Time seemed to disjoint as Fan Zhong slipped in and out of consciousness. One moment a leaf fell from the giant tree above him, the next blackness met his gaze. His consciousness returned again, the leaf barely having fallen a finger length, two of the black-robed assailants lay as dead corpses on the ground. Above him, his mother bellowed a furious warcry to the sky silent through his hazy consciousness. Suddenly the remaining enemies gripped their heads, falling to their knees in agony.
Another lapse in consciousness before clarity again, the leaf fell another finger length, dozens of blurring silver lights flew from translucent ribbons that seemed to be made of pure moonlight leading back to his mother’s hand. The attackers were riddled by the lights, bleeding from dozens of wounds, each of them having a pure Silverlight flying dagger sticking from their foreheads, the weapons so ethereal as if they weren’t real.
Finally one last moment of clarity, the number of silver arcs multiplied into what seemed like a storm before disappearing entirely. In the silence, the assailants bled from hundreds of wounds. They sat there on their knees, hands behind their backs looking to the sky in prostration as blood fountained from every pore of their bodies. Blackness once again threatened to swallow him and the last thing he could hear was the shaking sobs of his mother.
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The Flow Grass field held eerily still as Fan Yahui checked the condition of Fan Zhong, it was as if the world was holding its breath to avoid her fury. With a sigh of relief she lowered her hand from her son's head feeling satisfied that he was in a stable condition, she finished tying a bandage around the wound to his side. Small inaudible cries of pain sounded from the assailants she had disabled upon arriving and finding Fan Zhong under attack.
To a normal person it seemed as though she had retracted all of her flying daggers; however, with special energy sensing techniques, one would be able to see dozens of pure moonlight daggers piercing their bodies. These attacks were not physical; instead, they were Qi phantoms made of pure Mind-aligned Qi. This phantom technique was called “height of the sky overbears the deep earth” and was specifically made to amplify all emotions and feelings the target felt.
Conversely, all other emotions and feelings would be dampened causing the user to go into rampant states of imbalance and intense pain. Fan Yahui used this technique to bring down many martial artists that were proud of their pain tolerance. Most had been unprepared to have their own arrogance intensified while feeling pain in quantities the human body should not be capable of. Those who lived to describe such things had… interesting descriptions of the conflicting feelings and emotions.
Sneering with contempt Fan Yahui opened her hand and focused on her mental energy taking hold of the phantom weapons. Pouring some of her frustrations and anger out she closed her hand into a fist so hard it created a shockwave of force that expanded outward in all directions. Meanwhile, the dagger phantoms exploded with force shooting into their victims and out the other side.
While still technically alive this last attack had shredded their minds. If they survived the blood loss these assassins would serve the rest of their lives as little more than catatonic vegetables. It was truly a mercy to let them keep some semblance of their dog lives, at least in Fan Yahui’s opinion. Originally it had been the plan to keep them alive and extract information from them once they returned to the village, however, that had been before she sensed the presence of their reinforcements arriving
As she extended the sense of her mental energy Fan Yahui was able to detect the multitudes of shadowy figures that were appearing out of the forest. Around 100 Third-Grade martial artists, 20 Second-Grade martial artists, and a single First-Grade martial artist by her estimation. Calmly she paced a circle around the tree, in the time it took a single leaf to fall to the ground she had set up three rings of talismans with seals on them. This was a simple protective formation to protect her son and the Wang boy.
Although the opponents may not be a match for her peak Master realm martial arts there were a lot of them, better to be safe than sorry. After carefully examining the barrier she was satisfied no one under the initial stages of the Master realm could breach it in a short period of time. Nodding to herself Fan Yahui walked a few paces from the tree into the tall grass of the field and swept out a fan of flying daggers cutting a 100-meter radius clearing with her at the center.
After clearing a space to fight she drew a short sword that had been tied to her back and undid a set of talismans that bound the blade in the sheath, eyes as cold as the harshest winter night as her hands worked with incredible precision as to not trigger the safety talismans.
Conflicting emotions passed through her eyes as she stared at the weapon for a moment. However, now wasn’t the time to think of such things. It was the time for action, not thought, time to let the enemy experience the sword art that had lain dormant in her for so many years. Blood and screams would cover this forest before her wrath was satisfied!
All of these thoughts took a mere moment for Fan Yahui to process, in the time it took the Second-Grade martial artist to cross half the open field and draw their weapons she had already taken their measure. First the ‘Crescent moon waxes’ flew as ghostly streaks of Sword Qi flew out, the first 48 opponents fell on the ground half of them trying to move their bodies even though they had been split in half. The others, still whole, grasped at their still attached limbs as if feeling phantom arms and legs that should not be there.
Next rang out ‘10,000 Worlds Reflected on Pure Silver’ as Fan Yahui’s eyes shone with the pure silver light of the moon becoming bright beacons that seared into the soul of each of the bisected enemies that still writhed on the ground. Suddenly these writhing corpses started to froth from their mouths and began to claw and attack their companions. Some even drew weapons, if they were still able, while others bit and clawed at their once allies. Soon the field was a horror show of running blood, screams, and those who begged for mercy. Like this over half of the enemies fell before they ever reached Fan Yahui’s clearing.
Finally, Fan Yahui released one final technique made to clear away the rest of the trash, anyone who made it to the clearing would at least be worthy of facing her sword properly. With that thought, she gathered Qi into the blade focusing the mind technique before setting into an incredibly elaborate set of sword forms that caused the wind to whistle through the holes on the hilt. Soon a joyful and yet somehow foreboding melody rang throughout the field as the air itself distorted and started jittering with laughter. The wind whispered sweet promises of wishes fulfilled into the ears of all that could listen.
Suddenly the melody stopped and all noise seemed to vanish, not the softest cry or scream could be heard, a deathly silence. Into the air sprang a phantom version of Fan Yahui sword in hand with girlish laughter springing from the phantom as horrible banshee wails seemed to come from all around. As the wave of noise hit the approaching enemies their souls shuddered as if they were being ripped in two directions, tearing at the seams. Many attempted to flee and were cut down by their powerful officers who followed close behind. By the time the officers also gave into despair to flee, it was already too late to do so.
The phantom Fan Yahui seemed to glide through the air merrily before it started to descend merrily swinging the sword in its hands. If one could see her in the clearing earlier they would recognize these as the same stances from her sword dance. Quickly the phantom blurred with amazing speed arriving in front of one opponent after another slipping their blows with grace and easily cutting their throats, bisecting them entirely, or filling their heart with gaping holes. Some fell down with true physical wounds, others fell to their knees laughing maniacally to the sky as they clawed the skin from their own face tearing out their eyes.
Others still turned on their companions clinging tightly to them before exploding in showers of gore while those least fortunate simply slumped over, the silver light of their soul sucked directly out into the mouth of the phantom who absorbed it with glee to continue fueling the technique. Finally, only the First-Grade martial artist stumbled into the clearing eyes full of rage and malice, the man had managed to arrive with only a few cuts and scrapes and his mask was even intact. The entire slaughter had taken place in the time it took a falling leaf to hit the ground.
“ Filthy whore, does your feeble mortal mind understand how much you have offended my master? He will drag you upside down by your entrails, force feed your family to you and that shall be the most merciful of your fates! Surrender now and I'll beg for leniency on your part, otherwise, you face the wrath of a true immortal. Forget all notions of resistance, my master could destroy this entire mortal country with a wave of his hand let alone your small valley-” The tirade was shortly cut off as the man jumped to the side, narrowly avoiding a sword strike to his heart.
Rather, avoiding what he had thought was a sword strike to his heart, however, when he looked for the blade his mental technique had warned him of there was nothing. His opponent simply stood where she had always been, eyes closed, face calm and impassive as ever. Suddenly the air rushed and the only thing he could see was the sheath of that sword fall slowly through the air. 10 silver streaks approached him at perplexing angles.
With a furious howl, he focused his mental energy and whirled the shortswords hidden in the sleeves of his robes, deftly striking the weak points of each attack to ward off his impending death. Triumph turned to horror as Fan Yahui came into focus to his right-hand side holding a sword that was buried 5 inches deep into his torso, a strike he was sure had been blocked.
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“ You know, it always baffles me when people assume my illusions can only make big flashy effects. Small details make a difference you know? Things such as slightly misjudging the angle of a sword thrust, for example, can prove deadly against even a weaker opponent” Fan Yahui said lazily as if having the most casual conversation of her life.
She blurred again and this time the man attempted to parry a staggering 20 blows he sensed coming. However, even though he was sure his counterstrikes connected no feedback ran through his weapons to single the clash. Fan Yahui appeared once again and slowly walked around him on his left side now seeming bored, blood oozed from the 20 perfectly level straight and uniform cuts the man now bore.
“That isn’t to say parlor tricks are better than the flashy stuff.” Saying this she seemed to blur once again, this time the man focused all he had into blocking the sword, successfully feeling his blades ward off all 15 strikes “No, that’s also just the gimmicks of mediocre illusionists.” Fan Yahui continued her lecture as if not noticing her sword was piercing through her opponent's shoulder and out his back.
“Illusions are about unpredictability, subtly and bombast combined. Creativity reigned in by strict fine control..” Saying that her figure blurred once more, this time the man felt a power surge within him.
Surprised, he felt new power in his swords as he swung them, sword phantoms flew from the blade and cut apart the opponent before she could get close, he felt invincible!
“Bombast,” Fan Yahui’s soft whisper and breath on his ear froze the man's blood in his veins as he sprang forward in startlement, directly onto the sword Fan Yahui was holding in front of his chest “and subtly.”
Spluttering, a pained cry rose from behind his mask as the man couldn’t comprehend how what was going on, all the while Fan Yahui had not moved a single step. Calmly, from the same position the man had first seen her she raised her eyes to meet his. He realized at that moment that there was no sword in his chest, that Fan Yahui had not even moved a single time during this exchange. However, he still felt as if his entire body were pierced by a hundred phantom swords. If he had a Qi sight ability he would have seen the over 100 phantom mind qi swords impaling his body from every angle.
“Break!” Fan Yahui spoke the word with every speck of fury and contempt she could muster.
Suddenly the man experienced a world of pain and torment that dwarfed the experience of every single one of his subordinates, finally when he came to the moon was overhead. He could hear himself babbling, begging, and sobbing for mercy. His mind was so gone no longer had active control of what he was saying.
“Good, introductions are out of the way. Now, why don’t you start over from the beginning? Tell me about your ‘immortal master’?...” The night was long and Fan Yahui’s disciples had arrived hours ago to retrieve her son and the wang boy. Now she had a full battle-ready battalion of Fan clan warriors and observers at her disposal and a very long night to ask as many questions as she liked…
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Walking away from the babbling man as her newly arrived disciples carried him away, Fan Yahui’s eyes once more turned to her sword. This sword was a weapon that had been passed down since times immemorial from each Fan clan Matriarch to the last. It was a Supreme Earth Magical Treasure sword forged from pure Mind-aligned steel of the mortal grade of natural treasures.
One had to know that even obtaining small amounts of natural treasures was extremely beneficial. It would allow martial arts to advance, for Master realm or higher martial artists, much faster by setting up cycling environments. As long as the natural treasures were aligned to the elements of the martial artists' techniques it had immense benefits to their progress.
These so-called natural treasures were materials that had existed in environments that naturally had rich Qi of the elements for tens, hundreds, or sometimes even thousands of years. Years would pass with the Qi saturating the material eventually strengthening them into materials that surpassed mortal comprehension. There were even legends that some materials had lain in such places for millions of years forming truly supreme natural treasures capable of giving one the power of true immortals and gods!
Natural Treasures were thus ranked on how much they would amplify the abilities of the user and were ranked as: Mortal natural treasures that could provide anywhere from a 1-25% boost in power, Earthly natural treasures which provide aid of 26-50%, and finally, the legendary Spirit natural treasures which could increase ones might by 51-100%! Anything above this existed only in the realms of legend.
Fan Yahui was one of the strongest people in the valley and had only ever seen a single Earthly Natural treasure once in her life let alone existences above Spirit natural treasures. The Fan clan however had another issue when it came to their observers, the natural treasures of the Flowing Grass Valley were aligned to wood and water, not mind! In fact, there were no naturally occurring veins of natural treasure metals that aligned to the mind element they had ever heard of.
However, the waters of the Flow Grass River did carry mind qi within them, this had caused the generations of the Fan clan to devise a method to obtain natural treasures aligned with them. Finally, after many years they found a way to combat this problem. An ancient clan ancestor had paid a large sum of money to hire a foreign formation expert.
Upon hearing the wants of the clan the formation master had tasked them to divert a part of the river's flow out of the river and into a channel before it ran back into the main body of the river. With these instructions, the ancestors had chosen to place the channel west of the village outside of its walls to prevent the risk of the channel flooding the village. There the formation master had made a formation that extracted the natural Water-aligned Qi of the water as it entered the channel leaving unique water that only contained Mind-aligned Qi.
Many clan ancestors had been overjoyed and they had prepared various ores and plants to saturate and grow in the channel, absorbing mind qi and creating pure mind-based natural treasure deposits within the clan. Eventually, a series of buildings were built around the channel area to protect this valuable asset. Finally, after many years that place had become the ancestral training grounds of the clan’s observer lineage!
With access to mind-aligned natural treasures, the observer lineage had sought to make magical treasures for their members. Magical treasures differed from natural treasures in that they were natural treasures that had been forged into tools and weapons to be used. Usually in the process, large amounts of natural treasures were refined and shaped into treasure essence that was infused into the magical treasure in a variety of ways.
With these methods, treasure essence can be added after the initial forging process as long as excess natural treasures are acquired. As such legacy treasures such as this sword could be forged and reinforced over generations! The strength of a magical treasure directly amplifies the effect of the natural treasure it was born from as well as simply strengthening the physical aspects of the object such as sharpness, durability, etc.
In other words, if one were to have a Mortal natural treasure that provided a 25% boost of strength and forged it into a magical treasure that provided a 100% magical treasure increase, the overall effect would be a 50% boost in strength to the techniques used with the magical treasure. In this way, even low-quality Mortal natural treasures, when used as materials, could be combined in high quantities to forge a Magical treasure that rivaled peak Earthly natural treasures.
Magical treasures themselves are also ranked after being forged by their quality as well as the energy used to forge them. These started with Mortal magical treasures which were formed from the simple process of physically forging the natural treasures into the shape of the desired tool. These provide no benefit past what the natural treasure would, however, a sword made of 1,000-year-old Natural treasure wood is more effective for sword techniques than if it was simply left as a branch.
Next would be Earth magical treasures made using pure mental energy techniques, these treasures provide a bonus of anywhere between 1-25%. Earth magical treasures are further subdivided as any from 1-10% quality is considered an Inferior Earth magical treasure, 11-19% is considered a normal Earth magical treasure, 20-24% is considered a Superior Natural Treasure, and finally, 25% is a Supreme Earth magical treasure. Above this are Qi treasures however the Qi master realm martial artists cultivated was too impure to use the forging techniques meant for such treasures and the ones possessed nowadays were considered the relics of ancient legends.
It was said that the concentration of Qi that mortals could gather was simply too impure to truly forge Qi treasures and all attempts to circumvent this had failed. Perhaps one needed to ascend mortality and reach the vaunted realm of Qi condensation to truly create such treasures?
In any case, even this Supreme Earth Magical treasure sword had taken the accumulation of hundreds of years of fan clan resources to arrive here today. Long ago the clan had made it and slowly over generations more and more treasure essence was refined into it until finally during her grandmother's time the sword had reached the quality of a Supreme Earth magical treasure and could be strengthened no more. Bitterness had swelled inside her when thinking of this weapon, originally it had been the strongest and oldest of a set of 5 treasure swords that were carried by the strongest of the observer lineage.
Now after many hundreds of years of war and struggles only this one remained, the rest lost to time or bargained away as gifts to avoid clan destruction. From her generation onwards her daughter and her daughter's daughters would have no treasures to pass to their heirs, only the matriarch was still able to hold such a weapon. The urge to forge new treasures had been tempting, however much of the mind natural treasures they created went to raising more master realm fighters and forging mortal magical treasures, such as the set of flying daggers she wielded.
Flying daggers had become such a replacement for the clan observers that now Fan Yahui alone knew the stances and techniques of the Moon Cleaving Sword Style, she had not even passed it on to her daughter yet. Sighing, her mind drifted from the sword as she returned it to the sheath and carefully reactivated the sealing and concealing talismans. Such matters would need to wait as there were more pressing concerns at hand. Once she was certain who this ‘immortal master’ was and how the tensions with the Wei clan played out then Fan Yahui could worry about passing on the sword style.