Chapter 65: Another Lesson

I forced myself to take several slow, deep breaths, letting the cool mountain air soothe the raging fire inside my chest.

Allowing anger to dictate my blade had nearly caused me to butcher thirty innocent men on that muddy highway. Anger was a blind, feral beast, it clouded the eyes, dulled the instincts, and led straight to fatal mistakes.

I had already tasted the bitter price of impulsive pride once, and I refused to let my family’s name be stained a second time.

So, when Master stepped forward to direct the preparation of traps across Wolf Fang Gorge, I swallowed my impatience and followed his lead entirely.

Watching him move was like watching a living immortal descending to walk among mortals.

He had no obligation to embroil himself in this petty mortal conflict, in fact, he went out of his way to restrict his terrifying cultivation base, refusing to simply wipe out the enemy army with a flick of his celestial sleeve. Yet, his benevolence knew no bounds. He looked upon these ragged, desperate outlaws and saw their plight.

The resistance fighters were merely broken peasants, hunters, and miners who had picked up rusted blades when the court’s oppression became unbearable. They lacked organized military training, they lacked tactical vision, and they certainly lacked the high-level brainpower needed to outmaneuver an elite imperial extermination force.

Master perceived their fatal weaknesses immediately. Without shedding blood himself, he used his boundless immortal wisdom to guide their hands, ensuring they wouldn’t throw their fragile lives away into an imperial meat grinder.

He devised lethal, multi-layered deadfalls, gravitational boulder traps, and venom-slicked tripwires that turned the narrow throat of the gorge into an absolute labyrinth of death.

The rebel militia obeyed his every instruction without question, their rough faces shining with awe and reverence. Seeing them work with renewed hope warmed my heart.

Once every lever was primed and every poisoned trench concealed, the fighters retreated to rest, leaving Master, Bai Ling, and me atop the high limestone ledge beneath the moon.

Master sat casually on a flat boulder, closing his eyes to meditate, looking completely unbothered by the hundreds of imperial soldiers marching toward our heads. Taking advantage of the quiet lull, I walked over to where Bai Ling was resting against the cliff wall and took a seat beside her.

I wanted to bridge the distance between us.

As Master’s first disciple, it was my sacred duty to pave the way for his designs, and I knew an alliance forged on genuine warmth was ten times sturdier than mere battlefield convenience.

To my pleasant surprise, we bonded with effortless grace.

Perhaps it was because both of us carried the bitter stench of blood and loss. Although Bai Ling did not speak of her origins, I possessed the intuitive instincts of an officer’s daughter, I could see the subtle, crushing weight pulling at her shoulders.

It was a burden that stretched far beyond the daily survival of two thousand starving refugees. She carried an unspoken agony, a deep, unresolved sorrow rooted in betrayal that she kept locked behind her stern commander’s armor.

I didn’t pry, having crawled through the depths of hell myself, I knew some wounds bled fresh if touched. I simply sat beside her, offering quiet comfort, sharing dried rations, and listening to her talk about the crags.

When Master’s attention drifted toward the distant pine valleys, completely absorbed in his silent contemplation, I seized the opening.

Leaning closer to Bai Ling, I began speaking of my Master.

To be completely honest, I didn’t even have to exaggerate. In my eyes, no words in the mortal tongue could ever truly capture the boundless, peerless grandness of the man who saved my soul.

"Sister Bai, you see him sitting there in simple scholar robes, looking like an easygoing wanderer," I whispered, my obsidian eyes glittering with fervent, unreserved adoration. "But you cannot begin to fathom the celestial heights he commands. When I first met Master, I was nothing. I was a broken, dying beggar dragging myself up nine thousand jade steps on shredded knees, my body saturated with terminal bone poison, mocked and discarded by the entire world as a worthless waste."

Bai Ling blinked, her amber eyes widening in disbelief as she looked at my pristine, healthy frame. "You... a discarded mortal?"

"Yes," I murmured, a soft, devoted smile curving my lips. "The elders of the great sect sneered at me and demanded my death. But Master stepped out from heaven itself. He didn’t care about my ruined roots, he didn’t care about the curses of rival peak masters, and he didn’t care about dirtying his hands with my blood. He took me in, declared me his disciple before the entire council, and shielded me behind his wide sleeves like an unyielding mountain."

I leaned in further, my voice buzzing with pure, fanatical reverence as I praised every facet of his character.

I told her of his saintly benevolence, how he personally prepared celestial medicinal baths to cleanse my marrow, how he bestowed priceless dragon-vitality pills without demanding a single copper, and how he possessed a heart so pure and gentle that he treated a broken orphan with the delicate reverence usually reserved for royal princesses.

I spoke of his peerless swordsmanship, how he dismantled a kingdom-shattering Tier 3 magical beast as if it were a playful kitten, and how his casual words contained profound cosmic laws that could shatter a cultivator’s bottlenecks in a single breath.

Bai Ling sat there, listening with rapt, spellbound fascination. Her amber eyes darted repeatedly toward Master’s tranquil, handsome profile, a mixture of awe, reverence, and profound curiosity shimmering in her gaze.

"An immortal who truly cherishes the broken..." Bai Ling murmured softly under her breath, her fingers unconsciously tightening against her leather vambrace. "I did not believe such people existed in this cruel world."

Seeing the seed of longing planted deep within her soul, a thrill of triumph surged through my chest.

Just wait, Sister Bai, I thought proudly. Once you witness his true glory, you will realize that serving at his feet is the greatest blessing heaven could ever bestow.

Our conversation was abruptly shattered when Master opened his eyes, his low, resonant voice announcing that the enemy had breached the lower riverbed.

The atmosphere instantly turned freezing cold.

Eight hundred and fifty heavily armored imperial troops marched into the valley under flickering torchlight, their iron drums shaking loose gravel from the cliffs.

My knuckles whitened around my scabbard as my Asura Dao Heart surged, the instinctual urge to leap down and bathe my blade in imperial blood clawing at my throat.

Yet, remembering my vow, I forced my heels to remain anchored to the stone.

Master had already laid out their numbers and cultivation bases, hundreds of mortal conscripts, dozens of Body Strengthening shock troops, and three genuine Qi Condensation commanders leading the column.

If I charged down alone on raw emotional fury, my peak Body Strengthening strength would be swarmed, pinned, and slaughtered within twenty breaths.

I needed to master my sword, not let my sword master me. I had to learn when to strike like thunder, and when to coil in the dark like a sleeping viper.

So, I waited.

I watched the imperial army pitch their tents, light perimeter bonfires, and arrogantly divide their forces, sending two isolated detachments to flank the ridges.

They were underestimating us, assuming a starving rebel band possessed only cheap tricks.

Good, I smirked beneath my veil. Let their arrogance dig their graves.

When the valley fell quiet, Master casually turned to Bai Ling, testing her strategic intellect.

Watching Bai Ling analyze the camp, the supply lines, and the tactical impossibility of conventional raids, I had to admit she was terrifyingly smart, vastly more knowledgeable in military logistics than I was.

Yet, even her sharp deductions failed to see the whole picture. Master dismantled her reasoning with an easy laugh, casually offering to suppress the sound of an entire mountain spur with his spiritual qi, transforming an impossible suicide mission into a guaranteed midnight slaughter.

Is that why Master looks upon her with such interest? I wondered, watching them exchange smiles. Because her tactical mind complements his grand vision?

Yes, that made complete sense. Lonely Cloud Peak needed someone who could manage affairs while Master enjoyed his leisure.

The night raid that followed was pure slaughter.

Blanketed by Master’s invisible sound-dampening barrier, our scouts descended upon the eastern imperial detachment like mountain wraiths.

When the camp roused and the hulking detachment commander, a veteran at the Peak of the Body Strengthening Realm wielding a massive five-foot executioner’s blade, charged to cleave Bai Ling in half, I didn’t hesitate for a heartbeat.

I stepped into his path, my mind calm and still like the frozen surface of a winter lake.

He was my very first life-and-death clash against a trained warrior of the exact same cultivation realm. Yet, guided by Master’s foundational movement arts and the unyielding edge of my Asura will, the terrifying brute was nothing more than an open training dummy.

In two clean, fluid transitions, I shattered his elbow joint and drove my steel through his throat.

He died without even knowing my name.

In truth, he meant nothing to me. My true targets were the three Qi Condensation commanders sleeping in the central pavilion down below.

When the clearing fell dead silent thirty-five minutes later, I looked around at the blood-slicked limestone in sheer, disbelieving astonishment.

The entire two-hundred-man imperial detachment had been wiped out to the last breath. Yet among our seventy rebel fighters, not a single brother had fallen. A dozen had suffered shallow cuts or bruises, but every single man was standing on his own two feet, clutching salvaged weapons in wide-eyed awe.

Bai Ling looked equally stunned, though she attributed the miracle entirely to terrain, night vision, and lucky maneuvers.

I, however, knew better.

I stole a quiet glance at Master, who was standing atop the high crag with his arms folded into his sleeves, a faint, knowing smirk playing upon his handsome lips.

It was Master.

A mortal scout wouldn’t notice a microscopic pebble deflecting a lethal spearhead by two inches, nor would an outlaw realize that a sudden gust of wind had tripped an enemy axeman’s heel.

But I had watched him fight the tiger, I knew the absolute, godlike precision of his control. He had stood in the dark, weaving his invisible will through the chaos, ensuring that not a single innocent life under our banner was snuffed out.

The depth of his protective warmth made my soul tremble with gratitude.

Yet, after the salvaged weapons were packed away and the men were sent back to the caverns to rest, the greatest, most suffocating hurdle loomed over our heads.

At sunrise, the central imperial battalion of six hundred heavy troops would storm Wolf Fang Gorge. And leading them were three genuine Qi Condensation Realm cultivators.

Mortal traps could crush foot soldiers and snap the legs of warhorses, but against cultivators who commanded liquid spiritual essence and defensive qi barriers, falling rocks and poisoned stakes were useless toys.

The resistance had ninety brave men, but not a single cultivator. If those three commanders breached the barricades, seventy Body Strengthening mortals would be slaughtered like dry grass.

Standing on the moonlit ledge, I looked at Master.

I saw the quiet, expectant depth in his dark eyes, and in that single, silent breath, my soul understood everything.

I had made a solemn vow to butcher my family’s killers with mortal hands before shedding my mortal vessel. I had stubbornly clung to that pride, believing that delaying my breakthrough was the only way to honor my parents’ memory.

Yet, looking at the dark cavern where two thousand innocent women and children were sleeping, and looking at the man who had given me everything, my stubborn pride shattered like brittle glass.

I walked to the center of the limestone ledge, dropped into a lotus posture, and released the seals on my dantian.

Within an hour, the five elemental currents roared through my veins, the heavenly qi collapsed into liquid essence, and I stepped across the threshold into the Qi Condensation Realm!

Sitting under the stars, feeling the boundless, crystalline spiritual qi circulating smoothly through my newly opened channels, a profound realization washed over my heart.

Was this what Master had planned from the very beginning?

He had known about the imperial cultivators, he had known about the slave convoy, and he had known that our meager forces would face an insurmountable wall of spiritual power.

Was he teaching me that while sacred vows and principles are vital to a warrior’s soul, one must possess the wisdom to understand and adapt to the shifting currents of reality?

The more I turned the thought over in my mind, the more absolute the truth became.

A warrior who remains rigid and unyielding in her personal vows will eventually snap when the storm turns against her. Clinging blindly to an outdated promise while innocent people bled would have been the height of selfish arrogance. The situation had demanded change, and so I had cast off my stubborn mortal shackles to embrace the strength needed to protect what mattered.

Adaptability. Fluidity. Flowing like water around immovable stone.

This was the grand Dao Master was imparting to me.

And yet... as dawn broke over the peaks, and Master handed me the peerless Autumn Water Frost Sword, telling me with that playful smirk that the three Qi Condensation commanders belonged entirely to me, that familiar, intuitive whisper brushed against my soul once more.

No. That was still only one layer of the truth.

There was something else, something even more elusive, buried deep beneath this battlefield.

What are you truly showing me, Master?

I drew the frost blade, feeling the icy spiritual hum resonating with my blood as the six hundred imperial soldiers charged into the mouth of the gorge.

Perhaps, as my steel meets their commanders’ throats in the smoke below, the final veil will tear away, and I will finally see the full brilliance of the lesson my Master has woven for me.