Chapter 331 — One Meeting Outshines All the Splendors of the World
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
The Imperial Preceptor's frame trembled faintly. He let out a long breath of turbid air and gave the order: "Receive them!"
The city gate swung open, and the generals within ranged themselves to either side. The Dragon Qilin, head high, striding proudly, its great belly swaying, walked into the city. Suddenly all the sword-light upon the battlefield surged like a tide, howling toward Shen Mu, and burrowed into the medicine basket on his back.
The man in the basket was just poking out his head—and then he saw the middle-aged man walking toward him.
The sage said to appear once in five hundred years, the strong man called first beneath the gods, the man hailed as the Sword God of the present age!
Their eyes met, and in both hearts, unbidden, waves arose.
The Sword God of the last age and the Sword God of this age had met at last!
Behind the battlefield, from the towers of the two great passes came the striking of bronze zheng—the sound of the gong, the order for the field to withdraw its troops.
On the field, hundreds of thousands of officers and men felt the weight lift from them and hurried to pull back their forces; in an instant every one of them felt that his body was drenched through, sweat pouring from him like thick broth.
And within Qingmen Pass, Li Zheng floated out of the medicine basket. As though he had grown legs and arms, he walked straight toward the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping—the strongest men of two ages, face to face!
"You study the sword?" Li Zheng asked.
The Imperial Preceptor offered the salute of a disciple, his manner reverent. "This disciple learned the sword in his early years, and at the age of one hundred and sixty ceased to learn it."
Li Zheng asked, "At one hundred and sixty, you understood the sword?"
"At one hundred and sixty," the Imperial Preceptor said gravely, "I had read through all the peerless arts and techniques under heaven and comprehended the great thousand divine powers. Thus I understood the sword, and began to create sword arts of my own."
Li Zheng smiled. "Unfold your sword art for me. Let me see it."
The Imperial Preceptor drew his sword. Sword-light brimmed the heavens and blazed across the world. His sword art was manifold, infinite in its changes—as many as the stars of heaven, as plain as counting rods; it had its straight lines and its winding turns; it seemed able to transform into any other method in the world, and it left in one a feeling that could not be named.
His sword art carried a momentum that pressed ever forward, a grandeur of reform like oil boiling over fire, like fresh flowers spread on brocade—resolved to set the fire of all living beings under heaven alight, to change this fixed heaven and earth, to change the Dao that holds fast and never alters, to reform all that was stale and rotten, to tear open the decay of the old age and expose its ugly face, its ugly truth!
He would use his own sword to change the stale Dao of this world, to open up more new roads, and bring the world into a new age!
His sword art had already left behind technique and become method, infused with his own ideals; one step short, and it would reach straight into the realm of the Dao!
Li—the li of ideals, and the li of reason. Sword art that has an ideal has life, and his sword art had life already. Yet the Dao lies before li; only by surpassing li may one see the Dao.
His sword art was one step from seeing the Dao.
The Imperial Preceptor sheathed his sword, panting. His wounds had still not healed; his cultivation was not what it once had been. Yet before the Sword God of the preceding age he was like a student, and he was glad to lay out his most perfect sword art and await the other's judgment.
"Fine swordsmanship."