When Zhong Yue had crashed on the ground, the other Jiao dragon condensed by his mind had already reached Yu Feiyan’s body. It abruptly tangled around this young woman, then fully borrowed thunder to cross the sky and repeatedly knocked down big trees as it resisted the fall.
Yu Feiyan was still frightened out of her wits and her sea of consciousness was still controlled by her heart demons. After landing, she only managed to stop after a dozen tumbles.
Fortunately, even if she didn’t deliberately cultivate her body, her physique was still many times more tyrannical than ordinary people, so she wasn’t injured but only gained a few green traces on her fair skin.
This young girl was still in a state of panic, her eyes filled with terror. Her heart demons hadn’t disappeared.
"Sister apprentice, save me!"
Upward in the air Tao Dai’er was wildly shouting. Zhong Yue raised his head and saw the red-clothed girl fall while wriggling her arms and legs, but the speed of her fall was very slow.
"Eh? This kind of visualization method is very curious, she’s visualizing cloud qi."
Zhong Yue carefully examined her and saw that clouds were wrapped around Tao Dai’er’s body and slowed her falling speed. He thought: "Pu elder once said that clouds had cloud spirits. Clouds that men worship won’t disappear, and over time will gain spirituality. Maybe the road sister apprentice Tao is walking is precisely the road of the cloud spirit."
Cloud spirits drifted without a definite form and without a definite nature. They could become wind, they could become rain, or they could become thunder. They could soar in the sky and they could fall inside the mountains; they were a very mysterious kind of spirit.
Yu Feiyan came back to her senses. After all she still was the eldest sister apprentice of the female yard, and she visualized a dragon fish very quickly, melting her heart demons away. When she glimpsed Tao Dai’er dropping from the sky she hurriedly ran in her direction and said: "Tao Tao, I’m coming to catch you!"
Putong.
Tao Dai’er crashed on the ground in front of her, landing on her b.u.t.t, wobbly and groggy.
"Sister apprentice, you did that on purpose!"
"I didn’t."
Yu Feiyan took back the arms that didn’t catch Tao Dai’er, and said with an indifferent face: "Tao Tao, I very much wanted to catch you, but I just couldn’t. I miscalculated."
Tao Dai’er climbed up and rubbed her a.s.s, saying angrily: "It was clearly intentional, what miscalculated!"
Yu Feiyan sneakily looked at Zhong Yue in the distance and said in a low voice: "No it really wasn’t, just now I really miscalculated."
"Nonsense, you clearly were afraid to lose face if you were alone so you let me crash down too." Tao Dai’er angrily said.
The two girls quarreled in a low voice, but they suddenly saw Zhong Yue find another boulder inside the mountain forest and surprisingly put it on his back, intending to climb back to the top of the cliff. The two girls exchanged a glance and walked in his direction.
"Brother apprentice Zhong…"
Yu Feiyan was silent, only saying after a while: "Thank you."
Zhong Yue visualized a Jiao dragon and smiled: "It was only natural. After all sister apprentice jumped down without the slightest hesitation. Two sister apprentices, I still need to cultivate, I won’t accompany you."
"Who wants your company?"
Tao Dai’er said with a pshaw: "It’s not like we’re drinking!"
Yu Feiyan rolled her eyes at her and said: " Brother apprentice Zhong is cultivating?"
"That’s correct. Cross past the edge of life and death, stimulate my potential, overcome great dread and great terror, survive to my utmost. This is my way of cultivating."
Zhong Yue smiled: "Sister apprentice also experienced the thin line between life and death just now, you should know how the taste is."
"The line between life and death…"
Yu Feiyan deeply looked at him. "Hu" Two black wings suddenly spread behind her. She shook her wings and flew towards the clifftop, saying: "Since you’re cultivating, then your and my battle will wait for another day!"
"Sister apprentice, you dumped me again!"
Tao Dai’er repeatedly stomped her feet, and hurriedly visualized cloud and mist. Her body lazily drifted up and floated very slowly toward the top of the cliff. She said to Zhong Yue: " Brother apprentice Zhong, we’ll come find you another time, I’ll go first… hey! Wait for me, don’t climb so fast! d.a.m.n cloud, stinky cloud, float a little faster…"
When Zhong Yue climbed to the top, Tao Dai’er was still at half the height, but the black-clothed girl Yu Feiyan had already disappeared without a trace. She should have gone far away already.
"Flight techniques are indeed profound and ingenuous. Visualizing clouds or birds can let you fly. When borrowing thunder to fly, the speed is admittedly fast but the consumption is also extremely great, and it doesn’t have the same nimbleness as flying with wings. Let’s wait until the next lecture day, I’ll see if I can’t learn a flight technique."
He felt that flight techniques were all extremely useful, whether for upper yard disciples like him or for Qi Refining warriors. Not only they were useful during battle, but they were also very convenient for fast travel during ordinary times.
Hu-
Zhong Yue put the boulder on his back and leaped down the cliff, pa.s.sing near Tao Dai’er on the way. It took him more than an hour to climb up the cliff and jump down, but that red-clothed girl was still doing her best to lazily float up toward the top.
Zhong Yue’s fall created a big wind that continually blew the young woman down, causing her to shout and yell.
Not long later, Zhong Yue carried a big boulder and climbed the cliff. Tao Dai’er once again shouted and made a big racket, slowing him down.
"Zhong Mountain clan, I’m going to get you if you dare to jump down near me again!"
The red-clothed girl was once again blown by the wind from Zhong Yue’s fall from the cliff, and she sunk down a thousand feet. She finally got angry and said with tender rage: "If you dare to do it one more time, I’ll tell sister apprentice Ting you molested me, then you won’t have any good fruit to eat!"
Zhong Yue carried the boulder and climbed by her another time, saying seriously: "I really don’t have any relationship with sister apprentice Ting."
Tao Dai’er leaped and landed on his back, beaming with joy: "Carry me up, and we’ll say you guys don’t have any relationship."
Zhong Yue didn’t feel much added weight on his back. He realized this girl was light, soft as if she had no bones, and on top of that she visualized cloud and mist to reduce her weight to avoid him not being able to carry her. He thought: "Sister apprentice Tao is a considerate person, earlier she also followed me and jumped down the cliff. It’s no wonder she has such a wonderful singing voice with this kind of heart."
"Sister apprentice Tao, how about you sing a song for me?" Zhong Yue proposed.
"Not singing."
Zhong Yue pretended he was about to throw her down, scaring the girl into hurriedly hugging his neck as she said: "I’ll sing, I’ll sing! You’re such a bad person, I really don’t know what sister apprentice Ting likes about you."
Tao Dai’er sang light and slow on his back, and her singing voice filled the ravine with matchless etherealness. Her singing voice was still floating when Zhong Yue carried her to the top of the cliff.
Tao Dai’er sat beside the lake, her feet splashing the lake’s surface as she continued her song.
Zhong Yue dove in the Horse Drinking Terrace’s lake, washing sweat and dirt off his body. The song was like the fingertips of a young woman caressing his heart, carrying away the fatigue from his body and mind.
Sunset fell and the sunset glow hung between the sky and the mountain. The afterglow shone upon the young woman on the lake’s sh.o.r.e and the young man in the middle of the lake. Some lone gnus leisurely came to the sh.o.r.e and drank from the lake.
The song was becoming even more ethereal. Tao Dai’er carried her shoes, stepping over the ripples as she went past Zhong Yue. After a while, the song slowly fell and lingered on. The red-clothed girl waved to him and walked inside the mountain woods.
Zhong Yue only woke up from the young woman’s wonderful singing voice a long while later, realizing then that the girl was already gone long ago.
"Dragon Traveling Ten Thousand Li!"
Zhong Yue soared from the water and his mind power burst out. A Jiao dragon wrapped around his body and glided across the lake’s surface like a flood dragon breaking through the water, setting off stormy waves as it crossed the sky. He stepped across the Drinking Horse Lake and went to the upper yard in great strides.
In one day, his cultivation had gone through a transformation that overturned heaven and earth. Not only Sovereign Sui became more real, and Sovereign Sui’s image more distinct, but his sea of consciousness had repeatedly enlarged, already reaching a surface of twenty acres!
His body was filled with explosive strength, and he could manifest his mind power in the s.p.a.ce of a short instant, bursting it into an incomparably valiant attack!
"Continue to cultivate tomorrow!"
Little Xin Huo said inside his sea of consciousness: "You can’t do with slowpoke cultivation if you want to surpa.s.s the Celestial Elephant Old Mother! What you’re doing right now is far far from enough. Only when you’ve achieved the three words crisp, fierce, firm, only then could it be considered the entry level of inducing spirit!"
Zhong Yue inquired: "What’s crisp, fierce, firm?"
"Strength needs to be crisp. The moment your fist connects with your opponent’s body, your strength has to completely burst out and wreck destruction like breaking rotten wood and cutting dry gra.s.s!"
"The mind needs to be fierce. The heart needs the ambition of a fierce tiger, like a dragon going down the mountain. The mind power surges and visualizes demons and G.o.ds in a flash!"
"The soul needs to be firm. Soul like spear, bend but not break. When the soul moves, it can infuse items of ten thousand pounds, when the soul is still it is like a celestial emperor sitting on his throne, unshaken by any kind of evil!"
Xin Huo lightly said: "After you achieve this step, your foundation can be counted as stout. Only this way you can have the capital to battle the Celestial Elephant Old Mother."
Zhong Yue took a long breath, saying heavily: "Ok! Tomorrow we’ll continue cultivating!"
"Grandfather, today I met a young man cultivating, he told me there was great terror and great dread between life and death."
Under the golden peak of the Sword Sect, inside a great hall propped over a cliff shaped like a lingzhi mushroom, the black-clothed Yu Feiyan girl was deferentially asking a white-haired old man sitting cross-legged: "He said that by stepping between life and death you can stimulate your hidden potential, that by fighting great dread and great terror, surviving to one’s utmost, you could cultivate twice faster with half the effort. This line between life and death, what kind of thing is it? Is there really such a way to cultivate?"
This white-haired old man was precisely the patriarch of the You Yu clan and he had an extremely high status inside the Sword Sect. He opened his eyes when he heard the question and said with surprise: "The line between life and death? Are there actually people using this kind of way to cultivate?"
"Does this kind of cultivation really exist?" Yu Feiyan asked in surprise.
"It does. But it’s only hearsay."
The patriarch of the You Yu clan said heavily: "This kind of cultivation way is too extreme, extreme danger, extreme progress, extreme mortality rate, hence very few people use it. Between life and death, life on one side and death on the other, two forces opposing each other, imitating life, not imitating death. But the great majority of people who use this way of cultivating end up dead. Our Sword Sect also had people who cultivated this way before, they all died."
Yu Feiyan jumped in fright: "All dead?"
The You Yu clan patriarch nodded and said: "This kind of cultivation way is only useful for establishing a foundation. It has some effect for those at the Out of Body and Soul Infusion realms, but it’s no use to Qi Refining warriors. Qi Refining warriors soar to the sky and dive inside the earth, is it so easy for them to enter the s.p.a.ce between life and death? While before becoming a Qi Refining warrior, there are too few ways of preserving your survival and you’ll die with a single moment of carelessness. Hence people call this foundation-building way extreme, extremely not worth using. However I heard that our old sect leader used this kind of method back then and built an incomparably stout foundation, but this is only rumors, it can’t be true…"
Yu Feiyan’s eyes flashed. When the You Yu clan patriarch saw the light in her gaze he trembled in his heart and shouted: "You can’t learn this way! Becoming a Qi Refining warrior is already written in stone for you. If you used this method to cultivate you could die at the slightest carelessness, it will do more harm than good!"
The next day, Zhong Yue went again to the Horse Drinking Terrace. There he saw a red-clothed young woman sitting at the lake’s sh.o.r.e, with a black-clothed young woman standing beside.
"Eh? Eh? Zhong Mountain clan, what’s this chick hooking method of yours?"
Xin Huo was astonished and he said excitedly: "Pa.s.s it to me, pa.s.s it to me fast, after I find the next Soul Fire inheritor I can teach him!"