Free Web NovelChapter 30: Chapter 24: An Outer Devil Disturbs the Dao Heart
He began his study of the Dao at eight, achieved Foundation Establishment in ten years, and entered the Refining Realm at thirty. After traveling the Divine Continent for twenty-eight years, he formed a Top-grade Golden Core at the age of sixty.
When Xuzhuang first began his cultivation, his talent, while superior, was not considered astounding within the Tai Su Orthodox Sect.
Xuzhuang’s cultivation had always been steady and solid, progressing through persistent effort. Reaching the Refining Realm at thirty was not slow, and it made him a candidate to become a true disciple. At thirty-two, he left Li Mountain to travel the world. He walked the mortal realm, weathered storms, and faced life and death. After a fated immortal encounter, his progress suddenly skyrocketed, and he ultimately formed a Top-grade Golden Core.
Golden Core Cultivators lived for eight hundred years. Nascent Soul Venerables had lifespans of two thousand years. Primordial Spirit True Men achieved long life and everlasting sight...
For a Cultivator, who could sit and watch clouds gather and seas turn to mulberry fields, ten years was a fleeting moment. To a long-lived Golden Core Cultivator, if not the snap of a finger, it was but the blink of an eye. Yet for Xuzhuang’s still relatively short cultivation career, this had been his longest seclusion.
’The years in the mountains truly flow like water. In the blink of an eye, more than ten years have gone by.’
Xuzhuang ambled out from the grand hall of the majestic Beiji Pavilion. Outside, the spring day was perfect. The warm sun, which he had not seen for over ten years, did not sting his eyes, but it brought with it a slight daze.
But he pushed the fleeting sentiment aside in an instant. Ten years was not a long time, and the Arctic Abyssal Gorge was no prison, but forced confinement was ultimately different from a seclusion of his own choosing. A sense of joyful freedom swelled in Xuzhuang’s heart.
He glanced up at the clear blue sky and its wispy clouds, then suddenly flicked his finger. A streak of White Rainbow Sword Qi shot out, soaring toward the heavens with astonishing force, as if to cleave the very sky in two. In an instant, it struck a layer of clouds, only to vanish within it, not causing so much as a ripple—less than even a drop of water striking a lake.
Xuzhuang smiled faintly, then rode the wind up into the sky. After he passed through the first layer of clouds, a massive sword gash, thousands of feet long, suddenly leaped into view. It parted the clouds beyond, looking as if it had torn a rift in the heavens.
The Tai Su Sword Qi could shift between form and formlessness, substance and nothingness. It could be formless, and it could be substanceless! It had passed through the first layer of clouds without harming it in the slightest, only to gash the heavens for thousands of feet beyond!
Xuzhuang let out a hearty laugh. Inside the Beiji Pavilion, he had found the cultivation notes of a senior cultivator. This great Nascent Soul expert had explained the material-to-immaterial transformation of the *Tai Su Formless and Substanceless Sword Qi* in such vivid detail that Xuzhuang had benefited immensely.
Thus, not long after completing his study of the *Tai Su Formless and Substanceless Sword Qi*, Xuzhuang mastered this transformation between the material and immaterial. This level of attainment was exceptionally rare, even among the many masters of this Swordsmanship within the Tai Su Orthodox Sect.
It had simply been inconvenient to practice within the Beiji Pavilion, so Xuzhuang had never unleashed it. Now that he had tested it, he found it to be truly marvelous.
’If I were to fight someone in the future, I could send out a sword strike, and no matter how my opponent defends, my Sword Qi could suddenly become immaterial, pass through all their defenses, and then rematerialize right in front of them! It would be practically impossible to defend against.’
However, executing such a transformation consumed an immense amount of Magical Power.
Xuzhuang’s brief test had already consumed a massive amount of Magical Power, and that was just for transforming a single strand of Sword Qi. What would happen if he tried it with his sword pellet, or even split its light into a dozen rays? Moreover, his sword pellet was refined from the essence of meteoric iron; it looked small and smooth but actually weighed over a thousand pounds.
Using this sword pellet to perform various Swordsmanship techniques was well within the limits of Xuzhuang’s Magical Power. But to render an object of such immense mass into nothingness... he could only imagine how difficult that would be.
He suddenly understood why this sword pellet had sat in the sect’s Magic Treasure Pavilion for so long before accidentally falling into his hands. As it turned out, the properties of this particular pellet were not entirely compatible with the sect’s most profound Swordsmanship techniques.
Then again, without this sword pellet by his side, who knew how many more hardships he would have faced along the way? His circumstances today might have been entirely different. Who could say for sure?
Xuzhuang pushed the thoughts away, summoned an escape light, and departed. When not in a hurry, he rarely flew using Sword Escape. Wind-Riding Escape had a unique charm of its own, and his speed using it now was nothing short of extraordinary. freewebnovёl.ƈom
This was because the Escape Technique Xuzhuang used when not performing Sword Escape had also ascended to a new level, causing its speed to increase dramatically.
Xuzhuang’s gains from his ten-year seclusion were far from meager. He was no longer the man he was when he first formed his Golden Core. Not only was his Magical Power now consummate and his Swordsmanship greatly improved, but he had also refined the techniques he frequently used back in the Refining Realm.
Daoist arts were profound and mysterious. While the intricacies and power of each art varied, they were all divided into nine realms of consummation. Cultivating a single art could take anywhere from a few days to a thousand years. For any Cultivator, it was an endless path, just like cultivation itself.
The world has never lacked for Cultivators who become obsessed with the wonders of Daoist arts while neglecting their fundamental cultivation.
In his youth, Xuzhuang had practiced many Daoist arts, but he had only managed to cultivate a dozen or so of the most practical ones for self-protection to the Third Realm. As for advancing further to the Fourth Realm, he had not achieved it with a single art.
With each new realm, the difficulty, power, and profundity of any given Daoist art would multiply. For many cultivators, spending time in the Refining Realm to cultivate an art to the Fourth Realm was not a wise move, unless they had already given up hope of forming a Golden Core.
But now, with his natural talent having soared and with a Top-grade Golden Core formed, practicing those Daoist arts again felt as easy as flipping his palm. In the spare moments of his ten-year seclusion, he had already brought several of his most frequently used arts to the Fourth Realm.
The first of these was the Five Elements Escape Skill he was currently using. As the Five Elements form the material foundation of esoteric doctrine, the Five Elements Escape Skill has always been one of the most common Escape Techniques among cultivators. While it doesn’t emphasize sheer speed like a Flying Escape, its wondrous applications are endless, making it one of Xuzhuang’s preferred Escape Techniques.
