Chapter 348: He Will Definitely Come (2)
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Four hundred kilometers away, Jun Mountain Terrace…
Under the light rain, the 72 islands of Jun Mountain seemed to have fallen into the clouds. Hundreds of large and small ferries passed through the islands. In just a few days, nearly ten thousand Jianghu people had gathered here, waiting for a peak battle that would definitely spread throughout the world to begin.
Ze Province was located in the middle of the Central Plains, and Jun Mountain Terrace was located at a river mouth in the Cloud Dream Swamp. Its unique geographical location made it tied to the word ‘Jianghu’ from the moment it appeared.
Jun Mountain Terrace was not a name set by the Xuanyuan family, but it was a treasured land of Jianghu since ancient times.
There were no less than a hundred sects of various sizes scattered around the Cloud Dream Swamp. Usually, they would each lead for decades. When they could no longer defend their position, the overlord of Ze Province would change. Jun Mountain Terrace had always been here. Whoever had the ability would occupy this treasured land.
The family of the current Saber Chief, Xuanyuan Chao, was one of the top wealthy forces in Ze Province from the previous generation. However, their martial arts practice was relatively complex and wasn’t specialized in the saber.
Xuanyuan Chao was a genius, but he looked down on the martial arts passed down in his family. He only liked to study unorthodox saber techniques, which was considered a violation of his ancestral teachings. Because of this, he left angrily when he was a teenager, determined to defeat Kuang Yazi, and didn’t look back. Speaking of which, his experience was similar to Pei Yuanfeng’s.
However, Xuanyuan Chao wasn’t as lucky. He didn’t encounter any Martial Chief who took him in as a disciple. When he was ten-odd years old, he took a boat to the Zhou family and asked Old Master Zhou to give him a saber. Then he joined the revolutionary army alone and fought throughout the 12 provinces of Great Wei with one saber. When attacking cities, he was the first to climb the walls, and when fighting in the fields, he captured the generals. He relied on the hundred blood battles to kill thousands of people and slowly developed an invincible saber technique.
Although the reputation of Xuanyuan Chao wasn’t very good, there were only a handful of people in history capable of being conferred the title of a founding marquis with their own martial strength alone. Their ability couldn’t be denied because of their character. There were many people in Jianghu who scolded Xuanyuan Chao, but there was no one who said that his saber wasn’t good.
The vast night shrouded the thousands of kilometers of blue waves. On a ten-thousand-foot-long platform at the center of the 72 islands…
The platform itself was a small island, but in the past thousand years, it had been gradually flattened and paved with bluestone bricks. It slowly evolved into the largest arena in the world. This was where the name Jun Mountain Terrace came from.
At the edge of Jun Mountain Terrace, there was a huge wordless stele with dozens of weapons inserted in it. They were all left behind by the discouraged challengers from the previous dynasty to this dynasty. There were sabers, spears, swords, halberds, and so on. Most of them were divine weapons that had experienced hundreds of years of wind and frost. But they had very little rust, and some were even as bright as new.
An old man was sitting under the stone stele.
The old man had long hair draped over his shoulders, and his upper body was naked. He was only wearing a black scale armor skirt, and there was a qilin belt around his waist. He was wearing half a set of Great Wei’s qilin armor.
The old man was over two meters tall. His shoulders were wide, and his back was broad. His arms were shockingly thick, like the arms of a python, tiger, or bear.
Under the contrast of his majestic body, the 1.5-meter-long broadsword beside him looked like the saber carried by ordinary martial artists. The ratio was very balanced.
The young man standing in front of him was of medium build, but at this moment, he looked tiny. Standing in front of the old man sitting cross-legged, he was only a head taller.
From the back, the old man was like the sun in the sky. From afar, people could feel the overwhelming pressure of killing thousands of people with his own hands. He didn’t look old at all.
But the old man was already over 70 years old after all. Among peak martial artists, who usually lived over 100 years old, he had reached the end of his peak. There were obviously many wrinkles on his face, and his long, disheveled hair was white. Only his eyes were still as sharp as when he was young.
The young man beside the old man was Xuanyuan Hongzhi’s eldest son, Xuanyuan Zhe. At this moment, his eyes were full of grief and indignation as he recounted the news that had just come from Ze Province.”… Uncle Yao, Father, Old Eighth Fan, and others went together, but they accidentally lost. There are disciples of Jun Mountain Terrace in the Ze Province army. They secretly sent a letter saying that only Uncle Yao was captured and sent to Rising Sun City on his last breath. The rest are corpses. I’m afraid Father…”
Sitting cross-legged on the arena, Xuanyuan Chao looked at the endless blue waves that he had watched growing up without saying anything.
Xuanyuan Chao had roamed Jianghu his entire life and only had two sons. In order to show consideration for his eldest son, even though he knew that he would leave an enemy alive, he still held back on the arena. But in the end, his eldest son still turned against him and never returned.
Because he had spared Zheng Feng’s life back then, his second son had died at the hands of the other party’s descendant. His only two sons were gone, and he even lost the successor he had trained.
To someone of Xuanyuan Chao’s age, no matter how much he had seen through the world, how could he not have waves in his heart?
“Grandfather, what should we do? Could it be that Ye Jingtang and the Prince of Jing’s people can casually kill members of our Xuanyuan family? Back then, you contributed to the founding of Great Wei and took the lead in more than a hundred battles. You were the first to attack Yun’an City. After succeeding, you retreated without even accepting the Great Ancestor’s grant of the official position of the general of the South Stabilizing Army. All these years, just the taxes alone, the combined power of the entire Jianghu in Zezhou didn’t pay as much as our family…”
“Matters of Jianghu belong to Jianghu. Ye Jingtang can’t take revenge by relying on the government. If he wants to avenge Zheng Feng, he can only bring his saber to Jun Mountain Terrace.”
“What if he doesn’t come? If he becomes a high-ranking official one day…”
“When Qiu Tianhe comes, he will definitely come,” Xuanyuan Chao said calmly, “This is how Jianghu is. If there’s hatred, there will be revenge. If there’s kindness, there will be repayment. Once this matter is exposed, Qiu Tianhe will definitely die if he steps onto Jun Mountain Terrace. If he doesn’t come, how can he be worthy of the Hornless Dragon Saber in his hand?”
When Xuanyuan Zhe heard this, the grief and indignation in his heart dissipated a little. He thought for a moment and said, “Grandfather, you’re already old. If you fight these two people…”
“I have dominated for seventy years and experienced all the storms that I should have experienced. When I die, it will be a joyous funeral. What I’m afraid of is not being killed by a saber one day but being afraid of moving forward when I have my saber in my hand one day.”
Xuanyuan Chao looked at the saber beside him. “If someone can kill me, Xuanyuan Chao, it is the change of the old and the new in Jianghu. After going through a cycle, it can be considered a good ending.
“If no one can kill me, and I’m undefeated even until death, my name will shake the world for a thousand years, and I will also have a good ending.
“At my age, 1 actually prefer the first option. It’s not a blessing for martial artists to be invincible until they die without meeting an opponent.
“I became invincible at the age of thirty, and 1 have been practicing my saber for another forty years. But if there’s no opponent with whom I can use it to my heart’s content, who can I show my saber to?
“I’m already standing at the peak of the mountain and can’t see the higher sky of the saber. What’s the difference between dying at thirty and dying at a hundred?”
Xuanyuan Zhe didn’t have the frame of mind of a Martial Chief, so he naturally didn’t understand these words. He asked, “Grandfather, if something happens to you, what will happen to the Xuanyuan family?”
“Status and wealth have to be defended by the saber in your hand, not by your father and grandfather. If you have the ability to live in riches, no one can take it away. If you don’t have the ability, you should live the life you deserve.”
