She closed the window.
She settled cross-legged again.
She guided the water spirit root into a slow circulation.
Three months, and she still could not fully command this Flawless Sword Body.
Only while meditating did her mind settle at all.
A pile of trouble was waiting tomorrow. Settling Lin Jin, testing his spirit root, handling the elders' questioning, guarding against Yue Qingshuang's covert probing, and cramming the sword art into her memory.
A sense of crisis pressed on her at every hour. The whole peak seemed full of watching eyes.
She had been strung tight inside for a long while.
An image of Lin Jin flashed through her mind.
She could not help wondering to herself.
At the spirit-testing platform tomorrow, what spirit root would Lin Jin turn out to have?
Even a waste root with no potential at all — with that optimistic streak of his he would only scratch his head and trot out some line from a novel about a good-for-nothing turning it all around, to comfort himself.
And then he would practice his sword day after day, and not stop even when it wore blisters raw.
There was no one anywhere around.
Chu Qingxue sat quietly with her eyes lowered.
A very faint smile lifted the corner of her mouth, and no one saw it.
Chu Qingxue sat regulating her breathing and slowly closed her eyes.
Her divine sense sank down the meridians into her dantian, and spiritual energy gentle as water wound through flesh and blood in a slow circuit.
The Flawless Sword Body's meridians were clear by nature. Even though the deeply locked origin sword intent still refused to merge with her, the energy met not the slightest obstruction as it traveled.
Yue Qingshuang's murmur circled again and again through her sea of consciousness, and her chest felt tight. Three years at your side, and I have never seen you smile so freely.
Her fingers pinched at her dao robe without her noticing.
In three months she had never once let so unguarded a smile show. Yet in the instant she came upon Lin Jin at the Jade Pool, the pretense held taut for three months had cracked open, and that faint smile had gotten away from her.
Chu Qingxue drew a deep breath, forced down the vexation churning in her, and pressed her divine sense further down.
The blue spiritual light in her dantian trembled faintly, and the sword body's memories came flooding into her sea of consciousness once more.
Three months ago. The rear mountain of the Ethereal Sect. The Spirit Spring Cave.
Chu Yang's consciousness gradually woke, and a tearing ache came in waves through every limb and bone, as though his whole frame had been taken apart and put back together wrong, every inch of flesh carrying an unfamiliar dull pain.
Something was wrong.
His chest tightened abruptly. Last night he had played games all night with Lin Jin, lost eight rounds straight, and gone to sleep in a sulk. He had shut his eyes for a moment. How had he come to this unfamiliar place?
She raised her eyes in a panic to the reflection on the pool. Long silver hair floated scattered across the water, a strikingly beautiful girl's face met her eyes, and soaked white robes clung to a full figure. The shock of the sight wiped her mind blank.
A cry burst out of her throat beyond all control — a girl's voice that was not his at all.
Chu Yang stood frozen in the pool, numb from head to foot, and then a violent pain exploded from between his brows.
An ocean of memory poured into his mind: the complete life of the original owner, Chu Qingxue, who had lived twenty years.
Ice shards whirled through the sky on a howling wind. Six-year-old Chu Qingxue curled up in dead grass in a cavern of ice, hands and feet purple with cold, teeth chattering beyond her control.
A massive ice-crystal phoenix, ice-blue and frost-patterned from head to tail, spread its wings and sheltered her securely beneath its body, out of the wind. The great head lowered slightly, amber slit pupils resting gently on the child.
"Come here."
Chu Qingxue's fingertips were stiff with cold. She shuffled forward a small step at a time until she stood before the phoenix.
The phoenix's beak touched lightly between her brows, and a thread of ice-blue spiritual light poured into her divine sense, carving the water-attribute sword dao and the dao of heaven and earth's spiritual energy wholly into her soul.
"Your spiritual energy is like water, ceaseless and self-renewing. As a top-grade water spirit root, you must learn to feel the utmost cold of this heaven and earth merging into your sword body."
Every day at daybreak the phoenix flew out of the Cold Abyss and came back with frozen fish and snow hares in its beak, laying them down in front of her.
Six-year-old Chu Qingxue tilted up a small face red with cold, ice crusted on her lashes, and asked in a small voice, "Master, what is a sword?"
Wind and snow howled at the cave mouth and struck the walls of ice. The phoenix's wings shivered, and a single ice feather drifted loose and fell into her palm, where it became a sword of ice.
"The sword is the one support that will never abandon you, once you have left this place."
"Then will Master leave me?"
The phoenix lowered its eyes, the life in them thinned almost to nothing. "My lifespan nears its end. After that I will send you to the lands of the human race. From today your name is Chu Qingxue — clear and limpid in spirit, your original heart like snow."
In the deep winter of her seventh year the phoenix spent the last of its spiritual power to beat its wings. It carried the thin little girl south and cast her into the unbroken deep mountains there.
Chu Qingxue fell into the forest, the ice sword clutched in her palm. She looked back, and in the far north there was nothing but endless wind and snow. That ice-blue figure was gone.
She was at the fifth level of Qi Refining then, wearing a thin dress of ice silk woven from her own spiritual power, walking south alone.
A rank wind came at her out of the dense forest. A black-striped tiger demon sprang from the thicket, sharp fangs going straight for her throat.
Chu Qingxue froze, fumbled the ice sword out of her robes, and stabbed hard. A shaft of extreme cold drove out, and the tiger demon was knocked back half a step.
Her heart hammering, she forced her weak legs into a narrow crack in the rock and curled up there the whole night. Beasts roared through the forest without pause, and she did not dare close her eyes till morning.
At twelve she had walked the length of the mountains and found a three-hundred-year crimson spirit fungus, and on the way back three Foundation Establishment heretical cultivators cut her off.
The leader's gaze was filthy. He struck her hard across the back with his palm, a dull impact sounded, the back of her head slammed against bluestone, and scalding blood ran down through her hair.
Agony swept through her and her insides heaved. Shaking, she pulled out the ice sword worn thin by years, and the last of the phoenix spirit within it erupted, driving a crystal edge clean through the heretic's chest.
The other two were wounded by the spiritual power as well and fled in a panic.
Chu Qingxue had two broken ribs, and every breath dragged a piercing pain through her. She lay in a pool of blood, and the ice feather at her breast shattered as the last thread of the spirit beast's presence dispersed entirely.
She reached out and scooped up the blood-smeared fungus, pulled a bitter smile leaning against a cold corpse, traded that small piece of fortune for a cultivation technique, and drove herself alone all the way into Foundation Establishment.
At sixteen Chu Qingxue went alone to challenge the Ethereal Sword Sect's gate trial.
Light poured down from the spirit-testing stone, the power of a top-grade water spirit root shot straight to the clouds, and the Flawless Sword Body set ten thousand swords resonating.
Every elder in the hall rose at once, and the white jade teacup slipped from the Second Elder's hand and shattered across the floor.
The Sect Master came quickly down the jade steps, looked at the girl standing with her back straight, and said it three times over. "Good."
In her four years in the sect she went down the mountain alone, year after year, to cut down demons and heretics.
At nineteen she went alone into the ancient Soul-Burning Kingdom, where living people were offered up in sacrifice. Thousands upon thousands of puppet corpses lay strewn beneath the city walls, and in blood-soaked robes she put the calamity down.
At twenty she drew on her own blood and qi to call a hundred li of sword light and hold back a devil tide at the border, reached the peak of Golden Core, and was invested as Saintess.
Until a month ago, when three Nascent Soul devil cultivators laid down a killing formation and sealed off every path of retreat.
Chu Qingxue drove the Flawless Sword Body, her meridians rupturing one after another, and cut down a Nascent Soul devil head by main force.
The dying devil cultivator raised a hand with a savage grin and stamped a pitch-black soul-extinguishing curse seal onto her spirit, and a bone-eating agony spread through her soul.
She escaped back to the sect by luck. The Sect Master and the elders together stripped away most of the curse poison, and what remained was to be rooted out slowly with a daily decoction.
But the decoction handed to her that day had already been swapped in secret.
Curse markings crawled over her whole body in an instant, the sword intent within her scattered completely, and boundless darkness swallowed her consciousness.
The replay of memory finally ended, and at that moment a translucent white-robed apparition stepped slowly forward — the remnant soul of the original Chu Qingxue.
At the sight of the girl's remnant soul something stopped up in Chu Yang's chest, and the anger held down there surged up at once.
In his past life there was nothing he could stand less than a good person wronged. The original owner had spent her life cutting down demons and shielding the common people, loyal to her sect, upright and sincere through and through, never in anyone's debt. Mountains of blades and seas of fire had failed to take her life, and in the end she had fallen to the private scheming of her own sect, her own gate.
An enormous sense of injustice rushed straight to the top of his head, and the sense of righteousness in his bones swelled all at once.
Chu Yang's throat tightened, his fingertips shaking. "Chu Qingxue, who swapped the medicine? Who did this to you?"
The remnant soul first brushed lightly over the empty scabbard at her waist, her lashes trembling. "I could find no lead either. Never mind that for now. You must take care — body-snatching is a capital crime in the sect, and the Soul-Refining Lamp can burn a foreign soul away entirely. On no account may you let your identity be exposed."
"The Flawless Sword Body has sealed away all twenty years of my memories. From now on the world will take you for Chu Qingxue. Whatever you do, do not let a flaw show. Master the sword dao methods as quickly as you can, and give the traitor within no opening to use."
Chu Yang stepped half a pace forward and held out a fist to the apparition, his voice carrying both ache and anger. "I saw all twenty years of it. Growing up alone in the Cold Abyss, escaping death time after time, holding back a devil tide by yourself, putting down a whole kingdom. A girl that clean and that righteous, and you didn't die fighting demon beasts or devil bandits — you were ambushed by your own sect."
The remnant soul gazed quietly at the Chu Yang before her, at that wholly sincere nature of his that could not bear to see her wronged in the smallest degree, and a gentle smile spread through her dead-still eyes.
"I have one wish still unfinished."
Before the words were done the translucent apparition leaned in, and in the next instant a light, soft, faintly cool touch settled on Chu Yang's lips.
It lasted only an instant before the apparition drew back.
Chu Yang went rigid all over, the tips of his ears flaring scarlet, his heartbeat losing its rhythm entirely, and he pulled back the half-raised fist with no idea what to do with his hands. He looked at that thin, fragile remnant soul with an ache filling his eyes.
The remnant soul drew back half a step, her gaze soft and brimming with concern. "The one thing in this life I cannot let go of is the young junior brothers and sisters of the sect. As long as the traitor within remains, sooner or later a hidden poisoned hand will reach them."
Chu Yang's eyes stung faintly, and his gaze turned utterly solemn. "Rest easy. I will drag the traitor hiding in this sect out into the light, and I will keep every one of those junior brothers and sisters safe. The sword that belongs to you, I will hold in my hand forever, and I will collect every measure of justice from every last person who plotted against you."
The remnant soul lowered her eyes, and the insubstantial line of her brows curved into something gentle. She put out her own fist and touched it once more to the face of Chu Yang's.
"Then I entrust it to you. Goodbye, Chu Qingxue."
As the words faded the remnant soul became a sky full of ice-blue points of light, scattering entirely into the depths of the spirit vein and dissolving away.
Chu Yang held the raised fist where it was, a chill lingering in his palm, then slowly lowered the hand and closed all five fingers. "Rest easy. I do what I say."