Old Wu slowly raised his hand and placed it palm down hovering over the table top, Xu Long who was watching intently with anticipation knew that the old man was drawing this out to mess with him, he also knew however, that if he let any frustration show he would just be inviting Old Wu to push it further, so he sat and he waited.
Finally, seeing that Xu Long wasn’t going to dance how he wanted him to, Old Wu chuckled and materialized a pristine looking sword laying flat on the table under his hand. As he removed his hand and Xu Long saw the entire sword in all its glory, he was captivated. All in all It was a fairly simple looking sword, save for the fact that it was completely white from tip to pommel and, despite its simplicity, it gave Xu Long a sense of grandeur and perfection that he couldn’t explain.
There was no ornamentation, save for a single small etching on the base of the blade that depicted a dragon. Xu Long was fairly certain it was a dragon anyway, it was perhaps 6 lines in total but it certainly conveyed a lot in those lines. The blade itself was a pristine shade of white with almost imperceptible streaks of silver flowing through it, the hilt was a compact and sturdy looking Y shape, in a slightly off white color almost like bone, the grip was wrapped by what appeared to be white leather that so uniformly and perfectly wrapped the around the hilt that it appeared as if it was always apart of it, lastly the sword was capped by a simple pommel that was in the shape of a sturdy looking ring.
Having soaked in the entirety of the sword with his eyes, Xu Long reached out and took the sword in his hand, a feeling of reverence overwhelming him as he did so. The sword was indeed as perfect as it appeared, he could remember when he first received what his mother had called his training sword and how perfect it felt in his hand, now though that feeling that he had almost seemed an insult to this sword, this was true perfection. He gave it a few swings, every slight movement he made seemed to flow, the sword would do exactly what he wanted it to when he wanted, it wasn’t being ‘wielded’ by him, it was moving with him.
After a few moments, he realized, as he was about to start running through sword forms with it, that Old Wu and his mother were still here and just watching him. He turned towards them with a sheepish grin. “Sorry, got a little carried away there. Thank you Old Wu, this sword is…I don’t really have the words for it, exquisite, perfect, magnificent, they all apply and yet they feel so lacking.”
Old Wu let out a short bark of a laugh. “Don’t say stuff like that around the crotchety old man who made it, his ego is quite inflated enough.”
“You know the person who created this? Who are they?”
Old Wu just waved his hand. “He is just a weapon forger I know from one of the sects.”
Xu Long heard his mother sigh to the side and he looked in her direction. “Why do you feel the need to do that, Zhong?” She then turned her attention from Old Wu to Xu Long. “He is the Master Forger at the Dao Temple, one of the largest and most powerful sects in the realm.”
Xu Long’s mouth was hanging open as he looked towards Old Wu, who was his usual nonchalant self. “How did you get him to make me a sword?”
“It is not a big deal, kid. He owed me one, so I just called in a favor.”
Xu Long was not sure how to feel about this, he was grateful beyond belief, but it also seemed far too extravagant. “You used a favor with one of the best forgers in the realm just to get me a sword?”
Smiling at the way Xu Long was reacting, Old Wu shook his head. “I think you are misunderstanding what this sword is, kid. This sword will be with you for a very long time. In fact it will never have to be replaced while you are in this realm, and possibly not even when you reach the Immortal Realm. The old coot didn’t actually tell me what materials he used, but he assured me that it was not possible to find finer materials in the realm.”
Seeing his words had the desired effect when he saw Xu Long’s astonishment, he carried on. “You are a Sword Immortal, kid. I know you don’t understand the full scope of that designation just yet, but when you go out into the world you will meet no shortage of cultivators that will fight and die for resources; rare spiritual plants, high level beast cores, higher grade cultivation techniques, fancy weapons with outlandish abilities and all manner of other aids to their path. None of that matters to you, the only thing that matters to a Sword Immortal is the sword in their hand, it is the one area that they cannot disregard or neglect.”
After listening to Old Wu’s little speech, Xu Long looked down at the sword in his hand in a new light, he had always been deeply attached to his sword, in fact it was very rare for it not to be attached to his waist, but he had never really considered that his entire path would flow through a single item and the ramifications of that.
As he was staring at his new sword and thinking about his future, his mother interjected. “While it is certainly true that ultimately your sword is pivotal, it is not the only thing that you are going to need on your journey.” She picked up something that he assumed had been resting on her lap, which confused him because he could not remember her or Old Wu ever not using their storage rings to reveal items to him. When he saw it, he was even more confused, it was a band of onyx black metal, it looked too big for a bracelet and too small for a circlet, he could not for the life of him figure out what it was and why he was apparently going to need it.
Seeing the confusion on her son's face she smiled. “Give me your left hand, Long’er.”
Even more confused after being asked for his arm after just confirming that it was too large to be a bracelet, Xu Long held out his left hand regardless and simply watched as his mother placed the band over his hand and rested it on his wrist, leaving it dangling there. He then watched wide eyed as she pressed a point on the band and the outer perimeter lit up with an elaborate formation shining in silver light, not unlike his blindfold.
“You should know what to do by now, Long’er.”
He looked at her and then down at his wrist. A very similar looking spot on the formation to his blindfold was sitting facing upwards right in the middle of his wrist, so he did exactly what he did last time, he placed his new sword on the table and then poked the index finger of his right hand onto the point before moving a small amount of qi to his finger and dropping his blood onto the designated spot.
There was a similar reaction to last time, similar but not identical, the blood vanished as soon as it made contact with the glowing formation, however, the formation itself didn’t vanish along with it, instead there was a subtle pulse at set intervals as the band resting on his wrist started to shrink. It was a relatively short process, not more than 20 seconds. Xu Long watched with rapt attention the entire time, only when the band had stopped shrinking did the pulsing stop and the formation then promptly disappeared. Xu Long then found himself staring at his wrist, adorned in a solid black metal bracelet about a finger width across that fit perfectly, loose enough to not hinder his wrist movement and tight enough not to move around too much as he moved his arm.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
As he moved his wrist around, testing how it felt, he looked up at his mother. “That was pretty impressive, but what is this exactly?”
His mother smiled at him. “It has two major functions and one minor. The first major is the most important but will be inconsequential to your daily life, it is the integration of my divination blocking formation, which you should be familiar with. The second major however is the one I suspect you will care about most as it is a spatial storage artifact.”
Xu Long felt as if time had stopped, as he stared in disbelief at his mother, her staring back at him with a smirk at his reaction. When his brain started to function again he looked down at his wrist, staring intently at the black bracelet with reverence and excitement, only to be jolted back to reality by the voice of his mother.
“I wouldn’t get too excited Long’er, it is not a real one.”
Xu Long’s head that was in the clouds was instantly deflated. Seeing she had brought her son back to his senses, she continued.
“It is not possible to utilize a proper spatial storage artifact without functional spiritual sense, which means in practice not until the Core Formation Realm. This bracelet’s spatial storage function is both simplified and designed with quite the number of assistance features built in. If you run your qi through it you will feel a total of nine nodes connected together in a ring. Each of these nodes can be thought of as a single pocket, when you view the nodes all you will be able to determine is if the node is empty or full, and when you go to interact with them the interaction is extremely limited, if the node is empty and you interact with it you will fill it with what is touching your palm, within limits of course, if the node is full and you interact with it the entire node will empty. There is no nuance here whatsoever.
“Go ahead and try it out, there should be four nodes with items in there right now, one thing to note, Long’er, the items always appear a small distance away from your palm, so if your palm is facing upwards you can easily grab hold of whatever you retrieve, likewise if you have your palm facing down you can have the item drop downwards. In this instance and any instance where you are unsure of the contents of a node facing your palm downwards is obviously preferable.”
Perked up again after hearing his mother’s explanation, as it sounded plenty real enough to him, Xu Long ran his qi through the bracelet in order to determine just how to utilize his new storage item. He felt the nodes almost immediately and it was rather apparent which ones were full, starting at the topmost node and running right, Xu Long decided to start at the top.
He held his hand over the table and had his qi that was cycling through the bracelet interact with the topmost node, without him having to do anything else the contents of the entire pocket appeared on the table under his hand. Which on this occasion happened to be something he recognized right away, it was obviously the scabbard for his new sword, much like the sword it was entirely white save for a simple ring of silver around the edge of the opening and a cap of silver on the end.
Xu Long smiled and immediately took his sword off the table and sheathed it in his new scabbard before attaching it to his waist. Buoyed by this gift that kept on giving, Xu Long plowed ahead with his exploration of his new storage item. The second node materialized what appeared to be 10 sets of white robes and pants, a set of clothes that he had gravitated towards at a young age and worn ever since, in fact now that he was looking at his very static wardrobe choices he wondered. Looking at Old Wu he asked. “Did you tell your weapon forger friend that I always dress in white?”
Old Wu let out a hearty laugh. “Not a chance, even if I did he would never compromise a weapon for vanity. It looks like you and this sword were just fated.”
Xu Long nodded his head, still unsure whether he believed that or not, but he put it out of his mind regardless and turned towards his mother. “Do you really think I require all this, Mother? Besides the new clothes you gave me each time I outgrew the previous, I have never had more than a single pair of clothes at one time in my life.”
“I certainly hope you don’t need them Long’er, it would take quite the amount of damage to overwhelm the self-repairing formation on any of these. You can consider this node a just in case node from a worried mother. After all, no son of mine can ever be caught wearing clothes of shabby make, I would die of shame.”
Xu Long had to laugh and shake his head at the things that his mother chose to care deeply about. Placing his hand over the stack of clothes he returned them to his bracelet, but this time in one of the bottom nodes, out of the way. Moving swiftly on to the next node, which materialized a jade slip and a black cube, Xu Long started with the jade slip as he had already learnt what they symbolized in a distant lesson from his mother, cultivation techniques and arts. He picked up the slip and ran his qi through it immediately and was quite shocked when information started entering his mind almost unprompted. It was exactly what he thought it to be, the complete Clear Spring Manual.
“Remember Long’er, you cannot read the next realm of the cultivation technique until you have achieved it. This is a hard and fast rule that is enforced the realm over, it is nothing but a hindrance to cultivation to be concerned with your future path and neglect your present situation. You will no doubt pick up vague hints from others' conversations or from teachers, which is fine, as long as you do not dwell on them.”
He stopped putting qi into the jade slip when his mother started talking and then looked up at her and nodded by the time she was finished. As he was about to move on from the Clear Spring Manual to the cube, his mother interjected again.
“The cube is somewhat of a puzzle box, if you place your finger on to the two small lines on one of the surfaces, your consciousness will be drawn into the cube. Ultimately it is designed to teach you the formation breaking art that I designed for you, it is divided into three layers for the first three realms and acts just like your Clear Spring Manual in gating your progress by realm. Remember well Long’er, if I find out that you have not been keeping up with your mastery of this art, there will be consequences.”
Xu Long felt a chill run down his spine when he heard that last part and nodded his head towards his mother with a drop of sweat beading down his forehead. Not feeling now an appropriate time to send his consciousness into the puzzle box, Xu Long placed it and the Clear Spring Manual back into his bracelet.
As he was preparing to empty the next node his mother cleared her throat and when he looked up she mimed flipping her hand to a palm up position. Nodding his head Xu Long complied and turned his hand around as he emptied the next node, what materialized in his hand was a small stack of what he identified as talismans even though he had never actually seen one before, they fit the description he had been given to a tee.
His mother once again chimed in to offer an explanation. “There are six talismans total, the top three are escape talismans and will teleport you and whomever you are in contact with a great distance in a random direction, do note that the distance traveled will decline precipitously with more people, the bottom three are emergency communications talismans that will alert Wu Zhong that you are facing imminent death and allow him to pinpoint your location. Both of these options are for emergency situations only and either should be considered the option of last resort.”
“I understand, Mother.” Xu Long replied when he heard the seriousness in his mother’s voice.
“I am glad you do Long’er, those that rely too heavily on external aid cripple their path, however those who do not call for aid when they face utterly insurmountable foes do not live long enough to walk their path at all.” When she saw Xu Long reply with a nod she continued. “Now for the other, admittedly smaller function of your bracelet, that is simply the function to change your eye color as we previously discussed, although in this case it is merely for a backup should your blindfold be removed. Before it is made available though you have to decide if you are going to pretend that you are truly blind or just wearing a blindfold for cultivation purposes.”
Xu Long didn’t have to think about it for even a second. “The second one, I would prefer not to lie to people.”