Chapter 63: The Beginning of Legend!

Li Guanyi exhaled, staring at the Xue Shenjiang’s inheritance aura, nearly perfect and untouched, clenched his fist, thinking that by the third year he would master the spear techniques of Entry, then learn the Rolling Wave techniques.

In the second year, he could learn the variations of Rolling Wave.

Then what would it mean if he reached perfection instantly, like now?

Could Xue Shenjiang really have never considered anyone might achieve this, and thus made no preparation?

Even mastering Entry-level techniques in an instant defies reason.

At this moment, Li Guanyi felt unease, and the Xue Shenjiang’s inheritance aura regarded him, seemingly regaining its former restraint and coldness, speaking flatly: “...Perfected. Can transmit [Rolling Wave].”

Li Guanyi realized: this was transmission, not instruction.

Xue Shenjiang raised his weapon, pressing it against Li Guanyi’s chest, his eyes clear and bright, then instantly dissolved into a pure spiritual essence, with no reservation, no loss, striking directly into Li Guanyi’s third eye.

Li Guanyi’s mind exploded with a thunderous boom.

His vision went blank.

A faint scent of moisture reached his nostrils, gradually pulling his consciousness back.

The flowing melody of the zither stabilized his spirit, and Li Guanyi opened his eyes to see water murmuring around him, distant layered cliffs draped in green, mountains rising and falling.

He felt suddenly towering, standing on flowing water, where a woman in plain robes, her face hidden beneath a hood, her black hair slightly falling, stood afar; Li Guanyi saw a man before him, clad in heavy, intricate armor.

This was... Chen Duke?!

Li Guanyi looked down, seeing his own hands: his left gripped a bow, his right a battle spear; he wore solemn, magnificent ceremonial armor, golden threads binding the lamellar plates fluttering slightly, hearing his own throat vibrate with sound.

He was smiling faintly: “Chen Duke, this is merely sparring—why take it so seriously?”

Li Guanyi understood.

He had entered that memory, merging into Xue Shenjiang’s body.

This was the highest form of instruction.

Not teaching. Not assistance. Direct memory transmission.

Nothing was more effective than personally experiencing a supreme warrior’s technique.

Chen Duke smiled slightly and murmured, “His Majesty, today in Taihe Palace, judged the empire’s greatest generals, saying your spear and my lance surpass even the Fierce Marquises of Grand Ancestor’s era—those are His Majesty’s true thoughts. He says our martial prowess is strong enough to spark rebellion.”

“If we don’t fight, His Majesty will remain uneasy.”

These words were not in the earlier vision. Xue Shenjiang smiled faintly; Chen Duke lifted his lance.

At that moment, Li Guanyi felt the aura from across the way.

Heavy, tyrannical, like a mountain standing firm beneath rushing rapids.

In the memory five hundred years past, Chen Duke lowered his faceplate—a dark gold mask, like ancient war-god armor, concealing his face and expression, leaving only two calm eyes visible.

As an observer, Li Guanyi had seen Chen Duke rise before Xue Shenjiang, seemingly defenseless.

That mountain-like aura made Li Guanyi’s consciousness tremble.

To hold the title of Duke in the great strife of five centuries ago.

Later generations learned his lance art, used his divine lance to slay the godlike Bai Hu that invaded the Central Plains, charged into the imperial palace, and founded the Chen dynasty—yet now, this hero, revered as Chen’s founding ancestor, launched his attack.

Like mountains collapsing, earth splitting.

Li Guanyi’s pupils contracted; his talent was strong. At this moment, Chen Duke’s lance thrust, brutal and overwhelming, slowed in his vision.

He had once fought Chen Duke before Entry, in a secret realm, where Chen had suppressed his realm.

He had seen his lance techniques.

Now, that lance technique, previously judged merely superior, transformed utterly—inch by inch, it brightened, then seared itself into Li Guanyi’s divine soul.

Li Guanyi memorized that thrust.

Then he felt Xue Shenjiang’s movement.

He felt the flow of qi, the contraction of every muscle, the tautness of sinew and bone, the White Tiger spirit form crouching nearby, the grip of his hand on the spear—everything, as if he had become Xue Shenjiang wielding this technique.

This was transmission.

The spear swept horizontally!

Rolling Wave!!!

…………

Before this, in the desert.

Po Jun and the old guide, their camel terrified to death, crawled painfully across the sands.

They lay beneath a dune; moonlight spilled like vast silver, the clean, bright sand reflecting it, as if they lay upon the moon itself, all around a pale, hazy glow.

Beneath night and starlight, the desert stretched boundlessly.

Without mounts, their situation was dire; now they encountered desert bandits being hunted by Turkic cavalry—the bandits, driven mad, would kill even dogs; a handsome man like Po Jun would suffer terribly.

Po Jun was no fighter; he and the old man masked their aura, hid, and the desert horsemen rode back and forth searching—but Po Jun found a clever spot, concealing their sight; they could not find them, and rode farther away.

Yet at that moment, the battle spear exposed outside suddenly screamed again.

The bandits heard the sound and converged; noisy shouts drew nearer. Po Jun grinned.

He prepared to fight.

One bandit charged on his desert horse, wielding a curved blade.

Po Jun drew a soft sword from his instrument, stabbed the bandit dead. The old man stared, dumbfounded. Po Jun said: “I’m not skilled at killing.”

“Remember this: the words of the Central Plains people must be studied carefully.”

“Not that I can’t—just that I know a little.”

He leapt lightly, swung his horse-head fiddle in a circle, smashing it into a cavalryman’s skull; when the fiddle body shrieked and cracked, he drove the sharp-edged fragment into the third man’s throat.

The hollow body became a blood channel.

Blood gushed out, splashing onto his clothes; the guide stared, dumbfounded, watching this man who, parched, footsore, and exhausted, had felled three mad desert bandits in one breath.

Po Jun picked up the battle spear, placed it on a horse, and told the old man to ride the other.

Desert horses were not large, their bodies dry and sturdy; compared to the tall steeds of the Western Regions, they appeared shorter. The Horse Classic wrote: desert horses lacked one lumbar vertebra and two tail vertebrae; their ribs were arched, their hooves tough, capable of galloping across the desert.

The old man rode, the two of them galloping beneath the moonlight.

The old man’s heart pounded; behind them, the bandits chased. He shouted:

“Can your Central Plains strategists kill too?!”

Po Jun laughed: “Even frail scholars should master swordplay and archery, drive a four-horse chariot with one hand, swing a battle halberd to sever heads with the other, and chant the Qin war song.”

The old man marveled: “Central Plains people are truly terrifying warriors.”

Po Jun said: “No, most Central Plains people are not skilled in battle. My countrymen fear combat.”

The old man puzzled: “Why?”

Po Jun answered: “Because they seek to defeat enemies without injury. But once you wound them, make them bleed—you’ll see their other face: madness, fury, relentless, refusing to stop until they tear their foe to shreds.”

Po Jun slashed another man dead with one hand, his brow raised, saying:

“This is what the Central Plains army calls [Mourning Soldiers Must Win] and [United in Hatred].”

The whistle of arrows pierced the air.

Po Jun’s internal qi surged, but he was no martial cultivator.

Martial cultivators could endure dozens of wounds and roar in battle; his qi could not break arrows. The arrows struck the horse; the desert horse collapsed. As Po Jun fell, he instinctively clutched the battle spear, protecting this divine weapon.

The old man had ridden far ahead, but he gritted his teeth and pulled the reins.

The desert horse turned; the old man reached out, shouting: “Go!”

But the bandits surged like a pack of wild dogs. Mounted on small desert horses, they moved faster than Po Jun could mount; they wielded curved blades, more powerful than slender swords. Po Jun grinned, thinking himself unlucky.

He planted the battle spear and rose. This divine weapon must not fall here.

Po Jun gripped his slender sword, grinned, his beautiful eyes blazing with a fury even wilder than the bandits’—the Po Jun lineage, even in death, must ignite the world’s flames.

Behind the bandits, torches flared—Turkic cavalry approached. Under these circumstances, the bandits could only charge forward.

And at this moment—

In Tingfeng Pavilion, Li Guanyi, within the illusion, lifted the battle spear.

Far away in the desert, the ancient weapon seemed to sense it.

It shuddered violently, tilting forward—straight, decisive.

The charging bandits were split cleanly in two; blood splattered the sand. The howling wind seemed stirred by the divine weapon; the bandits froze, their horses tossing their heads, unwilling to advance.

Hoofbeats approached.

Behind the bandits, Turkic cavalry closed in rapidly.

The bandits gritted their teeth, jabbed spiked boots into their horses’ flanks; the mounts screamed in pain and charged ahead.

The wind howled, sand gathered; Po Jun could not see ahead. Then the grit coalesced, forming a hand that reached from his shoulder, grasping the fallen weapon. The young strategist froze, watching the unseen lord step over him.

Li Guanyi fully merged with Xue Shenjiang’s consciousness of the technique.

Beneath the moonlight, a storm erupted in the desert; the heavy divine weapon turned of its own accord.

In that memory, Li Guanyi’s spirit, will, internal qi, and spirit form all converged into this technique, summoning a tidal wave—if ocean waves surged under a storm, becoming a tsunami, then the general wielding the spear must be the storm that raised the chaos of this age.

He gripped the battle spear.

Far away in the desert, the divine weapon, resonating with Li Guanyi and Xue Shenjiang, awakened its spirit. Within the storm, the sand coalesced into a figure. Po Jun saw “him” lift the divine weapon, the spear’s tip pointing forward, as if legend reborn.

He paused—then swung the spear.

In Tingfeng Pavilion, Li Guanyi mastered [Rolling Wave].

In the desert, the battle spear named [Tiger Roar Heaven] swept through, its edge emitting a low, solemn roar—the tiger’s growl turned tyrannical.

The storm ahead was torn apart.

Dozens of charging bandits kept advancing, cut cleanly in half mid-charge; blood splattered, staining the desert red. The lead bandit’s head flew upward, blood spraying far, drenching half the young man’s clothes.

Beneath the moonlight, the spear descended before Po Jun; wind blew across the desert, littered with corpses. The youth stared ahead; the old guide rushed over to pull him away—but before they could move, torches loomed overhead, engulfing the scene.

The Turkic cavalry has arrived.

They rode warhorses, their armor less refined than that of the Central Plains, yet the crude iron plates radiated a savage, chilling menace; one hand gripped the hilt of heavy blades, the other held torches whose flames burned bright, as if ready to ignite the moon in the sky.

At their head was a young man wearing a jeweled headband, watching the scene.

“...a sinister weapon.”

He spoke, his warhorse stepping forward, hooves leaving behind scorching, flaming imprints on the desert sand—this was a mount bearing the blood of a demonic beast. The lord of the Seventh Tent of the Turks gazed at the weapon and the man, and said coolly: “A man of the Central Plains.”

“What do you want here?”

For centuries, slaughter between the steppe and the Central Plains had never ceased; these words carried murderous intent. The old man knelt pale-faced on the ground, surrounded by heavy cavalrymen like emissaries of hell, speechless. But Po Jun lifted his gaze, calm as a guest, and said: “I’ve come to deliver a gift.”

The Seventh Khan of the Turks showed little interest. “Oh? A gift?”

“What kind of gift?”

Po Jun looked at him and replied, “You are out of favor here. You long for the glory of the steppe kings from five hundred years ago—to win the submission of your people, to claim the woman you love, not watch her taken into your father’s tent, forced to call her ‘mother.’”

The old man’s scalp prickled.

He nearly screamed.

He wanted to grab a handful of blood-soaked sand and shove it into this Central Plains man’s mouth to silence him.

The Seventh Khan of the Turks stared fixedly at the man who had spoken straight to his heart.

Beneath the moonlight, the man’s eyes burned—not with moonlight, but with the wild, all-consuming fire of winter on the steppe, when withered grass and trees turn pale, and a single spark ignites a blaze that seems ready to burn the entire plain to ash—Po Jun smiled and said:

“I can grant you a thousand li of western territory, making you the most renowned among your brothers. There, your herds will graze on the grasslands of Tuyuhun; you shall feast on the beauties and delicacies of the Western Regions, and wield a curved blade forged of gold.”

“Who knows? Perhaps all you desire will one day return to your arms?”

These words, spoken by this handsome man of the Central Plains, sounded like the seduction of a demon from legend.

The Seventh Khan of the Turks asked: “What do you want in return?”

“I have only one wish.”

Po Jun gripped the weapon, now silent and unchanging:

“I ask you to send me back to the Central Plains.”

“I must meet someone. No matter how chaotic the mountains and rivers, no matter how distant the road—I must go to fulfill my destined path.”

In the eyes of the old guide, the fierce and tyrannical Khan of the Steppe finally loosened his grip on his blade. The man, half his robes stained with blood, caressed the weapon and smiled faintly—his smile quiet, his eyes reflecting the torchlight, ablaze with fire meant to consume the Western Regions.

The young man later known in history as [Cunning and Ruthless] revealed his fangs thereafter.

In the Listening Wind Pavilion, Li Guanyi released his grip on the divine weapon, his face pale.

He had learned—

Li Guanyi closed his eyes.

Xue Family: Battle Spear Rolling Waves.

Chen Duke: Divine Spear Shattering Mountains.

Five hundred years ago, the two famed generals, feared by the Central Plains emperor as Fierce as the Fierce Marquises, now had their ultimate arts converge upon one man. In the Xue family’s guest chamber, Changsun Wuchou gazed up at the night sky, where the stars lay still, and sighed:

“The stars are distant, the heavens calm—today is indeed a peaceful day.”

A merchant brought parchment, picked up his brush, and wrote a letter to the Phoenix far beyond the frontier, recounting today’s events.

“Second Miss.”

He paused, then wrote:

“Li Guanyi is alive again.”