Chapter 331 — One Meeting Outshines All the Splendors of the World

The middle-aged man on the gate tower was somewhat pale of face; clearly he carried wounds that had still not healed. This man was none other than the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping. In his single battle against a god he had been gravely hurt; Shen Mu and Fu Yuanqing, the Little Poison King, working together, had healed his injuries, but a wound dealt by a deity is a wound dealt by a deity, and he had not yet recovered fully.

It was precisely this chance that the Mandi Kingdom had seized to invade Jingping. Qingmen Pass was of vital consequence. The Imperial Preceptor knew well that Jingping had passed through two great calamities and that its vital strength was sorely spent; and beyond that, neither he nor Emperor Yanfeng had returned to the peak of their powers, and the Emperor's wounds were the heavier of the two.

Fearing that Mandi might drive straight through, he had marshaled his troops and his generals, and resolved to hold Qingmen Pass to the death.

He had even been willing to come in person to the battlefield, to command this confrontation with his own hand.

Li Zheng's drawn sword, the single stroke that stilled the strife of the field and shook the hearts of all, had not escaped his eyes.

In truth it was past the shaking of hearts. It was the power to turn a battlefield into a vast, swelling sea of blood, to overawe the armies of both sides utterly.

The lives of every soul on that field lay in his hand.

Such swordsmanship could hardly be called swordsmanship at all; it was profound and near to the Dao, and it showed the Imperial Preceptor a higher plane—the plane of the Sword Dao.

In that one move Li Zheng had loosed sword-light beyond all counting, and the most terrible thing was that every gleam traveled a different course, each one checking a martial artist or a wielder of divine powers—a thing all but impossible to accomplish.

On that field hundreds of thousands of troops charged and slaughtered; every man's cultivation and strength differed, the martial arts, techniques and divine powers they had trained all differed in greater or lesser degree, and the battle formations shifted with every breath. To hold them all in check at once, one would have to counter every divine power, every martial art, every primal weapon, every formation among them; the reckoning required was of an inconceivable order.

One who had reached such a level could already be called a god—a god of the sword!

"One sword unseals an emperor's sea of blood. I have seen this sword art before—upon the Painting Sage's painting."

The Imperial Preceptor narrowed his gaze and looked toward the Dragon Qilin. Shen Mu and the others stood upon its back; strong as they were, they had not yet earned a place in his eyes.

"In that painting I saw the utmost of swordsmanship. For two hundred years I studied the sword art of the man within it, and each time I contemplated it I gained something new—until one day I could find nothing new in it at all. And so I believed I had attained the level of the man in the painting."

Remembering that painting, the Imperial Preceptor's eyes searched for the man inside it, but found him not; then his gaze gathered and settled upon Shen Mu's back.

Shen Mu carried a medicine basket slung on his back, and in the basket sat a white-haired old man with neither hands nor feet.

This old man did not resemble the man in the painting of those years. The man in the painting was a Sword God, not so aged as this, his keen spirit bursting forth, like a blade—a blade that had just drunk blood.

But the old man in the basket was a cripple, a candle guttering in the wind, its flame ready at any moment to be snuffed out. Where was the high, proud bearing of the Sword God in the painting?

Yet the Imperial Preceptor was certain: this crippled old man was the Sword God of former days!

For his own first lessons in the sword had come from the Sword God in that painting.

The Imperial Preceptor's frame trembled faintly. He let out a long breath of turbid air and gave the order: "Receive them!"

The city gate swung open, and the generals within ranged themselves to either side. The Dragon Qilin, head high, striding proudly, its great belly swaying, walked into the city. Suddenly all the sword-light upon the battlefield surged like a tide, howling toward Shen Mu, and burrowed into the medicine basket on his back.

The man in the basket was just poking out his head—and then he saw the middle-aged man walking toward him.

The sage said to appear once in five hundred years, the strong man called first beneath the gods, the man hailed as the Sword God of the present age!

Their eyes met, and in both hearts, unbidden, waves arose.

The Sword God of the last age and the Sword God of this age had met at last!

Behind the battlefield, from the towers of the two great passes came the striking of bronze zheng—the sound of the gong, the order for the field to withdraw its troops.

On the field, hundreds of thousands of officers and men felt the weight lift from them and hurried to pull back their forces; in an instant every one of them felt that his body was drenched through, sweat pouring from him like thick broth.

And within Qingmen Pass, Li Zheng floated out of the medicine basket. As though he had grown legs and arms, he walked straight toward the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping—the strongest men of two ages, face to face!

"You study the sword?" Li Zheng asked.

The Imperial Preceptor offered the salute of a disciple, his manner reverent. "This disciple learned the sword in his early years, and at the age of one hundred and sixty ceased to learn it."

Li Zheng asked, "At one hundred and sixty, you understood the sword?"

"At one hundred and sixty," the Imperial Preceptor said gravely, "I had read through all the peerless arts and techniques under heaven and comprehended the great thousand divine powers. Thus I understood the sword, and began to create sword arts of my own."

Li Zheng smiled. "Unfold your sword art for me. Let me see it."

The Imperial Preceptor drew his sword. Sword-light brimmed the heavens and blazed across the world. His sword art was manifold, infinite in its changes—as many as the stars of heaven, as plain as counting rods; it had its straight lines and its winding turns; it seemed able to transform into any other method in the world, and it left in one a feeling that could not be named.

His sword art carried a momentum that pressed ever forward, a grandeur of reform like oil boiling over fire, like fresh flowers spread on brocade—resolved to set the fire of all living beings under heaven alight, to change this fixed heaven and earth, to change the Dao that holds fast and never alters, to reform all that was stale and rotten, to tear open the decay of the old age and expose its ugly face, its ugly truth!

He would use his own sword to change the stale Dao of this world, to open up more new roads, and bring the world into a new age!

His sword art had already left behind technique and become method, infused with his own ideals; one step short, and it would reach straight into the realm of the Dao!

Li—the li of ideals, and the li of reason. Sword art that has an ideal has life, and his sword art had life already. Yet the Dao lies before li; only by surpassing li may one see the Dao.

His sword art was one step from seeing the Dao.

The Imperial Preceptor sheathed his sword, panting. His wounds had still not healed; his cultivation was not what it once had been. Yet before the Sword God of the preceding age he was like a student, and he was glad to lay out his most perfect sword art and await the other's judgment.

"Fine swordsmanship."

Li Zheng praised it, and said, "Worthy indeed of the first man beneath the gods, the sage who appears once in five hundred years. At the end of my life I have at last met a man I can converse with. I came out this time only to see you—I mean to let you see the Dao."