Honoring a Promise

As soon as Minister Lu returned to the manor, a torrential downpour began, and the same was true on the mountain. Higher up the tower, when Zhang Ling entered the attic that morning, a middle-aged man in a Daoist robe was seated at the fifteenth-floor entrance, keeping watch there with a long sword in his hands. He had the bearing of an immortal. Only on closer inspection could one sense the weathered air unique to him. After asking around, Zhang Ling learned that this man was also a senior brother of the academy, named Zhao Guihong. As for when he had come to the academy, or what his former identity had been, the Daoist would not reveal a single word. Zhang Ling did not press the matter. After browsing the fifteenth floor for quite some time, he finally chose an art of controlling objects. Unlike those grandmasters whose flying swords arrived at the mere stir of thought, this method forced one to nourish the embryo with blood and govern objects with qi.

Zhang Ling sat in his own small courtyard, having moved his table outdoors. This was to prevent the excessive release of true qi, which might send his blood surging, make him dizzy, and keep him from focusing fully on controlling objects.

Since his short sword had been taken away by the people of Chenliu, and since he was only at the third tier, his inner power was not particularly abundant. The larger the object to be controlled, the greater the inner power it consumed. Zhang Ling was not yet able to practice sword flight. Fortunately, when Zhang Jingqian had saved him earlier, he had left twelve Falling Silver Needles in his body. So Zhang Ling decided to see first whether he could use qi to direct the needles.

From morning until night, the rain gradually weakened, while the heat in Zhang Ling’s body became more and more pronounced. He could only grit his teeth and endure it. Using both hands at once, with four fingers hooked inward, he placed the finest of the Falling Silver Needles on the tabletop. Little by little, the needle’s tip rose, slowly lifting half an inch from the surface. Zhang Ling’s heart leapt, and a smile appeared on his face. Yet because he lost concentration and disturbed his qi, the needle dropped back onto the table.

Even so, Zhang Ling did not feel regret. He had only practiced for a single day, and being able to make a beginning was already more than enough.

After putting away the twelve Falling Silver Needles, he tidied himself, ate a little, and returned to the house. There he began circulating his inner power in cultivation. The breathing art Mirror-Gazing and Heart-Seeing, when first learned, could only speed the flow of true qi within the body by a small margin. To fill even a single meridian point required who knew how many years. Back when he had opened his third point, it had been nothing more than the final push at the threshold. Yet after a month of cultivation, Zhang Ling had gradually become able, within an hour or two, to form an inner image of himself, tranquil as a mirror lake, and to guide his true qi by his own will. Unknowingly, his speed had increased by more than severalfold. To outsiders, this would already have seemed like prodigious progress. But Zhang Ling knew that reaching such a level in Mirror-Gazing and Heart-Seeing had taken Tang Yong, Lu Qingci’s disciple, years of practice. And even then, to produce the inner image each time still required more than ten hours.

Several hours passed in this way, and it was already deep night. Since he could cultivate while also nourishing his inner breath, Zhang Ling did not feel tired. Mirror-Gazing and Heart-Seeing was especially suited to those who could keep their minds calm at all times, and Zhang Ling happened to be one of those people whose heart never stirred in waves. It was almost as though the technique had been made for him alone. Thinking of this, Zhang Ling could not help recalling another secret art he had once seen while choosing techniques in the scripture tower, a body-tempering method that also seemed made for him. That made him suspect that all of this had been deliberately arranged by the two people back home.

Zhang Ling had taken up martial arts late. His frame was frail, like that of a scholar, and his inner power was even weaker still. So they had intentionally had Lu Qingci teach him the breathing art. When he came to the academy and entered the fifteenth floor, he ought to have chosen that body-tempering secret art. Who could have known that there would be a man who looked unserious, yet was in fact a true expert, and who, over something as trivial as a paper-thin veil, would pass down to him, a complete stranger, the supreme body-tempering art passed down through a single lineage, the Vajra Body?

For the next several months, Zhang Ling cultivated in this same back-and-forth rhythm within the academy. Though he could feel his progress day by day, compared with all he had experienced before, it was still slower by a hundredfold.

He paced about the courtyard with his hands behind his back. With only the slightest movement of his fingers, the thickest and dullest of the twelve Falling Silver Needles flew out from his sleeve, cutting straight through the air in a smooth, natural arc. At the motion of his mind, he could make it lock onto a target with perfect accuracy.

Zhang Ling smiled faintly. “Done.”

Just as Zhang Ling was putting the needles away, Song Linjie vaulted over the courtyard wall, rushing in all at once, drenched in sweat and full of energy. Paying no mind to the owner of the neighboring courtyard, he grabbed the teapot and drank straight from it.

Over these past few months, Zhang Ling had learned that Song Linjie was also cultivating a body-tempering technique called a Hundred Temperings. It had originally been a method the Blade King, Song Qingtian, found overseas. One had to take certain special medicines, then exhaust one’s strength little by little in a prescribed manner. The longer one persisted at the point of utmost limit, the greater the benefit. When one reached a hundred rounds, it became a true mastery, beyond harm from ordinary folk.

At first, because Song Linjie’s stamina was limited, he would collapse in less than half a day. But that had been in childhood. Now he could go several days without sleep or rest. Over these months he had also made the academy anything but peaceful. Yet Zhang Ling had to admit that the boy’s diligence and perseverance were remarkable. After asking the academy master about it, he learned that even the Blade King himself, when he obtained this secret art and trained for the same span of time as Song Linjie, had only managed forty-one rounds. Song Linjie, at merely sixteen, had already completed sixty-seven. Of course, this was also because Song Qingtian had already been a first-rank grandmaster by the time he trained it.

Zhang Ling turned around and did not bother arguing with him. Instead he asked, “Well? When will you be able to break through into the Mysterious Realm?”

Song Linjie let out a long breath and said with a wry smile, “You really do take entering the first rank as if it were drinking water. Grandfather said that once you reach the point of breaking into the Mysterious Realm, it is no longer something human effort alone can achieve.”

Zhang Ling laughed softly. “Aren’t you a genius? For you, breaking through should be like drinking water.”

Song Linjie ignored the mockery and asked in return, “What about you? What have you gained these past few months?”

With a flick of his wrist, Zhang Ling sent a flying needle flashing before Song Linjie’s eyes. Then he shook his head and said, “If it’s only one needle, I can control it with ease. But once I try to divide my attention, my mental strength falls short.”

Song Linjie frowned in confusion. “Why are you in such a hurry to practice object control? Once your realm advances, won’t this come naturally?”

Now it was Zhang Ling’s turn to smile bitterly inside. As if everyone were a perverse martial fanatic like him, with no bottlenecks at all.

Suddenly Zhang Ling’s expression brightened. He picked up the tree branch he had been using in place of a sword and slashed toward the ginkgo tree in the courtyard. A streak of sword qi burst forth, leaving a shallow mark upon the bark.

This, however, only prompted Song Linjie to show a disdainful expression. “That’s all? When I first entered the ranks, I could already cut out blade force.”

Zhang Ling did not care for his genius’s mockery. Instead he stared at the ginkgo tree for a long while, and then suddenly remembered a promise he had made to someone long ago. Zhang Ling was by nature selfish, but when he sincerely agreed to something, he always saw it through. If he put it off too long, even he would feel a thorn of unease in his heart.

With coldness in his voice, Zhang Ling turned and said to Song Linjie, “Come with me tomorrow night. We’re killing someone.”

Song Linjie froze for a moment, then bowed his head deeply and nodded.