Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way - Chapter 175: Resort To Trickery

Boom! Boom!

Xu Cangyue’s body froze, and there was a pained expression on his face as he clutched his own chest.

He was horrified to discover that the blood in his body was actually…slowly beginning to boil.

“Vast Sword Will – Three Parts of Heaven!” he declared loudly, holding his sword as he ran quickly while trying to suppress the blood moving rapidly through his veins. His eyes were bloodshot, and his face filled with anger as he charged toward Gu Suihan.

As he thrust his sword forward, Gu Suihan felt like there was no other sound around him. Not only was there no sound, but everything before him turned dark, and he couldn’t even feel anything in his hand despite gripping his saber tightly.

“Is this…a spirit secret technique?” murmured Gu Suihan with a faint chuckle. He didn’t panic. He rose into the air and spun rapidly. The huge wave of blood that arose was like a ferocious beast from ancient times and turned into a giant obstacle as it stood in between himself and Xu Cangyue.

The logic behind this move was actually very simple. On the surface, Xu Cangyue’s attack seemed purely out of anger and desperation, but the bulk of his energy was all waiting inside his core. He was going to use his fury as a cover to mislead his opponent, then launch a full-blown attack from his core before his opponent realized that his attack had more than met the eye.

Unfortunately for him, the thing sitting within Gu Suihan’s consciousness was his spirit.

His spirit was like an angered god as it’s vast and overpowering will instantly shot out from his eyes. His spiritual sense gushed out and pressed against Xu Cangyue’s body relentlessly. The terrible pressure practically flattened the man in an instant.

Pfft! Pfft! Xu Cangyue let out a few muffled noises as his clothing tore into a thousand pieces. Blood sprayed in all directions, filling the air with a reddish mist. The explosion from his pores covered him entirely in blood.

Even so, he stood as straight as ever, like a proud, shiny sword. It would rather break than bend.

Gu Suihan’s lips twitched at this, and frowned slightly. What he hated the most were these people who cultivated in weapons. Even though they were all poor as fuck, they had bones of steel. Even if you won the fight, you wouldn’t make any profit from it. And the fight itself was also too long and drawn out. It wasn’t worth it. But if you decided against fighting and tried to retreat or run or hide, the other party would keep running after you and refuse to let go, like they were a dog gone mad.

“Damn it,” spat Gu Suihan as he looked at how pitiful Xu Cangyue looked. He raised his hand and clenched his fist, causing the five elements to circulate and the laws of nature to be broken down. In that instant, Xu Cangyue’s blood started flying out of his body against his will. Bumps the size of a fingertip kept appearing all over his body, which would explode after a while and spray blood out.

“You’re not at Origin Core…” Xu Cangyue was very severely injured, but he suddenly raised his eyes to look at Gu Suihan and said flatly, “Your control of the laws of nature is so advanced, even a Nascent Change cultivator would lose to you. I don’t know who in the world you are, but even if I have to die, I’m going to die in front of this well.”

Immediately after he uttered those words, everything fell silent for a moment. A soft humming suddenly echoed in the space.

It soon turned into a loud, continuous clanging noise and the sound of metal against metal boomed.

“Soul burning secret technique…” Gu Suihan couldn’t help but narrow his eyes. The sea of blood he conjured slowly formed a large, sturdy and foreboding looking throne behind him. The throne consisted of evil ghosts, vengeful souls, strange magical beasts and ferocious animals. The various lines and reliefs looked so vicious and their twisted expressions could send a chill down one’s spine.

“I’m going to see how powerful this sword attack made from gathering your energies, qi and spirit together is. After all, you’re actually willing to allow your hun and po to scatter, which means you won’t have a chance to reincarnate,” murmured Gu Suihan, as though he were touched by how determined and unyielding Xu Cangyue was. Gu Suihan actually slowly returned his saber to its sheath and waved an arm. The sea of blood turned into a huge and solid wall in front of him that could block anything. The runes formed from the laws of nature would gleam within the sea of blood from time to time. Their brightness was very eye-catching.

“Watch this!” Xu Cangyue took a deep breath and ignored how badly injured his spiritual meridians were as he forced the spiritual energy out from his dantian.

In that instant, a determined and valiant aura slowly began to emanate from his body. His sword trembled rapidly and gave off a howl that seemed to pierce the skies. He absorbed all the qi within a few miles’ radius like a whale taking in water. It gathered next to him and turned into an actual qi whirlwind.

ZHAAA! A light exploded from the sword and flowed along the sword’s body like water. Not a single wisp of qi leaked out. On top of that, Xu Cangyue’s muscular body suddenly looked like a leaky balloon as it slowly dried up. It didn’t take long for him to turn into a corpse that was just skin wrapped around some bones.

“If you had taken this chance to attack me, I would have no choice but to die with much hatred in my heart. I’m grateful you didn’t,” a hoarse and terrifying voice croaked from within Xu Cangyue’s dried-up throat. Because his flesh and blood had all dried up, his eyes now looked unnaturally large and bulged out of the sockets. He used these eyes to stare unblinkingly at the indifferent-looking Gu Suihan, who was sitting leisurely in the sky.

“To me, you’re an opponent worthy of respect. I waited for you to prepare for this incredible move out of my respect for you,” said Gu Suihan solemnly as he looked down at Xu Cangyue, who insisted on clinging onto his sword and raised his head to look up at Gu Suihan, even as his sword will seemed to reach the sky.

This move was not a technique or a spell. It wasn’t the creation of a domain or the appearance of the laws of nature. It was a sword will that quenched all the energy in the body to an extreme. It was a sort of spiritual world, or perhaps…a way to communicate with the gods and use their power!

“In that case, it’s time for you to receive the attack.” A comforted and grateful look flashed in Xu Cangyue’s eyes for a moment. To him, he was definitely going to die after executing this move. Preparing for the move had taken so much time, but Gu Suihan hadn’t seized this chance to attack him, respectfully waiting warily instead. That was enough for him to die without any regrets.

“Milky Way in Retrograde, Sword Moves the Heavens!” he yelled, emphasizing each syllable.

Once he finished announcing the move, his sword moved.

In that instant, the sky collapsed. The bright moon and stars seemed to be attracted to this sword that gave off a tragic cry, howling as it trembled violently, even as cracks appeared all over it.

As the sky pressed down, Xu Cangyue seemed to morph into a gigantic bottomless blackhole. As everything moved more and more rapidly, the stars in the sky were sucked into the blackhole at the speed of comets.

Gu Suihan’s world was completely dark, except for one spark, which was coming from the brilliant sword in Xu Cangyue’s hand that wasn’t too far from him.

The ferocious beast created by his sea of blood shattered upon contact, unable to stop Xu Cangyue from moving forward.

The screen blocking the way shattered.

The cage around Gu Suihan shattered.

The bloody dense web in front of his opponent shattered.

Every obstacle seemed so frail in the face of this attack.

“Break! Shatter! Destroy!” he bellowed with all his might. The corners of his eyes tore, but not a single drop of blood spurted out. His dried up arms and body kept getting its skin shaved off by the sea of blood coming at it, revealing the blackish red and brown flesh beneath.

After he saw how Gu Suihan had been able to control the laws of nature with such familiarity and ease, Xu Cangyue had no hope of defeating him.

He knew that he was no match for this young man at all. Not even You Hantian would be a match for him.

His sword moved, stirring the wind, scattering the clouds and stopping the rain.

There was no sound at all. Every creature in the world was silent.

When the sea of blood had shaved off so much of him that he was left with almost nothing but his skeleton, his sword had finally reached Gu Suihan.

The sword was only inches away, yet it felt like Gu Suihan was on the other end of the world.

Xu Cangyue did his best to advance, only to find that he couldn’t get any closer to Gu Suihan.

“The laws of…this space?” A dim gleam lit up his soul when he immediately realized the reason for this.

In that moment, Xu Cangyue’s determined sword that refused to back down finally felt a tinge of defeat. It was no longer as reckless as before.

He knew that even borrowing power from the gods wasn’t going to be enough to fill up the gap between himself and Gu Suihan.

This was a difference in aptitude.

“Your will to kill is too weak.” Gu Suihan looked at his opponent quietly. He waved his hand to scatter the space particles in front of him. Instead of retreating, he drew his saber and charged toward Xu Cangyue.

Gu Suihan suddenly disappeared before Xu Cangyue’s eyes. Less than a second later, a murderous and violent surge of fiendish qi exploded, threatening to bring the skies down and annihilate the entire world.

“You…are truly a demon!” Xu Cangyue weakly raised his head to look at the red figure above him.

“I must…kill you!” Xu Cangyue’s soul fire suddenly lit up and his sword’s humming grew louder. It turned the entire place to chaos as it hummed like a morning gong and was supported by its owner’s willingness to die in order to destroy Gu Suihan as it attacked fiercely.

The sword faced no resistance as though everything before him was nothing but an illusion. Xu Cangyue watched as his sword stabbed into Gu Suihan’s chest and turned the young man into nothing but broken pieces of flesh and a bloodied mist.

“You…you fooled me!” Xu Cangyue had a sad smile on his face. His body was filled with death as he looked hard around him in an attempt to find where Gu Suihan actually was.

“No good soldier would despise resorting to trickery,” Gu Suihan’s voice quietly came out from the bloodied mist. Immediately after he said that, a finger that was like deities descending to earth appeared. A finger that was like a heavenly demon coming to destroy the world.

“Three Fingers of Yama – Shocking the Deities!”

“Indeed…no good soldier would despise resorting to trickery,” murmured Xu Cangyue. The soul fire in his eyes that was already weaker than before slowly faded after this earth shattering finger struck him.

“Actually, my opponent wasn’t you to begin with. Even if you won this round, you would go through a living hell the next time,” said Gu Suihan pointedly as he stared indifferently at the lifeless bones before him.

He was referring to the last words of Xu Ran. Those seemingly righteous, courageous, selfless words that were merely a cover for his true viciousness.

That old man was basically someone who was the type who would dig a hole for others even when he was on the brink of death. Someone who brought others down with him.

The sea of blood made roaring noises. Its giant waves reached the sky and its very heart was as black as ink.

Gu Suihan ignored the bones on the ground and turned to look at the pavilion in the distance that still looked the same.

He was only a few kilometers away from it.

But the dangers he was going to face were a hundred times tougher than this sword attack that Xu Cangyue had sacrificed his life for.

Because…the former was human. The latter was…heaven.

Author’s note (in response to the comments he received when the book was published on qidian. The book has been taken down, so TL can’t see what the comments were).

I’m just a bum who can’t even been considered an author. I just write for fun.

But I’m really exasperated when I see how nitpicky some of you are.

If I write in too much detail, you’d say it’s word spamming.

If it’s not detailed enough, you’d say my writing is lousy.

I think that novels are an imaginary world to begin with, so the only thing the author can do is to conceptualize the world, then use words to add color and make it more realistic.

The rest depends mostly on the reader’s imagination.

If I write everything in great detail, including the beating of one’s heart, one’s breathing, or how many times a character chews, that’s not a novel anymore. That’s a diary entry. Or a composition.

(TL complaint: I don’t know the context of these comments, but while TL agrees that writing details that aren’t important to the action is definitely word spam, the author using inappropriate descriptions and multiple and/or repetitive adjectives that mean the same thing is word spam. Using conjunctions wrongly, using punctuations wrongly, not identifying who’s who for an entire page of fighting, using a string of adjectives and idioms that either don’t fit the circumstances or even contradict each other, and pretentiously using different words that all mean “a blade” is not great writing either. There is a very good reason why MTL-ing this book is shitty, and that reason isn’t because the machine’s dumb.)

Also, there are some parts where some people have just scanned through and they start criticizing the story. I’m so speechless.

For example, someone commented about Gu Suihan bringing his maid along when running from the Seven Kill Sect after the internal disciple selection, and said that the MC was an idiot.

I really felt like laughing. My friend, if you don’t like someone, would you immediately fall out with that person? Do both sides really have to lay out your emotions on the table? At that time, Gu Suihan had not fallen out with the Seven Kill Sect yet, so there was only so much they could do to one another. They couldn’t be too obvious about this.

(TL: I think the commenter thought that Gu Suihan should have run away by himself, which is normally the easier option, instead of dragging a not particularly useful Taohua with him, since MC is supposedly not someone who actually needs these maids or cares for them. But of course, you could argue that Gu Suihan still wanted someone he trusted to watch over the Qingguo mines or basically that he had use for Taohua, so he just brought her along first. Either way, this response doesn’t seem much of a response.)

Mo Yuluo and the other two factions starting a feud with MC for no reason – is that really such a brainless thing?

If you read on, you should have sensed that the three major factions were something that the Seven Kill Sect quietly allowed in order to keep the balance within the sect. They were also part of the plan about Qingming’s domain. How could the sect have allowed anything to go wrong?

The three factions joining hands to hunt down Gu Suihan, Feng Ran and the rest.

It was because Mo Yuluo and the rest were actually targeting Feng Ran and the rest. Li Rong and Gu Suihan were just additional variables. The factions would have done it even without the presence of these two.

If you think about the plans they had, do you think they would have allowed people like Feng Ran and the rest like him to live? Xiexin zhenren had a part to play in this as well.

Forget it. If you like the story, you can keep reading. If you don’t like it, just leave.

I never intended to make money out of this book and I’m just writing this to pass time. Since reading it makes you so unhappy, just click on the [X]. There are so many web novels out there nowadays. Why get so hung up on this one novel?

This is an imaginary world and you’re already so nitpicky and you’re being such a perfectionist? Don’t you feel tired?

This note doesn’t count against my total word count for the chapter. This chapter is still around the usual 2,700 characters.

There’s really no need for me to write a word spam filled book. There’s no meaning in that. Those big shot authors can write like that and ask for referrals and tips from readers. But why would I write like that?

Every character has their use. I don’t write them on a whim or for no reason. Feng Ran, for example, will add to a twist later on. Disciplinarian Zhang, for example, will need to appear in certain events later too.

I’m so emotionally drained.