Chapter 282: Four In One
There were hundreds of ways to use a sword and a hundred other ways to use it spiritually. The swordsmanship Rocher had been practicing was called Heavenly Sword. This was a very potent cultivation method that did not belong to tier 4 or tier 5. In fact, even the second tier methods did not contain this illustration, simply because of the fact that the method did not belong to any tier at all.
This cultivation method was highly special—it was constituted by only one illustration, which was called the Heavenly Sword Illustration.
The illustrious method had turned up around eight hundred and seventy-five years ago, and at that time, it had stirred up quite a bit of turmoil in the eastern region.
The noble clans, the Burning Sky Palace, the Cloud Sect, and all the independent mighty practitioners as well which were scattered across the numerous counties of Eastern Region had chased it like a lion chased its prey. They had been extremely eager and the illustration had seen its fair share of blood. Rumor had it that the Heavenly Sword Illustration contained a powerful theurgy; if one mastered it, he/she would grasp the concepts of heavens and attain immortality!
Hundreds, thousands... No one knew just how many outstanding figures lost their life to the battle for this illustration.
In the end, it had been Cloud Sect itself which had managed to defeat all other competitors and obtained the Heavenly Sword Illustration. Later on, it was sent to the Burning Sky Palace for safe keeping.
The news had made a lot of practitioners grind their teeth in resentment. They wanted the illustration for themselves but they could not afford to mess with Cloud Sect or Burning Sky Palace. None of them had ever dared to break into the heavily guarded Burning Sky Palace and try to steal the Heavenly Sword Illustration. People had thought it was going to be hidden forever but things had gone South.
Exactly one year later, several copies of the Heavenly Sword Illustration appeared in market! It was said that those copies had been leaked from the Burning Sky Palace itself!
Why the palace leaked the copy of such a powerful method, no one had a clue. Rumors said it wasn't intentional. But the practitioners had still scrambled for them, even though they were just copies! If they failed to get one by force, they were even willing to pay a high price to buy one. A simple piece of paper, available in trash cans, once printed with the illustration could go for as high as the equivalent of about six hundred pounds of pure gold.
The practitioners still didn't find the price outrageous, even though the common folks of the city said that it was appalling even for such a powerful cultivation method.
Several business minded clans and merchants had bought a copy with a large sum of fortune, and then made several more of it to sell on their terms. Even at half price, the sheer demand was so high that they made another fortune with it.
Pretty soon, there came a time when almost everyone in the Eastern Region had managed to land himself a copy of the Heavenly Sword Illustration. The parchment then became like salt and its price began to plummet. Slowly the 600 pounds equivalent price turned into a single figure.
This had happened because, being a simple piece of paper in the first place, there were now too many people who were producing copies of the illustration.
That was only the secondary reason. A far more important reason arose when every single practitioner found that he or she just could not figure out a single thing about the Heavenly Sword from the Heavenly Sword Illustration...
They failed to understand it no matter how hard they tried, and had no clue what the heck it was...
Feeling that they had been fooled, those practitioners naturally became angry and dumped the Heavenly Sword Illustration on streets and in skewers as if it was nothing but trash.
This way, the highly powerful cultivation method found itself as the most widespread one among the Eastern Region, and also the cheapest one.
It was possible to practice this cultivation method, that much was certain. But the ability and the talent that its comprehension required was just too much for any one to master.
In the last eight centuries, among millions of practitioners in the Eastern Region, there had been three extraordinary guys who had successfully managed to master the method against all odds.
Zeki Zhu who lived 633 years ago, Matias Xuanyuan from 400 years ago, and Zain Ao from about a 100 years ago were the only ones to have mastered it. Till now.
And even though the three were all highly gifted, they had still only managed to learn three parts. The Megrez Sword, the Dubhe Sword, and the Merak Sword were the first three parts of the method but not the complete story. One could combine the whole into one if only one were gifted enough.
In so many generations throughout history, the three had only learnt the first three parts. From that legend, it was easy to imagine just how hard it was to practice the complete Heavenly Sword. And that was why few practitioners chose to practice this impressive cultivation method in spite of the easy access to its Illustration—it was just not designed for ordinary people! Its legend had spread far and wide and finally, after 875 years, Rocher had achieved the fourth part of the method!
“The fourth part, it's the fourth part! Rocher has grasped the fourth part— Phecda Sword—of the Heavenly Sword Illustration! Good heavens! He is the first one to manage that in 800 years!”
“Yeah, he is going to be a legend! Hang on. It seems like Rocher has not only been able to grasp the fourth part, he is going to display the four swords all at once. He is gonna merge the four swords and use them all at once! Zen is a goner now for sure!”
“I agree. Now Zen is going to be in trouble. You know, I once heard that each part of the Heavenly Sword can draw support from the power of the heavens. It is said that any practitioner who can manage the Heavenly Sword is a man favored by the heavens, or we could call him son of God. Once the four swords are out, Zen will definitely lose!”
“At first I thought that Zen was the one more powerful between the two, but I think we now know that in front of Rocher, Zen has no chance at all!”
A tiny shadow of a seed suddenly burst open before Rocher. Then, a fine tread emerged on the top of his head and abruptly shot up into the sky. In an instant, a gigantic whirlwind tornado appeared in the sky. As it came into being, it cascaded down towards the ground at a furious pace.
Soon as it touched the ground, it started to dissipate like mercury spilled onto the earth. This whirlwind was the vitality between the heavens and the earth!
The vitality itself was extremely violent and dangerous, especially when it had not been refined by practitioners and transformed into life vitality yet. But due to that precise reason of not being refined, it still contained a trace of the natural law in it.
In fact, it was said that when a practitioner reached higher levels of cultivation, and entered stronger realms, he would, in theory, be able to utilize this vitality between the heavens and the earth at his will. It was almost like commanding the world!
However, merely at the rank of nature level consummation, Rocher could not directly make use of the vitality. That did not matter today. The Heavenly Sword never actually “used” the vitality. It merely “drew support” from it and that, it could manage without Rocher's help.
Even drawing support from the vitality meant that Rocher was extremely powerful beyond thoughts and imagination.
“Four in one!” He commanded.
A faint shadow of a sword intent appeared around Rocher's Blood-corroding Sword. He had employed the sword intent to trap the natural law inside his sword. Using this extreme momentum which could generate ultra high quantities of impulses, he thrust immediately at Zen.
Although sword movements were of great importance in combating, the role those movements played could be outshone by the absolute power the sword carried.
As the sword shoved forward, it was like the sky had flipped over! The very air seemed to vibrate and twist. The sun seemed to shimmer!
The power of Rocher's four-in-one sword was formidable to say the very least. But it completely differed from Jacques's soul attack, and was not supposed to cause any damage to one's spirit.
Therefore, the audience was just a bit out of breath due to the overbearing air of this sword, unlike the last time when Zen and Jacques battled; in that battle, their souls had been bled dry of courage and they were almost gone. This time around, their souls were intact.
At the sight of Rocher's sword, an opponent who was a little wimpish or didn't have a strong willpower would have practically wanted to turn around and flee, because he wouldn't have had the guts to face it!
The disciples of Cloud Sect who were standing or sitting off the arena were already so unnerved; one could imagine just how Zen was doing on stage.
At this moment, Zen felt like he had entered a fairyland!
Everything looked ethereal, and there was only one gull on this land. He was standing by an endless coastline all alone, watching the entire sky collapse and bear down upon him.
This was not a spiritual attack. And all the scenes Zen saw were just a series of illusions caused by the menacing air of the sword.
“It's just some support he has drawn from the heavens and the earth, but the effect is already so amazing. What a powerful method! It's dangerous too, a bit too extreme for my taste.”
Clutching his Streamer Sword, Zen cried to the sky, “How do I tackle this one?”
If this were any other disciple facing such a situation, he or she would have most probably been on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. Once his heart went unsteady, he would lose the battle right away and wouldn't find any more chance to turn the tables!
However, Zen's heart had long since become as tough as a rock. Even if the sky had really caved in this time, he would have fought through till one of them won. And this? This was only a bluff that Rocher made up with the help of the vitality his method was drawing support from.
As the illusion advanced on him, Zen's life vitality slowly began to circulate inside him, almost as if in self defense.
His demonic life vitality gradually climbed up along the hand that was holding his sword. Stars were glittering above the dark purple aura of life vitality which was fluttering around the Streamer Sword. The stars themselves were roaming around in spirals or ellipses.
“Flick the sword!”
This was the most powerful move that Zen had grasped by himself whilst learning 'basic swordsmanship'.
Simultaneously as his sword stabbed forward, the spots of starlight strewn across the demonic life vitality suddenly sprang to life!
In theory, each of these spots could release a shot of overwhelming energy, which was already quite potent.
But right before the All Peaks Competition, Zen had, without any prior intentions, unexpectedly entered the Sun Moon Stars Picture. In there, he had received an insight on how to boost the power of the starlight while he was observing and meditating.
It was theorized that the collision of even two spots of starlight could make the already overwhelming energy 10 times more dangerous!
“Boom!”
With a deafening bang, two of the spots crossed paths and clashed, radiating blinding rays of light as if two real stars in the sky had bumped into each other.
Precisely at that very second, Zen's sword lunged forward.
Aided by the fusion of the stars, his sword was now carrying fierce and terrible amounts of energy.
'He has merely taken advantage of a bit of the vitality between the heavens and the earth. Meh! That aura is nothing, Rocher. Even if the sky had actually fallen down, I would have still crumbled you!' Zen bellowed inside his mind, strengthening his resolve even more.
Rocher's four-in-one sword converged with Zen's sword. At that moment, both of the contestants saw the towering determination in each other's eyes!
They were both determined to win in any possible way!
“BANG!”
With another loud clang, a ball of blazing light instantaneously rose from the arena.
As its shine increased and reached blinding levels, everyone felt the heat and became blinded for a moment.
After quite a while, the audience gradually started to recover their vision. What was going on! Slowly, as the arena came into focus, they saw that Zen was still standing in the same spot he had been, as motionless as a statue, while Rocher had been forced five steps backward, with a trace of blood hanging at the corner of his mouth.
“Holy cow! Zen's one sword attack pierced the monstrosity that Rocher conjured up!” A disciple shouted indecorously.