Chapter 628: - Saber Technique, Unfettered

In truth, the arrangements the Blind Man had mentioned went far beyond a ceremonial retinue. The retinue was only the surface.

A Great Yan Marquis raised through military merit was, in Chu terms, roughly equivalent in stature to a Pillar of State. The formal institutions could not be copied directly from Chu, but the underlying substance still had to be there.

So he needed a makeshift staff accompanying him as well, if only for appearances.

The Blind Man and Fourth Lady could not get away. The other Demon Kings all had work of their own, and this was precisely their busiest period. So Gou Moli was recalled to accompany the trip. After all, he had performed very well the last time they handled affairs in Yingdu, and his ability was more than sufficient for the role of a dog-headed strategist.

He Chunlai would also accompany them. The Blind Man had already marked him out as an assistant. This time, he was not going merely to cook. He would genuinely begin learning secretarial work and other administrative duties.

Of course, if circumstances allowed, he could still cook on the side.

At the same time, a group of relatively young students would serve as “attendants” on this journey, handling assorted errands and menial work. They were called attendants, but in truth the purpose was to take them out and let them see the world.

For any organization to develop, it had to pay attention to cultivating the next generation.

Sometimes, it was not that the next generation necessarily had to inherit everything. Rather, if you never began the process and never let outsiders see that posture, then you could not give people the sense of stability and security that came from knowing your organization would continue functioning and continue existing.

That was why the Crown Prince was the foundation of the state. So long as the Crown Prince existed, there was at least some guarantee of continuity into the future, and people’s hearts would not drift so easily.

As for military force accompanying the journey, the other Demon Kings were busy. Fan Li still had to act as construction foreman. Demon Pill would naturally be there. What remained missing was one expert respectable enough to place on the public stage, so the obvious choice was Hero Chen, who had spent these days doing odd jobs in the red-tent quarter.

Hero Chen was the sort of man who might occasionally return to Qian and then suddenly appear again out of nowhere. But so long as he was present, he was reliable.

That was the power of character.

As for the Sword Saint, Zheng Fan had not intended to invite him. Good steel had to be used on the blade’s edge. One could not trouble the man over every little thing.

But the Sword Saint came anyway.

...

“I truly did not arrange for Liu Dahu’s name to be put on the list,” Zheng Fan said with absolute certainty. “I never even planned to have you accompany me. I already called Hero Chen along. Why would I pull a stunt like this on top of that?”

The Sword Saint stood before Zheng Fan, his brows faintly drawn together.

Yes.

His stepson, Liu Dahu, had successfully been selected among the student soldiers accompanying Marquis Zheng on this journey to Yingdu.

Zheng Fan shrugged.

“You know how I do things. Even if I wanted to trick you into helping me through some roundabout scheme, I’d make the whole process flow so smoothly that you’d feel as though you were bathing in spring wind. How could I possibly handle it this stiffly?”

The Sword Saint did not fixate on the part about “tricking him.”

Some forms of tacit understanding were already perfectly clear to both sides.

The Sword Saint merely pretended not to notice the obvious. So long as he was comfortable and everything felt agreeable, Marquis Zheng had, time and again, succeeded in making him feel exactly that way.

At that moment, Xiao Yibo walked over carrying a stack of booklets and placed them on the tea table before Zheng Fan.

“Marquis, I’ve finished marking them.”

“Good. You may go.”

“Yes, Marquis.”

Zheng Fan picked up the booklets and leafed through several pages. Red ink had been used to mark the relevant entries.

Then he set the booklets down, tapped them lightly with one finger, and said:

“In the academic subjects, Liu Dahu is decent. Upper-middle, I’d say. But in archery, first place is Zheng Man. He counts as half a godson of mine, that wolf cub. Liu Dahu is third. In horsemanship, Zheng Man is first and Liu Dahu fifth. In wrestling, first place is... Liu Dahu. Zheng Man is second. Loaded marches, endurance, long-distance running: Liu Dahu is first in all of them.”

Zheng Fan looked at the Sword Saint and continued:

“So there really was no back door this time. You trained your son too well. He earned his place in the group entirely on his own overall results.”

“...” the Sword Saint.

The Sword Saint believed him.

This was not something Zheng Fan had fabricated.

There were certain things he had never consciously thought about before, but now that he did, the explanation was obvious.

The Sword Saint himself was a practitioner, so naturally he understood how to nourish the body properly. Under his requirements, Liu Dahu had always eaten extremely well, with meat almost never absent from his meals.

Every day, he also made Liu Dahu sit cross-legged and meditate with him.

Commonly speaking... “refining qi.”

This kind of qi refining was different from the methods of Qi Refiners. Its effect was more like regulating qi and blood, giving oneself a daily session of “loosening the sinews and invigorating the blood.”

During the day, Liu Dahu studied at school. Half the day was devoted to lessons, while the other half was spent under martial instructors learning archery, horsemanship, riding, and other skills.

In effect, he trained his body every single day.

Perhaps some of those things had seemed insignificant to the Sword Saint.

But in reality... how many people in this entire world could receive the Sword Saint’s personal instruction from childhood onward?

Even the breathing method he had taught Liu Dahu had been adjusted specifically for the boy’s constitution, meridians, and frame.

The overwhelming majority of masters in the world could never do that.

So he ate well.

He trained well.

And Liu Dahu himself was willing to endure hardship, work hard, and apply himself.

Under those circumstances, good results were nothing strange.

Bad results would have been the truly bizarre outcome.

Why were descendants of great families more likely to rise, whether in literature or martial arts?

Why, among the Four Great Swordsmen, had only the Sword Saint risen from common stock while the other three all possessed established backgrounds?

The reason was exactly this.

“How about this?” Zheng Fan said. “I’ll strike Liu Dahu’s name from the list. I genuinely never intended to have you follow me to Yingdu this time. There really isn’t anything major happening there anyway. It’s only that one marginal prince almost died.”

Marquis Zheng stretched lazily.

“You understand. In Great Yan, imperial princes don’t seem especially valuable.”

Back in his early years, Marquis Zheng himself had already achieved the feat of crippling one prince’s fifth limb.

The Sword Saint hesitated.

In the end, he sighed.

“This is a result he earned through his own ability. It is also an opportunity he won for himself. He admires you greatly.”

“Mm-hm.”

“I also know that nearly every child in the school admires you. They all treat you as their example.”

“Mm-hm.”

First, although the school had a headmaster, the Blind Man was responsible for compiling the teaching materials and arranging the curriculum.

Given the Blind Man’s ability, there was naturally no possibility of anyone below him teaching one thing while implying another.

Second, Marquis Zheng’s own achievements and rise truly were beyond reproach.

Most importantly, this group of children at the school came from the earliest wave of migrants to Snow Sea Pass.

They had personally experienced the care extended by the Count’s Residence, so their cohesion and sense of belonging were naturally much stronger.

What the Marquis Residence needed to do next was continue spreading that same love, centered on Fengxin City, so long as the cost remained controllable.

“He earned this qualification through his own effort. As his father, I cannot deprive him of it. In the end, the road is his to walk. He is a good child.”

If people said a stepfather and stepdaughter were separated by one layer, then a stepfather and stepson were separated by at least three.

Among ordinary folk there was even a saying:

Marry a widow with a daughter, and you gain another warm jacket.

Marry a widow with a son, and wait until you are old for him to kick you out of your own nest.

But Liu Dahu had been sensible since childhood.

Back at Snow Sea Pass, while the Sword Saint was still injured and needed crutches, he went to collect the boy from school every day.

And every single time, Liu Dahu would walk over in front of all his classmates, support the Sword Saint by the arm, and call him:

“Dad.”

The Sword Saint truly regarded him as his own son.

“All right.”

Marquis Zheng agreed.

Then he quietly waited.

He did not have to wait long.

The Sword Saint stood up and said:

“I’ll accompany you.”

“Good.”

Perfect.

The Sword Saint prepared to leave.

Zheng Fan called after him:

“That thing I mentioned before, about having Tian Tian take you as his master...”

The Sword Saint did not stop.

He kept walking outward and waved one hand.

“I will not raise Tian Wujing’s son for him.”

Zheng Fan smiled.

“Pretentious.”

What he did not know was that the Sword Saint had once stood before the child and asked:

“Want to learn the sword?”

The child had answered:

He wanted to be like his godfather and practice the saber.

...

His usual afternoon saber practice was interrupted.

The Sword Saint matter consumed more time in the middle as well, so Marquis Zheng simply changed methods.

He ordered Xu Chuang brought over.

Xu Chuang wore shackles, and the Sword Saint had sealed part of his qi sea with sword qi.

So before the Sixth Grade Marquis Zheng, he could now be considered harmless to man and beast.

Marquis Zheng sat in a chair and looked at Xu Chuang kneeling below.

This was the man who had tried to muddy the waters back when Zheng Fan was away from Snow Sea Pass.

Then the Blind Man decided to release him.

And then

Hero Chen caught him and dragged him back.

Perhaps the man genuinely was destined to cross paths with them.

“How was the water dungeon?” Zheng Fan asked. “Pleasant?”

Xu Chuang replied:

“Answering the Marquis, now that the corpse poison has been removed, every other hardship feels like entertainment.”

Liang Cheng had removed the corpse poison for him.

Otherwise, the man might already be dead.

So Xu Chuang himself was rather bewildered.

He had been captured.

Then released.

Then captured again.

Then imprisoned.

Then someone cured his poison.

Jianghu men naturally had their own rules.

But after this repeated alternation of clubs and sweet dates smashed into his face over and over, he was genuinely starting to lose track of what was happening.

He wanted to do something in return.

Genuinely in return.

But just as the Blind Man had guessed, the person who had sent him here had not actually been that person at all.

There was no vine to follow back to the melon.

“I heard...” Marquis Zheng used an ear spoon to clean one ear. “The saber and sword arts of your Wenming Mountain are both complete garbage?”

For a jianghu sect that trained both saber and sword, to somehow become famous throughout the State of Liang as a sacred ground of medicine was enough to show just how badly its martial arts had failed.

Xu Chuang answered:

“Marquis, the reason is that the sword art of Wenming Mountain is too profound, while its saber art is even more profound. So when the disciples of Wenming Mountain cultivate both saber and sword, they end up becoming worse at both.”

“Oh?” Zheng Fan laughed. “Now that is an explanation with some artistry to it. Not bad. Can you still perform a saber form?”

“Answering the Marquis, I can still move a saber.”

Even in shackles, even with his qi sea sealed, performing a saber form was still possible.

“Give him a saber.”

One of the personal guards stepped forward and handed Xu Chuang his sidearm.

Xu Chuang accepted the saber, saluted Zheng Fan with it, and began to move through a form.

Once the sequence ended, he withdrew the saber.

Xu Chuang’s footing had become slightly unsteady.

Under this kind of weight and restriction, any movement consumed more energy than usual.

Zheng Fan looked somewhat puzzled.

“This Marquis feels that saber art was... only so-so.”

Zheng Fan had trained the saber without ever pursuing some special secret manual.

In the jianghu, saber manuals and sword manuals were indeed divided into superior and inferior grades, something like Heaven, Earth, Profound, and Yellow tiers.

But Marquis Zheng had first asked Ding Hao about it.

Ding Hao said:

If it works, it works.

Later, he asked the Sword Saint.

The Sword Saint said he knew there were fine sword manuals in the world, but he had never seen any manual that let someone emerge from seclusion invincible under Heaven the moment he finished practicing it.

Later still, trying to be as safe as possible, Zheng Fan asked the Prince of Jingnan.

The Prince of Jingnan’s answer was:

“A saber needs practice?”

So the saber art Marquis Zheng had always trained was actually the most orthodox military saber technique of the Yan army.

Because it was suited for killing in battle formations.

Too many fancy flourishes were useless.

Surviving the battlefield mattered most.

Zheng Fan drew Wuyai.

Although his waist was sore, his back ached, and one of his legs was still threatening to cramp, he nevertheless performed an entire sequence.

Once finished, Marquis Zheng tossed Wuyai to the guard beside him.

Then, supporting his lower back with his left hand, he walked to the tea table, picked up his cup, and drank twice.

“What do you think?”

Xu Chuang replied:

“Marquis’s saber technique is simple and heavy. At a glance, one can tell it comes from the military tradition.”

“How is it different from the one you just performed?”

“Answering the Marquis, there is no clear superiority between them.”

“Doesn’t that contradict what you said?”

“Marquis, because I cultivate both saber and sword, I can compare the two more clearly. A Martial Artist practicing the saber is different from a swordsman using the sword. For a Martial Artist, the saber is actually an attachment. A Martial Artist’s true strength still lies in his physique. Once a saber technique reaches a respectable level, the specific form makes little essential difference. What matters is still the body. A swordsman seeks unity between man and sword. In my view, however, it is actually a Martial Artist wielding a saber who most truly achieves unity between man and weapon. The saber is an extension of the Martial Artist’s physique. What matters most is tempering one’s own body and raising one’s qi and blood, and then using that body to command the saber. The quality of a saber art does not lie in the manual. It lies in the strength of one’s own physique and qi and blood, and in how well the saber complements the gaps in one’s body.”

Marquis Zheng listened.

Then he slowly nodded, thoughtful.

“I understand what you mean. Tempering the body and raising qi and blood come first. On that foundation, the saber can be practiced however freely, however naturally, however unfetteredly one wishes?”

...

Litian City.

The former Marquis of Jingnan Residence.

No heated conservatory had been built in the rear courtyard.

There was no scene of flowers blooming like spring in all four seasons.

But in truth, many flowers had once been planted here.

Many, many... azaleas.

The ground beneath them had even once been partitioned and prepared.

The original plan had been to build a heated conservatory here as well.

Tian Wujing had been born into the Tian Clan.

It was not as though he had never lived comfortably.

Only none of those things were needed anymore.

The bleak desolation filling the garden was the scenery most fitting for this moment.

On the threshold, the white-haired man sat there.

He was not staring blankly into space.

Nor was he sitting there consumed by depression.

He was looking very seriously.

Only the thing he was looking at could not be seen at all by ordinary eyes.

This was not some imagined escape.

It was a kind of complete immersion within oneself.

Perhaps letting oneself become unkempt, letting oneself become miserable, letting oneself appear so tragic that anyone who saw you immediately understood that you were grieving was itself a kind of release.

By contrast, remaining like this might be what true strength actually looked like.

No.

Even “strength” was not quite the right word.

Because it was not that Tian Wujing had always liked standing.

It was that he had long since forgotten what posture kneeling required.

A guest arrived at the residence.

That alone was astonishing.

Ever since the Prince of Jingnan returned to the residence, not even eunuchs carrying imperial edicts had been able to make those gates open.

The Fifth Prince had been attacked in Yingdu.

Such a major event naturally meant Prince Cheng Residence had sent someone to notify Litian City.

But they themselves did not believe their messenger would actually be admitted into this residence.

So they had simultaneously sent an official letter to the Marquis of Pingxi Residence.

Naturally, another dispatch had gone to Yanjing as well.

Inside the Marquis Residence courtyard, an extra pair of cloth shoes appeared.

A middle-aged man who looked no different from an ordinary street laborer walked in.

He knelt before the man seated on the threshold.

“Your Highness.”

Tian Wujing withdrew his gaze.

Almost as though saying farewell to someone.

Then his eyes settled on the man.

Even Marquis Zheng, who had called him “Brother” more than once, still had to observe certain rules when standing before the Prince of Jingnan.

That alone showed how overwhelming the pressure Tian Wujing exerted upon others could be.

He had once defeated the Sword Saint.

And compared with the Sword Saint, he had something more behind him.

Several hundred thousand iron cavalry.

“Did you find it?”

“We did, Your Highness.”

The man took a letter from his robes and placed it before him.

Then he kowtowed three times.

Without waiting for an order, he withdrew on his own.

Tian Wujing rose.

He walked over and picked up the letter.

The envelope was black.

He did not open it.

He merely held it in one hand.

Carrying the letter, he walked to the northwest corner of the courtyard.

After passing through a moon gate, he saw the Pixiu crouched there against the wall.

Tian Wujing stopped before it.

The Pixiu understood.

It opened its mouth.

Tian Wujing tossed the letter inside.

Then he reached out and lightly patted the Pixiu’s head.

The beast’s eyes immediately began turning red.

Its breathing grew heavy.

Between mount and rider, there existed a faint spiritual link beyond words.

The Pixiu could sense the emotion rising from its master.

It looked ordinary on the surface.

But beneath that surface, rage was gradually preparing to erupt.

A dark volcano.

A terrifying suppression.

A faint smile appeared at Tian Wujing’s lips.

Perhaps it could be called a smile.

The next instant, the Pixiu lowered itself flat again.

It no longer dared display the slightest emotion.

Great Yan’s Pixiu actually lived rather stifling lives.

Look at the same sort of divine beasts in Chu.

They were worshiped and exalted.

In Great Yan, divine beasts could only become mounts.

But what could they do?

Great Yan simply had too many monsters in human skin.

Tian Wujing returned to his courtyard.

He sat back down on the threshold.

Once more, he looked toward that place.

Before his first expedition onto the snowfield, she had sat there amid fallen blossoms.

Her belly had been large.

Needle and thread had rested in her hands as she embroidered a little bellyband.

She had mocked herself.

Saying that even if she had never touched a saber in her life, she still would never catch up to Zheng Fan’s wife when it came to needlework.

Then she had said that as the child’s own mother, if she never embroidered even one piece of clothing for him herself, she would feel ashamed admitting it.

And she had said one more thing.

When the child grew older, if it was a boy, she would have him follow her and practice the saber.

Suddenly, Tian Wujing spoke into the empty, desolate courtyard:

“Our child will learn the saber. But not from me. He will learn from Zheng Fan. His saber...”

Tian Wujing raised his head.

He looked at the gray sky.

Then continued:

“is truly unfettered.”

[End of Chapter 628]