Ze Tian Ji

Edited by: Michyrr

The Maple Forest Pavilion was half-collapsed, the ground strewn with the remnants of walls and windows.

The falling sunlight, filtered through the slowly returning thin clouds and the tall red maples, had become rather dim.

The dim light was constantly reflected by several thousand swords, not becoming any brighter, instead appearing like light reflected off a pool of water.

Chen Changsheng loosened his grip, allowing that short sword that had been hidden in the flower pot for several years to fly away and regroup with the rain of swords in the sky.

He stretched his hand into the air and plucked out a sword like he was plucking a fruit at the height of autumn.

It was similarly a very short sword, but this one was exceptionally bright and incomparably sharp. It was called Stainless.

The topknot had been split apart, the halved hairtie now somewhere amongst the debris.

The Vault Sheath had fallen at Shang Xingzhou’s feet.

The sword sheath known as the Vault Sheath had once been a valued treasure of the Li Palace. Ever since Chen Changsheng had left Xining Village, it had always been at his side.

What might have been an idle gesture from Shang Xingzhou at the beginning had finally become one of his most inconceivably well-hidden moves today.

At the start of the fight, he had snatched the Vault Sheath from Chen Changsheng’s hand.

With the Vault Sheath cut off from Chen Changsheng’s spiritual sense, he could not summon those swords.

He was forced into desperate straits; one could even call it a dead end.

But afterward, he found one sword after another in the Orthodox Academy, and all those swords had a sword intent.

The sheath could cut off his spiritual sense, but for some reason, it could not completely cut off sword intent.

Sword intent was the will of the sword.

The will of these swords was to summon, to stand shoulder to shoulder, for comrades and friends to join hands once more.

At this moment, the sword sheath could no longer block all the swords, even though it was called the Vault Sheath.

Because those sword intents were revealing their edges.

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The Prince of Xiang’s eyes were a little red, perhaps aggravated by the bits of wood drifting over from the Orthodox Academy.

Or perhaps it was because he had seen, through the thick walls of the academy, those sword intents revealing their might.

He raised his sleeve and wiped his eyes, then he suddenly turned and left Hundred Flowers Lane, causing a large turmoil.

Wang Po glanced at him but did not follow.

In a short time, the Prince of Xiang’s figure appeared on the Bridge of Helplessness.

The winter had passed and all things were being reborn. The spring was about to arrive and the Luo River was already thawed, slowly flowing with dregs of ice in tow.

Two clear trails of tears dripped down from the Prince of Xiang’s cheeks.

His face was round and large, so this was not a sorrowful sight, but a comical one.

Standing next to him was a white-haired old man with a similarly large and round face. He also had a rather comical appearance, or perhaps one could call it an extremely happy face.

The old man was called Cao Yunping and he was the Elder of Heavenly Secrets’ nephew, once a member of the Storms of the Eight Directions. Enraged and anguished at his loss to Su Li’s sword, he ignored the exhortations from the Elder of Heavenly Secrets and the Tianhai Divine Empress, and crippled his entire cultivation. In the end, he went mad, with a problem occurring in his brain.

Cao Yunping had rarely appeared in public in the last few years.

Only a small number of people knew that Chen Changsheng had met him on his journey to White Emperor City.

He had originally been invited by some authority to make trouble for Chen Changsheng, but he ended up being convinced by Chen Changsheng to put the overarching situation of the Human race above all else.

And then, he went to the Western Sea and killed Mu Jiushi.

Yes, this expert of the Divine Domain had already recovered his cultivation and was even more powerful than before.

As for his intelligence, no one knew if he was really as innocent as a child or if he had just learned how to play one.

But why had he appeared in the capital today, and why was he meeting the Prince of Xiang over the Luo River?

Had the Prince of Xiang been the one who had invited him to make trouble for Chen Changsheng?

"Why are you crying?"

Cao Yunping looked at the Prince of Xiang and asked with deep sincerity, "Because you have no one willing to give you candy to eat?"

Without waiting for the Prince of Xiang to answer, he hurriedly added, "Xu Yourong only gave me one bag of candy. I certainly don’t have any to share with you."

These two simple questions seemed childish, cute, and even pitiful, but they had already revealed enough information.

And if one were speaking of negotiation terms, these were also rather explicit.

The Prince of Xiang used a handtowel to wipe the tears from corners of his eyes, then he ruefully said, "I am sad because the venerable Daoist is going to lose and the days after this will be very hard going."

Cao Yunping seemed to be dumbstruck by these words, and then he grinned and said with childlike innocence, "You liar; that’s not possible."

Yes, there was absolutely no reason for Shang Xingzhou to lose to Chen Changsheng. The gap in strength between the two was simply too vast.

Yet there existed a prerequisite for this fight between master and disciple, and it was that Shang Xingzhou had to suppress his cultivation to beneath the Divine Domain.

As one able to wield the South Stream Temple sword array all by himself, the current Chen Changsheng could be considered the most powerful person beneath the Divine Domain. Not even the Demon Lord or Qiushan Jun would be a match for him. Even looking back across the tens of thousands of years of cultivation history, it would still be very difficult to find someone as powerful as him before they had broken into the Divine Domain.

Just a glance past the wall had caused the Prince of Xiang to start to cry, because he had seen those sword intents, and also because he was truly rather disappointed.

It seemed that Shang Xingzhou really had lost.

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The Maple Forest Pavilion was very quiet.

The Orthodox Academy was very quiet.

Winds blew across the lake and the maple trees, passing through the ruins of Maple Forest Pavilion. They were then sliced to pieces by the swords into the sky, and when they reformed, they created very complicated noises.

Some sounded like sobs, others like resentful hisses.

"I will not lose to you."

Shang Xingzhou declared to Chen Changsheng, "I taught you."

This was his principle, his reason.

’I will not lose to you’ was really just ’I cannot lose to you’.

Shang Xingzhou took a step forward and said a single word.

It was a seemingly simple word, consisting of just one syllable.

But when one heard this word, it would reveal its true form, manifesting tones of incredible complexity that rose and fell.

This extremely short amount of time seemed to contained an infinite amount of information.

This was not a human language, but the remnants of an ancient civilization, a world of wisdom almost impossible to describe, as magnificent as the sea of stars.

As the blue Daoist robe swayed in the wind, the dragon cry rose to reverberate across the entire Orthodox Academy.

Shang Xingzhou’s eyes became completely white, making him seem like both god and ghost.

An unimaginable timeworn Qi swept toward Chen Changsheng and his storm of swords.

Chen Changsheng stared into Shang Xingzhou’s eyes and suddenly also said a word.

This word was also a single syllable, and it was also indescribably complex, impossible to comprehend and hailing from a most ancient era.

From high up in the cloud-covered sky came a dragon cry, bursting with surprise and delight.

Countless swords descended according to Chen Changsheng’s heart.

With awe-inspiring sword intent, the swords cried out in an unending stream, drawing out countless deep and straight marks in the sky.

There was a light clap.

The wind stopped.

The world once more became absolutely silent.

The rain of swords was on the verge of descent, but they remained stationary in the sky.

Shang Xingzhou stood in front of Chen Changsheng, covered in blood.

His right hand was clasped around Chen Changsheng’s throat.

He just needed to slightly clench it and Chen Changsheng would die.

At this moment, Wang Zhice spoke.

"You’ve lost."

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