Qiao Yiting spent most of his daytime hours striving for breakthroughs, while a small portion of his time was spent at the Herb Pavilion, following Xue Yun and Su Qingyu to study the medical arts of Qihuang, and nighttime was dedicated to teaching Zeng Youran some basic swordsmanship and Dao-entry theories.
During this period of getting along with Zeng Youran, he could clearly feel the boy’s progress, and Qiao Yiting could also distinctly perceive his own changes, whether in his understanding of Qingxuan Mountain or his grasp of swordsmanship.
At night, outside the Zhiji Hall bamboo grove.
“Junior Brother, watch closely. This set of sword forms is actually quite difficult.”
He casually picked up a slender bamboo pole and began gesturing in the open space. By now, he clearly perceived the feeling Yin Rong had described: “a blade of grass or a single tree can all transform into a sharp sword in one’s hand.”
Although holding a bamboo pole looked completely harmless, he could nevertheless emanate waves of sword Qi.
After finishing a complete set of consecutive moves and looking at the stunned teenager standing aside, Qiao Yiting sighed and shoved the bamboo pole into Zeng Youran’s hands. “I’ll teach you again.”
Without waiting for Zeng Youran to react, Qiao Yiting grabbed his hand with a tug, pulling him right into the center of the clearing. Immediately afterward, he wrapped an arm around his waist from behind, while his other hand gripped the bamboo pole tightly together with his.
Zeng Youran instantly grew tense, his entire body stiffening up.
Sensing his discomfort, Qiao Yiting gently patted him. “Relax, it’s just practice. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get it right.”
As soon as he finished speaking, Zeng Youran was swept into the air by Qiao Yiting. His heart was pounding nervously, he had no idea how they were executing the moves, but while turning, he could clearly see the smiling corners of Qiao Yiting’s mouth.
Hand-in-hand teaching seemed even less effective than demonstrating it himself. Qiao Yiting looked with a mixture of amusement and exasperation at the boy’s blank expression, temporarily unsure of what else to do.
“Senior Brother is amazing. Can you demonstrate it one more time?”
“How about this, let’s go through it one move at a time.”
Zeng Youran nodded, keeping his gaze closely fixed on Qiao Yiting. He thoroughly enjoyed watching his Sixth Senior Brother practice swordplay; he felt that whenever he danced with his sword in a flurry of white robes, it looked exceptionally graceful. Moreover, he deeply cherished these nightly sword practice sessions taught by his Sixth Senior Brother, who always had a way of making people feel as comfortable as a spring breeze.
This time, Zeng Youran thought with selfish intent: If I can’t learn it tonight, Senior Brother will keep practicing with me tomorrow night too. Therefore, he decided in his mind that he would only master the first three moves, and he seemed to have found his Sixth Senior Brother’s soft spot.
“Senior Brother, I always miss the point on this move. Can you teach me again?”
This was the foundational sword technique of Qingxuan Mountain, the Qingyun Sword Method. For Zeng Youran, who had just recently guided Qi into his body, it was indeed rather difficult. Qiao Yiting felt he might have been a bit too impatient, sighed, and comforted him, “You’ve already done very well. How about for these next few days, you just practice the first three moves first?”
He thought for a moment and added, “Or if you feel it’s too difficult, you can put this set of consecutive moves aside for now and refine your previous swordsmanship on your own.”
“What about the subsequent sword forms?” Zeng Youran’s expression shifted slightly, thinking Qiao Yiting was going to stop teaching him.
Qiao Yiting placed his slender-jointed hand on the boy’s shoulder and patted it reassuringly. “The subsequent sword forms can wait until I come out of seclusion. Tomorrow, I’m going into seclusion.”
“So sudden?”
“There’s nothing sudden about it. I just feel I’m ready to break through this realm.” Looking at the somewhat reluctant Zeng Youran, he found it rather amusing. “Don’t miss me too much.”
Watching Zeng Youran follow his instructions, practicing the sword forms over and over again amidst fluttering sword shadows, Qiao Yiting felt quite gratified. Yet he worried that in his absence, Fang Ping might make things difficult for the boy.
“Junior Brother, if Eldest Senior Brother assigns chores to you again, you must remember not to overwork yourself. If you truly cannot finish, don’t force it; he won’t really do anything to you.”
“At worst, you can ask Third Senior Sister for help.” Though whether she would care was another matter entirely.
Zeng Youran acknowledged every single piece of advice with a verbal promise. Even though he didn’t dare defy the Eldest Senior Brother, having his Sixth Senior Brother’s comfort suddenly gave him a bit of courage.
That night, lying on his couch, Zeng Youran tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep. He glanced up toward Qiao Yiting’s side. “Senior Brother, are you asleep?”
“What is it? Are you troubled by something again?”
“No.”
“If not, go to sleep quickly. Don’t you have to go over to Eldest Senior Brother’s place to work tomorrow?”
Qiao Yiting wasn’t sleeping either. In truth, he was also feeling somewhat apprehensive, afraid that this seclusion breakthrough might end in failure once more, and anxious about whether Zeng Youran would run into any trouble without him watching over him constantly.
After a long while, thinking Zeng Youran had fallen asleep, he heard the boy’s voice pipe up again in the dark: “Senior Brother, are there really immortals in this world?”
Qiao Yiting was on the verge of answering that there were no immortals at all, but then he recalled this was a world of immortal cultivation, otherwise, what was he even doing here?
So he turned toward Zeng Youran and said softly, “There probably are. If you believe they exist, then they exist.”
“Can people really fly up and become immortals?”
“They probably can.”
“Can bad people do it too?”
“Bad people cannot.”
“What about someone who has only done a few minor bad things? Can they not either?”
“If he genuinely repents for his past wrongs, he probably can.”
Chatting back and forth in this disjointed manner eventually lulled Zeng Youran to sleep.
Listening to his steady breathing and watching the faint white light break on the horizon, Qiao Yiting got up and headed toward the Fengquan Valley deep within the Herb Pavilion.
This was a prime location for seclusion and breakthrough that Qiao Yiting had scouted after observing for a long time. Located deep inside the Herb Pavilion, it was extremely secluded and served as the water source for the hot spring medicinal baths, plus medicinal herbs were densely distributed throughout the Herb Pavilion.
Therefore, going into seclusion here could cleanse the marrow and shed old bones, rapidly enhance one’s cultivation, help form the elixir, and thus break through into the Golden Core stage.
The Golden Core stage was a realm every cultivator dreamed of reaching, often requiring nearly a hundred years of time just to await a single opportunity for a breakthrough.
Yet Qiao Yiting wanted to attempt a second breakthrough within a mere half-year. Regardless of whether it succeeded or failed, making such a decision was quite bold in its own right.
He didn’t know the original owner’s age, because eternal youth was a well-known fact in the world of cultivation. Looking at his own youthful face, he figured the original owner must possess extraordinary natural talent, and even felt a twinge of regret that he had taken over the body of someone who had died.
Had the original owner still been around, he likely would have acted even bolder than himself.
Arriving at Fengquan Valley, Qiao Yiting pushed into the depths until he found an even more hidden spot, where he began regulating his breathing and entering a meditative state.
He blocked out all surrounding sounds and silenced the stray thoughts in his own mind.
As he opened his eyes, a familiar ICU hospital room came into view, accompanied by the beep, beep sound of an electrocardiograph monitor. Turning his head slightly, he spotted one of the hospital’s most expensive pieces of equipment: an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine. Listening to his own slightly heavy breathing, he felt as though he had come back to life.
The surge of emotion caused the nearby monitors to sound a sharp alarm, various noises intertwining into an exceptionally noisy din.
Listening to the sounds made by these instruments, he didn’t find them annoying at all, instead, he felt a profound, heartfelt warmth. He thought, “It really was a dream! I survived!”
Subsequently, amid those sounds, he distinguished footsteps and wanted to look up to see which colleague had come.
Who would have thought the newcomer was Su Qingyu, wearing a nurse’s uniform, her crisp voice ringing out: “Sixth Senior Brother, you’re awake.”
The scene shifted, and he suddenly heard Zeng Youran’s youthful voice reciting the Scripture of Purity and Tranquility line by line, muffled, yet exceptionally clear.
He followed that sound and began silently reciting the Scripture of Purity and Tranquility, which he had already memorized by heart. Soon, he felt a change occurring within his sea of consciousness.
Starting from his Dantian, something seemed to be absorbing the surrounding true Qi. Before long, an extremely bright core point appeared within it. He thought, could this be the legendary Golden Core?
Yet immediately afterward, that intensely bright center point began to disintegrate, getting submerged back into the Dantian Qi sea. He did not panic, having seen similar situations described in books beforehand.
At the same time, Yin Rong was practicing swordplay at the training ground. He saw Fang Ping scolding Zeng Youran once again, with Shi Kai aiding and abetting nearby. Seeming to sense a faint gaze, Zeng Youran slowly raised his head and looked toward the direction of the Herb Pavilion. Immediately following that, his perspective shifted to the Herb Pavilion itself, he saw Xue Yun and Su Qingyu discussing swordsmanship, and heard the surrounding bustling noises, from the flowing waters of Fengquan Valley up close, all the way to the sound of stir-frying in the dining hall, which poured directly into his ears.
These novel sensations did not distract Qiao Yiting. He continued his practice calmly and steadily, proceeding with the next steps.
When he was able to freely sense the existence of the Golden Core and manipulate it, he opened his eyes and walked out of Fengquan Valley.
In an instant, dark clouds gathered densely, and sharp raindrops carrying heavenly thunder surged toward Qiao Yiting. He raised his eyes, his pupils resembling a calm body of water without a trace of panic. Without the slightest hesitation, he flew out of the Herb Pavilion and landed inside the Zhiji Hall bamboo grove, waiting for his heavenly tribulation.
Fortunately, it was merely the Golden Core stage; the heavenly thunder struck down only three times, which was an absolute piece of cake for the current Qiao Yiting.
When he first entered Fengquan Valley, it was late autumn with withered vegetation and fluttering fallen leaves that tormented Zeng Youran with grueling labor every day. Now, however, a faint trace of green could be seen on the ground. Amidst the verdant bamboo grove, patches of lingering white snow had yet to melt. Qiao Yiting couldn’t help marveling, “Time flies so fast. I wonder if I can head down the mountain before Zeng Youran turns into a demon.”
He turned his head and found himself caught off guard by the gaze of the protagonist he had just mentioned. Qiao Yiting’s heart skipped a beat, thinking to himself that things were bad, he didn’t know if the boy had heard him.
Zeng Youran hadn’t caught his muttered monologue. When he saw Qiao Yiting standing there with his hands behind his back, easily weathering the heavenly tribulation, he had tuned out every other sound in the world, his eyes filled solely with the senior brother he had yearned for day and night.
Seeing the stunned boy standing there, Qiao Yiting walked over, rubbed the bridge of his nose awkwardly, and asked with a smile, “I didn’t scare you, did I, Junior Brother?”
Before he could say anything else, he saw Zeng Youran’s tears fall first. He hurriedly raised a hand to wipe them away. “No, I was just worried the lightning might have hurt Senior Brother.”
Qiao Yiting also quickly reached out to help wipe away his tears. “I thought I had scared you into crying.”
He looked the young man up and down, he seemed to have grown taller than before he left, and his clothes were actually a bit too small for him now, while his figure looked even more slender than before. He wondered if Fang Ping had intensified his harsh treatment and overworked the child while he was away.
Yet the boy’s tears seemed endless. “I followed Senior Brother’s instructions and practiced diligently every single day.”
“You did wonderfully, Junior Brother.” Qiao Yiting raised his own sleeve, which had been slightly charred by the lightning, to continue wiping the boy’s face. “It’s freezing cold out here, if those tears freeze on your face, stop crying.”
Zeng Youran nodded, though he still sobbed, “Eldest Senior Brother and the others are waiting for you at Cuiying Garden. When they saw you came out of seclusion, they sent me to call you over.”
“How fortunate, I also have matters to discuss with Eldest Senior Brother.” Qiao Yiting draped an arm around his shoulder. “Let’s head over together.”
The so-called Golden Core stage allowed a sword cultivator to achieve the unity of person and sword: “my heart is the sword, and the sword is my true nature.”
Forming the elixir was merely a tiny initial step, and the Golden Core stage itself was further divided into three minor realms. Beyond that, a sword cultivator also had to undergo a period of attunement with their natal sword so as to fully comprehend the principle that a single sword breaks all derivative magic.
As far as Qiao Yiting knew, apart from the elder who stayed out of worldly affairs, the only ones in the sect who had entered the Golden Core stage were Yin Rong and those two mountain-guarding boy disciples.
He was also very clear about his purpose in pursuing the Dao: not for longevity, nor for invincibility under heaven, and certainly not to vie for the position of Sect Master. As long as he had sufficient capability to carve out a surviving path for himself against the future Zeng Youran, that would be enough.
Thinking of this, Qiao Yiting leaned forward slightly, meeting the boy’s watery eyes. “Come to think of it, I should thank you. Thanks to Junior Brother, I managed to break through.”
Zeng Youran didn’t know how he had helped, but under those repeated expressions of gratitude, he buried his head even lower. He felt his little senior brother seemed to have changed, yet felt as though nothing had changed at all.