The room was so still one could hear a pin drop, yet Qin Ming caught a whispering at his ear, as if from right beside him. He seized his long-handled black-gold hammer, tensing like a leopard — it was no illusion, for he had glimpsed a blurry shadow. The sunstone went out entirely, plunging the room into black, dead silence. The murmur vanished with it. When he touched the old leather blade manual again, all was quiet. He went to the fire spring, fished out a few glowing stones, and returned. Still nothing.
But when he sank his whole focus into the age-stained pages, his hairs stood on end. He heard not only the murmur but a clear, echoing sigh — and a white-haired old man appeared in the dim room, his tattered clothes stained with blood. Qin Ming struck at him with a hammer-blow, and the figure vanished, the temperature seemingly restored.
Was this an accursed book? Or had the liquid he absorbed driven his spirits so keen that his senses went strange? He decided to let stillness master motion and simply watch. When he gave himself fully to study, the disheveled, bleeding old man reappeared.
"Time is short. Leave this blade manual behind, then. Alas, my blade way cannot be fully described. Part of it is doomed to be lost," the old man sighed. Qin Ming then watched him write, blade-light flaring with every stroke, and beside every form the scene of the old man practicing it in his youth took shape — his emotions, insights, and understanding.
In an instant Qin Ming understood how profoundly this affected him. Absorbing the liquid from the offcut stone had made the world he saw utterly different. When his spirit was keen, he sensed the author's state of mind, and his understanding of the blade art surpassed what was written. He was witnessing the manual's birth and resonating with the spirit behind it.
He set down the hammer and studied the manual from the first page, pouring his whole mind in. The deeper his focus, the clearer the voices, images, and resonance. He saw the old man stare at the night sky, then pierce the darkness with blade-light bright as snow. The scene shifted to thunder and rain; the old man, holding a wooden blade, cut a heart-stopping stroke that seemed to cleave the heavens. Qin Ming trembled to his core — this form was not in the manual. Such a stroke could only be shown by spiritual ascent, which was why the old man lamented that part of his art would be lost. But now Qin Ming had witnessed it and grasped its very essence.
In the scenes that followed, the old man trained in the deep mountains, slaying monstrous beasts, then walked through wind and snow in battle, losing an arm and, gravely wounded, burying a broken sword. After five years of silent sitting, he dug it out, and when next he drew it the blade-light was even more overbearing — cleaving mountains where mountains stood, leveling seas where seas rose. The older he grew, the fiercer his spirit; this was not the blade intent of "return to simplicity," but a ceaseless ascent until the blade-light threatened to burn away his withered frame. He swept all comers with the broken sword, returned to his place of silent sitting, buried the blade, left his writing — and reached the final hour of his life.
"Alas, I was trapped in this remote frontier, without secret methods to elevate the essence of my life. Though my understanding of the blade way runs deep, my body shackled me, and I could never glimpse the higher tomes."
When the writing touched upon Heaven Light, the scene grew blurred, and the pages beyond became unreadable. Qin Ming understood: he had not yet fostered Heaven Light, so his emotion and spirit could not resonate there.
He closed the manual, and all those scenes, experiences, and insights floated up in his mind as though they were his own memories. In the courtyard he practiced blade forms never written in the manual, and thunder seemed to crash beneath the night sky, a dense web of dreadful blade-light. Drawing the hammer still, he was deeply shaken — in a single night he had grasped techniques beyond the manual itself, as if he had practiced them for decades. He steadied himself: this applied only to technique and understanding; raising the essence of his life still required cultivation. Yet it was enough to astound the world.
What was this liquid, that it could make his spirit resonate with the book's mysterious emotions? He realized the produce of the offcut stone might not be inferior to what was bred from ten light columns and five-hued haze — and perhaps its origin was even greater.
His thoughts turned to the youth in feathered robes who, on the night of the great fire, had seemed otherworldly, holding a violet bamboo staff of unfathomable power. Now Qin Ming had gained calm and confidence to someday walk to Falling Moon City and face the bloody past. His own path need not be weaker than any other; advance swiftly enough and he could smash through any road.
He gauged his strength: his arms held more than two thousand jin, approaching twenty-two hundred, and with the essence he had mastered his combat ability had become fearsome. Even if the old hands could lift six hundred jin at their first New Life, three New Lives would put them around eighteen hundred — still short of him. This was why everyone prized the first New Life and the Golden Foundation, since all later New Lives stacked on that base. A three-life New Lifer's fearsome Heaven Light Force could pierce even a monstrous beast's scale-armor — but within the realm of New Life it could only spread over the body's surface, not along a weapon.
"So as long as I keep the three-life old hands from closing in, I can fight them," he said to himself — provided he had a long-handled black-gold hammer, for swords could be torn by Heaven Light Force, while sheer might would beat them to death.
That night there was no sleep again; only near the small hours did he doze briefly. He studied the blade art, breaking apart the old man's insights and reworking them his own way.
The next day, Cao Long, Mu Qing, and Wei Zhirou said they would return home in a few days if they found nothing special. They gave Qin Ming and Old Liu an intermediate qi circulation manual as payment, allowing them to pass it on. The folk of Twin Tree Village were grateful to touch such a New Life method at last.
That night Qin Ming found the manual fell short of the silk tome's method, and being a hasty transcription it carried no dense emotions, so it could not resonate. "It must be the crystallized work of a predecessor."
When he delivered it to Old Liu, he asked whether the old man, out of gratitude, would tell the Redcloud City teams all the numinous places. Old Liu thumped his chest: "Wait till I heal and you gain your Second New Life, and the mountain is quiet — then we two will go find the substance for a Third New Life. I've been saving the best places."
Qin Ming then asked if any lineage in the area had fallen into utter ruin. "I want to borrow books from them," he said. "I'll offer them Night Silver they can't refuse."