Chapter 45:
Friends
IN TRUTH, unless Yan Wushi was willing to sleep in the abbot’s bed or simply leave in search of somewhere else to stay, then staying in a room with Shen Qiao was his only option.
But in any case, Shen Qiao had just cleaned, and the monastery’s young disciples had sunned the blankets two days prior—the fresh, sweet smell of sunshine was still on them.
The bed was meant for one person, and squeezing in a second would definitely feel somewhat cramped. “You sleep,” Shen Qiao told him. “I’ll sit and meditate. Catching a few winks afterward will be enough for me.”
The room was very crude and humble: moonlight trickled in through the cracks in the window paper, and the night breeze slipped in alongside it. Fortunately, it wasn’t too cold this time of the year, and both of them were top-class martial artists—catching a chill wasn’t a worry.
Shen Qiao sat cross-legged, his back like an evergreen pine or bamboo, resilient and enduring. It was already early summer, and little by little, his clothes had grown lighter—the outline of his waist was faintly visible through the fabric.
Time slipped by in drips and trickles. The moon climbed high, coolly tinting the rippling well water.
Yan Wushi stared at Shen Qiao’s figure from behind. Then, without warning, his finger darted forward quick as lighting, striking right at the center of Shen Qiao’s back.
Shen Qiao was immersed in meditation, having entered a deeply profound state. Most martial artists, unless they were in secluded cultivation, kept a portion of their awareness on watch for danger, especially when they were in a strange environment. This was to guard against an ambush. But Shen Qiao had only been guarding against outside enemies—he’d never expected Yan Wushi to launch a sneak attack against him.
That tiny sliver of vigilance quickly pulled him out of his meditation, but the significant gap between their martial arts and the recent closeness they’d shared combined so that, by the time Shen Qiao reacted, various important acupoints on his back were already sealed. He was completely unable to move.
Yan Wushi caressed Shen Qiao’s cheek, and a quiet sigh escaped him. “A-Qiao, why are you always so trusting of others?”
Shen Qiao frowned. “I thought we were friends.”
Yan Wushi smiled thinly. “You have only yourself to blame. If you hadn’t talked about being friends, I might have waited a little longer before moving against you. Just what kind of person do you think my venerable self is? Why would I need someone like you—some down-and-out laughingstock who can’t even recover his martial arts, who’s been exiled from his sect—to be my friend?”
Shen Qiao stopped talking.
Yan Wushi picked him up in his arms and left the room, heading right outside without further regard for Shen Qiao.
His footsteps remained featherlight, almost weightless, despite the person he carried in his arms. Beneath the moonlight, he glided across the fallen leaves soundlessly, his robes and sleeves billowing in the wind. His movements were peerlessly beautiful and poised—nobody who saw him would have believed that such a celestial being could be the Demon Lord whose name inspired such fear.
“Why don’t you ask where we’re going?”
Shen Qiao didn’t reply. Anyone who didn’t know better would think him mute.
Yan Wushi dropped his chin and looked at him. Shen Qiao had simply closed his eyes.
He couldn’t help but laugh, saying, “I’m bringing you to see someone. I’ll tell you a story while we go. Since we haven’t met this someone yet, I’ll start with the story.
“Ten years ago, when I’d just begun obtaining the Zhuyang Strategy, I held it in contempt. At the time, I didn’t believe that any martial arts could surpass the Fenglin Scriptures. Even though I’d lost to Qi Fengge, I thought it was an issue with the person, not the martial arts themselves. After all, the first leader of Riyue Sect had attained the tenth and final stage of the Fenglin Scriptures. In his time, no one was his match—not from the Daoist or the Confucian sects. Legend says he lived to be a hundred and twenty years old, and at the end of his life he broke through the zenith—he achieved godhood and returned to the void, his spirit freed from his body.
“But later, I read the records Riyue Sect left behind. There, I discovered that the legends were wrong. Although he lived past one hundred and twenty years, his spirit hadn’t been freed by his ascension to a higher realm—he died from a qi deviation that destroyed his body. The Fenglin Scriptures are incredible, but hidden within them is a fatal flaw. To put it simply, a person’s body is like a vessel. As their internal energy strengthens, the vessel is constantly remolded to adapt to their martial growth. So the more powerful a martial artist is, the stronger their meridians are.”
Shen Qiao still didn’t speak, but the expression on his face implied that he was listening.
“But the opposite is true for the Fenglin Scriptures. The more powerful one becomes martially, the more restrictions it places on their body. When the ‘vessel’ can no longer keep up with their martial arts, the body ruptures and they die.”
Finally, Shen Qiao spoke. “The flaw you speak of exists in all martial arts. The martial path is never-ending, but a person’s aptitude is determined at birth, and their life span is limited as well. If they keep climbing ever-higher, they’ll eventually find themselves in this predicament. My shizun, too, failed in his secluded cultivation and passed away because of this.”
Although his martial prowess couldn’t compare to before, his insight was still intact. He had no problem discussing such things.
“That’s true,” said Yan Wushi. “If he’d been willing to stop, the lurking peril wouldn’t exist. But in the case of the Fenglin Scriptures, even if you stop practicing them, the harm to your body will still grow worse and worse. So, I thought of the Zhuyang Strategy—if I could merge the martial arts from different disciplines, then perhaps I’d achieve an unexpected result.”
“But you failed.”
“I failed,” Yan Wushi smiled faintly. “In my eagerness to succeed, I planted the lurking peril of qi deviation inside myself.”
Abruptly, Shen Qiao frowned. “If the Fenglin Scriptures have such a flaw, won’t all the members of Huanyue Sect and the other two branches who cultivate with it find themselves in the same predicament?”