Chapter 63 - The Shattered Sword Physique
She reached into her sleeve, pulled out her last high-grade spirit-replenishing pill, and crushed it between her teeth.
The surge of spiritual energy exploded in her mouth. Forcing her exhausted meridians to draw upon every drop of restored Qi, she temporarily raised her active cultivation to its absolute peak.
She stepped forward, her robes billowing as she glared at Su Ming with a mix of fury and raw terror. ’You absolute fool,’ she thought, her eyes burning as she looked at the blood on his lip. ’You are going to kill yourself and him.’
Unleashing the core inheritance of her lineage, she called out the Saint Rank Spirit Piercing Needle Technique — Thirty-Six Pulse Resonance.
Thirty-six silver needles rose from the case, hovering in a circle around her hands. With a sweeping motion of her arms, she drove all thirty-six needles into Wang Tian’s chest and shoulders simultaneously.
Each needle vibrated at a high, resonant frequency, creating a web of cold, stabilizing Qi that anchored his life force. She did not fight Su Ming’s reversal; instead, she used her needles to build a secondary, stabilizing frame around his frozen scaffold, absorbing the massive feedback before it could reach his core.
Su Ming felt the pressure ease. He met her angry glare, his hand on Wang Tian’s chest remaining steady. For three long breaths, the room was silent except for the metallic hum of the needles. The air was charged with revivals, remnants of forces of life and death.
Slowly, Wang Tian’s chest rose with a shuddering gasp, his heart giving a deep, regular thud. The wild sword Qi settled into the 108 meridians, flowing in a controlled circuit.
Bai Qingxian’s knees buckled. Her eyes faded, her hands trembling as she leaned on the table, completely drained. Su Ming withdrew his hand, wiping the blood from his mouth.
"It is stabilized," he said.
She slumped onto a stool, chest heaving. "You are insane," she whispered. "If I had been a breath slower, you would have suffered a backlash."
Su Ming looked at the 108 paths glowing steadily under Wang Tian’s skin.
"But we succeeded."
***
The immediate crisis had been averted, but the atmosphere inside the prepared chamber remained thick with the silent, humming potential of the newly stabilized network. Above White Lotus Peak, the dark violet clouds had condensed into a thick, swirling vortex.
Inside the chamber, the silence was absolute.
Wang Tian floated several inches above the wooden table, suspended by the tight, vibrating web of 108 newly connected meridians. The paths were fully formed, stable, and hollow, waiting for the final spark of energy to activate the circuit.
Technically, to activate the newly woven meridian network, any standard pure Qi would have been sufficient. It would have allowed Wang Tian to cultivate again, establishing a solid foundation. But Su Ming had not spent weeks planning just to achieve a normal result.
He had the means to make it better, and he was not a man to leave potential untapped.
He willed his storage ring to open, producing two items: a large, glowing chunk of raw thunder-fire crystal and a small glass jar containing the pure Yang Qi essence liquid he had preserved in his stores.
"Miss Bai," Su Ming said, his voice quiet but steady. "I will now perform an elemental Qi integration. Have the life-stabilizing elixir ready. Once the thunder-fire Qi enters, his pathways will expand rapidly. We must not let them tear."
Bai Qingxian, though completely exhausted, nodded immediately. Her face was dead serious as she gripped the flask, her fingers hovering near Wang Tian’s lips.
Su Ming placed his palms over the thunder-fire crystal, channeling his Qi into its core. Under Essence Sight, the crystal’s dense, chaotic elemental energy was refined, stripped of its wild impurities until it flowed like liquid crimson lightning. Mixing this refined energy with the pure Yang liquid, he wove the elemental threads into a single, high-purity conduit.
With a precise flick of his fingers, he guided this conduit into the primary entry point of Wang Tian’s new meridian network.
Instantly, pure liquid threads of thunder and fire coursed through the 108 meridians. The heat in the room rose in a sudden wave, causing the wood of the table to groan. Wang Tian’s body convulsed, his skin glowing with a deep red light as faint arcs of purple lightning danced across his chest and down his limbs. The energy wove into the newly woven pathways, fusing with the membranes and sealing the meridian pathways from the inside. It was an agonizing process, but Wang Tian’s jaw was locked, his entire body shaking as if he were being forged in a volcanic furnace.
Su Ming watched the energy settle, his eyes calm. This was an extra, completely optional step he had decided on simply because he had the means. A heaven-defying sword physique was already extraordinary, but one enhanced with an added peerless affinity for flame and lightning was of an entirely different caliber. While normal Qi would have activated the physique, utilizing the thunder-fire crystals and pure Yang liquid tempered the new meridians, optimizing their capacity and durability to a level that normal Qi could never match.
Outside the chamber, the sky erupted.
The swirling violet clouds turned black as pitch, rolling over themselves in a massive, churning vortex. A single, deafening roll of thunder shook the entire mountain range, rattling the windows of the central halls. At that exact moment, a strange, low hum rose from the center of White Lotus Peak, spreading outward like a massive ripple across a calm pond.
In the Heavenly Cloud Sect’s main valley, the sudden hum grew into a deafening vibration. Inside the Scripture Hall, the Enforcement Hall, and the training arenas, every sword willed by a disciple or elder began to buzz. Thousands of blades, still resting in their sheaths, vibrated violently, resisting the wills of their owners.
The swords of the inner sect disciples began to slide out of their scabbards, their tips pointing toward White Lotus Peak in a silent, collective salute. Even the spiritual swords of the grand elders on their respective peaks trembled in their racks, hums resonating through the stone walls.
"Sword resonance!" Jian Wufeng, the Peak Master of Heavenly Sword Peak, stood up from his meditation chamber, his face serious as his own Saint-rank sword rattled violently on the wall. "A sect-wide sword resonance... who is awakening such pure sword intent? No... This is a sword physique awakening!"
Before he or any of the other Peak Masters could fly toward White Lotus Peak, the black clouds parted. A massive, brilliant lightning bolt, a natural tribulation thunderbolt, tore through the heavens. It did not hit the mountain’s defensive arrays; instead, it passed straight through the roof of the chamber in a blinding pillar of light, striking Wang Tian’s floating body with a crack that shook the ground.
The thunderbolt did not harm him at all. The refined, thunder-fire-tempered meridians absorbed the celestial strike, channeling the raw lightning to temper the final connections. The air inside the chamber turned to pure heat.
With the descent of the tribulating lightning, the Immortal Shattered Sword Physique was born.
***
Outside the room, Lin Yao and Elder Bai Zhen were forced back off the veranda steps by the sheer wave of force, the containment barrier shattering into a thousand golden shards.
One by one, streaks of brilliant light descended onto the mountaintop. Yan Qinghai of Azure Dragon Peak, Huo Lianyi of Vermilion Flame Peak, Shen Wuji of Black Tortoise Peak—all the grand inner peak masters arrived, their faces filled with shock as they looked at the smoking, charred hole in the roof of the chamber.
"Elder Bai," Yan Qinghai demanded, his heavy spear buzzing on his back as the weapon reacted to the residual intent. "What is happening here? The sword resonance... the tribulation thunder... did Peak Master Su make a breakthrough?"
"No," Elder Bai Zhen said, his voice quiet as he looked at the rising smoke. "It is not Peak Master Su."
Before Yan Qinghai could ask further, a silent, grey-robed figure materialized on the veranda steps without a single sound. The grand inner peak masters instantly froze, their noisy chatter dying in an instant as their postures straightened immediately with reverence.
It was the Cloud Sword Saint, the legendary Back-Mountain Ancestor. His presence was vast as the sky, his eyes calm as he looked at the chamber door. He did not say a word, but the heavy, chaotic Qi in the air settled instantly under his gaze.
But before the Peak Masters could bow to him, the space high above the courtyard rippled like water. A figure appeared, standing in the void even above the Cloud Sword Saint. He was a thin, old man dressed in simple pale robes, yet his feet rested on the empty air as if it were solid stone, his presence like an immortal looking down from the heavens. No one present on the White Lotus Peak figured out his cultivation, yet the entire sky seemed to freeze around him.
When the Peak Masters looked up and saw him, they looked confused, whispering in hushed, uncertain voices as they failed to recognize this elder at all. But the Cloud Sword Saint’s eyes widened in profound shock.