Chapter 464: The Sword Saint's Regret
As Ye Liyou exclaimed in surprise, Shen Anyu, carrying her on his back, leaped out of the water like a fish, directly into a stone chamber.
The transition was jarring. One moment, they were submerged in the frigid, dark embrace of the volcanic lake; the next, they landed with a soft thud on dry, ancient stone. The oppressive weight of the water vanished, replaced by a profound and heavy silence. There was no lingering dampness in the air, no suffocating humidity. A faint, steady current of fresh air suggested a hidden vent connected to the world above, a secret lung for this subterranean grotto. It was clear they were deep within the hollowed-out heart of the dormant volcano's wall.
Shen Anyu gently set Ye Liyou down, his movements steady and unhurried. He scanned their surroundings, his eyes quickly adjusting. The chamber was surprisingly bright. Embedded in the high, vaulted ceiling were dozens of luminous pearls, each the size of a pigeon's egg. They cast a soft, milky-white glow that bathed the entire space in an ethereal, shadowless light, a timeless luminescence that had likely persisted for centuries.
The interior wasn't large, perhaps seven or eight meters square, carved directly from the dark volcanic rock. The furnishings were sparse and monastic: a simple stone bed, a matching stone table, and a single stone chair. Everything was hewn from the same rock as the walls, giving the impression that the room had been grown rather than built. There was nothing special about the materials, yet the sheer age of the place gave it a solemn, almost sacred atmosphere.
But what truly commanded their attention, what made the air crackle with sudden potential, were the three items resting upon the stone table. Three jade boxes, carved from a deep, lustrous green material, sat undisturbed. Two were the size of thick books, while the third was long and narrow, its shape unmistakably that of a sword box. A thick, uniform layer of grey dust coated their surfaces, marking the countless years they had waited here, untouched by living hands.
"Senior… open them. Let's see what good things are inside."
Ye Liyou's voice was a hushed whisper, a stark departure from her usual cold composure. Her clear, icy eyes, which had faced death without a flicker of fear only moments ago, now sparkled with an intensity that bordered on reverence. A faint flush crept up her pale cheeks. The near-death plunge, the impossible discovery—it was a dizzying cocktail of adrenaline and awe. She was a woman who dealt in death and secrets, but this… this felt different. This was a true fortuitous encounter, an "Opportunity" spoken of in legends. She could feel a resonance in her very soul, a pull toward the ancient treasures that promised to reshape her destiny.
"Alright," Shen Anyu replied, a calm, knowing smile playing on his lips. "Let's see what we've found."
As he spoke, a mysterious light flickered deep within his pupils, a cosmos of shimmering runes appearing and vanishing in an instant. He activated his Void Breaking Divine Eye. To him, the world shifted. The solid, opaque jade of the boxes became as clear as glass, the physical matter peeling away to reveal the potent auras of the treasures held within. He saw the faint, yet razor-sharp Sword Intent emanating from one, the dense, scholarly energy from another, and a powerful, almost overwhelming life force from the third. They were all exceptional. Especially the third one.
It was at that precise moment that the familiar, monotonous voice of the System echoed in his mind, a sound more rewarding than any praise.
[Ding! The Child of Destiny, Ye Linyuan, has missed a core Opportunity. Plundering +1,200,000 Destiny Points!]
A rich, deeply satisfied smile spread across Shen Anyu's face. His guess had been dead on. It was all clicking into place, the gears of fate grinding to his will.
How could Blood Shadow Rose, Ye Liyou, a Destined Heroine of her caliber, possibly perish in a simple plane crash? How could she become "Rose Jam," as the System had so crudely put it? It was impossible. The very laws of narrative in this world forbade it.
Had Shen Anyu not intervened, the original script would have played out flawlessly. Ye Liyou, despite her strength being comparable to a Martial Dao Grandmaster, would have been grievously injured in the crash but would have miraculously survived the plunge into the volcanic lake. People of Destiny, protected by the heavens themselves, simply don't die from falling off cliffs or mountains. If you remained unconvinced, they would even stumble upon a life-changing treasure for their troubles.
The subsequent plot was painfully obvious. The protagonist, Ye Linyuan, driven by concern or destiny, would have come searching for her. He would have discovered this hidden stone chamber at the bottom of the lake, performed a heroic rescue, and claimed this incredible Opportunity for himself. A classic tale of heroism, reunion, and power-up.
But now, that entire storyline had been brutally and decisively ripped from the source. Shen Anyu had not only claimed the heroine, but he was now standing before the treasure meant to propel her fated partner to new heights. Every piece of the puzzle, every ounce of fortune, now belonged to him.
He had almost missed it. If he had simply rescued Ye Liyou and immediately left, this entire legacy would have remained submerged, waiting for its intended owner. His decision to investigate the volcanic lake, a simple act of thoroughness, had paid off on a scale he hadn't fully anticipated.
'A core Opportunity,' he mused, the number echoing in his mind. 'One point two million Destiny Points. Ye Linyuan really took a massive loss this time.' His gaze fell back upon the three jade boxes, the dust of ages unable to conceal the potent destiny they contained. 'All three of them are filled with good things.'
With a deliberate, almost ceremonial slowness, Shen Anyu reached for the first green jade box on the left. Ye Liyou held her breath, her eyes fixed on his hands, her entire body taut with anticipation. He blew gently, and five hundred years of dust puffed away in a soft grey cloud. With a faint click, he opened the lid.
Inside, nestled on a bed of faded silk, lay a secret manual bound in some unknown beast hide, its pages yellowed with age. The characters on the cover were archaic, written with a powerful, arrogant script that seemed to cut into the very material.
"Tian Jian Nineteen Styles."
Ye Liyou read the title aloud, her voice cracking with disbelief. "Tian Jian Nineteen Styles? That's… that's impossible! My Sword Palace's core legacy, our most sacred text, only has the Sky Sword Nine Styles!"
Her mind reeled. The Sky Sword Nine Styles was the foundational scripture of the Sword Palace, a peerless technique of exquisite profundity, said to be a direct path to the legendary Land Immortal Realm. Even their most prodigious talent in generations, Senior Sister Pei Changli, was rumored to have only mastered the seventh or perhaps the eighth style. The idea that their ultimate, world-shaking technique was incomplete—that it was missing ten entire styles—was blasphemy. It shattered the very bedrock of her understanding.
Could it be that the Land Immortal realm, the absolute peak of the martial world, wasn't the end?
Could it be that the founder of the Sword Palace, the legendary Sword Master Lin Xuanyan, who had vanished without a trace five hundred years ago, had truly broken through that celestial barrier and reached a realm beyond mortal comprehension?
Shen Anyu picked up the manual. As he flipped to the second page, three characters leaped out at him: "Lin Xuanyan." They were written with bold, forceful strokes, each line imbued with a terrifying, surging Sword Intent. An ordinary Heavenly Human expert would have their mind instantly overwhelmed by the sheer spiritual pressure contained within that signature, their consciousness lost in an endless storm of raging sword light.
Shen Anyu merely smiled, a flicker of amusement in his eyes. The Sword Intent washed over his soul and dissipated harmlessly. He continued to flip through the pages, his eyes scanning the contents at an impossible speed.
After absorbing the entirety of the "Tian Jian Nineteen Styles," a thoughtful expression settled on his face. He turned to the still-reeling Ye Liyou, whose eyes were wide with a million questions.
"This is indeed the legacy left behind by your Sword Palace's founder, Lin Xuanyan, five hundred years ago," he explained casually. "The complete Tian Jian Nineteen Styles."
He tapped the cover. "The first nine swords, the ones you know, can indeed take a cultivator to the Land Immortal realm. The next nine swords, from the tenth to the eighteenth, are the path to the peak of the Land Immortal realm."
Shen Anyu paused, letting the weight of his words sink in.
Ye Liyou felt as if a thousand tiny kittens were scratching at her heart, the suspense unbearable. She leaned forward, her voice urgent. "Senior, what about the nineteenth style? Did he… did he break through the peak of Land Immortal with it?"
Shen Anyu shook his head, a faint chuckle escaping his lips. "No. The nineteenth sword is incomplete. It's more of a concept, a theory. Even Lin Xuanyan himself couldn't complete its deduction. He couldn't make the final breakthrough."
From the contents of this incomplete final style and the information he possessed on Ye Linyuan's background, Shen Anyu could paint a clear picture of Lin Xuanyan's final years. He was a peerless genius, a man who stood at the absolute zenith of the martial world, yet he was stuck. He had reached the ceiling of this world and found it to be unbreakable.
And Shen Anyu knew the reason why.
It was the Divine Soul.
The martial artists of this world cultivated their physical body, their True Qi, their very essence. They cultivated Qi, but they neglected the mind, the spirit, the soul. Without a method to temper and transform their mortal soul into an immortal Divine Soul, they could never achieve the final qualitative change necessary for transcendence.
No matter how heaven-defying Lin Xuanyan's martial dao was, no matter how astonishingly brilliant his swordsmanship, if his soul remained mortal, he could never take that final step beyond Land Immortal and enter the higher world of the Martial God.
This was the great filter, the reason why powerhouses above the Heavenly Human realm were as rare as phoenix feathers, one in ten thousand. Without actively cultivating the Divine Soul, the sheer difficulty of condensing the three essences of vitality, Qi, and spirit to break open the Heavenly Human Secret Cache was almost insurmountable. A martial artist either had to be born with preternaturally powerful mental energy, spend centuries grinding it down through sheer force of will, or be lucky enough to obtain a treasure like the Heavenly Human Breakthrough Pill.
The difficulty for a Peak Grandmaster to break through to the Heavenly Human realm was exponentially greater than for an ordinary person to become a Grandmaster in the first place.
Shen Anyu's own past battle with the remnant soul of the Immortal Doctor, Lu Ran, was a perfect example. It had been an excruciatingly difficult fight, forcing him to use his Supernatural Skill Sharing and borrow Susan's power. Why? Because despite his own immense power, Shen Anyu was still fundamentally a martial artist. That battle had taken place in the soul space, a domain where his greatest strengths—his near-indestructible Steel Body and monstrous physical power—were useless. His body was outside, unable to influence the fight. He couldn't even bring a fraction of his true strength to bear.
Any other Heavenly Human expert would have been utterly crushed in that scenario, their soul extinguished without a fight. The only reason Shen Anyu had won was because he possessed the Tian Yuan Secret Technique, "Soul Destruction." It was the ultimate Opportunity he had plundered from the protagonist Ye Yan, the very technique that had allowed Ye Yan to eventually reach the Martial God realm and create an immortal legend.
The Tian Yuan Secret Technique was more than just a mental energy killing move; it was a method for refining the soul itself, strengthening it with every use.
Without a comparable secret technique, a genius like Sword Master Lin Xuanyan, for all his talent, could only stand before the final gate, his hand on the lock but missing the key. He could only wither away at the peak, his life ending in regret.
This was also why practitioners of other paths—spellcasters, sorcerers, and the like—though even rarer, found it far easier to break through to Heavenly Human Unity and even the Land Immortal realm. Their primary focus was the cultivation of the Divine Soul.
So why didn't everyone cultivate all three essences of vitality, Qi, and spirit? The answer was simple and brutal: the world couldn't afford it. The ambient Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi was thin and insufficient. The true cultivators had long since fled to places like the Xuanhuang World. In this depleted environment, cultivating even a single essence to its peak was an arduous, life-long struggle. Attempting to cultivate all three simultaneously without adequate resources and spiritual energy would only increase the difficulty to an impossible degree, ensuring mediocrity in all paths.
As these thoughts flashed through Shen Anyu's mind, his gaze, sharp and assessing, moved to the two remaining green jade treasure boxes.
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