When Chen Zui walked out of the Water God Temple with his long spear slung over his shoulder, the sky was already bright with daylight.
A thin layer of morning mist floated over the surface of the Gun River, and several waterbirds fluttered up from the reed beds before settling back down.
Standing on the blue-stone steps of the ferry crossing, he looked down at the Quchi point on his right arm.
That faint azure glow had completely submerged beneath his skin, as though it had never existed.
Yet the lingering resonance of that spear thrust still burned faintly within his meridians.
A single breath of Liu Yinsheng's sword qi had shattered the coordinated siege of twelve Second Rank martial artists.
That was a realm he could not yet reach—a method of condensing the power of heaven and earth into the span of a square inch.
“‘The number one person beneath the Earthly Sword Immortals’ is truly a well-deserved title,” he muttered to himself, fishing out the small celadon bottle Liu Yinsheng had given him from his robes and tossing a pill into his mouth.
The pill melted as soon as it touched his throat. A warm surge of medicinal efficacy spread along his meridians, slowly seeping into the hidden injury near his Xinshu point.
The dull ache that had lingered incessantly finally eased a bit.
Chen Zui took a deep breath and stuffed the porcelain bottle back into his robes.
Thinking back on how he had been chased all the way from Luoyan City to Qingya Academy by Zhizhou Tower over the past few months, barely meddling in any business and making zero progress on his experience points, he felt a surge of irritation.
If there was one incident, it had been venting anger on behalf of Su Muyun, the destitute scholar who had traveled all the way from Longxi to the academy's gate, thereby provoking Cao Zhengchun.
And just yesterday, the system had finally settled the reward for that.
A pitiful twenty experience points.
From this, he could deduce that the poor student had successfully passed the Caiqin Trial and gained admission to Qingya Academy as he had wished.
Yet it also revealed that this dedicated student was unlikely to achieve great things in the future.
As the saying went: even if one possesses soaring ambition, without luck, one cannot break through.
Come to think of it, Su Muyun's ability to smoothly pass the Caiqin Trial had entirely depended on Chen Zui stepping up in the nick of time to shield him from that disaster brought by Cao Zhengchun, hadn't it?
Were it not for that, Su Muyun probably wouldn't have even made it into the examination hall.
That was luck.
Su Muyun certainly had drive. Traveling thousands of li from Longxi to Jiangnan, begging like a mendicant the entire way—such perseverance would make him a notable figure anywhere.
Yet without Chen Zui's spear thrust sweeping away the vicious dogs before the gate, no amount of drive would have saved him from crashing headfirst into a brick wall.
The reverse was true as well.
How many people in this world stood on high, looked up to by ten thousand souls, their names recorded in official history?
Yet if one took a close look, the fellows standing up there did not necessarily have more backbone than anyone else.
They had merely caught the right times, stood in the path of the right wind, met an influential benefactor, or enjoyed a stroke of good luck at a critical juncture.
These fortunes, these momentums—these intangible, inexplicable things—were the true weights determining how far a person could go.
All the heroes, champions, princes, and ministers under heaven were, in the end, nothing more than a makeshift troupe of amateur actors.
Singing, reciting, acting, and acrobatic fighting on stage, with playing and chanting below—it looked extraordinarily lively, but in truth, it was riddled with flaws and drafty all over.
So if he hadn't gained many experience points over the past few months, he accepted it.
He would chalk it up to bad luck.
After all, being targeted by a behemoth as resourceful and all-reaching as Zhizhou Tower was never going to be pleasant.
Yet accepting it was one thing; swallowing his anger was another.
Using up a breath of Liu Yinsheng's sword qi to wreck Zhizhou Tower's stronghold in Gunzhou...
In the eyes of others, this trade might seem a reckless waste of a heavenly treasure.
Yet he did not care.
Still, if Liu Yinsheng were to find out about this, he would probably be so furious he'd cough up blood.
Chen Zui truly could not imagine what that refined and gentle Senior Sword Saint would look like when throwing a thunderous tantrum.
However, that was a matter for later.
His top priority right now was to find some business to meddle in and make up for all the experience points he had missed out on over the past few months.
At this thought, the corners of Chen Zui's mouth curled up slightly higher.
Back in that underground chamber, from the stacks of documents and letters of Zhizhou Tower, he had gathered quite a bit of secret intelligence about the martial world.
These matters ranged from big to small, more than enough to recoup his lost experience points from the past few months.
Among them, what interested him the most was the news that Furnace-Listening Pavilion had cased up their newly forged divine sword and dispatched it toward Jinyang City.
Chen Zui went over the details regarding this matter in his head again. The more he weighed it, the more he felt this piece of business was worth poking his nose into.
First of all, the people of Furnace-Listening Pavilion were escorting Sword God Lü's sword.
Sword God Lü was one of the two living Earthly Sword Immortals in the world, and he was scheduled to duel Sword Immortal Shen in Jinyang City.
Meanwhile, Chen Zui held the message Gu Yiyou had left for Sword Immortal Shen.
Although the connection took three twists and turns, when all was said and done, he and the people from Furnace-Listening Pavilion were grasshoppers tied to the same string.
Meddling in this affair was both justified and logical.
Secondly, anyone who dared to intercept Furnace-Listening Pavilion's convoy and set their sights on the sword of an Earthly Sword Immortal certainly wouldn't be nobodies.
The more people, the merrier; the bigger the fight, the greater the value, and the experience points would naturally surge along with it.
It was far more worthwhile than standing up for a poor scholar at the academy gate.
Thinking of this, Chen Zui patted the small celadon bottle in his robes and touched the spot around the Quchi point on his right arm.
Although he was down one strand of sword qi, the other two remained.
The sword qi at the back of his heart and his left shoulder were enough for him to stir up trouble twice more.
Gazing at the official road outside the distant city gates as it grew steadily livelier, the curve of his lips looked exceptionally bold and unruly in the morning light.
“This time, no one is going to stop me from meddling.”
...
Furnace-Listening Pavilion's convoy had already been traveling for three days.
Carriage wheels rolled over the half-dry dirt of the official road, producing dull, rumbling rattles.
The horses pulling the carts were sturdy Hexi steeds, one in a hundred, with thick hooves and glossy manes, their breath jetting out in two columns of white mist in the twilight.
Inserted into the shafts of each carriage was a command flag forged from black iron, its surface embroidered with a three-legged furnace cauldron in gold thread.
Beneath the cauldron were two crossed hammers.
This was the emblem of Furnace-Listening Pavilion, representing the realm's foremost weapon-forging haven in the martial world.
In the center of the convoy, an all-black ironwood carriage stood out prominently.
The carriage body was not made of ordinary timber, but carved from a solid block of South Sea iron agarwood.
Over the roof of the carriage hung three layers of curtains woven with celestial silk.
From each of the four corners of the curtains hung a fist-sized bronze bell.
With every step the carriage took, they emitted an exceedingly faint, crisp chime.
Surrounding the carriage were eight martial artists in tight-fitting martial attire.
The weapons of these eight differed from one another, yet every single one was a divine weapon personally forged by Furnace-Listening Pavilion.
If even one of them found its way into the martial world, it would stir up a storm of blood and gore.
Their strides were uniform, and their breathing rhythms were in perfect sync.
Evidently, they were seasoned experts who had practiced the same joint-attack formation for years.
Bringing up the rear of the convoy was an open-topped baggage cart.
There were no goods on the cart—only a single person seated upon it.
It was a white-haired, white-bearded old man with a long saber resting horizontally across his knees.
At that moment, his hawk-like eyes swept across the forested mountains flanking both sides of the road.
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