Chapter 920: Comprehension of Swordsmans.h.i.+p
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Seeing the Dragon King jump down from the top of the wall, Old Man Mu was relieved. After they transferred to a quiet place, he whispered, “I was nearly scared to death. I thought that those two body parts… Fortunately, I didn’t fail the good girl’s trust in me.”
Gu Shenwei briefly snorted. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a while.”
“Ah? The Dragon King still… ”
Before Old Man Mu could finish his sentence, the Dragon King disappeared.
Gu Shenwei was confused about what he had just discovered. All men from the Big Snow Mountain were swordsmen. Only a few women had some average sabersmans.h.i.+p. How could such a kung fu as the “Tiangang Sabersmans.h.i.+p” been created and hidden in Golden Roc Castle?
If he was to find out the truth, he would have to check more stone chambers.
There were plenty of unoccupied courtyards. With the experience that he had just gained, he headed directly for the rightmost corner after sneaking into the residential area, groping around for carved words.
Small Sword Peak of the Big Snow Mountain.
Thirteen Saber Attacks to Down Wild Geese.
After feeling out several patterns, Gu Shenwei realized this was yet another sabersmans.h.i.+p.
All of the next few stone chambers that Gu Shenwei went to had kung fu of the Big Snow Mountain inscribed on the walls. The Luoshen Peak, the Danduo Feng, the Huagai Peak, the Big Sword Peak and the Small Sword Peak’s names were all there. Sabersmans.h.i.+p, swordsmans.h.i.+p, staff techniques, spearsmans.h.i.+p, fist techniques, palm techniques, leg techniques, and finger techniques were all included, but most of those kung fu were sabersmans.h.i.+p. Gu Shenwei could dimly feel that these kung fu forms were the origin of the swordsmans.h.i.+p of the Big Snow Mountain that used a heavy sword. It was just that the total number of moves of these kung fu was ten times, maybe even a hundred times bigger.
There were approximately fifty to sixty unique skills on the walls of these stone chambers on the south side of that narrow alley, which was more than enough to establish a first-rate prestigious sect even in the Central Plains. But surprisingly, all these kung fus were under the name of the Big Snow Mountain.
Gu Shenwei was becoming more and more curious, and he had almost forgotten about the most important task that he was supposed to fulfill this night. He went to the courtyards on the north side. There were considerably less Green-faced killers on this side, with only four or five of the courtyards being occupied.
The floors of these chambers on the north side were all rectangular. Gu Shenwei also started searching from the rightmost one, but it turned out that there were only patterns. There were no words. Only in the leftmost room did he find the name of the kung fu on the walls.
The first line of words were in a weird language that he didn’t know. He speculated that it was some kind of Western Regions language. The second line was in Central-Plains language, “The Short Blade Technique of Reincarnation Castle on Xuandu Peak.”
‘The Reincarnation Castle on Xuandu Peak,’ Gu Shenwei pondered over this phrase for a while and then recalled where he had heard this name befpre.
There was a High Priest of Flower Soul in the Land of Fragrance who claimed to be the successor of the Holy King. She had once told Shangguan Ru and Lotus some absurd tales, in which she mentioned that Golden Roc Castle’s former name was Reincarnation Castle, and that the mountaintop where the castle was located used to be called Xuandu Peak. And the lord of the castle’s surname had been Feng.
It was Shangguan Ru who had told Gu Shenwei this tale. Because it had nothing to do with him, he hadn’t paid any attention to it back then. He didn’t expect that one day, he would find these words on the walls of a secret room within Golden Roc Castle.
Gu Shenwei then sneaked into several other stone chambers, and there were kung fu skills of the Reincarnation Castle on all of their walls as well, running the gamut from fighting techniques to kung fu skills with various strange weapons. In the eighteenth room, he found the “Single Saber Technique,” which was the Golden Roc Castle’s narrow saber sabersmans.h.i.+p.
It was getting late. Gu Shenwei reminded himself again and again that this was a dangerous place, and that he was no match for a group of Green-faced killers. However, he was still reluctant to leave right away, and was eager to find out what kind of kung fu there was on the walls of the next stone chamber.
He stayed in the stone chamber where he found the Single Saber Technique for a relatively longer period of time. There were many moves in this sabersmans.h.i.+p, some of which were not in the Golden Roc sabersmans.h.i.+p, and some of which were very different from the moves in the Golden Roc sabersmans.h.i.+p.
Apparently, the current Golden Roc sabersmans.h.i.+p had undergone some radical adjustments, which made it simpler and also more practical. However, it had also been deprived of the maneuverability and uniqueness of the original sabersmans.h.i.+p.
All of the next three stone chambers’ walls were kung fu skills about a single saber.
Those Green-faced killers who had come here to practice kung fu gradually left. Some of them chose to sleep in their stone chambers. Gu Shenwei did something even bolder – lighting an oil lamp in a stone chamber.
The “Long Blade Technique” had been carved onto this wall. It was a swordsmans.h.i.+p which Gu Shenwei had never seen any killer perform.
The moves on the wall totaled fourteen, and it was not the complete set of the swordsmans.h.i.+p. The rest must be in other stone chambers.
This was a kung fu that had been abandoned by the Golden Roc Castle, since none of its moves were in the narrow saber sabersmans.h.i.+p. Soon, Gu Shenwei knew the reason for this. Most of the moves on the wall were too weird and too radical. Some of them even went against the basic principles of martial arts. For instance, there was a move which required the user to stab backwards with their back to the opponent, which was almost synonymous with committing suicide.
It was understandable that the former Lord of the Golden Roc Castle had been defeated by his subordinates. The kung fu of the Holy King, whose surname was Feng, was more fancy than practical. The kung fu skills of the Big Snow Mountain, which were recorded in the chambers on the other side, were far better.
It was a pity that there were only patterns and the name of the kung fu on the wall. There were also one or two annotations, but there was no records of the Big Snow Mountain or of Reincarnation Castle.
Unexpectedly, the Long Blade Technique, which had been abandoned by the Shangguan family, took up the most walls. There were seven stone chambers upon whose walls this technique had been carved, with its moves numbering over a hundred. Each move was weirder than the last. In the eyes of a normal kung fu pract.i.tioner, more than half of these moves were asking people to voluntarily expose their flaws and invite their enemies to kill them. Apart from that, many of those moves lacked coherence, and it almost seemed as if they were not from the same set of kung fu.
It was in the third stone chamber recording the Long Blade Technique that light suddenly dawned on Gu Shenwei. Not only were the moves carved on the wall eccentric, but some of them even required the user to blindfold themselves, as if to prevent them from seeing the enemy.
What kind of swordsmans.h.i.+p could be performed without vision?
Gu Shenwei’s heart lurched.
When he was practicing the Death Sutra, he would sometimes close his eyes. And it was in that condition that he executed some of his best moves!
All of a sudden, a thought occurred to Gu Shenwei and he was transfixed with shock. Raising the oil lamp, he fixed his eyes on the moves on the wall, astounded and delighted. He had totally forgotten that he was in a dangerous place.
In the Death Sutra that Gu Shenwei had read, there were mostly words and only twenty-nine ill.u.s.trations, implying twenty-nine cultivation methods. Completely by themselves, Gu Shenwei and Lotus had each comprehended one cultivation method and then improved themselves through fights.
Actually, the Death Sutra did have kung fu routines and moves. It was just that they were not in the book but rather carved onto the walls of these stone chambers.
These weird, seemingly suicidal moves could be perfectly explained by the theory of the Death Sutra. They were not only not suicidal, but also excessive.
The reason why these moves lacked coherence was because they were not one swordsmans.h.i.+p but rather twenty-nine different swordsmans.h.i.+p corresponding to the twenty-nine ill.u.s.trations in the Death Sutra. Though each of these swordsmans.h.i.+p had only a couple of moves, they could substantially extend the range of the practical techniques of the Death Sutra Swordsmans.h.i.+p.
Gu Shenwei had too many questions, the answers to which he could only speculate on.
The founder of Reincarnation Castle on Xuandu Peak, who was probably the author of the Death Sutra, was a martial arts genius. For some reason, his successor surnamed Feng had lost the most important sutra and only recorded down these incomprehensible patterns, which was why his kung fu didn’t have the strength that it was supposed to have. And at last, he had been outs.h.i.+ned by his subordinates and the Holy King had been forced to flee to the Land of Fragrance in the south.
There must have been a close affinity between the ancestors of the Shangguan family and the Big Snow Mountain. The kung fu skills that they brought here were richer, but not suitable for a.s.sa.s.sination. Thus, they had adopted the strong points of the kung fu skills of Reincarnation Castle as well as the kung fu of the Big Snow Mountain, forming the sabersmans.h.i.+p that these killers were currently using.
A few Green-faced killers had had the luck to access more kung fu, but the original moves were unavailable, and they could only learn the ones that the Shangguan family had made adjustments to. The Unique King wanted to change the public profile of his organization, so he had made an exception and granted the Green-faced killers access to the kung fu of the Big Snow Mountain.
Some of the kung fu skills recorded in the stone chambers on the north side still had referential value, so a couple of Green-faced killers had been drawn there. As for the “Long Blade Technique,” it had been consigned to oblivion. Though there were spare oil lamps in all the seven stone chambers, barely anyone had lit them before Gu Shenwei had come here.
But as to why the diverse kung fu of the Big Snow Mountain had degenerated to just the heavy sword swordsmans.h.i.+p, which was somewhat clumsy, as the only kung fu, Gu Shenwei was unable to find any clue no matter how hard he tried.
Gu Shenwei had completely forgotten about Old Man Mu and his original plan. After scrutinizing all the patterns in the seven stone chambers, he returned to the third one. The person in five of the pictures here were blindfolded, which meant these five moves were expanded moves of the cultivation method that he had chosen.
There were only five moves, but Gu Shenwei couldn’t move his eyes away from the wall. Subconsciously, he pulled out the Five Peaks Saber and started practicing. At first, he found it very uncomfortable to make these moves, which reminded him of those unfathomable annotations in the Death Sutra. Gradually, he comprehended part of them and also discovered that his former moves were unduly constrained, and that he had only realized fifty to sixty percent of this kung fu’s potential.
“It’s such a shame,” Gu Shenwei mumbled. He and Lotus had thought that they had mastered the Death Sutra and that they were real kung fu experts when they were actually merely at the entry level, and there was still a long way to go.
“Puh,” the oil gave out and the lamp went out.
Gu Shenwei didn’t register it and continued staring at the wall. After quite a while, he suddenly discovered that the dawn had broken.
Light had also dawned on him.
Due to their lack of experience and nearsightedness, Gu Shenwei and Lotus had failed to understand the Death Sutra’s rich connotations. By comparison, Old Man Mu was a martial arts master. Back on the cliff, he said that it might be possible for one person to adopt two cultivation methods of the Death Sutra concurrently, but Gu Shenwei had scorned his view. Now, it turned out that Old Man Mu was right.
Actually, one person could adopt far more than two cultivation methods at the same time, since all the twenty-nine cultivation methods were meant for the same swordsmans.h.i.+p. If one person could only adopt one of them, then how could the first Holy King of the Reincarnatation Castle have managed to create this kung fu?
Gu Shenwei risked exposure to return to the first stone chamber recording the Long Blade Technique. He started scrutinizing those moves from the beginning, verifying the connection between these moves and the words in the Death Sutra. The more he thought about it, the more profound he found this kung fu. A lot of ambiguous understandings were clarified, but at the same time, a lot of new ones arose, confining his thoughts to those simple patterns on the stone wall.
Gu Shenwei spent a full day in that stone chamber.
There were fourteen patterns presenting fourteen moves, corresponding to four cultivation methods. All of them were moves that Gu Shenwei had never thought of before.
Lotus had comprehended “killing enemies,” while Gu Shenwei had comprehended “killing one’s self,” and Shangguan Hong was on the verge of comprehending “killing for survival.” No names were given to these four cultivation methods on the wall. According to his recollection of the contents of the sutra, Gu Shenwei named them “Self-Oblivion,” “Self-Protection,” “Spiritual Sword,” and “Materialization.”
It was not until this moment that he admitted to himself that “Grand Enlightenment Sword Sutra” was the most accurate name for this technique. “Death Sutra” could only summarize a couple of those cultivation methods. The Self-Protection cultivation method, for instance, had three moves, each one of which was aimed at the opponent’s vital parts, but always gave the opponent a chance to flee at the last moment, as the user and his opponent would end up killing each other if the user kept attacking.
These twenty-nine cultivation methods must have a common primary principle, which Gu Shenwei hadn’t comprehended yet.
That very night, he went to the second stone chamber and found that four of the moves on the wall were in accordance with Lotus’ cultivation method of “Killing Enemies.” Lotus was now able to kill an enemy with each of her sword blows. If she managed to master these four moves, she would be able to fight many enemies at the same time without complex tactics.
Gu Shenwei couldn’t help imagining Lotus an enemy in front of him, pondering over how he would defeat her.
A whole night pa.s.sed. Gu Shenwei had neither slept nor rested, and he also hadn’t drunk any water or eaten any food. Though he still didn’t know how to ensure his victory during a fight with Lotus, his understanding of the Death Sutra was growing ever deeper.
The next morning, Gu Shenwei planned to go to the third stone chamber but encountered some trouble.
A servant who came to clean the courtyard said in surprise, “It’s so weird. Someone used all the oil in the lamp.”