Chapter 250

If one can hold a cup with an old friend.

Yes, if an old friend were right in front of you, what wine wouldn't be fragrant and mellow?

Hearing this sentence from Daoist Zhan Tao, everyone fell silent in unison. At this moment, everyone's emotions were the same, though the old friends in their respective hearts were different.

Cheng Xinzhan thought of Miaoyuan, that fellow Daoist who loved wine the most. His own hermit and madman persona were all put on; he was the one who was truly carefree.

"Ding!"

A crisp sound startled the slightly tipsy crowd from their memories.

Everyone looked toward the sound and saw it was Daoist Tuo Yan tapping a jade cup with a bamboo chopstick.

"I say, Zhan Tao, today is to welcome new guests. You insist on mentioning an old friend holding a cup. An old friend holding a cup is certainly good, but isn't welcoming new friends and forming bonds also a happy event? You are ruining the mood like this; you must punish yourself with three cups!"

Daoist Tuo Yan tapped the jade cup, glancing sideways at Zhan Tao. Her expression was unrestrained and soaring; she was actually the most carefree and uninhibited one at the banquet, her boldness even surpassing that of a man.

Daoist Zhan Tao was also startled awake. He apologized repeatedly to Cheng Xinzhan, and after speaking, he prepared to pour for himself to plead guilty.

"Wait."

Daoist Tuo Yan spoke again, her eyes showing a teasing look. She smiled and said,

"Zhan Tao wants to plead guilty; how can drinking pear wine work? Come, use my Firethorn wine."

Daoist Zhan Tao showed a bitter expression, but he still took the wine pot handed over by Daoist Tuo Yan and filled his cup.

After three cups, Daoist Zhan Tao was also flushed red.

Everyone laughed upon seeing this, and the atmosphere at the banquet finally turned from gloomy to joyful.

Daoist Zhouyue thoughtfully poured a cup of "Huanhua Fragrance" for Daoist Zhan Tao.

"According to the rules of our Xuanmen, one cannot drink without sword fighting to add to the fun. I wonder if Yunlai has the interest?"

Daoist Tuo Yan looked at Cheng Xinzhan again.

Cheng Xinzhan nodded with a smile,

"Naturally, one must follow the customs of the place. I wonder what the rules are?"

Daoist Tuo Yan laughed upon hearing this. She picked two lychee leaves from the fruit plate in front of her, handed one to Cheng Xinzhan, and placed the other on her own shoulder. Then, she used the bamboo chopstick in her hand to tap the rim of the cup and said,

"Extremely simple. Then I will ask for instruction from Yunlai. You and I will place the fruit leaves on our shoulders; people cannot move. If the leaf falls, you lose. You also cannot use any other means; just use the bamboo chopstick in your hand as a flying sword and fight with the chopsticks on this wine table.

"If the fruit leaf on your own shoulder is damaged by the opponent's chopstick sword, it also counts as a loss. If your own chopstick sword is damaged, it also counts as a loss. If sword Qi leaks out and damages a fruit or a cup on this wine table, it all counts as a loss. How about it?"

Cheng Xinzhan took the fruit leaf, placed it on his shoulder, and nodded,

"Indeed simple."

Daoist Tuo Yan smiled, released her hand, and the bamboo chopstick in her hand floated in mid-air. She wiped her hand over the bamboo chopstick, plating it with a layer of orange-red rosy light.

So she was one who cultivated the Dao of Sword Rosy Light.

Cheng Xinzhan's heart stirred, and a bamboo chopstick in front of him also flew up on its own. He flicked his finger, and a touch of crimson fire fell onto the bamboo chopstick, merely wrapping it without harming the chopstick in the slightest.

Bamboo chopsticks are fragile and cannot serve as sword weapons; they can neither strike nor defend. Therefore, while it is called sword fighting with bamboo chopsticks, it is actually using magic power as the sword, competing in the depth and purity of magic power.

And fighting with swords within the square inch of this wine table is a test of the Primordial Spirit's subtle control of objects.

The rules of this bamboo chopstick sword fight are simple, but there are many restrictions. It is not simple to truly manipulate them.

"Good, Rosy Sword fighting Fire Sword; it will surely be a battle of flashing lights and shadows. We will feast our eyes. However, sword fighting should stop at the point of contact; do not harm the harmony."

Daoist Mingding said.

The two nodded and said in unison,

"That is natural."

Immediately, the two looked at each other.

"Please."

"Please."

In an instant, Daoist Tuo Yan's chopstick radiated rosy light, as if the sun were rising in the east. The bamboo chopstick itself also seemed as swift as the rosy light, turning into a long rainbow of silk, charging straight at Cheng Xinzhan's shoulder.

Cheng Xinzhan's heart stirred, and his own bamboo chopstick suddenly caught fire, heat waves surging, then turning into a line of fire to meet the rosy light.

"Whoosh—"

The two swords intersected. There was no sound of metal, but rather a whistling sound like wind blowing through fire, exploding into a cluster of sparks and fireflies.

The Rosy Sword moved horizontally and vertically, open and closed, suddenly scattering into rosy clouds, suddenly expanding into falling fire stars. Every time, it was powerful and heavy, overturning rivers and seas.

The Fire Sword was elusive, like an antelope hanging its horns, sometimes trailing for thirty feet, turning into a crimson swimming dragon, sometimes shrinking into a point, like a thunderbolt bullet. Every move was free and easy, flowing like clouds and water.

Between the intersecting sword lights, one was hard and one was soft, one heavy and one light, rosy light and fire intertwined, triggering a sky full of brilliance, making one unable to take it all in.

The flying swords were swift, and in the blink of an eye, eighty rounds had passed.

The onlookers, including Daoist Tuo Yan herself, were extremely surprised by Cheng Xinzhan's performance.

Manipulating flying swords is the specialty of the Xuanmen in Shu. The first thing everyone does when cultivating the Dao is not to eat Qi, but to first pick a flying sword. The first mouthful of Qi eaten is to nourish the body, and the second mouthful of Qi is to nourish the sword. By the time they cultivate magic power and thoughts, the first object they take is a sword weapon.

The banquet was held in a bamboo forest, located exactly in the middle of the north and south of Yanhuai Mountain, slightly below the snow line at the summit.

But how could this Daoist from the East be so mysterious in his sword manipulation?

Among them, Daoists Mingding, Tanbai, and Huqing were even more shocked. These three were not surprised that Cheng Xinzhan used fire methods to manipulate swords, because when they first met that day, his two boy attendants were one offering a fire-vessel gourd and one offering a water-vessel magic sword, so it was natural to guess that Cheng Xinzhan was good at water and fire in the Five Elements.

But at the same time, it was precisely because of the boy attendants offering magic swords that the three naturally thought Cheng Xinzhan was good at the Dao of magic swords. What they truly didn't expect was that this person's attainments in flying swords were also so high.

Daoist Tuo Yan was also clearly interested. She pinched a sword formula, manipulated the chopstick as a sword, and the bamboo chopstick drew a circle in the air, leaving eight afterimages. But these eight afterimages did not dissipate; instead, they attacked together with the bamboo chopstick. Nine rosy lights pressed down layer by layer like a tide.

Seeing this, Cheng Xinzhan also became serious. His thoughts flew, thinking about how to respond.

Currently, his cultivation regarding flying sword techniques basically came from the Sword Scriptures of Toujian Mountain. Although there were also classics from the Juqu and Sanyuan mountains for him to read, the Shangqing Sect did not focus on sword weapons, and Wan Shou Palace was only good at magic swords and body swords.

However, Toujian Mountain was also quite famous in the Eastern Daoist Sect, because the East indeed focused on talismans, inner alchemy, thunder methods, and spirit storage. Sword Dao belonged to a branch of the Dao of precious weapons, and among these, it focused on cultivating magic swords and body swords. Few people cultivated flying swords, and many sects even hated and abandoned flying swords because they were hostile to the Western Shu Xuanmen.

And Sanqing Mountain was an extremely enlightened sect, not some stubborn conservative faction; its doctrine was to study all methods together.

Within the sect, the Shi Lin lineage first cultivated body swords, and later the Toujian Mountain lineage was established to cultivate magic swords. When the Dao of flying swords flourished under the leadership of the Western Shu Xuanmen, Toujian Mountain began to learn the Dao of flying swords again. Therefore, in the Eastern Daoist Sect, when it came to flying sword techniques, the Toujian Mountain lineage of Sanqing Mountain was already second to none.

So if it were in the Shu region, when talking about Eastern flying swords, the first impression of the Shu people would probably also be Sanqing Mountain.

The flying sword techniques of Sanqing Mountain also had characteristics. In nourishing the sword, they often merged with the Inner Alchemy Dao and the Five Thunders Dao, or manifested as merging lead, mercury, and evil spirits, using the method of running the Zhou Tian to nourish the flying sword, or manifested as generating thunder, using the sound and light of thunder to help increase the power of the flying sword.

In sword style, compared to the forward-moving, mountain-splitting, and rock-breaking flying swords of the Xuanmen, the flying swords of Sanqing Mountain were more agile and elegant, emphasizing that the sword follows the heart, retracting and releasing freely. The sword path was like a startled swan, like returning wind and dancing snow. The fundamental Sword Scripture of Toujian Mountain was called "Hunyuan Hunyuan Fei Qi", which was to refine the sword as a kind of "Qi".

Just now, it didn't matter to just exchange moves; even if it was an agile style, it would only make people feel that it was relaxed and had room to spare. Now that it was for real, if it were still this style, it would inevitably make people suspicious.

Or rather, was this Daoist Tuo Yan trying to test his background?

However, looking back at his Sword Dao journey, Cheng Xinzhan was undoubtedly very lucky.

In the early stages of his cultivation, he was just a registered disciple recruited from the mortal world outside the mountains. He had no family assets, and most of his energy was placed on breathing, eating Qi, and visualizing spirit storage. His spare time was used to cultivate talismans and spells that didn't cost much money.

As for sword techniques, it was the old master of Yulin Temple who enlightened him before he went down the mountain for the first time.

And the sword techniques on the mountain, the first one he came into contact with was not the sword technique of Toujian Mountain; it was the sword technique he learned in the Qinglong Cave of the Miao region.

So his sword technique was not branded with Toujian Mountain from the beginning.

By the time he returned from his first travels, his true evil spirits rushed into his acupoints, and he learned the Five Thunders Evil-Dissolving Method at Shuji Mountain, he still didn't have time to learn the Sword Scriptures of Toujian Mountain.

At this time, he investigated the decline of spring thunder in Qingzhou and went to Mount Huangshan to check the earth veins. Here, he obtained the Sword Scripture that had the greatest influence on his Sword Dao cultivation.

"Tieguai Li's Discourse on the Li Fire Urgent Sword Scripture".

An immortal scripture.

Sanqing Mountain didn't have few immortal scriptures, but the flying sword techniques within them were few and far between.

And who was Tieguai Li?

The immortal's Dao name was Li Ningyang. During the pre-Qin period, he was a famous sword immortal in the Ba state. It is said that he also received guidance from Lao Jun and eventually became the head of the Eight Cave Upper Immortals.

Tieguai Li's sword techniques had inheritances in both the East and the West.

The Upper Immortal was born in the ancient Ba state and cultivated the Dao in the Shu region; he was a leading figure in flying sword techniques. In addition, the story of the Upper Immortal's Primordial Spirit leaving his body, lodging in a beggar, and attaining the Dao to ascend was widely sung in the Western Shu area, and it was an excellent example of the Western Shu Xuanmen's belief that "the physical body is false, the Primordial Spirit is true."

And in the East, the Upper Immortal's fame was also extremely great. It is said that the Sword Dao of the Pure Yang Upper Immortal, Lü Dongbin, had received guidance from Tieguai Li. Moreover, although the Upper Immortal was born in the Ba state, he later opened a Daoist arena in Luzhou within the Qingzhou region to lecture on scriptures and expound the Dao.

Cheng Xinzhan had previously guessed that Master Canxia's Upper Immortal inheritance might have been obtained within the Luzhou region.

From this, one could also know how precious the "Li Fire Urgent Sword Scripture" was.

Cheng Xinzhan first learned body sword techniques because of the master of Zhenwei Temple, and first learned magic sword techniques because of evil-dissolving and thunder-drawing. The one that truly enlightened him on flying sword techniques was this immortal scripture.

Therefore, he was lucky. When he embarked on the Dao of flying swords at the beginning, the sword was the immortal's sword, "Taodu", and the scripture was the immortal's scripture, "Li Fire".

Precisely because of this, his attainments in flying swords could be so high.

After returning to the mountain from the Baiyujing Sword Fighting Banquet, the Sect Master ordered him to audit at Toujian Mountain, read all the sword scriptures, and cultivate the "Hunyuan Hunyuan Fei Qi" technique. His Sword Dao thus moved toward orthodoxy and maturity.

However, his flying sword style was not restricted by the sword techniques of Toujian Mountain; instead, it was integrated and mastered, soft or hard, slow or fast.

So at this moment, when Daoist Tuo Yan exerted force to attack, his thoughts flew, and he had already thought of a way to respond, deciding to change his style from the "Hunyuan Hunyuan Fei Qi" style to the "Li Fire Urgent" Dao.

Moreover, since he obtained the "Li Fire Sword Scripture", he hadn't used it many times. Most of the time, he was just understanding and deducing it in his heart, using the immortal scripture as a guideline to draw inferences about other cases. He had only truly used it at the Baiyujing Sword Fighting Banquet and when fighting demons in the Thunderstorm Sea.

The latter need not be mentioned; the demons didn't know the immortal scripture, and they wouldn't come to land. When the former was performed, only Emei's Seven Cultivation Swords competed with him head-on, and they should have been able to discover the brilliance of the sword style. As for those onlookers through the treasure mirror of the Pearl-Holding Tower, they were not immersed in it, and coupled with the chaotic battle situation at that time, with multiple flying swords crisscrossing, they couldn't see anything.

In addition, the "Li Fire Urgent" Dao also had to conform to the mainstream style of flying swords in Shu at present. Therefore, if Daoist Tuo Yan wanted to test his background with this, she would definitely be disappointed.

And his sudden change of style would definitely give her a fright.

Of course, this was just a competitive performance to add to the fun at the banquet, so naturally, there was no need to use the essence of the immortal scripture; just adding a little bit of the urgent sword trajectory would suffice.

As Cheng Xinzhan's thought stirred, the bamboo chopstick suddenly accelerated, instantly disappearing into the void, and then appearing elsewhere, as if thunder were piercing the clouds, swift and peerless, suddenly in the east, suddenly in the west, making people dizzy and unable to defend against it.

Daoist Tuo Yan was greatly shocked upon seeing this. She didn't expect Cheng Xinzhan's flying sword style to change so quickly and be so vastly different.

However, due to her personality, this woman had a strong desire to win. The wine had to be fierce, and the sword had to be hard. Whether it was slaying demons or sparring at the banquet, she didn't want to lose.

So this woman suddenly used ten percent of her strength. The bamboo chopstick split into light and shadows, changing from nine to eighty-one, and then from eighty-one to seven hundred and twenty-nine. Immediately after, the form of the bamboo chopstick could no longer be seen; there was only the sky full of rosy light pressing down, as if the sky had collapsed.

Seeing this, Cheng Xinzhan changed his sword formula again. That touch of fire light became even more swift and ghostly, like a star in the fog, vaguely visible, but difficult to distinguish its trajectory. It was also like an agile swimming fish, swimming against the current in the scattered rosy light, but the rosy water couldn't touch the fire light.

The star fire passed through the rosy sea. Just as the rosy sea was about to swallow Cheng Xinzhan, the star fire took a step ahead and grazed Daoist Tuo Yan's shoulder, splitting the fruit leaves into two one by one.

The two fruit leaves sliding from Daoist Tuo Yan's shoulder drifted in the air. After the rosy light smashed the fruit leaf on Cheng Xinzhan's shoulder into powder, they slowly drifted down to the wine table in front of the woman, landing right beside the wine cup.

Everyone at the banquet was dumbfounded. When Daoist Tuo Yan caught a glimpse of the two fruit leaves on her shoulder drifting down, she was shocked in her heart. The scattered rosy light returned to its original appearance after smashing the fruit leaf on Cheng Xinzhan's shoulder, revealing the prototype of the bamboo chopstick wrapped in magic power. At this moment, the bamboo chopstick lost control and fell toward the mountain rock behind Cheng Xinzhan, leaving a small hole in the rock. The bamboo chopstick didn't know how deep it had sunk into the rock.

And the fire sparks manipulated by Cheng Xinzhan turned back into a bamboo chopstick after slicing open the fruit leaf on Daoist Tuo Yan's shoulder, drifting lightly back into the porcelain plate in front of him, landing right next to the other bamboo chopstick.

Everyone looked at Cheng Xinzhan, as if they wanted to see flowers on his face.

He actually won.

It was this Daoist from the East who won; he actually won against the Female Flying Bear, Wu Mei!

And in Daoist Zhan Tao's eyes, apart from astonishment and appreciation, a trace of doubt also arose:

This kind of agile and swift sword technique, he seemed to have seen it before.

(End of chapter)