Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The sole surviving Emerald Cloud School disciple let out another inhuman cry as Shi Wuchen stabbed right into his forehead, Lang Ruojun’s sword pierced his heart, and Ren Qingkuang cut open his stomach unflinchingly. Behind him, Yun Yang dealt three strikes consecutively, each one diving towards the fatal points on his neck.
‘Clang! Clang! Clang!’
Each strike landed on the target’s neck, but it felt like hacking into a piece of steel; it was only the third blow that finally severed the head!
Before the man died, he howled hysterically and stabbed wildly in the air, yet he managed to penetrate Shi Wuchen’s right shoulder by chance, the saber’s tip peeking out from his back.
The headless corpse swayed before it collapsed forwards onto the ground.
All four men heaved a sigh of relief simultaneously. Lan Ruojun and Ren Qingkuang fell to the ground and shook with laughter.
“Gratifying! Thank you!”
Nothing more was done as their eyes rolled back. marking their loss of consciousness, their movements surprisingly coordinated.
“Let’s go! Quickly! We can’t stay here for long!”
Yun Yang carried the two men without further words while Shi Wuchen pulled the saber out of his shoulder with a low grunt and kept the weapon in his spatial ring.
Moving amongst the dead bodies, Yun Yang retrieved the spatial rings of all three Emerald Cloud School disciples before leaving promptly into the thick forest. Almost simultaneously, the sound of wind breaking and clothes flapping could be heard from afar.
“Who’s there?”
However, there was not a single shadow to be seen.
…
“Why are you here?”
“Why did you fellows come here?”
Lan Ruojun and Ren Qingkuang woke up swiftly, but just as they regained consciousness and exchanged stares with Shi Wuchen, the first words that left their mouths were coincidentally similar.
“You answer first!”
“You answer first!”
Yet another identical reply.
Yun Yang looked at the three of them curiously, like he was relishing a memory in the long past.
He could feel, at this moment, that the sentiment among the three, although not as close as he and his Nine Supremes brothers, or connected like the brotherhood of the ten Court of Yama Kings, there was a sense of kinship that tied them together.
“You’ve disappeared for three years and we’ve lost all traces of you in the martial world – it seems like you’re living quite well. The rumor of you sustaining irrecoverable severe injuries is obviously untrue. Yet, carefree as you may be, how would you know what kind of life we would go through in these three years?”
Lan Ruojun chuckled self-depreciatingly, “It will soon be the time for the Celestial Luck Banner contest this year in another four months. Furthermore, the difference this time from the past, countless sects are restless and eager – some intend to upgrade their Celestial Luck Banner and some plan to guard and maintain their flag level. The participating disciples are all engaged in closed-door training now, and this has caused many empty spots among the true-teaching disciples. The ordinary disciples of these sects are almost crazed, pouring into the martial world and upgrading their abilities like they’re toying with their lives…”
Shi Wuchen sighed. There was no need to listen further when he heard what the former said. The small part he spoke about was enough to hint at the general picture. He already knew his brothers’ encounters and their situation.
Nine solid pieces of whetstones were here as if they had been conveniently placed for a long time. How could these disciples not pounce at them madly? They had to create whatever opportunity they could to defeat the Demiurge-Flawed Ten and obtain the qualification to be one of the true-teaching disciples!
It was a cold, hard reality – there was no need for guessing.
“It looks like you haven’t had the best of days…” Shi Wuchen exclaimed.
“Not the best of days? The two of us are always sticking together, so we still fared better. It’s a daily event for Shi Bujia to be engaged in battle thrice a day… he can’t even hide from it. Ping Xiaoyi is quite the cautious man usually and doesn’t engage in an argument with others as easily, but somehow, he and a sect went head-to-head in an altercation. He poisoned a dozen of their disciples to death in one go… That man’s already a public target. At least he’s smart. Once he killed them, he escaped to a place hundreds of thousands of miles away and his status is still unknown to this day…”
Shi Wuchen was astonished.
“This fellow is usually soft-spoken and gentle, yet his murders were exceptionally brutal. I guess one really can’t judge a book by its cover… It’s good to not know his status I guess, no news is good news – there’s still hope. What about the others?”
“The others are mostly… the same… Maybe some are worse, but we don’t know about it,” Lan Ruojun sighed sadly.
Yun Yang asked from the side curiously, “Where are the ten of you picked at the whetstones initially? Don’t they have their judging standards? What kind of benchmark decides all of you as the whetstones? How did all this happen?”
“You have no idea, brother. A few among the ten of us have entered sects that possessed the Celestial Luck Banners before, like Wu Menghuan and Tie Qingcang. Strictly speaking, they’re still under the schools… However, back then, before half a year after they formally acknowledged their masters, it was the Bound of Universe’s great sect contest. Their schools were unfortunate enough to lose and were replaced, finally downgraded. The two of them were already selected as the true-teaching disciples. but all of their seniors perished in the battle… Their schools exist only in name from then on and they were forced to roam the martial world,” Lan Ruojun recounted forlornly.
“The others were either framed in their sects or isolated, or some other reasons… thus forced to leave the schools they originated from. Eventually, there were rumors that said that we had the innate talents of being whetstones…”
Yun Yang was flabbergasted.
“Innate talents of being whetstones? Whatever does that mean?”
“It isn’t false… but the so-called whetstone talents are referring to the people in sects who have met bottlenecks and can’t achieve a breakthrough, and it has to be ace cultivators who have been stuck for fifty years with no hope of breaking through. Such cultivators are suitably situated in the highest rank of their cultivation base level and are equipped with extensive martial world knowledge as well as battle experience. Understanding that their cultivation base can no longer progress and wanting to leave some sort of glory behind, they’ll mostly opt to be training partners to their sect’s disciples who are in the same level or a level lower than them… The presence of these people is called the whetstones.”
“In reality, schools, sects, and clans don’t lack members like this. Providing an excellent platform for the lower-level disciples who were gifted, the contribution of whetstones mustn’t be omitted.”
Yun Yang nodded and continued to ask, “It’s easy to understand what you said, Still, calling you fellows the innate whetstones, there must be a difference from the whetstone disciples of the ordinary schools and clans, right?”
“Of course there’s a difference – a very fundamental difference. What is said about the innate whetstones is that they can reach the ace rank in each level very quickly then they stop there for some time to digest the progress.”
“This is called the grinding time… Perhaps, it’s closer to call it the whetstone time. Facing us during this period, a cultivator at an equivalent level will feel the highest amount of pressure.”
“In this manner, the so-called best whetstone is thus birthed.”
“As to why we are the ‘innate whetstones’, the word on the street is but a malicious rumor initially spread by the vermin who had feuds with us!”
