Clouds churned over Dao-Seeking Peak.
A grey-green stele stood quietly beside the mountain path.
《Ethereal Sword Art, Opening Chapter》 was carved into its face, and even after a thousand years of wind and frost, the Dao resonance in it still refused to fade.
Chu Qingxue stood before the stele.
Silver-white hair fell to her waist, and the mountain wind stirred her white robes into a gentle sway.
Even the spiritual energy of heaven and earth circled her without meaning to.
Footsteps came from the far end of the path.
Three inner sect disciples came up it, laughing and talking. They rounded the ridge, and one glance found the white figure standing at the stele.
Their voices cut off.
Their steps froze.
Even their breathing tightened. They exchanged a glance, and their eyes were full of awe.
They straightened their lapels, hurried forward, and bowed.
"Greetings, Senior Sister Qingxue!"
Chu Qingxue turned her head.
Her eyes were as clear as a cold pool, deep and heavy, as though ten thousand sword daos lay hidden behind them.
She swept an indifferent glance across the three of them and lifted her chin a fraction.
"Good."
One word, and nothing more.
The three disciples let out a breath, not daring to look any longer, and withdrew to the side of the path with lowered heads. Only when her gaze had returned to the stele did they dare continue carefully down the mountain.
A dozen or so steps on, judging themselves far enough away, they began to talk in low voices.
"Having seen Senior Sister Qingxue today, I finally understand what the bearing of a sword immortal means. Even the finest painter of this age could not capture a fraction of her spirit."
"That Dao resonance of hers is wholly natural. Truly, it commands admiration!"
"Naturally. You have only just joined and know very little — this is the Saintess of our Ethereal Sword Sect, a prodigy the Eastern Wilds sees perhaps once in ten thousand years."
"Late-stage Golden Core at twenty, and she carries a top-grade mutated water spirit root. She was born attuned to every living thing between heaven and earth, holds an innate affinity with spirit roots of every kind, and can nourish another's foundation without their ever noticing it. The spiritual energy circling Senior Sister on the path just now was proof enough."
"I won't hide it from any of you — Senior Sister is my first choice for a dao partner."
"No wonder those damned fiends of the Harmonic Joy Sect put Senior Sister at the very top of their bounty list. They would go to open war with our whole sect just to carry her off and refine her into their sect-guarding cauldron."
"It went further than that. The Sect Master flew into a rage over it back then and laid down an iron law: any Harmonic Joy Sect disciple who sets foot in Ethereal Sword Sect territory may be cut down on the spot for a sect reward, no report required. No one in the sect dares question it."
"Shh."
"You actually dare say that out loud?"
"Careful, or the Enforcement Hall will haul you off for discipline."
"Come now, I was only speaking privately. Don't go reporting us."
"As if we would. We are the closest of friends, brothers in all but blood."
"Enough. I believe you."
"By the way — why do you suppose Senior Sister was studying the entry stele?"
"I grasped that method the day I joined."
"At Senior Sister Qingxue's level, why waste her time on it?"
"How would we understand the way a genius cultivates?"
"Now that you mention it, ever since that death-battle with the Nascent Soul devil cultivator four months ago, Senior Sister has grown quieter and quieter."
"There is talk in the sect that her temperament changed a little after that fight."
"Stop guessing at things."
"Senior Sister is a prodigy. Isn't a shift in her state of mind perfectly normal after a life-and-death battle?"
"Let's go, before we disturb Senior Sister Qingxue."
Their voices faded away into the mist.
Chu Qingxue stayed where she was before the stele, her gaze resting on the stone.
Every word of it had reached her ears. Not a ripple showed on her face.
As though she had long grown used to such talk — or had never taken it to heart at all.
Then an aura, ancient and long-drawn, came slowly closer.
"Qingxue."
She turned around.
The motion was unhurried, the crispness particular to a sword cultivator blending with a prodigy's composure.
She adjusted her lapels slightly and bowed.
"Second Elder."
Ji Wujiu stroked his white beard and studied the girl before him carefully.
Spiritual power drawn inward, sword intent perfectly rounded. Young in years, yet steadier by far than anyone of her generation.
He looked past her at the grey-green stele behind her.
His brows drew together slightly.
He scanned the ground all around the stele, confirmed that no heavenly portent had descended there, and only then drew his gaze back, puzzlement in his voice.
"How is it that you are here studying the entry method, Qingxue?"
Chu Qingxue was silent for a moment.
She raised her eyes to the stele, her gaze distant, as though it could pass through the stone and see straight to the origin of the sword dao.
The mountain wind stirred her collar.
Her voice came neither hurried nor slow.
"All methods return to one source. The Great Dao is simplicity itself."
"This disciple has met a bottleneck in her cultivation of late. I quieted my mind and read the entry method through once more, and found new insight in it instead."
"After the Golden Core, every breakthrough is a return to the origin."
"The world chases after high-tier sword techniques and forgets that the foundation is where the Great Dao begins."
"I have come to think that the true essence of the sword dao lies hidden in these plainest of forms."
Ji Wujiu went still.
The fingers stroking his beard stopped in midair.
He murmured the phrases under his breath — return to the origin, verify the Great Dao — and his eyes grew brighter and brighter.
His pupils contracted sharply. Even his breathing stopped.
To return to simplicity, to fold a lifetime of cultivation and insight into the Great Dao.
This was the hardest barrier of all in driving from Golden Core to Nascent Soul.
He had been stuck at the peak of Golden Core for a hundred years himself, and had come through alive by the narrowest of margins to grasp it.
Yet this twenty-year-old Chu Qingxue in front of him had not only understood the mystery of it early, she could dig her own Great Dao out of the crudest entry method there was.
Such comprehension, such a state of mind — there was not a second like her in all the Eastern Wilds.
He looked at the girl in fluttering white, and the appreciation in his eyes could no longer be hidden.
He clapped again and again, praising her aloud, his tone full of admiration for the generation coming up behind him.
"Good!"
"What a fine 'all methods return to the true'!"
"A few short sentences, and you have laid the sword dao's true meaning bare."
"The young are to be feared. Truly, the young are to be feared!"
The more he looked at her, the better pleased he was, until he could not help pressing further.
"Qingxue, could it be... that you have already touched the threshold of Nascent Soul?"
A trace of a smile curved Chu Qingxue's lips.
Composed, gentle, and yet unfathomable.
She did not answer, only shook her head slightly and let her gaze fall back to the stele.
To Ji Wujiu, that silence was the modesty and the depth of a peerless genius.
He laughed heartily and waved a hand.
"Never mind, never mind. I am being too persistent."
"Ah — the Sect Master has called you to the main hall. There is an important matter to discuss. Go quickly, Qingxue, and don't delay."
"This disciple obeys."
Chu Qingxue bowed once more.
Then she started down the mountain.
Silver hair and white robes melted into the churning mist, her bearing beyond compare in this world.
Every disciple she passed stopped without thinking to bow, their eyes full of fervent reverence and longing.
But no one saw it.
In that moment, a few steps after she turned away, once she had passed out of the Second Elder's sight.
The hand hanging at her side began to shake violently.
That look of one who pierced the Great Dao, that unfathomable air — all of it shattered in an instant.
The composed presence scattered at once.
She quickened her pace and turned into the ravine. Only when she was fully clear of every gaze and every sweep of divine sense did she release her own divine sense and check three times over in a panic.
There was no one anywhere near.
Not even the shadow of a spirit bird or a wandering beast.
She could not hold it up any longer.
She stumbled hard against the cold cliff face.
Her back was long since soaked through with cold sweat, her robes clinging to her skin.
She pressed a hand over her chest.
Her heartbeat slammed against her palm.
Her legs gave out, and she slid slowly down the rock face to sit on the ground.
Smothered breaths heaved in her throat. Every scrap of strength had been drained out of her.
Nothing was left in her eyes but delayed terror and confusion.
Not a trace remained of the sword dao prodigy of a moment ago.
"That scared me half to death!"
"Why did the Second Elder just appear like that, without making a sound..."