Chu Mingyao sheathed her longsword back into her sea of consciousness, her composure returning as quickly as the blade had vanished.
So what if her sword momentum had been heavy enough to crush a mid-Nascent Soul monster into pulp? What of it?
She had treated the tiger monster as a whetstone. The more she tested her blade, the more absorbed she became, unconsciously cycling through every sword technique she had ever mastered in the exact order she had learned them. If her memory served, the moment she struck the final blow, she had been executing the Mountain Chapter of the Sword Sect’s famous Mountain and Sea Sword Art.
This particular art was built on the relentless accumulation of momentum. Once the sword was drawn, every subsequent strike added a layer of weight to the next. As long as the flow remained uninterrupted, the momentum would stack infinitely. If broken, the user had to begin the accumulation anew.
When the layers reached a certain threshold, the strike gained the power to shake the earth and level mountains. It was said that the creator of the art, Immortal Shanhai, once reached a record of stacking ninety-nine layers of both Mountain and Sea Momentum. He had even theorized a way to merge the two into a singular, devastating Mountain and Sea Sword Intent, though he ascended to the higher realms before he could prove it.
Chu Mingyao had felt an immediate, instinctive compatibility with this art when she first encountered it— despite the fact that it contradicted every established law of the Sword Sect.
According to the sect’s internal archives, the Mountain and Sea Sword Art was most compatible with the Path of the Heavy Sword, followed by the Path of the Mountain Peak, and the Path of the Four Seas. The Path of the Swift Sword, which Chu Mingyao followed, was listed as the least compatible.
The logic was simple— Immortal Shanhai had walked the Path of the Heavy Sword. His techniques leveraged overwhelming force and crushing weight. The Path of the Swift Sword, conversely, prioritized lightness, agility, and speed— attributes that seemed fundamentally at odds with stacking momentum.
Yet, Chu Mingyao had been stubborn. She insisted the art suited her and threw herself into relentless, diligent training. The instructors had tried to persuade her otherwise, and elders who cared for her had offered alternative arts better suited to her agility. Even Perfected Zizhu, who doted on her and usually indulged her every whim, had tactfully suggested she might be wasting her time on a dead end.
After all, even a genius only has so much time. Why waste it on a sword that refuses to be swung?
Low-level sword arts were trivial. Given Chu Mingyao’s natural genius, she could master them casually in a matter of days. But the Mountain and Sea Sword Art was different. It was a supreme technique created by Immortal Shanhai— an unparalleled prodigy who had ascended to the Immortal Realm before the age of one hundred. Even on the eve of his ascension, the immortal had felt the art still held untapped potential for refinement.
The sect elders had been right to worry. Even for someone as gifted as Chu Mingyao, cultivating such a profound art would be a monumental task. If she hit a wall, she risked stalling her entire cultivation journey.
Ironically, the only person who offered ‘unwavering support’ was Perfected Ziqiong. He had personally confronted anyone trying to dissuade her, telling them not to ‘make things difficult for a child’. He insisted that if she liked the art, she should be allowed to learn it. As her master, he stood by her, effectively silencing all other advice.
As for actual guidance or resources? He provided none.
At the time, his behavior had moved Chu Mingyao to tears. She had believed her master was the only person in the world who truly understood her— the only one who supported her when everyone else called her willful.
Now, with the clarity of hindsight, the truth was bitter. Had Perfected Ziqiong truly cared for her? He hadn’t even attempted to discuss the risks with her, unlike the thoughtful Perfected Zizhu. The moment he heard she wanted to pursue a potentially dead-end path, he had pushed her toward it.
Wasn’t his ‘support’ just a thinly veiled hope that her progress would be sabotaged by her own ambition?
But Chu Mingyao’s intuition had been flawless. She was perfectly suited to the Mountain and Sea Sword Art, just not in the way the manuals described.
While her Path of the Swift Sword didn’t add inherent weight to the strikes, her speed changed the fundamental math of the technique. Because her blade was so fast, it was nearly impossible for an enemy to find an opening to interrupt her flow. More importantly, the time she required to stack layers of momentum was decimated.
She replayed the battle in her mind and reached a staggering conclusion. By the time the tiger monster was crushed, she had accumulated over nine hundred layers of Mountain Sword Momentum.
With that much concentrated power, the tiger monster never stood a chance. In fact, a massive section of the mountain peak itself had been flattened. In the area where her sword momentum had descended, everything— trees, boulders, and the frantic minor monsters— had been leveled.
Leveled in the most literal, devastating sense of the word.
No, wait— there was one spot that had not been leveled.
Chu Mingyao sent a voice transmission to her junior brothers as she walked toward a slightly raised patch of earth that had somehow resisted her momentum, “Third Junior Brother, Little Junior Brother— you didn’t let a single minor monster escape, right?”
Earlier, her entire world had narrowed down to the edge of her blade. Even the tiger monster hadn’t existed to her as a sentient enemy, but merely as a moving target for her sword practice. If she exerted the effort to analyze her memories of the fight, she might have been able to piece together what happened to the rest of the mountain’s inhabitants.
But with two junior brothers standing guard, why trouble herself?
Chu Mingxi replied, his expression unreadable, “Eldest Senior Sister, rest assured. Every minor monster is dead.”
Chu Mingyao had reached the raised mound by then. Her divine sense had already detected what lay beneath the soil. She was simply curious as to how it had kept its form under a sword momentum heavy enough to flatten half a mountain.
She caught the strange tilt in Chu Mingxi’s voice and raised an eyebrow, about to probe further. But before she could speak, Chu Mingbei was already chattering away.
“Huh? Eldest Senior Sister, what are you talking about? Third Senior Brother and I didn’t even get a chance to act! Those minor monsters were all obliterated by the overflow of sword energy you unleashed at the very start!”
Chu Mingyao fell silent.
Chu Mingxi couldn’t help but press his fingers to his temple in exasperation. What an idiot little junior brother!
Couldn’t he tell? Chu Mingyao had been so consumed by her breakthrough that she hadn’t deliberately targeted those monsters. The sword energy had simply overflowed from her form like a leaking dam.
And that tiger monster— how could a dignified mid-Nascent Soul fail to block even the stray ripples of her power? It had watched helplessly as its subordinates were mowed down, paralyzed with a fear that only allowed it to dodge…… until even dodging became a luxury it could no longer afford.
Chu Mingbei, however, finally had a realization— though, naturally, it was about something else entirely.
“Oh, I get it!” Chu Mingbei exclaimed, his face lighting up with misplaced confidence. “Eldest Senior Sister, you were testing me to see if I was actually keeping watch, right? Don’t worry! I might be a bit lazy with my cultivation, but I’ll always give a hundred percent to any task you give me! I watched every corner, and not a single minor monster escaped. They’re all dead!”
With an expressionless face, Chu Mingyao lowered her head and began to extract the mysterious thing from the small pit.
“Yes…… It’s good that you observed so carefully.” She said neutrally. “Third Junior Brother, Little Junior Brother— come here. Look at this.”
Since the mountain had been cleared of threats, there was no longer a need for a perimeter watch. Chu Mingyao needed to discuss her discovery with Chu Mingxi, the formation expert. As for Chu Mingbei? He was along for the ride. Keeping him close was safer than letting him wander the edges of the intersection of the three realms, where unknown dangers still lurked in the mist.
Two streaks of sword light descended beside her. As soon as Chu Mingxi landed, he spotted the conspicuous lump on the ground. He let out a low whistle of surprise and nudged it with the tip of his boot, sending it spinning. After a moment of scrutiny, his brows shot up.
“This is……” He started to name it, but a mischievous glint entered his eyes when he looked at his little junior brother. “Xiao Bei, you tell us. What do you see?”
Chu Mingbei panicked instantly, looking like a student called on for a surprise quiz. He nearly bolted behind Chu Mingyao to hide, but when he met her cold, indifferent gaze, he dejectedly squatted down to examine the small lump.
It was a fox. A single-tailed, reddish-brown fox. Its aura was weak, barely at the Foundation Establishment stage. By all appearances, it was a common, low-level monster.
But Chu Mingbei wasn’t an entire fool. This creature had been pulled from the epicenter of a strike that had pulverized a mid-Nascent Soul monster. How could an ordinary fox corpse remain intact while a great monster was turned to mincemeat?
While Chu Mingbei puzzled over the corpse, Chu Mingyao and Chu Mingxi began a private conversation via voice transmission.
“This fox carries the bloodline of the Celestial Fox Clan, doesn’t it?” Chu Mingxi asked. “Only the Celestial Fox Clan are arrogant enough to enslave the Tiger Clan. Could the tiger monster have been its guardian? But this fox’s bloodline is impure. Its status shouldn’t be high enough to command a Nascent Soul-stage protector. Eldest Senior Sister, what’s your take?”
Chu Mingyao’s expression grew grave. “The corpse was located at the very heart of the formation. The tiger sacrificed those minor monsters to power a grand array, likely to protect or nourish this impure-blooded celestial fox. The formation’s core shielded it from my sword momentum. Third Junior Brother, I’ll transmit the formation diagram I observed with my divine sense. Tell me what we’re looking at.”
Chu Mingxi began to acknowledge the request, but his face suddenly hardened. His jade slip vibrated. It was a transmission from Guan Jingjing.
Another issue had erupted at Danming Village.