CHAPTER 429: LIFE 111, AGE 16, MARTIAL DISCIPLE 1

The Undying Immortal System

After trudging up the final flight of stairs into our suite, all I wanted was a bed and a few hours of peace and quiet. YuLong and Meng LuYao, in contrast, still looked as chipper as always, our time in the training room not having taken much out of them.

As we entered, I scanned the common room to make sure that nothing had changed. The furniture was all still intact, none of the walls were damaged, and the bundles of loose training supplies were still scattered haphazardly around the floor. Most importantly, Kan and JiuLi were still locked away in their rooms, learning to cultivate. While I hadn’t been expecting anything to go wrong, I was still happy to see that my predictions turned out to be correct.

I walked over to the pile of blank books, picked up two at random, and used my copy ability to inscribe them with the same cultivation technique that I had given Kan and JiuLi. Once finished, I handed them to YuLong and Meng LuYao.

“Use these to get started. You still know how to seal your acupoints, right?”

YuLong gave me an easy nod, while Meng LuYao responded more hesitantly.

I offered her a tired but reassuring smile. “Just… Do your best. These mortal guandaos can only do so much. Without sealing your acupoints, you’ll be lucky to hit Martial Disciple 3 before going completely insane. If you have any problems, let me know.”

Both of them started to agree, but then they exchanged a quick glance, as if realizing something at the same time. YuLong let out a soft chuckle, while Meng LuYao’s expression tightened with concern.

“Fang… what about…” She gestured to the suite’s two locked doors.

I waved, brushing the topic to the side. “Let’s wait and see. It’ll be good to know how much cultivation knowledge those memory orbs actually gave them.”

Meng LuYao didn’t look entirely convinced by this response, but YuLong simply reached down, picked up an extra guandao, and gently guided her away.

Once they were gone, I tossed my short-hafted guandao to the floor, stepped into my room, and lay back on the bed. My eyes barely had time to shut before sleep pulled me under.

Several hours later, I woke to the hush that blanketed the inn during the deepest hours of the night.

As soon as I blinked open my eyes, I went out into the common room to make sure that everything was just as I had left it and that everyone’s doors remained tightly shut. Then, I went to our suite’s kitchen and made a bowl of rice porridge, sweetening it with a few pieces of dried fruit. Finally, I picked up one of the guandaos that lay discarded on the floor and returned to my bedroom.

Sitting down on a cultivation mat, I took a moment to reflect on the technique that I was about to practice—the Restless Blade Mantra, the same technique that I had shared with everyone else. Like all the other Low-Yellow techniques that I had seen, the Restless Blade Mantra came with severe mental side effects. This one, in particular, stirred a constant urge for battle, a restless craving for conflict that never truly faded.

While I generally wasn’t a fan of techniques with such blunt side effects, in this case, it seemed like the best option. Without weapons capable of properly filtering our qi, my group and I were destined to be deeply affected by whatever technique we chose to cultivate. And, as I had learned in the Yellow Flower Academy, it was much easier to both detect and block such mental effects when they were more straightforward like this.

Once I was confident in how to proceed, I laid the guandao across my arms in such a way that it was pressed firmly against an acupoint in my upper right arm. Then, I reached to the small bundle of natural energy in my core, moved it up to my arm, and used it to create a basic qi vortex.

While I didn’t yet have a guandao affinity, my qi affinity was more than up to the task of cultivating a Low-Yellow Rank 1 technique. However, like all weapon qi, there wasn’t much guandao qi circulating throughout the environment, so my progress was rather slow. There were several ways to fix this, such as Guandao Attunement Pills, Qi Gathering Formations, and guandao-based spirit fires, but I didn’t plan to use any of these. My companions would all need time to adjust to their new technique, so I was more than happy to cultivate at a more leisurely pace.

As I sat in my room, slowly pulling in one strand of qi after another, occasional sounds drifted from our suite’s common room. With each hour that passed, one person or another would decide to go out, stretch their legs, and, possibly, grab a bite to eat. However, shortly thereafter, they would return to their rooms to continue on with their practice.

In this manner, hours, perhaps days, passed me by. Eventually, the energy in my arm became saturated, so I formed it into a dense needle of qi and used it to pierce my first acupoint, ascending to Martial Disciple 2.

This done, I adjusted the position of my guandao so that its point was angled back and to my right, its haft pressed to my bicep. According to the Restless Blade Mantra, this posture was ideal when simultaneously drawing qi into both the upper and lower arms. The qi flowing into my upper arm would restore what had been depleted during my last breakthrough, while the qi entering my lower arm would help drive me toward the next.

As I continued cultivating, a faint call to battle echoed at the fringes of my awareness. However, the instant I recognized it, I crushed it beneath the full weight of my soul, refusing to let it take hold.

The next day, just as I was nearing my breakthrough to Martial Disciple 3, the clash of blades rang out from the suite’s common room, shattering my focus. I sprang to my feet and hurried to intervene before things got out of hand.

The scene that greeted me was almost comical. JiuLi and Kan were swinging their guandaos at YuLong with wild abandon, not caring about petty details such as edge alignment or even striking with the weapon’s blade. YuLong, meanwhile, brushed these attacks aside with ease, not bothering to form a proper defense.

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“You know,” I said, watching him toy with the two kids, “you should really be doing this in the training room. The walls here aren’t built to withstand repeated strikes.”

Sidestepping a blow from Kan, YuLong grunted at me. “You think I haven’t tried? They’re already too far gone.”

Seeing the truth of this, I made a subtle gesture toward JiuLi before lunging at Kan. Startled, the young man lashed out, his guandao cutting a clumsy path toward me. I pivoted under the strike, caught his wrist, and slapped his arm, channeling a precise thread of qi to seal his only open acupoint. When the energy that had been flowing through his body vanished—and with it, the impulses that had been driving him onward—Kan faltered and fell to the ground.

At that same moment, YuLong advanced on JiuLi. Her guandao flashed toward him, but he met it with a calm parry that knocked the weapon from her grasp. Then, after tossing aside his own weapon, YuLong stepped forward and enclosed JiuLi in a solid bear hug, steady and unyielding as he restrained her flailing limbs.

“Mind giving me a hand here?” he asked. “I know that sealing acupoints is possible, but I don’t have any memories of how to actually do it.”

I gave a brief nod and approached, channeling a precise thread of qi to my fingertips as I tapped JiuLi’s arm. Her acupoint closed instantly, cutting off the chaotic flow of energy within her body. Her resistance faded in a heartbeat, her muscles slackening as she slumped against YuLong’s chest, exhausted.

Only a few moments later, JiuLi stirred weakly in YuLong’s arms, her eyes unfocused. “What… happened?”

I gestured to the mats that were now scattered around the room. “Let’s sit down and talk about it.” My eyes flicked to YuLong. “Go get Meng LuYao. It would probably be good for her to hear this as well.”

While everyone was getting settled, I spent a few moments examining Meng LuYao. She had successfully advanced to Martial Disciple 2 and sealed her acupoint, but this seal wasn’t very tight, causing her to feel faint impulses from her cultivation technique. Aside from making her a little twitchy, this wasn’t much of an issue, but if left uncorrected, the mounting impulses could eventually unbalance her mind and twist her temperament as she continued to advance.

Satisfied that her condition was stable—for the moment, at least—I turned my attention to the others.

Kan and JiuLi kept stealing embarrassed glances at YuLong. The impulses driving them to attack had faded, but the memory of what they had done lingered. Every time YuLong looked in their direction, they flinched, caught between shame and the relief of finally regaining control.

“Alright,” I said, drawing everyone’s attention. “First, let's talk about sealing your acupoints to keep your cultivation base from affecting your mind.”

Drawing upon memories of my time at the Yellow Orchid Academy, I did my best to explain how the process was supposed to work. From Kan’s and JiuLi’s reactions, it was clear that none of this had been covered in the memory orbs they had used, but with the pulsing of their forcibly sealed acupoints urging them onward, I was confident they would learn quickly.

After I finished outlining the basics, I shifted focus to a critical difference between elemental and weapon cultivators—a difference that Meng LuYao, and perhaps even YuLong, needed to be made aware of.

“When cultivating elemental qi, you will rarely want to seal your acupoints completely since this will stop you from regenerating qi passively.” I looked at Kan. “If you are looking to use a dual-element lightning-guandao technique, you should go ahead and learn how to create partial seals. If you wanted to be a pure weapon cultivator, however, this is less important.”

I turned to look at Meng LuYao. “Without proper filters, the energy we absorb as weapon cultivators contains a high percentage of impurities, making the mental impulses of our cultivation techniques far stronger than normal. Therefore, we need to keep our acupoints fully sealed whenever they are not in use. Since you wouldn’t want to passively cultivate without holding a weapon anyway, partial seals don’t provide much value to weapon cultivators.”

Nodding in understanding, Meng LuYao turned her focus inward and worked to close off her acupoint completely.

“Alright,” I said, looking to JiuLi and Kan, “on to more important topics. Tell me about your blessings.”

Kan glanced at JiuLi uncertainly before clearing his throat. “Ancestor… no one has received a blessing since the Cataclysm.”

I cocked my head to the side, thinking. “Because you can’t receive them in Chang’an. After cultivating in this world, though, you should have received one. Did that not happen?”

Kan slowly shook his head, joined by JiuLi.

That was… different. Was this because they were reincarnators, or was it because they had spent their entire lives in my inner world, cut off from both the Heavenly and Earthly Daos? More importantly, was this good or bad? Should I block people from getting blessings, or should I do my best to ensure everyone in my world gets blessed properly? Did it even matter?

Setting these questions aside, I focused on the children in front of me. “That is… unfortunate. I was hoping the two of you might receive a blessing to help with the problems you’re going to face, but if not…”

They looked at me, worried, so I held up a hand to calm them.

“The two of you are already 20 years old. If you don’t ascend to Martial Master before the end of the year, you will enter stagnation. I can help you achieve this, but we are a First-Class nine-star sect. None of us are allowed to ascend to Martial Master until we earn the right to do so in the Heaven’s Ascension Tournament.”

I looked between the two children in front of me, studying their reactions. “The real problem is that Chang’an’s calendar doesn’t line up with that of the Central Continent. Here, the end of the year, and thus the tournament, is still eleven months away. For you, though, the end of the year is only seven months away. So, if you stay with us, there is no way for you to ascend before entering the initial stages of stagnation.”

I held up both hands, weighing them. “You have to make a decision. Do you want to return to Chang’an and ascend to Martial Master before stagnation sets in, or do you want to stay here and help us establish our sect?”

“How will this affect the sect?” asked JiuLi. “How will it affect our clans? If we leave now… will it cause problems?”

I shook my head. “No. I was hoping that you would be given a blessing to help with this, but since you weren’t, we’ll just have to make it work. If you choose to rush forward and advance before entering stagnation, we can pull out others to replace you.”

Left unsaid was that switching out two of our members might cause the Sect Affairs Bureau to ask uncomfortable questions. If we didn’t want to leave any hidden dangers behind, we would likely need to do a clean restart.

Kan, for his part, looked indignant at the idea of being ‘replaced.’ “If we enter stagnation, will we still be able to advance?”

“Yes. With any luck, you’ll be able to advance to Martial Master only a few months after you turn 21, leaving you at the beginning stages of stagnation. This will make cultivating more difficult, but you will still be able to advance to Grandmaster, Lord, and beyond.”

Hearing this, Kan didn’t hesitate. “I’ll stay.”

After looking at the boy for several long seconds, JiuLi took a deep breath, then nodded. “Me too.”

“Alright. In that case, we’ll need to make sure you’re ready to ascend the moment we become an eight-star sect. For now, though, why don’t you go downstairs and spend some time sparring with YuLong? He needs to teach the proper way to use a guandao.”

Off to my side, YuLong let out a loud snort, no doubt amused by the fact that compared to a ‘proper’ warrior, neither of us was much better with a guandao than JiuLi or Kan.