Chapter 380 – Inheriting Qing Hancheng’s Legacy, Playing Every Angle - Part 1

A tattered robe snapped in the high wind.

A sharp-featured man skimmed through the air, covering miles in the blink of an eye, then slipped past the third gate of the Holy Tree Temple.

The wardens on the ramparts dropped to one knee as he went by, but he didn’t spare them a glance. His destination lay dead ahead. It was the White Bamboo Hanging Bell Tower at the very heart of the compound.

The tower had an outer block and an inner sanctum. The outer floors were where direct disciples like Ping'an trained.

Only two people were ever allowed inside the core. That was Gu Xuejian in one wing, and Qing Hancheng in the other. Qing Hancheng’s chamber faced the fourth rank meat field, the prime vein of blood essence in all the Holy Tree Temple. No one enjoyed a richer supply of blood energy.

In front of that inner door now, the man pressed his palm to a hidden dial. He turned it left, right, then left again, each twist a different weight and rhythm. The unlocking mechanism was a cipher in place of a key. At last he knocked once, and the door swung open.

No one except Qing Hancheng had crossed this threshold in centuries.

The intruder was, of course, Li Yuan.

During their final duel Qing Hancheng had told Li Yuan everything. There was no bargaining, no melodramatic

avenge me!

Speeches.

Qing Hancheng simply understood that Li Yuan and

those people

could never coexist. Large factions rarely tolerated a maverick who could write his own cultivation technique from scratch.

The locals might never notice Li Yuan’s faked death or grasp what a self-created cultivation technique really meant, but the powers behind the curtain would figure it out in a heartbeat.

The clash was inevitable; why waste breath pretending otherwise?

So Qing Hancheng dropped the scheming grandmaster act and, for three days, became the best tutor Li Yuan could ask for. He dumped lore, tactics, and hard-won experience into his student’s head.

When the lesson was over Qing Hancheng smiled and let his body crumble to ash. The last vestige of his will was then sapped into the Wither Growth Sword, becoming one with all the previous temple masters.

After Qing Hancheng’s death, Li Yuan paused only long enough to don the deceased temple master’s face, then strolled away from the Flying Swallow Terrace.

And Bubba, the big oaf who had been publicly

defeated

by Qing Hancheng? Li Yuan would let the higher powers shine their floodlights, dig up the rubble, and scavenge night and day for whatever clues remained. An identity that conspicuous was already useless to him, so he tossed the persona aside.

With Qing Hancheng officially

alive

, the ripples were minimal. Li Yuan’s exit was effortless, his entry here unopposed.

He shut the door behind him and surveyed the room. It was sparingly furnished and spotless. Scroll tubes crowded the desk, books lined the shelf, and the bed exuded a soothing, steady pulse of spiritual calm.

Overhead hung a calligraphy piece. Two bold words blazed with unrestrained swagger—

Heaven’s Equal.

Li Yuan couldn’t help but chuckle. He mused, “So the feared temple master, Qing Hancheng, was a closeted

chunibyo

. Who says scheming old foxes can’t have a starry-eyed side?”

From the tone of Qing Hancheng’s diaries, Li Yuan figured the man had once been as naive and innocent as Ping'an in his youth. It was simply that rank and responsibility taught him to hide it, revealing his true self only where no eyes could pry. Cultivation had stripped away every other attachment, even family, until nothing remained but the path.

“Heaven’s Equal,” Li Yuan murmured. “Heaven shelters ten thousand things yet stands alone. If Heaven won’t bend, why bother to call it whole?”

He plucked the scroll down, rolled it tight, and slipped it into an empty tube. Then his fingers rifled through the stack until he found three more cylinders.

Inside were the three diagrams that made up the life chronicle, the very heart of the Holy Tree Temple’s legacy.

Out in the main hall every disciple, including Gu Xuejian, had been studying from diagrams the temple master had copied by hand, not from these original sheets. The effects were almost identical,

almost

being the key word.

Clearly, Qing Hancheng had hoarded the originals the way a miser hoarded gold, terrified that someone might one day outstrip him or start trouble he couldn’t stamp out.

Li Yuan thought it over. In Qing Hancheng’s shoes, he might have done the same. A real treasure was for you and your own blood; why share it with the world? Even the three paintings he’d left behind at The Bladeseekers were second generation copies.

The difference was that Qing Hancheng no longer had any family while Li Yuan still did.

He studied the three true drawings with quiet curiosity. Their age showed in the trim and ornaments around each scroll, yet the paper and ink looked as fresh as yesterday. It was obviously made up of no ordinary materials.

Thanks to the time he spent cultivating in the Holy Tree Temple, he recognized them at a glance.

First came

A Single Thought Between Water and Clouds

, anchor of the Evergreen Art. Second was

Mass Grave of a Hundred Ghosts

, core of the Cycle of Withering and Growth. Third,

Evening Traveler at the Long Pavilion

, heart of the Return-Willow Technique.

Li Yuan, who had once painted his own visualization aids, felt their meaning unfold.

“A Single Thought Between Water and Cloud depicts how a tree lives by borrowing water and stays forever green. The mind should mirror that, remaining calm, supple, and turning inward.

“The Mass Grave of a Hundred Ghosts illustrates a field of corpses littered with coffins and straw mats, some half-exposed, some clawed open by stray dogs... In the gloominess, arms thrust from the soil, maybe an unfortunate victim when the dead were tossed in, maybe the dead crawling back to life.

“A grim scene, yet perfect for the Cycle of Withering and Growth.

Wither

is death and

growth

is rebirth. Only those who have died burn so fiercely to live. That yearning becomes power, even if it drives the practitioner to ruin and internal conflict...

“No wonder Qing Hancheng thought of letting one personality devour the other to achieve his

True Self

. Eat or be eaten fits this cultivation path.

“Evening Traveler at the Long Pavilion... you can’t tell if the guest is arriving or leaving. Sunset, willow branches trailing in the wind...” Li Yuan mused, “Whether it’s coming or going is beside the point. What matters is moving as you please, like those willows departing, returning, and swaying with the breeze. But a guest is always a guest, and guests must one day travel on.”

The three scrolls, the insights hidden inside them, every Holy Tree Temple cultivation technique from ninth to fourth rank, and even the contents of this little chamber itself was a parting gift from Qing Hancheng. He simply hadn’t expected Li Yuan to stroll in wearing his face.

“These paintings and manuals won’t help me much,” Li Yuan mused to himself, “But Ping'an, Huayin, Yao Jue, and Shuxiang, they’ll gain a fortune from them. I just have to warn them about pausing after reaching fourth rank.”

Still, now that he knew the flaw, could he mend it? The core problem was an imbalance between spirit and flesh. If he could strengthen the ancestral seal so it could keep up with the later shadow blood stages, the scales would right themselves.