Sword Saint Gu Qingfeng reached out with a trembling hand, calling his chipped wooden wine gourd back into his calloused palm. He took another long, slow draught of coarse sorghum wine. That let the sharp burn of the liquor scour the lingering chill from his throat. For the first time in fifty thousand years of wandering the boundless heavens, his ancient eyes carried no spark of sword intent. There was only the stunned confusion of a craftsman whose finest chisel had bounced harmlessly off an unbending mountain.
“A squid,” Gu Qingfeng murmured, his dry lips twitching into a wry, crooked smile as he glanced toward the golden-winged roc. “Fifty thousand years of quiet focus, thousands of battles across nine heavens and ten earths. The Grand Patriarch compares my life’s masterpiece to an undercooked squid.”
Beside him, high in the faster-than-sound slipstream, Da Peng let out a low, shaking avian chuckle that rippled his golden plumage. “The Master has always valued practicality above aesthetics, Sword Saint. If a technique can’t be boiled, braised, or roasted with proper seasoning, he rarely sees the point in practicing it.”
“Perhaps that’s where my sword path fell short,” Gu Qingfeng muttered, fastening the wooden gourd back to his hemp belt with a quiet sigh. “I learned how to cut existence apart. But I never learned what to do with the pieces afterward.”
