Chapter 265: Such Refined Interests
Qingcao Sword Sect.
Sword Pavilion.
The afternoon sun slanted through the high windows, falling upon rows of sandalwood bookshelves. Motes of dust swam slowly in the beams of light.
Li Qingcao sat alone on a cattail cushion by the window. A yellowed Sword Scripture was spread open on his lap, his gaze serene. His fingers would occasionally trace the lines of text across the page.
“Sword Son, what are you up to?”
Someone passed by him, treading lightly, their voice filled with a hint of curiosity.
Li Qingcao didn’t look up. “Sword Cultivation.”
“What kind of Sword Cultivation? Mind if I take a look?” The person crouched down beside him with a chuckle. “Maybe if I study it with you, Sword Son, I’ll have an epiphany of my own.”
Only then did Li Qingcao close the scroll and turn the title page toward the other man.
Little Grass Sword Technique.
The man paused for a moment, then chuckled in disbelief. “The Little Grass Sword Technique? Sword Son, why are you suddenly looking at this swordsmanship? It’s not exactly a powerful technique. There are so many profound and exquisite Sword Manuals in the Sword Pavilion. With your level of cultivation, why bother with this one?”
The thirty-two moves of the Little Grass Swordsmanship were considered a foundational technique for beginners, but every single move was far too common and simple. Most disciples of the Qingcao Sword Sect preferred to cultivate other, fiercer styles of swordsmanship—ones that carried the grandeur of heaven and earth.
For instance, there was another swordsmanship called Cyan Emerges from the Clouds. When wielded, it was like the azure of the sky after a rainstorm, and its killing power was immense.
Li Qingcao gently shook his head, his gaze returning to the old scroll.
“While practicing my sword recently, I had a sudden insight, so I came back to take another look.”
The man just smiled and stood up. “Well, once you’ve fully grasped it, Sword Son, I’ll have to shamelessly ask for a few pointers. Maybe there really is something hidden in the Little Grass Sword Technique that we’ve all missed.”
“By the way, Sword Son, Great Xia is at war. Should we send someone to keep an eye on the cultivators involved?”
Li Qingcao continued reading his book, replying without looking up, “I already made arrangements before the great competition.”
This was why Li Qingcao was the Sword Son, after all.
“I knew you wouldn’t need me to remind you. Ah well, I’m off to get a drink.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
Not far from the Qingcao Sword Sect, there was also a Mortal Dynasty by the name of Great Xia, which had existed for eight hundred years.
Like the Glazed Dynasty, this dynasty was a mix of immortals and mortals. Many cultivators who had no hope of reaching the Fifth Realm, or who could not endure the hardships of cultivation, also came to Great Xia to seek official posts and patronage.
The place where Great Xia housed these patronized cultivators was called the Dragon-Seeking Pavilion, and its Pavilion Master was the cultivator with the highest cultivation in Great Xia today.
The lifelike coiled dragons on the eaves of the Dragon-Seeking Pavilion, with Dragon Pearls in their mouths, had watched over the Great Xia capital of Luoyang for seven hundred years. The steps before the pavilion had turned pale with age; who knew how many people had ascended them to enter the Dragon-Seeking Pavilion in those seven centuries.
In the end, it hardly mattered. The cultivators who entered the Dragon-Seeking Pavilion ultimately met the same fate as mortals: they were laid in the earth and returned to dust.
A drop of morning dew fell from a leaf within the pavilion’s courtyard, and an elderly figure was reflected in the nearby lotus pond.
“What is the situation at the front lines?”
The Dragon-Seeking Pavilion Master was very old, so old that his words were now somewhat slurred.
He had been at the Fifth Realm for many years. He had originally come to Great Xia seeking an opportunity to break through to the Sixth Realm, but after searching for years, he had never found that sliver of chance.
Seated before the Dragon-Seeking Pavilion Master was a young woman named Leng Xuanshuang. She was the current Eldest Princess of Great Xia.
With the Emperor still a child and the Empress Dowager long dead, the Eldest Princess governed from behind a screen in the Golden Hall, holding her young brother in her arms each day.
Leng Xuanshuang, dressed in a Phoenix Robe, said, “A great victory. Before autumn arrives, Great Yue will be ours for the taking.”
It was currently late spring, just on the cusp of summer. By that calculation, the war would be over in three months at most.
“Then my congratulations in advance, Eldest Princess.”
Not far from Great Xia was another Mortal Dynasty called Great Yue. Before the new year, Luoyang had launched a sudden attack. In just a few months, the Great Yue Kingdom could no longer resist and was about to become territory of Great Xia.
Leng Xuanshuang placed a stone on the game board. “I must trouble you, Pavilion Master, to keep an eye on the cultivators of the Great Yue Kingdom.”
A cultivator who had not reached the Fifth Realm could not be considered a true Immortal in the eyes of mortals, nor could they alter the course of a war.
Besides, all who walked the Immortal Path knew that the great Daoist Sects hung high in the nine heavens, looking down upon all living things.
Almost no one dared to defy their orders and interfere in the wars of mortals.
It was said that even the Blood Demon Palace, one of the Nine Gates and Twelve Palaces, had suffered the punishment of the Celestial Red-clothed Sword Immortal for meddling in the affairs of a Mortal Dynasty.
That single sword strike had heavily wounded the Blood Demon Palace Master and had even cleaved Blood Demon Island in two.
Thus, Leng Xuanshuang’s worries were entirely unfounded.
The Dragon-Seeking Pavilion Master sighed. “Let it end quickly. Whether we win or lose, it’s the common people who suffer.”
This Dragon-Seeking Pavilion Master did not hail from the Nine Gates and Twelve Palaces, but was a cultivator from a Minor Sect. Before he began his Cultivation, he had come from a farming family in a small, remote border kingdom.
His homeland had long been lost to history, but his childhood memories remained exceptionally clear, and lately, they had been surfacing more and more often.
They were not pleasant memories. Most of them were of merely surviving amidst the chaos of war.
He hated war.
Because after the war began, he lost his mother and never had enough to eat again.
The Dragon-Seeking Pavilion Master didn’t understand why Great Xia had suddenly initiated a war, but he couldn’t find anything strange about it either. He simply assumed that after the efforts of several generations of the Emperors of Great Xia, the dynasty had accumulated enough Power and silver coins to be capable of seizing more territory, and so the war had begun.
Leng Xuanshuang looked at the Dragon-Seeking Pavilion Master but said nothing.
The Dragon-Seeking Pavilion Master knew her purpose in coming here wasn’t solely about the cultivators of the Great Yue Kingdom; beyond that, she clearly wanted to hear his answer.
He sighed.
“Eldest Princess, it is not that I am unwilling. It’s just that… the rules of this world were set by others. If they say something is forbidden, then it is forbidden. The Immortal Sects decreed long ago: the Royal Family cannot practice Cultivation.”