Chapter 156 – Those So Called “Moves”

“Sis, did you find last night especially cold?” grumbled Taohua with a pout to Lihua first thing in the morning as she combed her hair.

“You felt it too? If it weren’t the middle of summer now, I would have thought we were in the middle of winter,” said Lihua softly as she spun around with a start.

“Do you think…” Taohua whispered as she leaned toward Lihua’s ear.

“Shush! What you say might get you killed!” Lihua clamped a hand over Taohua’s mouth before the younger girl could finish her sentence, giving her a stern warning.

“Okay then…” Taohua nodded sadly.

“I need to get changed.”

Just when Lihua was about to continue to warn Taohua, Gu Suihan’s voice resounded from his own room.

“Yes, Young Master!” The two girls quickly straightened their clothes, grabbed all his clothes, and ran into his room to help him get changed.

They had observed recently that, for some reason, their young master had become pickier and pickier with his clothes. He had stopped wearing the simple, plain blue garb that all Youthful Clarity Sect disciples wore but preferred a much more expensive and elegant brocade long robe that was as black as the night sky. Also, in the past, Gu Suihan didn’t need them to help him with such things, but he started wanting them to help him, and he didn’t look like it was his first time ordering servants about either.

“Young Master seems to have changed,” thought Lihua to herself as she glanced a little enviously at Gu Suihan’s handsome yet feminine features. How did a man end up looking prettier than a woman?

In fact, almost every person who saw Gu Suihan would describe him that way. Descriptors like thick eyebrows, a chiseled jaw, a rugged look, and other phrases usually used to describe men weren’t applicable to him at all.

His deep-set eyes shone like the stars in the night sky, his lips were thin but not overly so, and they formed a perfect curve when he smiled. His eyebrows were slightly curved and weren’t thick. His ivory-white skin was smooth and delicate, while his waist-length hair was as black and shiny as ink.

Someone with such features among commoners would have been regarded as a great beauty.

Unfortunately, the creepy symbol of a red spider lily in between his brows made this gentle face look somewhat indifferent.

It was as though he was born as a deity who lived among the clouds above and looked down on the pathetic mortals below.

“Young Master, are you going to class today?” asked Lihua softly. As maids picked and trained specially to serve cultivators, both Lihua and Taohua were very pretty and had an excellent figure, but they paled in comparison to Gu Suihan’s unbelievable beauty. They dared not even compare themselves to him.

“They’re nothing but a bunch of trash, so I’m not going. Prepare some food. I want to eat,” said Gu Suihan calmly with his eyes closed. He didn’t bother hiding the disdain in his tone.

“Yes, Young Master.” A thought crossed Taohua’s mind, causing her to glare at Gu Suihan through the copper mirror before skipping out of the room.

When the two maids first arrived at Gu Suihan’s abode, they were actually very nervous. The sect had sent them here to take care of Gu Suihan’s everyday needs, but Gu Suihan was so independent. Besides letting them cook, he did everything else himself.

But now, things have changed completely. Gu Suihan was now ordering them around as they expected, which made them actually breathe a sigh of relief instead.

“I heard that a plague broke out in a country called Fenglin, near where the Seven Kill Sect is. What happened there?” Gu Suihan suddenly asked as he enjoyed a gentle massage from his two maids.

His voice was soft but resounded like thunder in the extremely quiet room. He hadn’t unleashed any qi when talking at all, yet his tone sounded authoritative.

Lihua got shocked and nearly dropped the comb she was holding. She pulled herself together after a moment and quickly replied, “I don’t know the details, but I heard that Fenglin had become a dead town. Both humans and animals turned into senseless creatures, and it was a tragic sight to behold.”

“A tragic sight to behold, you say?” An elegant smile spread across Gu Suihan’s exquisite features.

“The Seven Kill Sect didn’t send anyone to investigate this matter?”

“I…don’t know about that,” said Lihua a little disappointedly after she struggled to find an answer.

“It’s fine,” said Gu Suihan flippantly. He didn’t blame her for not knowing. He did not speak after that.

Lihua began to feel that her young master had really changed. He seemed more…charming now.

As she thought more and more about him, her heart became more and more confused as well, and there was a dazed look in her eyes.

“Sis, the food is ready,” Taohua’s bright voice called out from outside, which immediately snapped Lihua out of her infatuated thoughts.

After eating, Gu Suihan sent the two maids away and sat inside his meditation room by himself. He felt the qi flowing within his body and snorted. “That’s a Youthful Clarity Sect cultivation technique?”

He snorted even more loudly when he remembered how he had been described as someone who had “complete understanding with the sword and a natural formation of a sword will”. And they had been so excited about that too.

What did it mean to have a complete understanding of the sword?

You get a sword and use it for more than a decade, and even an idiot would have a complete understanding of it. In short, it meant that the sword went where you wanted it to go.

As for sword will, that was a joke.

Once you managed to refine fiendish qi and combine it with your core, then you would have the will of any weapon you wanted. All that about having a fist will, a sword will, and a saber will was just pure bullshit. Only these uninformed country bumpkins from this tiny world would be so impressed by something like that.

Gu Suihan hated such things in particular. Things like splitting cultivation stages into Foundation Establishment, Origin Core, etc., or spells, moves, and all that.

To him, all these things were just fucking dumb.

There were only two realms – either you were weaker than him, or you were stronger than him.

As for moves, spells, and the like, those were just a matter of different ways of moving qi and energy about.

For example, moves like Immortal Guides the Way or the Green Dragon Emerges from the Sea were basically move involving raising a sword and thrusting it forward. Other move names like Life Snatching Consecutive Sword or Refreshing Wind Sword Technique, blah blah blah, was just different in the way the energy was moved and how much strength it required. On the outside, it was always basic moves like holding the sword horizontally, using it to poke something, slice something, stab something, crush something, encircle something, hack something, and so on.

Novels love making people fight and yell their moves like, “My move is Black Tiger Gouges the Heart!” “My move is the Green Dragon Explores the Ocean!” They’re the same! How the hell do you differentiate them?

In summary, the weaker the person, the more complicated they like making things. It was the same with humans.

When one reached Gu Suihan’s level, all these sword or spear moves were utterly useless. To him, the only takeaway he had was whether it was a move that could affect the laws of nature.

Gu Suihan might have looked like a sword cultivator after he started cultivating in the Geng Gold Sword Mantra, but if you looked carefully, he seemed to learn all the sword techniques and moves like he already knew them. He controlled the movement of his qi and energy without any trouble.

For example, his Three Fingers of Yama move. He could literally use his fingers to execute it, but he could also execute it just as well with his legs, and using a sword to execute it could work too.

“Bloody River Underworld River Mantra!” Gu Suihan immediately started cultivating the cultivation technique he had been studying before he came to this world. He had recreated his body, and his own spiritual root was a water element, so it went well with this technique.

Once, twice, thrice…Gu Suihan moved his energy faster and faster, using it to push through obstacle after obstacle without stopping. The heart-soul at the bottom of his spirit flickered faintly as qi kept flowing out of it. At the same time, his level of cultivation began to advance like it was a rocket.

Beginner…Mid…Advanced…Peak…He made a breakthrough.

Immediately after his cultivation level had stabilized at Beginner Origin Core, Gu Suihan stopped himself and withdrew his energy, making it surge wildly within his spiritual meridians.

“This is not the time to expose my real capabilities,” murmured Gu Suihan. He slowly hid away the imposing aura around his body and dropped his cultivation level back to Beginner Foundation Establishment.

Who was he?

A powerful being at the Immortal stage.

His heart for the Way was clear. His heart-soul was untainted.

He didn’t suffer from any demons inside his heart. And even if he had any, those demons would die before he would.

You could say that if he had enough natural treasures on hand, he could return to the Immortal stage without any problems.

Unfortunately, despite gobbling up many souls and helping his spirit to heal considerably, it would still be long before he recovered completely.

One’s cultivation level was like a little boat, while one’s spirit was like the person sitting in that boat. If the boat were too big, the person wouldn’t be able to control it well. But if the person were too big, the boat wouldn’t be able to take it.

The two things had to match each other in proportion all the time without any disparity.

Gu Suihan could only hit a maximum of Beginner Origin Core now. If he went any higher, he would go out of control, which would be even worse.

He wasn’t the impatient sort of person. He wasn’t going to be anxious to reach the next stage and do something that wasn’t worth it.

His storage ring flickered, and a strange sword suddenly appeared and gave off an excited hum.

Despite holding it again, that deep connection was gone.

Gu Suihan knew why. His spirit had not changed, but his body had been recreated. The process had also quietly severed any ties made with such weapons.

In other words, Questioning Heaven was now nothing more than a powerful spiritual weapon. Anybody could refine it and turn it into their own.

“That makes it…perfect,” said Gu Suihan. He used his long fingers to grasp the hilt loosely and pulled it out of its scabbard. The usual bloody sea appeared, and it looked like the apocalypse had hit.

Now that he had no connection with it, there wouldn’t be that problem of him dying if the sword were to be damaged and vice versa. One had to be dumb to prefer that. Wasn’t his current situation the best one to be in?

“Kill! Kill! Kill!” Murderous thoughts and the surging fiendish qi within him burst out of his body, but he was able to stop it easily just as they got close to the door. The relentless qi was trapped within the meditation room, dyeing its surroundings a bloody rose red.

“This is my heart for the Way…my obsession, my will…my own Way!” he muttered as if he were in a dream.

He then returned the sword to its sheath, and everything that appeared earlier instantly disappeared. The meditation room was silent once more.