“Supreme Earth-Splitting Sword Cultivation?”
Ye Guhan blinked his dark eyes, staring first at Pei Xuan’s earnest face and then out toward the jagged black mountain range rising ten miles west of the town walls.
“Lord Pei,” Ye Guhan said, frowning slightly as his hand rested on the cloth-wrapped hilt over his shoulder. “I have read all three thousand sword manuals in the Sky-Sword Sect’s inner library. I have heard of the Sky-Star Sword Dao, the Flowing-Water Sword Dao, and the Blazing-Sun Sword Dao. Why have I never heard of an ‘Earth-Splitting Sword Cultivation’ that pays off thirty thousand silver taels in a week?”
Behind Pei Xuan, General Tie Zhan stuffed half a pork bun into his mouth to stop himself from laughing out loud, while Abacus Su adjusted his brass spectacles and kept his face as stiff as a coffin board.
Pei Xuan didn’t panic at all. Instead, he narrowed his eyes and opened the detailed second page of Ye Guhan’s RTS Citizen Tooltip.
Aha. Got you, Pei Xuan thought with an inward grin.
With the RTS System showing him Ye Guhan’s exact medical chart and technique flaws, fooling this honest nineteen-year-old sword nerd was easier than stealing a bone from Old Yellow the camel.
Pei Xuan slowly shook his head, letting out a long, disappointed sigh as if he were an old master looking at a foolish student.
“Brother Ye,” Pei Xuan said softly, clasping his hands behind his back and pacing three steps around the young swordsman. “Your Sky-Sword Sect only taught you how to look up at the stars, so of course you have never looked down at the earth beneath your boots. Tell me—three days ago in the desert, when you fought seven enemies at once, your sword was as fast and bright as falling stars for the first forty strikes, wasn’t it?”
Ye Guhan’s body stiffened like a lightning-struck tree!
“How... how do you know I fought seven enemies three days ago?!” Ye Guhan gasped, his fingers tightening on his sleeve.
Pei Xuan ignored his question and pointed one finger directly at the third rib on the left side of Ye Guhan’s chest—right where the patched white robe hid a dark bloodstain underneath.
“For the first forty strikes, nobody could touch the hem of your robe,” Pei Xuan continued in a calm, all-knowing voice. “You killed two and crippled three in the blink of an eye. Beautiful! Flashy! Like immortal fireworks! However... by the forty-fifth strike, your breath grew short. By the forty-eighth strike, your dantian felt like an empty stove, and the Sword Qi in your left chest meridian turned as thin and brittle as dry grass! That was when your enemy’s heavy iron weapon smashed through your guard and cracked the meridian under your third left rib. Am I right, Brother Ye?”
BOOM!
Those words hit Ye Guhan’s brain harder than a falling meteor!
Ye Guhan stumbled half a step backward, knocking into Table Four and making the eighteen empty porcelain noodle bowls rattle loudly. His cold, proud eyes stared at Pei Xuan in total disbelief.
“You... how could you possibly know that?!” Ye Guhan’s voice trembled. “That battle happened two hundred miles west in the Dead-Sand Quicksand Pit! There wasn’t a single living soul within fifty miles! And I haven’t even pulled my sword out of its cloth wrapping today—how did you see the exact flaw of my Nine-Heavens Starlight Sword Art and count the exact forty-eighth strike?!”
Around the noodle stall, the two hundred bricklayers, Scarface Wolf, One-Eyed Jack, and even General Tie Zhan looked at Pei Xuan with shining eyes.
“Whoa...” Scarface Wolf whispered to One-Eyed Jack, rubbing his goosebump-covered arms. “Did you hear that? Our Lord only looked at the three cracked bricks on the ground and figured out what this sword guy did two hundred miles away three days ago! Is our Lord a fortune-telling god?!”
“Shut up and bow your head!” One-Eyed Jack whispered back fiercely. “Have you forgotten how the Lord turned a dry mud pit into a spirit well and made cactuses shoot iron needles? Our Lord is a hidden Immortal walking the mortal world!”
Pei Xuan read the long paragraph of wild overthinking in Ye Guhan’s tooltip and had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep his face solemn.
Thank you for filling in the backstory all by yourself, Brother Ye! Pei Xuan praised him silently.
Out loud, Pei Xuan gave a faint, mysterious smile and pointed down at the three cracked gray bricks on Main Street.
“A true physician sees sickness in a man’s face; a true sword master sees a man’s heart in a single cut,” Pei Xuan said smoothly. “Look at the cut you made in my road, Brother Ye. The top two inches of the stone were sliced clean as glass because your initial burst of Sword Qi is sharp. Reference the bottom inch, however—do you see how the cut narrows by the width of a hair at the six-inch mark?”
Ye Guhan immediately squatted down beside the three cracked bricks and peered closely into the slit.
Sure enough, at the very bottom of the six-inch cut, the stone fissure was slightly narrower than at the top!
“Your sword floats in the clouds,” Pei Xuan said, his voice ringing clearly across the quiet street. “It has speed and sharpness, like wind and starlight. What lacks in your dantian is the Heavy Virtue of the Great Earth! Wind blows away in a moment, and starlight fades at dawn, whereas a mountain stands for ten thousand years without moving! Because your sword lacks the heavy endurance of stone, your Qi runs dry after forty-eight strikes!”
Ye Guhan stayed squatting on the ground, his eyes wide and unfocused as waves of genuine martial enlightenment washed through his mind.
All Cloud, No Earth...
Wind blows away in a moment, whereas a mountain stands for ten thousand years...
Inside Ye Guhan’s chest, his [Pure Heart Sword Dao] began to hum and vibrate on its own! For the past two years, he had been stuck at the Early Stage of Foundation Establishment, unable to figure out why his Sword Qi couldn’t condense into heavier liquid sword-light.
Now, with just three simple sentences from Pei Xuan, the thick fog inside his head split wide open!
Ye Guhan stood up and bowed ninety degrees at the waist toward Pei Xuan, cupping his fists with both hands in the highest salute of a junior disciple meeting a grandmaster.
“Junior Ye Guhan was blind!” Ye Guhan said, his voice filled with sincere reverence. “Senior Pei’s words are worth ten years of closed-door meditation! Please enlighten me, Senior—what is the ‘Supreme Earth-Splitting Sword Cultivation’ you mentioned just now?”
Pei Xuan secretly opened his Fusion Cube interface inside his mind while reaching his hand toward Old Guo’s noodle counter.
“Old Guo, bring me one bowl of pure ox-bone broth from the bottom of the pot,” Pei Xuan ordered.
“Right here, My Lord!” Old Guo handed over a steaming clay bowl.
As Pei Xuan held the bowl with both hands, his wide sleeve covered the top for two seconds. Inside his mental interface, he dragged three items into the 3-Slot Fusion Cube:
- Slot 1: [1 Bowl of Rank 2 Scorpion-Beef Bone Marrow Broth]
- Slot 2: [1 Cup of Concentrated Sweet-Spring Well Essence]
- Slot 3: [1 Chunk of Refined Black-Iron Slag (from Old Wei's saber forging)]
When Pei Xuan pulled his sleeve back, the red broth in the clay bowl had turned into a rich, glowing amber-gold liquid that smelled like roasted beef mixed with fresh rain on hot mountain stone!
“Drink this bowl of soup first, Brother Ye,” Pei Xuan said, handing the clay bowl to Ye Guhan. “Consider it a free welcome gift from Dry-Well Town—not on your bill.”
Ye Guhan took the warm clay bowl with both hands. Just holding it made the cloth-wrapped spirit sword on his back vibrate with excited zing-zing sounds!
Without hesitation, Ye Guhan tilted his head back and drank the golden soup in three big gulps.
BOOOOOOM!
A warm, heavy current—ten times richer than the eighteen bowls of noodles he had just eaten—rushed down his throat and exploded inside his dantian!
Like melted gold pouring into cracked porcelain, the medicinal power sealed the bleeding fissure under his third left rib in three seconds flat! At the same time, his nearly empty Foundation Sea of Qi roared back to life, filling up to eighty percent capacity with thick, heavy silver-gold Spirit Qi!
Ye Guhan let out a long breath, and when he opened his eyes, a foot-long beam of solid silver light flashed from his pupils!
“My... my cracked chest meridian is healed!” Ye Guhan whispered in shock, touching his chest. “And my Foundation Qi feels twice as heavy and stable as before! Senior Pei, how can I ever repay this kindness—”
“By finishing your cultivation AND paying off your 30,000-silver road fine at the same time,” Pei Xuan interrupted smoothly, gesturing for Abacus Su to step forward.
Abacus Su trotted up with a wide, businesslike grin and unrolled a four-foot-long blueprint map across Table Four, pinning the corners down with four pickled garlic jars.
“Look here, Brother Ye,” Pei Xuan said, pointing at a thick red line drawn straight through the middle of Black-Stone Mountain Ridge on the map. “Ten miles west of our town lies Black-Stone Ridge. Behind it flows the White-Jade Snow River. Between the river and our town’s ten thousand acres of dry farmland stands ten miles of solid black granite.”
Pei Xuan looked straight into Ye Guhan’s eyes and spoke with grand solemnity:
“If you return to your sect and swing your sword at empty air a million times, your Sword Qi will still be light as wind. Instead, I want you to take your sword to Black-Stone Ridge! Do NOT use flashy tricks. Do NOT use light slashes. Put both feet firmly on the mountain rock, channel the heavy marrow soup in your belly, and use pure, steady Sword Qi to carve a ten-mile-long, thirty-foot-wide, fifteen-foot-deep stone canal straight through the granite ridge!”
Ye Guhan stared at the red line on the blueprint.
“Carve... a ten-mile stone canal through solid black granite?” Ye Guhan repeated slowly. “With my sword?”
“Not just any messy trench!” Abacus Su piped up, tapping the blueprint specs with his brass ruler. “According to Municipal Engineering Standard #8, the canal walls must be sliced at a seventy-five-degree angle smooth as a mirror so water doesn’t leak! The bottom must drop by exactly one inch for every hundred feet of length so the river water flows eastward on its own! And all the giant granite blocks you slice out must be cut into neat three-foot cubes so our Scorpion Dump Trucks can haul them back to build town walls!”
Ye Guhan’s mouth fell open slightly.
“Wait a minute,” Ye Guhan said, a tiny flicker of suspicion finally waking up inside his honest brain. “Cutting a smooth, sloped water canal and slicing rock into neat three-foot building cubes... isn’t that just using me as a giant human quarry machine for your town’s farm irrigation?!”
Pei Xuan didn’t blink an eye. In fact, he looked at Ye Guhan with deep disappointment.
“Anyone can smash a mountain into messy rubble with brute force, Brother Ye,” Pei Xuan said coldly. “Even a clumsy monster can make a crater! True mastery of heavy Sword Qi lies in absolute control! Can you slice ten thousand tons of black granite while keeping the floor slope accurate to a single inch over ten miles? Can you cut three-foot stone cubes on your fiftieth strike, your five-hundredth strike, and your five-thousandth strike without your wrist shaking by a hair’s breadth?”
Pei Xuan turned away and waved his sleeve dismissively.
“Forget it. Perhaps I overestimated the number one sword prodigy of the Sky-Sword Sect. If your sword control is too sloppy to cut straight three-foot cubes and a one-inch slope, Foreman Jack still has that Yellow Debtor Vest and the latrine shovel ready—”
“WHO SAYS MY SWORD CONTROL IS SLOPPY?!”
Ye Guhan’s extreme pride flared up like dry firewood doused in oil!
The tiny bit of suspicion in his head was instantly burned to ashes!
“A one-inch drop per hundred feet? Three-foot granite cubes? Seventy-five-degree mirror walls?” Ye Guhan slapped his chest with a loud thud, his pale face flushing with competitive fire. “I, Ye Guhan, have practiced the sword since I was four years old! Even with my eyes closed, my sword tip does not deviate by the width of a silkworm thread! I will cut your ten-mile granite canal in seven days—and if a single stone cube is off by half an inch, I will cut ten more miles for free!”
“Wonderful! That is the spirit of a true Sword Immortal!”
Before Ye Guhan could take back a single word, Abacus Su slapped a written contract onto the table, pressed Ye Guhan’s right thumb into a box of red ink, and stamped it onto the bottom of the paper!
“Contract signed and witnessed!” Abacus Su cheered, blowing on the wet red thumbprint before tucking the paper safely into his chest pocket. “For every mile of standard canal cut, we credit 3,000 silver taels toward your 30,000-silver brick damage fine! Cut all ten miles, and your debt is wiped clean! Furthermore, during the seven-day construction period, Dry-Well Town will provide you with three free meals a day delivered hot to the mountain site—up to twenty bowls of Old Guo’s Braised Scorpion-Beef Noodles per meal!”
Hearing “twenty bowls of Braised Scorpion-Beef Noodles per meal,” Ye Guhan’s stomach gave a happy little gurgle.
Still, his stubborn immortal pride refused to let him look happy. He pulled his inked thumb back, wiped it on his handkerchief, and tilted his chin back up to forty-five degrees.
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear, Lord Pei,” Ye Guhan said coldly, turning toward the west gate. “I am an independent Sword Cultivator of the Sky-Sword Sect. I am NOT joining your town, and I am NOT your subordinate! I am only cutting this mountain to test my Heavy-Earth Sword Intent and pay off my noodle and brick bill! Once the ten miles are cut, I will leave immediately!”
Pei Xuan smiled warmly and waved his hand. “Of course, Brother Ye! Take all the time you need!”
As Ye Guhan hopped onto the back of a waiting Armored Scorpion Bus alongside Foreman One-Eyed Jack’s surveying team, Pei Xuan eagerly glanced at the floating Loyalty bar above the young swordsman’s head—expecting to see it jump past 60 and unlock that juicy +100,000 LP/day reward!
Pei Xuan’s warm smile froze stiff on his face.
“Fifty-nine?!” Pei Xuan stared at the glowing number 59 / 100 as the giant Scorpion Bus scuttled out the west gate carrying 100,000 LP/day away into the dust.
He was ONE SINGLE POINT short of 60!
“Old Guo!” Pei Xuan turned around and grabbed the fat chef by the shoulders, his eyes blazing with determination. “Tonight for dinner, don’t just give him twenty bowls of beef noodles! Throw in two roasted lamb legs, four spiced pig trotters, and a whole basket of crispy fried scorpions! I refuse to believe I can’t pry that last one point of Loyalty out of this stubborn kid’s mouth!”