Chapter 257: The Real Leading Template?
Translator: Subudai11 Editor: Chrissy
"Very good, you have mastered eighty to ninety percent of this Nine Yang Heaven Burning Sword, Sword Spirit Root truly deserves its reputation. This is the only time I ever see someone with such a level of sword art perception. Even in my heyday, I’m not as good as you."
On an island in a boundless black tide, a piece of golden light formed into a sphere. Within that sphere, Sword God was slowly doing a sword dance using a plain sword. Beside him, the Big Sister of Spirit Sword Sect Zhu Shiyao followed his move. Their actions were exactly the same, however, her Great Sun Golden Brilliant Sword bloomed nearly as bright as the sun.
While Sword Demon and Wang Lu were stepping up his cultivation, Sword God and Zhu Shiyao were not idle either.
Although from the point of view of strength, this group occupied the absolute superiority, Sword God remained vigilant. He spent every moment passing on the methods he learned during his life to Zhu Shiyao.
What he was imparting her now was the immortal level sword art Nine Yang Heaven Burning Sword.
"What Sword God of Bai Li excelled at the most is Primal Chaos Heaven Splitting Sword, which, although powerful, does not fit with the sword path that you took. Moreover, your Stellar Sword Method is also an immortal level ancient inheritance method, and its power is not below that of Primal Chaos Heaven Splitting Sword, so there’s no need for you to change it. However, in addition to the core method, a brilliant sword cultivator must also learn many other knowledge."
"You possess the Sword Spirit Root and Stellar Divine Eyes, so every time you learn a sword art, you will reap benefits far more than the others. Unfortunately, currently, there are very little immortal level methods left in Nine Regions, and I’m afraid even your Spirit Sword Sect has only gotten the Stellar Sword by chance, and it doesn’t have the second part. Thus, although your sword art is extremely refined, it’s not broad enough. Right now, what I teach you are a few sets of immortal level and quasi-immortal level sword art. If you can learn and understand them, even if they won’t cause your cultivation base to advance rapidly, but in the actual fight, you would progress by leaps and bounds."
Sword God then revealed a faint smile. "For a sword cultivator, the so-called Stage is meaningless. If you have an immortal sword in your hand, you will only have two categories of opponents, one is those that you can beat, and the other is those that you can’t beat, that’s all."
Zhu Shiyao felt deeply in agreement with this.
From the beginning, her immortal cultivation path was very different than the others. Among the few Successor Disciples of Spirit Sword Sect, except for the one who was deliberately treated with low key because of a special reason, she was the one who entered the sect the earliest, and also the most legendary one.
She was taken back to the mountain by her Master when she was not yet old enough to remember. Only when she was about ten years old did she hear her story from her Master.
Twenty years ago, when Daoist Master Feng Yin was wandering out, occasionally he saw devil cults that indiscriminately killed innocent villagers as sacrifices to build devil treasures. Their means were extremely vicious. Unexpectedly, they even used dismemberment and chopping people into pieces. However, when Feng Yin rushed in to intervene, thousands of households in the villages and towns have already been slaughtered. Later on, Feng Yin wiped out these devils. At that time, the present hundreds of devil cultivators were frightened out of their wits when they saw two Deity Stage baby-eating old devils were slain by him, and they immediately broke ranks and tried to flee. However, they didn’t even have the chance to do that. After wiping out these devils, when Feng Yin was defusing the blood spell that imprisoned the area, he actually discovered that someone was still alive within the village! Guided by that person’s breath, he was amazed to find that a four-year-old girl was still alive! She was quietly standing, wrapped in the dust of the remains of the dead devil soldiers.
Daoist Master Feng Yin was puzzled by the fact that she was still alive. How could the raging devils in the village let her off… At that time, he felt that there was no life in this place, so he swept clean of this place using his stellar sword qi, reducing the several hundreds of devil soldiers that wreaked havoc in the village into ash. However, stellar sword qi didn’t differentiate between friend and foe, so how could she manage to survive? Then, when Feng Yin carefully looked at her, he was shocked speechless.
The girl, in the chaos of the rampaging devil cultivators, through fortuitous circumstance and surrounding, unexpectedly activated the legendary Sword Spirit Root! When this activated, it protected her from having sword injury, which guaranteed her life.
Despite Daoist Master Feng Yin being well known in the Nine Regions for his amazing divination through his Stellar Diffraction Technique, he actually couldn’t calculate such a miracle. At the most critical moment, this child actually activated the never-before-seen-in-thousands-of-years top rated spirit root. It was as if there was an invisible hand that manipulated the fate, which produced this incredibly great miracle.
Later on, Daoist Master Feng Yin immediately took the girl back to the Spirit Sword Mountain and trained her with the highest method available. However, her method of cultivation greatly differed from the other cultivators. He didn’t let her cultivate immortal cultivation method first but consolidated her root through a secret method, sparing no expense in refining innate panacea to stimulate her innate magical ability from its dormant state, the Stellar Divine Eyes.
After her foundation was solid, only then did she officially begin to cultivate the Stellar Sword Method. During this period, she spent most of her time in isolation. Daoist Master Feng Yin himself never told her about stage and related things. Were it not for the occasional exchange with her Junior Uncles or fellow apprentices, she would not even know what were the Stages and what they meant!
At that time, when she asked about it, her Master probably told her: Pure sword cultivation is based on sword, but sword is also a murder weapon. Therefore, for a sword cultivator, the immortal cultivation is a path of battles, and in a battle, no one cared about stage or level. In a battle, there are only two kinds of people, the winner and the loser. Thus, you only need to divide your opponent into two types, those that you could not beat and those that you could.
During her twenty years of cultivation, the path that Zhu Shiyao tread into was indeed full of thorns and thistles. Although a few years ago she wasn’t allowed to descend the mountain for the experiential learning, her cultivation life on the mountain was not so simple either. Her Master often brought her formidable matches for her to practice her sword, and most of the time, she ended up badly bruised and injured… Later on, when one of her Junior Uncle accidentally met her and exchanged blows with her, Zhu Shiyao finally realized that all of her opponents that her Master brought before her have cultivation base far higher than her.
However, so what? For a sword cultivator, there were only two types of opponent, the one that she could beat and the one that she could not. She never has to consider about cultivation base.
However, her immortal cultivation was not always smooth. The biggest difficulty was when her Master tried to awaken her dormant innate magical ability, the Stellar Divine Eyes… This supreme level magical ability was well-known in history. It was one of the few innate dormant magical abilities. It was even rare for the possessor of Sword Spirit Root to be able to activate it. However, the time and way to activate it were difficult to predict. The power of a magical ability could be limitless, but they were also difficult to control. And Stellar Divine Eyes was well known as one of the most difficult to control magical abilities. Within the history book, the most famous cultivator who managed to activate the Stellar Divine Eyes dates back into the past Sect Leader of the Stellar School. Relying on his pair of Stellar Divine Eyes, he swept the entire Nine Regions, becoming undefeated. Unfortunately, until he died, he was still unable to fully control this magical ability. Up until he died, he was still deeply affected by its side effect, and that was when the surrounding spiritual energy was still very rich and cultivators were still nearly omnipotent!
Prior to the Sect Leader of Stellar School, there were also people that stimulated the Stellar Divine Eyes, but none of them could truly overcome this magical ability. Many of those were able to activate the Stellar Eyes when they were still a commoner. Later, when they were discovered by cultivators, they have already missed the best time to cultivate. Some of them were promptly discovered, but the training method was not right, therefore, they thoroughly couldn’t suppress the side effect of this magical ability. The higher their cultivation, the stronger the side effect...
Zhu Shiyao’s condition was unique. When her Sword Spirit Root was activated, Feng Yin concluded that it was likely that she could arouse the Stellar Divine Eyes. Therefore, he simply artificially induced it through innate panacea. Also, there was the record of many valuable experiences of the Sect Leader of Stellar School, as the possessor of Stellar Divine Eyes, among the ancient inheritance of Stellar Sword Method. Based on this record, Daoist Master Feng Yin formulated a set of strategy to improve the innate magical ability of Zhu Shiyao.
To this end, Daoist Master Feng Yin did not even hesitate to sacrifice his own immortal cultivation to nurture the magical ability Stellar Divine Eyes and improve Zhu Shiyao’s training program according to his experience. This selfless sacrifice actually allowed him to find a way.
The regret of his predecessor was mostly because the power of the Stellars Divine Eye and its side effect always complemented each other, so it was very difficult to separate in order to suppress the side effect but also strengthen its power. Previously, no one was able to do that. After careful weighing, Feng Yin decided to find another way.
After the Age of Chaos, on individual cultivation, the present people were inferior to the ancient people. However, there have been unprecedented progress and breakthrough in fine skill and technique. The path chosen by Feng Yin was exactly based on that background. Simply speaking, he made a pair of wonderful glasses.
The side effect of the Stellar Divine Eye was its ability to discern the future, inevitably seeing myriad of future possibilities, resulting in the blurred vision. This blur could not be removed by any ability. Under the effect of the Stellar Divine Eye, the person’s five senses were also affected. Whether it was seeing or hearing, it was very difficult to find any useful information.
All of the efforts of the predecessors were unable to suppress this powerful side effect. However, in Feng Yin’s hand, this side effect has actually been alleviated through Kunlun Mirror, which was an ancient immortal treasure. It has the same ability of seeing the future. Through the invention of polarization method after the Age of Chaos, Feng Yin managed to transform Kunlun Mirror into a glasses, eliminating a lot of useless virtual image in one fell swoop, achieving a never before seen brilliant breakthrough.
If it had not been for the sake of the protection of the disciple, this method would’ve been made public and won Daoist Master Feng Yin an important seat in the Academic Committee of Union of Ten Thousand Immortals.
Of course, based on her cultivation base, it was still unknown when Zhu Shiyao would be eligible to use an immortal treasure like Kunlun Mirror. However, she has the innate magical ability, meaning that her path was different than that of Feng Yin. From a very young age, she has already begun to wear different glasses. All of them were, of course, imitations of Kunlun Mirror handcrafted by Daoist Master Feng Yin. Their grades were not high, which exactly matched the cultivation base of Zhu Shiyao.
With the aid of these glasses, Zhu Shiyao was finally able to successfully control her Stellar Divine Eyes, but also has an awe-inspiring divine swordsmanship. However, there was still a sliver of regret—her dependence on the external object, the glasses. Although her divine swordsmanship was invincible, her glasses were not...
She remembered that the first time she wore her glasses was when she was ten years old. At that time, her Master gave her a mysterious white ape as her opponent. The white ape has monstrous strength and could easily knock over dozens of Zhu Shiyao, who at the time has just completed her body refining stage. However, Feng Yin seemed to have full of confidence of Zhu Shiyao. He put Zhu Shiyao and the white ape together on the mountain and then confidently descended the mountain to wander. The result of the battle was also quite a surprise.
On the first day, when Feng Yin caught the white ape and brought it to the Stellar Peak, it was still in shock. Although only the ape and the seemingly harmless Zhu Shiyao were left in the mountain, it never dared to move. Until nightfall, when it smelled the fragrant dishes in the bamboo room. It could not hold itself back anymore and break into the hut. However, the girl, holding a bamboo stick, ended up beating the sh*t out of it that it could not even display its strength.
On the second day, the white ape came prepared. It also held a bamboo stick; its method was actually extremely exquisite. However, the girl was not afraid, still with the same bamboo stick to face the opponent. At that time, she has yet to even officially begin practicing swordsmanship. However, she was still able to break the white ape’s stick method, beating it until its skin cracked.
On the third day, the white ape held two short bamboo sticks, which made its offensive ferocious. This time, the girl dealt with her with ease, poking it in the stomach until it nearly sh*t itself.
On the fourth day, the white ape rode a deer, turning it into a white ape knight. The girl lightly tapped with her bamboo stick and that night’s dinner was braised deer meat.
On the fifth day, the humiliated white ape stole the girl’s glasses in the middle of the night.
Three months later, Zhu Shiyao slowly woke up from the sickbed. At this time, her fractured legs, broken wrists, and joints have already been healed. The scars on her face have been eliminated, and the blindfold on her right eye has also been taken down. At the same time, this lifetime’s lesson would forever stay in the deepest part of her heart.