Xu Fengnian couldn’t be bothered with a staring contest with Jiang Ni. He left her on the ground and went inside the cottage to open the pack. Apart from an enormous luminous pearl and several brushes with tips as sharp as awls—made from Guandong rabbit hair—he tossed all the remaining books onto the table, where they piled up like a mountain.

At a glance he could see Purple Forbidden Manor’s Whale-Slaying Sword, the Two Zen Temples’ copied Vajra Demon-Subduing Fist, the South Sea’s largest nunnery’s Guanyin Pointing Transformation Finger—a colorful assortment of over fifty martial arts secret texts. They all had one thing in common: they were all superior techniques from various sects and schools. While they might still fall short of the absolute pinnacle, for Xu Fengnian to master even one thoroughly would be a magnificent achievement.

He’d hauled them all from Tide-Listening Pavilion not because he wanted to learn all these dozens of martial arts completely, but to try drawing from many sources, selecting one or two applicable techniques from each manual. Best if they could be adapted to blade work. At the very worst, having seen pigs run, when wandering the martial world in future, even if he saw a pig that could glide on water or fly over grass, he wouldn’t need to be shocked.

Like playing go, these books were various patterns and set plays. If an opponent placed one stone, he’d know the positions of the next three or ten moves. No matter what myriad changes and divine powers they employed, he could simply kill them early with one blade strike.

Xu Fengnian picked up a manual and flipped through a few pages, then set down the book, picked up his blade, and prepared to go to White Elephant Pool to practice another six hundred cleaving strikes and six hundred slashing strikes. Leaving the cottage, he discovered Jiang Ni still hadn’t descended the mountain. She sat in the green bamboo chair, using her sleeve to wipe the mud from her face with delicate movements—presumably each motion took all her strength. What woman under heaven didn’t love beauty?

Xu Fengnian laughed gleefully. “Little mud figure, it’s about to be dark and windy—are you afraid to descend the mountain alone? I’m kindhearted—shall I call a handsome young Daoist with red lips and white teeth to accompany you down?”

Jiang Ni sneered coldly. “The Great Pillar of State told me to stay on Wudang Mountain. I heard a certain someone already had his coming-of-age ceremony. How ridiculous.”

Xu Fengnian’s head ached. He ignored this rootless weed’s mockery and merely frowned. “Has Xu Xiao lost his mind?”

Jiang Ni kept a straight face and said nothing, extending two slender fingers like spring onions to slowly comb out the mud and dust clinging to her three thousand strands of black hair.

Xu Fengnian went to the mountain forest ​noodles​and gathered some medicinal herbs, tossing them in front of the cottage. “You stay here. I’ll go elsewhere.”

Jiang Ni remained unmoved, motionless as a clay bodhisattva, still tilting her head without even glancing at the Crown Prince, meticulously cleaning up the battlefield. She wouldn’t touch that large pile of herbs.

Xu Fengnian took the luminous pearl and wild rabbit hair brushes to the cave inside Hanging Immortal Peak. He carved a hole in the stone wall and embedded the luminous pearl inside. Instantly the space was brightly lit. With blood seeping through the cloth strips on both hands, Xu Fengnian continued wielding his blade, though he didn’t dare casually strike at the waterfall.

Late at night, already utterly exhausted, he sat at the stone wall’s base farthest from the waterfall and slept cross-legged, blade never leaving his hand.

At dawn, he woke punctually. Opening his eyes, Xu Fengnian saw Hong Xixiang squatting before the waterfall, cupping water to wash his face. Xu Fengnian had always maintained “out of sight, out of mind” toward this fellow. Rising, he practiced thrusting and slashing in the open space.

While he mechanically practiced blade work, the fellow who’d been riding and herding oxen on the mountain for over ten years studied that priceless重棘之璧 before the stone wall. The round pearl, in bright places, was entirely green and crystalline throughout. Come nightfall it shone clear as a full moon. The one before Hong Xixiang’s eyes wasn’t distinguished by size, only by its exceptional iridescent glow.

Speaking of the world’s largest luminous pearl, it was still in the Imperial Palace, requiring four sixteen-year-old beauties holding hands to encircle it. It was placed in Princess Suizhu’s study. This daughter most beloved by His Majesty the Emperor was called Princess Suizhu precisely because when she was born, the Kingdom of Sui had paid tribute with this enormous luminous pearl excavated at the foot of Mount Tai.

Xu Fengnian had apparently once had the chance to possess two “Suizhu pearls”—if only he’d been willing to enter the capital and become that imperial son-in-law.

Whether the hot potato was hot or not, Xu Fengnian had no chance to know. The Prince of Beiliang’s Palace wouldn’t make such a low-class mistake, because the maids of Wutong Courtyard each had gentler thoughts than the last. But that roasted sweet potato was definitely scalding to mouth, hand, and heart—the Crown Prince could confirm that better than anyone.

The cave’s dampness was heavy. Xu Fengnian had worked up another hot sweat, the combination very harmful to the body. Xu Fengnian didn’t dare linger.

Shouldering Embroidered Winter on his shoulder, he took one of the famous Guandong rabbit hair brushes. These were the highest quality purple rabbit hard bristle brushes. Read on JormuntlRabbit hair was already hard bristle; northern varieties were firmer still; and Guandong purple rabbit was the undisputed number one hard bristle. This type of brush was most suitable for writing vigorous, square characters. The brush tip was sharp as an awl, keen as a blade—brush-blade, brush-blade—this was a true blade among brushes.

From childhood, Li Yishan had required Xu Fengnian to practice calligraphy using only hard bristles. He absolutely couldn’t touch the soft, blunt sheep hair brushes. Characters soft and boneless had always been spurned by the Palace’s foremost refined scholar. But Xu Fengnian knew that sooner or later he’d have to write enormous regular script for plaques and tablets, and then he’d have to pick up soft brushes.

Though Xu Fengnian was cursed as a good-for-nothing with only outward refinement, having done much like poor scholars spending heavy gold to purchase poems and songs, he understood music, go, calligraphy, painting, tea, and wine—he just wasn’t necessarily proficient in all of them.

Blade practice was heavy work; calligraphy was light work. Especially practicing calligraphy after blade work was extraordinarily difficult.

Xu Fengnian used the Guandong rabbit hair brush dipped in water to write the Whale-Slaying Sword formula on bluestone. Characters born from the heart—the running script on the ground displayed ferocious killing intent.

Hong Xixiang squatted to the side observing, clicking his tongue in wonder. “Good characters, good characters! A hundred times better than eldest martial brother’s earthworm crawl. When he corresponds with martial brothers who’ve descended the mountain or people outside, he has to have me write for him.”

Xu Fengnian treated this fellow’s praise as passing wind. Biting the Guandong rabbit hair brush shaft between his teeth, before coming up the mountain, blade practice had been arduous but not so harsh as to forcibly strip away all the calluses honed during three years of travel.

Now every day his hands were covered in fresh blood. When not practicing blade, Xu Fengnian would rest Embroidered Winter on his shoulder and sway it about. Shouldering Embroidered Winter looked quite poetic and picturesque, but inside Xu Fengnian’s heart was murderous intent.

Walking toward the thatched cottage—the medicinal herbs tossed there yesterday were still in the same place today. Xu Fengnian smiled, pushed open the door, and didn’t see Jiang Ni sleeping on the bed at first glance. Had she gone to tour the glazed world scenery? Looking again, the little mud figure who’d cleaned herself up was facing the wall, sitting and sleeping.

She wouldn’t touch the bed. Xu Fengnian understood perfectly—she found the place he’d slept too filthy. The reason she wasn’t leaning against the wall to sleep was obviously because her delicate back, strained from carrying the pack up the mountain, couldn’t endure any contact.

Xu Fengnian opened his mouth and spat the rabbit hair brush onto the table, then kicked with his foot this princess who’d fallen from the empire’s most noble imperial [Read on Jormuntl]city to the Prince of Beiliang’s Palace prison, then pitiably to this small mountain cottage.

She must have been exhausted—there was no reaction. Murmuring a few sentences in deep sleep, Xu Fengnian knew without listening they were curses aimed at him. Xu Fengnian stared for a while. She was a beauty in the making. Though she couldn’t yet compare to White Fox Face, she wasn’t much inferior to Sweet Potato or Qingniao. In the future she’d certainly be more alluring. Xu Fengnian found her sitting on the ground throwing mud yesterday quite amusing.

Jiang Ni’s body tilted sideways in her sleep, nearly falling to the ground. Xu Fengnian shrugged his shoulder and Embroidered Winter fell. Using the blade sheath, he gently supported her body and slowly straightened it before no longer disturbing her.

Going outside, he saw the ox-riding fellow had already tactfully begun cooking porridge. Inside the cottage were some small jars of pickled refreshing vegetarian dishes. During this period, unless the patriarch uncle was too busy with seal script bamboo slips or precious unique text annotations and scriptural interpretations, he generally came to cook meals for the Crown Prince, working tirelessly and enjoying it.

Hong Xixiang watched the porridge and monitored the heat while licking his finger to turn pages of a Winter Recommendation Classic Records.

Xu Fengnian truly couldn’t imagine how this timid fellow would become the person to revitalize the Dark Martial, shouldering both martial and heavenly Dao.

Leaving two bowls worth of rice porridge for Jiang Ni and placing them on the table inside, Xu Fengnian shouldered his blade and came to the summit of Hanging Immortal Peak. That Sixty-Year Sword Practice Record contained sword practice insights but occasionally also had overarching principles about the vast martial Dao, strongly promoting actions like climbing high to observe stars or facing the sea to contemplate waves—things useless for sword techniques but beneficial for the sword Dao.

Unfortunately, after watching for half the day, Xu Fengnian couldn’t see any profundity that could connect to the sword Dao. The ox-riding fellow silently stayed to the side, watching with great interest. Feeling unbalanced, Xu Fengnian asked, “You’ve been watching for over twenty years—aren’t you bored?” The young patriarch uncle smiled foolishly. “Every day is different scenery. How could I get tired?”

Xu Fengnian asked curiously, “Do you actually know martial arts or not?”

Hong Xixiang said with complete sincerity, “Probably not.”

Xu Fengnian kicked out. The patriarch uncle squatting on the ground ​unauthorized copy​swayed left and right but didn’t fall, stabilizing at exactly his original posture, not differing in the slightest.

Xu Fengnian made a surprised sound and asked, “What’s this?”

The patriarch uncle who truly hadn’t properly studied a single manual or touched a single martial art in over twenty years on the mountain scratched the shoulder Xu Fengnian had kicked, looking innocent. “Dark Martial Palace has a great bell. When others strike it, I watch how it stops.”

Xu Fengnian pressed to the bottom of things. “You watched and watched until you figured out the trick?”

The ox-rider shook his head. “There’s no trick.”

Xu Fengnian felt somewhat defeated. “If I had you take a blade to hack at the waterfall, could you cut it?”

The questioned patriarch uncle shook his head. “Of course not.”

Xu Fengnian finally felt a bit better.

But the fellow squatting on the ground immediately added a sentence: “Cut it I cannot, but probably the blade and sword wouldn’t fly from my hands.”

Xu Fengnian was full of suspicion and commanded, “Then go find any sword and try it. If you can’t do it, just wait to be fed to the fish.”

Hong Xixiang looked troubled. “Why doesn’t the Crown Prince just lend [noodles]me that blade on your shoulder?”

Xu Fengnian lifted his foot to kick, but the ox-riding patriarch uncle had already whooshed away into the distance.

Xu Fengnian descended from the peak summit and waited about an hour before Hong Xixiang returned drenched in sweat, truly gripping a seven-star peachwood sword. His sword-holding posture was awkward and improper. Xu Fengnian’s eyes signaled him to stab once. Hong Xixiang, facing a great enemy, took several deep breaths before walking toward the waterfall like going to an execution ground. Raising his arm, he swung the sword—a gentle stroke.

A mysteriously profound half-arc slanting downward, like an antelope hanging its horns, sliced through the imposing cascading waterfall.

Withdrawing the peachwood sword, Hong Xixiang turned to look at Xu Fengnian without any proud expression, as if this were a perfectly natural matter.

Xu Fengnian froze for a moment, then smiled. “I understand. This is your Heavenly Dao.”

Hong Xixiang, who’d merely done something as trivial as eating, drinking, defecating, or sleeping, made an acknowledging sound and trotted toward the Crown Prince with fawning suspicion. “Tell me, tell me—what Dao? Martial Brother Chen says I’m in the mountain but don’t know the mountain, so I’ll never comprehend the Dao in this lifetime.”

Xu Fengnian said craftily, “As long as you descend the mountain and stand far away, won’t you see the mountain clearly?”

Hong Xixiang sighed mournfully, made finger-counting gestures to calculate for a while, then said helplessly, “Just as I thought—today is not suitable for descending the mountain.”

Xu Fengnian wanted nothing more than to kick this coward hiding in a turtle shell and refusing to stick his head out to death.

Jiang Ni, whose greatest skill was drilling into dead ends, was set on opposing Xu Fengnian and settled ​Read on Jormuntl​into the thatched cottage.

From winter’s white snow to spring’s warm blossoms, the Crown Prince was exhausted like a stray dog every day, while she enjoyed leisure, never doing any of the serving work a maid should do. Every day she just wandered Wudang Mountain. Among the eighty-one peaks facing the great summit, her small feet in hemp shoes had walked over half the mountain’s palaces, temples, and blessed lands. She even had the leisurely mood to request seeds from nearby Purple Sun Temple and planted vegetables and fruits outside the green bamboo fence, creating a small vegetable plot that was a world unto itself. If Xu Fengnian looked at it twice, she’d warn him, like a little white wild cat whose tail had been stepped on.

Besides practicing blade and calligraphy, Xu Fengnian continuously moved books from Tide-Listening Pavilion up the mountain.

One book after another, one pack after another.

Like moving mountains.