Chapter 225: Meeting Cheng Lingshuang Again
"Back then, it truly took every ounce of my strength to slay the Taowu," Rovel began, his voice steady as he recounted the past. "And just as the rumors claim, its ominous aura seeped into my meridians, eroding me from the inside out."
He glanced at his hands, flexing his fingers as if recalling the phantom sensation of that dark energy. "But I refused to simply lay down my sword and end my own life. Instead, I gambled on the Liangyi Immortal Art taught to me by Master Red Kite. I attempted the impossible—forcing my own internal strength to fuse with the corrupted true qi ravaging my body."
A faint, self-deprecating smile touched his lips. "As it turned out, the gamble paid off. Not only did I survive the ordeal, but every trace of mara-struck corruption was purged from my system. Yet... there is one missing piece to this puzzle. While I was incapacitated, someone sealed me away beneath the earth."
"The only person capable of such a feat—and the only one who would have reason to—is Red Kite. But Master lived by an absolute, unbreakable creed: the demonized must be executed. Her devotion to that rule was ironclad, far exceeding my own."
"Yet, despite finding me in that state, she spared my life. It defies all logic," Rovel explained.
Otto steepled his fingers, his calculating eyes narrowing slightly. "So, you never actually crossed the threshold of death in the true sense. You were merely placed in a state of suspended animation?" A fleeting shadow of disappointment crossed the blond man's features. If Rovel hadn't truly died and resurrected, this phenomenon wouldn't meet his strict requirements for mastering life and death at all.
"Correct," Rovel affirmed with a soft sigh. "Though I lacked the strength to sense the outside world during my slumber, my life force never extinguished. By the time I finally opened my eyes, Sushang had already dug me out of the dirt. Only then did I realize that decades had slipped through my fingers."
Li Sushang bit her lower lip, a sharp pang of heartache tightening her chest. She looked at Rovel's calm profile, imagining the sheer isolation he must have felt. To wake up beneath the soil, only to find the world you knew had crumbled to dust and everyone you cared for was gone... it must have been an agonizing realization.
"Which brings us to the present," Rovel continued, a heavy bitterness lacing his tone. "I need to uncover exactly what transpired twenty years ago. I need to know why Master vanished without a trace, and why our sect fractured into this current state."
Beneath his calm exterior, frustration gnawed at him. Despite all his knowledge of the future, despite his desperate efforts, he had still failed to save Red Kite. The cruel inertia of the original storyline had marched on without him.
"Don't worry, Martial Uncle! You'll definitely find the answers," Li Sushang said, puffing out her chest in a bright attempt to comfort him. "Let's hurry back. My Master will absolutely know the truth about what happened back then."
"Mhm." Rovel nodded, his expression softening at her earnestness.
The trio quickly rounded up their previously startled horses. Hoisting the unconscious, battered form of Ma Feima over one of the saddles like a sack of grain, they spurred their mounts forward, galloping toward the legendary Peerless Freedom Gate.
Miles away, Cheng Lingshuang sat quietly before a weathered wooden loom, her slender fingers guiding the silk threads. Yet, today, the usually flawless rhythm of her hands faltered. She paused, her icy gaze dropping to the fabric.
"Another mistake?"
A rare flicker of surprise rippled through her placid features. She had been weaving silk for over two decades. Aside from a handful of clumsy errors during her very first week of learning, her hands had never slipped. Not once.
Initially, this mundane task had absolutely nothing to do with her martial arts training; it was simply a quiet, unassuming way to make a living in the mountains. But for someone like Lingshuang—a prodigy whose every breath was a martial art, whose absolute stillness was a form of sword practice—the rhythmic clacking of the loom had invisibly transformed into a crucible. It tempered her Sword Heart, honing her focus to a razor's edge.
And when it came to the sword, Cheng Lingshuang was never careless. It was fundamentally impossible for her to make an error.
Therefore, the only logical conclusion remained... her mind had wandered. She had been daydreaming.
She reached out, intending to unravel the miswoven silk threads and correct the flaw. But her fingers hovered in the air. After a moment of silent contemplation, she withdrew her hand, stood up, and glided out into the open courtyard. Casually picking up an empty wooden scabbard from a nearby rack, she began to flow through the stances of the Taixu Sword Forms.
Raise your hand just a fraction higher here.
Don't scramble your footwork. Adjust your breathing; your rhythm is getting a bit erratic.
Mhm, Junior Sister Lingshuang, your talent is truly astounding. Give it a few more years, and once you attain the Taixu or Sword God realm, your strength will completely eclipse mine.
As she moved, a familiar, gentle voice seemed to echo on the mountain breeze. To the outside world, she was the Peerless Sword God—an untouchable immortal with a heart of frost and extinguished emotions. But in the privacy of this empty courtyard, her usually impassive expression fractured, revealing a complex, aching reminiscence.
Then, the warm memories warped, replaced by the chilling echoes of a nightmare.
Rovel has fallen to mara. I have executed him in the Northern Barrens. Master's cold, detached decree.
Master killed Senior Brother. Don't you want to... seek revenge? The venomous whispers of her fellow disciples.
Master is the one who has truly fallen to mara! She's lost her humanity! That's why she slaughtered Senior Brother without a second thought... Do you want what happened to him to happen to little Junior Sister Wanru as well?!
Cheng Lingshuang's eyes snapped open, the wooden scabbard freezing mid-swing. She took a slow, deep breath, forcing the turbulent ripples in her Sword Heart to settle back into a mirror-like calm. With a flick of her wrist, she casually tossed the scabbard aside.
"Hmm?" Her ears twitched. "Sushang is returning? But... why do I hear the hoofbeats of four horses?"
She blinked, a rare trace of confusion crossing her pristine features. Her senses were honed to perfection; she could easily distinguish the rhythmic thud of hooves from forty li away. Had her foolish disciple managed to make some new friends during her descent down the mountain?
Unwilling to entertain unnecessary suspicions, Lingshuang turned on her heel and silently retreated indoors to tidy up her appearance before her guests arrived.
Roughly fifteen minutes later, Rovel's group finally crested the mountain path, arriving at the legendary headquarters of the Peerless Freedom Gate.
Rovel stared at the structure. Calling it a 'Gate' was a massive overstatement. In reality, it was little more than a dilapidated, weather-beaten courtyard clinging stubbornly to the mountainside.
Dismounting, Rovel casually hoisted the limp body of Ma Feima onto his shoulder. Li Sushang eagerly took the lead, guiding the two men through the creaking wooden entrance.
"Master, I'm back!" Li Sushang called out, her voice as crisp and cheerful as a morning oriole.
The wooden doors parted, and Cheng Lingshuang, having already sensed their approach, stepped out into the sunlight.
"This sword trial was a massive success! My Sword Heart has officially broken through to the Taixu realm!" Li Sushang declared, planting her hands proudly on her hips, her chin tilted up as she waited for her master's praise.
Instead of a nod of approval, Sushang was met with a look of absolute, unadulterated bewilderment on Cheng Lingshuang's face. Having lived by her master's side for over a decade, this was the very first time Sushang had ever seen the Peerless Sword God look so deeply shocked. A tiny, smug grin crept onto the young girl's face. Heh, my talent finally surprised her!
But that smugness evaporated in the very next instant. The shock on Lingshuang's face didn't melt into relief or pride—it ignited into an incomparable, world-shattering rage.
"What manner of foul demon are you, to dare impersonate my Senior Brother?!"
Lingshuang's hand shot out, gripping the discarded wooden scabbard between two slender fingers. She raised it vertically toward the heavens. In the blink of an eye, the space above the scabbard's tip violently warped, as if struck by an invisible bolt of divine lightning. The very air exploded with a deafening crack, sending violent tremors through the entire courtyard.
"Ma-Ma-Ma... Master! What are you doing?!" Li Sushang shrieked, hurriedly throwing her arms wide as she threw herself in front of Rovel to shield him.
A mere fraction of a second before the apocalyptic wave of sword qi could cleave Li Sushang in two, the condensed true qi instantly dissipated like morning mist. It dissolved into a harmless, albeit powerful, gale that merely whipped Sushang's clothes and left her hair in a disheveled mess.
A sharp, stinging pain scraped across Sushang's cheeks from the residual wind pressure. She swallowed hard, her heart hammering against her ribs. She had genuinely believed that by attaining the Taixu realm, the vast chasm between her and her master would have finally narrowed. Instead, facing that single, casual strike, she felt like a fragile piece of duckweed tossed into a raging hurricane—utterly powerless, without the slightest capacity to resist.
If Cheng Lingshuang's absolute mastery over her true qi hadn't been leagues beyond human comprehension, Li Sushang would have been instantly vaporized by that blow.
"Junior Sister Lingshuang, it's been a long time," Rovel said, his voice calm and steady as he casually tossed the unconscious Ma Feima onto the dirt. He stepped out from behind Sushang, his eyes locking onto the white-haired woman. "I didn't expect... you to have already attained the Sword God realm."
He studied her, a wave of nostalgia washing over him. The change is truly staggering. The quiet little girl who used to shadow his every footstep now stood before him with hair as white as fresh snow. He knew, of course, that this wasn't a sign of aging. It was the physical manifestation of her fully awakening the dormant power within her Stigmata.
The current Cheng Lingshuang is undoubtedly the strongest in this era, Rovel mused inwardly. Her raw power has likely reached the level of that Palatinus Equinox 'silly goose', Durandal...
"Who exactly are you?" Cheng Lingshuang demanded, her delicate brows knitting together in a fierce frown. Her rational mind refused to believe that the man standing in her courtyard was the very same Senior Brother whom Red Kite had personally sentenced to death decades ago.
"I am the second disciple of the Taixu Sword Sect, Fang Ruobai," Rovel introduced himself formally, before his shoulders relaxed into a more casual posture. "Wait a moment, let me think about how to actually prove my identity to you..."
He tapped his chin, pondering hard as he muttered under his breath.
"Sword practice? No, that seems too common... Sword trials? There's nothing particularly memorable there... Candied haws? No, Sushang already knows about that story, so you'd just think I extracted it from her..."
After wracking his brain for a long minute, Rovel realized he was genuinely struggling to come up with a foolproof piece of evidence.
"Then how about this?" He reached to his side. "This is my Xuanyuan Sword. You used to play with it all the time when you were little—"
Rovel's words hitched in his throat, coming to an abrupt halt.
A sudden, desperate weight crashed into his chest. He stiffened as slender arms wrapped fiercely around his torso, burying a face into his robes. The Peerless Sword God, the untouchable immortal of the martial world, was trembling against him.
Slowly, the tension drained from Rovel's shoulders. He let out a soft breath, raising a hand to gently rest it upon her snow-white hair, stroking it with deep tenderness.
"I'm sorry, Lingshuang," he whispered into the quiet courtyard. "I'm so sorry for leaving you all alone..."
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