"Sister, this opponent of yours is no simple one. Don't let thoughts of winning or losing give rise to a heart demon."
The warning from Senior Brother Zheng Shaosi reached her ears, and Chen Jinshu's previously absorbed expression gained a trace of contemplation. She shifted her gaze toward the distant arena where the crowds were already gathering.
She had still been delighted over passing the illusion trial in third place, a result that had solidified her standing among the sect's elite. Now, after learning that her opponent in the Golden Core arena was the Buddhist cultivator Wu Nian Zhēnrén, a man famed for countering sound techniques with his formidable mantras, an inexplicable unease crept into her heart.
There were rumors that Wu Nian Zhēnrén specialized in striking at the heart demons of other cultivators, peeling back their mental defenses with every word he spoke.
The only thing she could be grateful for was that she no longer had one—or so she told herself as she adjusted the sleeves of her robes.
"Thank you for the reminder, Senior Brother. I will act within my limits." She seemed to think for a long while, her eyes clouded with thought, before she finally gave a firm nod.
Half a stick of incense later, she stood upon the Golden Core arena.
Her green robes fluttered in the sharp mountain wind as her toes touched down on the cold surface of the platform. Her fingertips brushed across the strings of the Lüqi Zither, the wood smooth and cool beneath her touch.
At the same moment, the gilded meditation staff of the Thunder Sound Temple Buddhist cultivator Wu Nian slammed heavily into the ground.
Dong!
A ring of golden ripples spread along the jade arena, vibrating through the stone. She felt her eardrums throb from the sheer force of the impact. Even the Golden Core in her dantian trembled in response to the sudden spiritual shock.
She was startled, and she immediately circulated the Azure Wood Life Transformation Art to calm her agitated spirit. The lotus birthmark on her forehead glimmered faintly with a soft light, finally steadying her surging spiritual power.
"Xuanming Sect Luanque Zhēnrén, please instruct me." She bowed with the zither cradled in her arms, her gaze sweeping over the dense crowd gathered below the stage.
Her master, Shui Huanmeng, stood at the very front of the Xuanming Sect's ranks. Crimson purple sleeves fluttered like butterfly wings in the wind, her expression calm and confident as she watched the platform.
Several Senior Brothers and Senior Sisters beside her watched with anticipation, their eyes fixed on the upcoming match.
Seeing this, she felt her confidence rise.
This was her first battle since stepping into the Golden Core realm. She wanted to see just how far her strength had reached and if her mastery of sound could withstand the trials ahead.
Wu Nian raised one palm before his chest. The vermilion dot between his brows looked as if it might bleed at any moment, glowing with an intense, holy light.
"Thunder Sound Temple Wu Nian. Zhēnrén, please be careful."
Before the referee elder's bronze gong could strike, two waves of sound collided head on.
Zheng!
As the first note of Breaking the Formation Melody transformed into a majestic azure luan bird and lunged forward, Wu Nian suddenly uttered the Six-Character True Mantra.
Golden swastika symbols rippled outward from his throat in a blinding wave, shattering the sound-formed luan bird in midair.
Her fingers went numb in an instant from the backlash. One of the zither strings snapped with a sharp twang that echoed across the arena.
"Annihilating Brahma Sound?"
This was the Thunder Sound Temple's supreme art, a technique that could supposedly suppress all earthly noises. It was said that at full mastery, it could even reverse the flow of rivers.
Seeing the second mantra coming toward her, she slammed her palm against the hidden compartment in the zither. With a crisp click, seven spare strings refined from flood dragon tendons instantly replaced the broken ones.
Gasps of surprise surged through the audience as they witnessed her quick recovery.
On the Sacred Sword Sect's viewing platform, Purple Sword Zhēnrén Leng Yan stood with arms crossed over his chest. "When sound cultivators clash, you break the opponent's instrument first. This monk is ruthless."
"Junior Sister's Lüqi Zither is a treasure-grade spirit instrument, tempered by Master's close friend. It shouldn't snap so easily." Zheng Shaosi frowned slightly, his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword.
The next instant, Wu Nian tore off his kasaya and flung it into the air. One hundred and eight bodhi beads shot out at once, each transforming midair into a towering golden swastika seal that loomed over the platform.
She plucked the strings rapidly, her hands moving in a blur. Soundwaves wove together into a shimmering green silk barrier before her.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Under the relentless impacts of the golden seals, scorch marks streaked across the jade bricks beneath her boots.
Worse still, the shattered golden seals didn't dissipate into the air. Instead, they formed a chanting barrier around the arena, closing in from all sides. Her zither sound vanished the moment it left the strings, like mud oxen sinking into the sea.
"A sound barrier!" someone cried from the Medicine King Valley seats.
Unless she could break the barrier, the power of her music would drop by at least thirty percent.
Wu Nian seized the chance and sat down cross-legged on the jade, his meditation staff laid across his knees. He began chanting the Diamond Sutra. Each word manifested as solid golden script floating in the air, humming with spiritual resonance.
Chen Jinshu suddenly felt her fingers slow. The golden characters were absorbing the spiritual energy of the arena, even disrupting the flow of power around her body.
"I can't let him finish the chant!"
She remembered her master saying that once the Thunder Sound Temple's word-spirit techniques took shape, the outcome was essentially decided. Her left hand swept urgently across the strings to maintain the barrier, while her right quietly reached for the dragonbone whip at her waist.
The final movement of Breaking the Formation Melody thundered forth. Thirty-six soundwaves condensed into azure luan birds and charged at Wu Nian together in a desperate assault.
The Buddhist cultivator had no choice but to interrupt his chanting. His staff spun into a wheel of golden light to block the incoming birds.
In that instant, she spun and snapped the whip. The blood-jade dragonbone whip tore through the sound barrier, its tip striking like a venomous snake toward Wu Nian's throat.
Pa!
The whip halted abruptly, three inches from his neck.
A string of crystalline relic beads floated before his chest, neatly catching the barb at the tip of the whip.
Golden blood seeped from the corner of his mouth from the strain of the block, yet a smile flashed in his eyes. "Does Chen Zhēnrén know what 'Voice Hearer and Pratyekabuddha' means?"
The world suddenly spun around her.
In the blinding light from the relics, she saw the Chen clan ancestral hall from when she was thirteen years old.
The elders pressured her with their heavy cultivation force because she refused a political marriage that would benefit the clan. Female cultivators sneered at her with sharp words and disdainful eyes from the sidelines.
"You're truly ungrateful. This marriage alliance was something your Second Uncle begged Bai Nian for." The Patriarch's cold voice drilled into her ears.
"Begged for it?" She sneered at the memory. "Whatever I want to do, I decide for myself."
She couldn't tell if this was an illusion or a repressed memory surfacing.
Back then, she had refused the Patriarch without the slightest hesitation, standing her ground in the face of their collective weight.
Outside the arena, Shui Huanmeng suddenly clenched the railing, her knuckles turning white.
To others, it looked like Chen Jinshu had frozen in place, the dragonbone whip drooping limply in her hand, while Wu Nian slowly pointed his staff at her brow.
"It's the Diamond Subduing Demon Mantra," an elder from Yuqing Sect sighed. "It strikes directly at flaws in the Dao heart. This girl is about to suffer from a heart demon."
Before the words finished, a clear luan cry pierced through the chanting.
The beast-taming bracelet on her wrist flared with intense green light. The Shadowpeak Finch forcibly broke through its spirit beast pouch and revealed its true form.
Three-zhang wings blotted out the sky above the arena. Crimson flames ignited along its tail feathers, burning a hole straight through the chanting barrier.
In the illusion, she suddenly saw a line of green light breaking through the darkness.
The ancestral hall roof split open as the azure luan's claws tore through the blood-red sky of the memory.
"Xiao Yin, came!"
Clang!
With another cry from the bird, the treasured furnace in her sea of consciousness shook violently, spewing forth clear, chilling spiritual power that washed over her mind.
She seized the dragonbone whip and lashed viciously at the Chen clan elders standing before her in the hall.
With a sharp crack, the illusion shattered instantly.
In reality, Wu Nian grunted and staggered back, golden blood pouring from all seven orifices. When a heart demon illusion was broken by the target, the caster always suffered a devastating backlash.
Blood also hung at the corner of her lips, yet her eyes were terrifyingly bright. She wiped her face and found her palm soaked with cold sweat.
Those few breaths of heart demon invasion had been far more dangerous than the Burning Heart Purgatory of the illusion trial.
"Thank you." She nodded to Xiao Yin circling above the arena, then she suddenly stowed the Lüqi Zither into her storage pouch.
The entire arena erupted in confusion. For a sound cultivator to abandon their instrument was no different from cutting off an arm in the middle of a fight.
Wu Nian wiped away the golden blood from his chin. His staff glowed once more with a dim light. "Does Chen Zhēnrén concede?"
"I changed my mind." She flicked her wrist. Violet-gold lightning suddenly crackled along the dragonbone whip, casting sharp reflections on the jade.
This was thunder power absorbed by the Genesis Alchemy Furnace during her tribulation, now hissing through the body of the whip.
"If chanting counters my music, then let's see whose bones are harder!"
The seventh move of Vine Blood-Drinking Calamity Whip, Azure Dragon Sweeps Its Tail, exploded forth. The arena filled with flying sand and stones as the whip lashed out.
Wu Nian hastily formed the Immovable Wisdom King seal. The golden barrier had just taken shape when the whip struck.
Crack!
Spiderweb fractures spread across the golden barrier.
Even more terrifying, wisps of blood energy seeped through the cracks, siphoned away by the whip as it drank from the barrier's power.
This was the most insidious aspect of the whip art, drinking the enemy's essence to replenish itself.
"Om!"
Wu Nian suddenly roared, unleashing the Buddhist Lion's Roar to push her back.
Chen Jinshu bled from her ears and nose from the sonic pressure, yet she grinned. "Too late!"
She suddenly released the whip. As her palms came together, Xiao Yin dove, spewing intertwined azure and crimson flames onto the Buddhist cultivator.
He had to withdraw his seal to block the spiritual fire. In that opening, she summoned the Lüqi Zither again.
This time, she didn't play Breaking the Formation Melody. Instead, she casually plucked a string of seemingly chaotic, discordant notes.
"Hm?" Leng Yan straightened abruptly in his seat.
The scattered notes struck the remnants of the chanting barrier and rang out like bells and chimes, resonating with the structure of the barrier itself.
Wu Nian finally lost his composure as his defenses began to crumble. He hadn't expected her to change tactics mid-battle, nor that her understanding of sound had reached the realm of using sound to break sound.
As he hastily tried to retune and rebuild the barrier, she let out a clear whistle. Xiao Yin's cry fused perfectly with her music.
"Break!"
Boom!
The modified Breaking the Formation Melody doubled in power, surging forward like a tidal wave.
Wu Nian's kasaya instantly turned to dust, revealing a dark gold protective soft armor beneath it. The treasure armor cracked visibly under the pressure.
The referee elder's protective barrier descended just in time, shielding Wu Nian from the final blow.
When the dust settled, the Buddhist cultivator sat collapsed on the ground, while she leaned on her zither, barely standing.
"Xuanming Sect, Chen Jinshu wins!"
Hearing this, her consciousness wavered.
For that brief instant, she had truly thought she had returned to years ago, back to being that ignorant, ugly girl.
If not for Xiao Yin waking her in time, the one carried off now would have been her.
"The Dao heart still has flaws."
===
Hi, I am back here on the Webnovel side. LOL.
I will be here for about a day, so today and tomorrow I am going to update several novels that I paused for a few months. The reason is simple. AO3's server is down for around fifteen hours, and that blocks what I already planned on my roadmap. Because of that, this is going to be a special exception.
The titles I will be picking up for this exception are Stealing Luck from the Heavenly Dao's Favorite; True Heir of Chaos: From Villainess to Empress; After Killing Dao Partner, the Villainess Becomes the Demon Ancestor; and Crimson Lotus, Divine Path.
For Crimson Lotus in particular, the author has started updating again just last month after a few months of hiatus, so I decided to continue it as well.
You might notice that my translation style feels a bit different this time. Right now, besides translating, I am also expanding and refining the text more. There are a few differences compared to my usual style, and I hope you enjoy this improvement.
I really recommend joining my Discord server for announcements and updates. Anyway, consider this a small gift from me. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for waiting for my updates.
If you want to support me, the best way is through Ko fi at Ko-fi.com/rikhi or Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/rikhi.
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I am sorry if some terms are different from before. The last time I worked on this novel was around June, so it has been a long time. Back then, my notepad system was not as refined as it is now. I only wrote the English terms, without noting the original Chinese wording beside them.
Now I usually keep both, but for older notes I sometimes cannot be sure which Chinese term I meant. Because of that, some differences may appear in this translation. I tried to choose the most rational option, but my memory is not perfect, especially considering how many titles I have worked on and how long it has been since I last touched this one.
You can comment on the paragraph of the term, and then write the previous term if you found inconsistency. I will change it immediately.
Sorry for the inconsistency, and I hope you understand.