Life as a Rogue Cultivator

Chapter 319: Clues

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen wind and rain like this...” Lin Twin Fish said after they finished the meal of fish and shrimp. “It’s the perfect chance to cultivate. Junior Brother Su, let me cultivate a bit too. Once the storm passes, the opportunity will be gone.”A pair of swords flew out from her forehead. They were her life-bound flying swords, forged through years of bitter cultivation. The Silverfish Blood Needle Swords.

The Silverfish Blood Needle Swords were only half the length of Su Jing’s Tidewatching Sword, but their entire bodies gleamed with a dark purplish-black sheen. When they hovered beside the Tidewatching Sword, they stirred up a layer of sword aura that glowed blood-red.

That sword aura spread outward until it reached the boundary opened by the Tidewatching Sword, then stopped. The blood-red light faded away, leaving it indistinguishable from Su Jing’s sword aura.

Liu Xiaolou saw Su Jing take a deep breath and withdraw the Tidewatching Sword. A sheen of sweat was visible on his forehead. He closed his eyes, sat down cross-legged where he was, and began to regulate his breathing. Before long, he entered a deep state of calm.

Lin Twin Fish made a small gesture to Liu Xiaolou, signaling that Su Jing needed to rest for a while and shouldn’t be disturbed. Liu Xiaolou nodded. He watched as Lin Twin Fish stood up and tidied away the leftover bones and shells. The large brown leaf they had been using vanished from her palm in the blink of an eye, though he had no idea what kind of treasure it was.

By nightfall, the wind and rain were even more ferocious than during the day. Su Jing was still seated in cultivation, regulating his breath. And the one holding up the calm, protected space outside the hermitage the entire time was Lin Twin Fish.

At one point, a few feet of jagged mast swept toward her, smashing against her Blood Sea Sword Aura. The impact jerked her cheeks and made her face twitch.

The mast tip tumbled away after being flung back by the sword aura. It shot into a hill dozens of feet away, burying most of itself deep in the mud.

Liu Xiaolou worried that she might exhaust her true qi and wanted to help. He sent out his Glass Shield. Strands of glassy light swept down one after another, forming a much smaller protective enclosure.

Lin Twin Fish didn’t stand on ceremony. She recalled her flying swords and let Liu Xiaolou take over blocking the wind and rain. She had held on three or four times longer than Su Jing, and she was truly worn out.

After withdrawing her sword aura, she hurried back into the storm. Moments later she returned and told Liu Xiaolou, “It’s not our ship. The ship’s fine.”

After Liu Xiaolou raised his Glass Shield, it didn’t feel especially difficult at first. Compared to fighting another cultivator, the power of wind and rain at sea was honestly much weaker. But as time dragged on, that ceaseless, lingering force, endless and never showing the slightest sign of fading, started to grind him down and breed real despair. While quietly enduring it, he also gained some insight into the kind of conditions sword cultivators trained under, and the mindset it forged in them.

The Glass Shield held for about an hour before its luster began to dim, so Liu Xiaolou withdrew it. And then summoned his Three-Mystery Sword. Pouring true qi into it, he tried to imitate Su Jing and Lin Twin Fish by facing the storm using nothing but sword aura.

He had already spent a long time watching the two Foundation Establishment sword cultivators from the sidelines. He felt he had picked up a few small insights, and after thinking it through and sorting out the flow of it all, he decided to test the results.

At the start, five streaks of sword light split off and began spinning at high speed, forming a transparent, umbrella-shaped sword aura. The area it covered was a bit smaller than the circle of glazed light from the Glass Shield. It was a success nonetheless. He had faintly grasped a couple of points of the Tidewatching Sword Formula’s intent, and it actually looked convincing, holding the wind and rain at bay.

But after a dozen or so breaths, a whole string of objects suddenly came flying in from the sea and slammed hard into the Three-Mystery Sword’s aura. They crashed and bounced away in a loud clatter, the force behind them terrifyingly strong.

In a hurried glance, he realized they were a school of sea fish, each about three feet long. No one knew where the gale had torn them from. One by one, their tails thrashed wildly as the chaotic wind hurled them high into the sky, where they vanished into the black clouds.

After taking such a brutal hit, Liu Xiaolou immediately felt his true qi fall into disarray. His sword intent could no longer hold together. Several gaps opened in the sword aura, and wind and rain surged through, drenching him head to toe in an instant.

Just as it looked like the hermitage was about to be breached by the raging storm, a new sword aura rose up. It was Su Jing’s Tidewatching Sword.

Liu Xiaolou stayed to the side, continuing to observe and contemplate the sword intent of the Tidewatching Sword.

The storm raged through the night. By the next day it had eased a little, but it still hadn’t let up. The three of them took turns in that order, relieving one another as they guarded the hermitage.

Su Jing’s Tidewatching Sword could hold out for about two hours. Lin Twin Fish’s Blood Sea Sword could last six hours. Liu Xiaolou relied on his Glazed Glass Shield for a little over an hour, then spent a short while refining the Three-Mystery Swords.

Liu Xiaolou lost himself in this kind of training, feeling the power of the storm and the surging sea. He'd study the sword intent of Su Jing and Lin Twin Fish. After gaining some insight, he'd return to his own cultivation. When he ran into difficulties, he'd watch and reflect again.

At first, the Three-Mystery Sword could only hold for ten or so breaths before the sword intent was broken. After three days like this, the time he could sustain it grew from those few breaths to the length of a stick of incense.

By the fourth day, the wind and rain gradually weakened. The dark clouds thinned and broke apart, blue sky reappeared, and just like that, the storm passed.

Lin Twin Fish sighed. “A storm this big is really rare.”

Su Jing nodded. “The last time it was this fierce was five years ago, when I went out to sea with my master to hunt Ling Ghosts.”

Lin Twin Fish smiled. “I’ve heard about that. Martial Uncle Bai really is something else. One sword strike, three ghosts cut down. If the Tidewatching Sword Formula were cultivated to its absolute peak, who knows what kind of world-shattering power it would have...”

She suddenly turned to Liu Xiaolou. “Fellow Daoist Liu, you’re Junior Brother Su’s brother-in-law, and I’m a bit older than you, so I’ll just call you Xiaolou. Over the past few days, watching your sword intent, I’ve noticed it seems quite similar to Junior Brother Su’s Tidewatching Sword Formula. Of course, I’m not suggesting that Junior Brother Su secretly taught the his technique. I assume neither of you would do something like that. It’s just that…”

Liu Xiaolou hurried to explain. “What I cultivate is the True Mysteries Scripture passed down in my own sect. Back when I was at Shenwu Mountain, I studied sword techniques together with Thirteenth Brother. We did notice that the Tidewatching Sword Formula he cultivates has quite a few similarities to our True Mysteries Scripture. In fact, before reaching the fifth layer of Qi Refinement, the meridians cultivated are almost exactly the same.”

Lin Twin Fish was surprised. “Is that so? I recall Junior Brother Su mentioning that Xiaolou comes from the Sanxuan Sect. But I’ve never known where the Sanxuan Sect originated. Does it have any connection to the various sects here in Lingnan?”

Liu Xiaolou gave a wry smile. “To be honest, there probably is some kind of connection. The reason I came to Lingnan in the first place was precisely because of cultivation methods.”

With the two people in front of him, one was Thirteenth Brother, someone he could trust completely. The other also seemed trustworthy for now. At this moment, there was no reason to keep anything hidden. So he laid out his true purpose clearly, step by step.

After hearing him out, Su Jing spoke up at once. “I’ll go beg my master. No matter what it takes, I’ll make sure he agrees to pass the Tidewatching Sword Art on to my brother-in-law.”

“That won’t work,” Liu Xiaolou said. “The Tidewatching Sword Art is out of order.”

Lin Twin Fish shook her head too. “Don’t rush, junior brother. If you trust me, Xiaolou, please describe the general progress of the True Mysteries Scripture to me.”

Liu Xiaolou explained it on the spot.

Lin Twin Fish thought for a while. “This method does seem somewhat similar to a mental method kept in the Sword-Hiding Pavilion. Hmm. Years ago, I saw Little Grandmaster cultivating that sword art. He even explained the training method to me and asked if I was interested in cultivating it. If I remember correctly, at least the sequence of the first eight meridians is exactly the same as your sect’s True Mysteries Scriptures...”

The first eight meridians were exactly the same?

Liu Xiaolou felt his heart jolt. “May I ask which technique it was?”

“It’s called the Yellow Dragon Sword Art,” she said. “I cultivated it for about half a year back then. Later, when I ran into some problems and asked my master for guidance, he stopped me from continuing. He said the Yellow Dragon Sword Art doesn’t belong to our South Sea Sword Sect. Forcing myself to cultivate it would clash with our sect’s sword intent and could lead to something going wrong down the line. There was another issue too. What we have is only a partial manual. The rest has already been lost. So it can only be studied for reference, to compare against our own sect’s sword techniques.”

Liu Xiaolou was crestfallen. “A partial manual?”

Lin Shuangyu replied, “The sword art itself is complete. But it’s only one part of a larger cultivation system, and our sect doesn’t have the rest of that system. That’s why it counts as incomplete.”

A sword art needs a matching foundational method to truly cultivate it. Without that, even if you cultivate it, you only ever scratch the surface and can’t go any deeper. That was why Lin Twin Fish’s teacher had forbidden her from continuing.

But Liu Xiaolou was different. The first eight meridians were identical, which meant his own True Mysteries Scripture was effectively the missing foundational method for the Yellow Dragon Sword Art. He could cultivate it without a problem.

“Does it include the techniques for nurturing a flying sword, condensing true qi into liquid, and forming the Golden Core?” Liu Xiaolou asked, his voice tight with nerves.

Lin Twin Fish smiled. “Of course it does.”