Chapter 296: Wave-Cleaving

“All the meals are carried in by those old servant women. We tried asking those old servant women a few questions in private, but they’re so tight-lipped. If they don’t want to talk, they just don’t. They even warned us not to spread rumors.”

“So secretive?”

“Mm-hm. She’s a fine, delicate lady. Even the sun’s not allowed to shine on her. She’s completely different from people like us who are out in the wind and rain every day.”

The other woman sighed. “We still count as lucky, you know? Our village’s crops all sell straight to the Li Family down south. We’ve got a fixed buyer, so we’re not worried about finding a market. Even in a famine year, we can at least keep food in our mouths. Look at the other villages in the township, half their people have already run off.”

Aunt Liu hissed between her teeth. “You don’t think that noblewoman is from the Li Family, do you? Just look at how the village chief treats her. It’s as if she’s his ancestor.”

They chatted for a while longer, until they felt a few cool drops spatter onto their heads. They looked up.

The dark clouds were rolling in, low and heavy, dragging curtains of rain beneath them as they swept over.

In the mountains, the weather changed several times in a day if it wanted. The women had no choice but to gather up their laundry in a hurry and start back. They had not gone far when dozens of riders thundered up the mountain road toward them. The leading rider reined in close, looking down from the saddle and asking, “Two aunties, which way is it to Benlei Village?”

The other woman opened her mouth to answer, but Aunt Liu tugged at her sleeve, wary. “Who are you people?”

The rider drew out the token at his waist and flashed it to the two women. “We’re working on orders from the Xia Province, so please cooperate with us.”

The token gave off a faint glow. The two women could not read, but they had heard plenty of talk that officials carried a special treasure called a mandate token, which was practical and could emit light.

The token in the rider’s hand radiated a pressure that brooked no argument.

Seeing more than thirty riders around them, all fully armored and armed to the teeth, Aunt Liu’s heart fluttered with unease. She lifted a hand and pointed west. “If you’re heading to Benlei Village, then just follow this road for about half a kilometer.”

The lead rider gave a sharp whistle, and the rest spurred their horses and galloped away toward the village.

The rain came down in earnest a moment later.

The two women huddled under their laundry tubs, heads tucked in, slogging through mud and puddles as they hurried home.

Strangely, neither of them had much to say this time. They were not cursing the weather as they usually did.

At the moment, their minds were simply filled with curiosity as to what those thirty-odd riders were going to Benlei Village for.

Within a few breaths, the wind and rain were so fierce they could hardly open their eyes. Their steps slowed whether they liked it or not.

By the time they finally trudged back to the village entrance, dripping and exhausted, they saw the same group of riders coming toward them again.

It looked like they had already finished whatever errand they had in Benlei Village and were now on their way out.

But this time, there was a carriage together with the group of riders.

The carriage was right in the middle of the formation of riders, and it seemed like they were guarding it for escort.

Despite the downpour, villagers had still rushed out of their homes to gather under eaves and watch the spectacle. The biggest crowd Auntie Liu saw at a glance was gathered near the village chief’s house.

Her heart gave a jump as she said, “They really went to see the village chief!”

She snagged a young farmer who was standing nearby, craning his neck. “Hey, Young Li, what happened at the village chief’s place?”

“Those guys who look like constables came and took several people away from his house. They said that they were harboring a wanted criminals!”

“Wanted criminals? What wanted criminals?” Aunt Liu’s mind went straight to that so-called noblewoman.

Another villager commented, “It looked like someone died in there, too! I saw blood on the ground!”

Aunt Liu’s eyes widened. “Someone died in the village chief’s house?”

“It didn’t look like someone from his family, though...”

But once that statement left his mouth and passed from ear to ear, it did not stay that modest for long.

Before long, the rumor had become that a lot of people had died in the village chief’s house.

* * *

On the front line where the two armies faced off, the same heavy rain was pouring down.

Most days, the camps were noisy and bustling. But today, they were almost eerily quiet. Everyone was hiding in their tents, and only the soldiers on duty remained outside, standing stiff and miserable in the downpour, heads bowed on the walls and watchtowers as they endured the soaking rain.

Thieves and assassins loved weather like this, with clouded skies and roaring storms, when the moon and stars were hidden. Steal in wind, not in moonlight; steal in rain, not in snow—the same rule applied to army raids.

In such wild wind and rain, it was all too easy for an enemy to creep close under the cover of the storm and launch a surprise attack.

So the Yuan forces had their nerves taut as bowstrings, and their vigilance raised to the highest.

The waters of the Han River had begun to rage in the afternoon. Soldiers kept well away from the banks; no one wanted to be standing on the edge when a section of shoreline suddenly collapsed.

However, there was one person who went completely against the norm, and this was none other than Young Master He, the same “if I don’t stir up trouble I’ll die” Young Master He. When he saw the river swelling and the waves heaving like beasts straining at a leash, he burst out laughing. Saber in hand, he marched straight down toward the river.

He frightened half the nearby guards out of their wits. They rushed to report it up the chain of leadership. General Zhao Pan, terrified that Governor-General He’s beloved son would drown right here in his camp, hurried to send someone to inform the provincial governor.

He Chunhua shot to his feet, slamming his hand on the table. He was ready to drag his disgrace of a son back by the scruff of the neck and give him a good tongue-lashing. But before he could storm out, Shan Youjun returned with an explanation. It turned out that the young master was on the verge of a breakthrough and had to enter the river to practice a saber technique.

What saber technique can’t be practiced on the bank? On flat, solid ground?

He Chunhua asked, “Is he being serious? What saber technique is he practicing?”

Shan Youjun answered, “Yes, the young master is being serious. He said that he’s practicing the Wave-Cleaving Saber.”

He Chunhua thought about it, then slowly sat back down. “Keep an eye on him. If anything happens, I’ll be questioning you first.”

“The young master’s tied a rope around his waist,” Shan Youjun added with a grin. “If he gets swept away, we’ll just haul him back in.”

In the end, He Chunhua swallowed his anger and gave his consent.

When Zhao Pan heard the final decision, he secretly shook his head.

This Governor-General He can be ruthless and precise in his handling of affairs, every calculation cold and clear, but when it comes to his own son, he turns indulgent and soft.

Well, I’ve already warned him. If anything happens, I won’t be to blame.

Down by the river, He Lingchuan stood on the bank, looking at the roiling water. Then he stripped off his upper garments, leaving only his trousers, grabbed the Fleeting Life saber, and waded into the river.

He was not completely brainless. He chose a solid rock outcropping beneath his feet, tested its stability, and braced himself.

He had spent months practicing the Wave-Cleaving Saber, counting both the time he had spent training in the waking world and the Panlong Dreamscape, of course. His speed, stability, and accuracy had all improved significantly. Because the Wave-Cleaving Saber could be blended with his Swallow’s Return movement technique, he had been able to create moves like the Swallow’s Return Slash.

However, the continuous, overwhelming momentum that the saber technique demanded was something he had always struggled to grasp.

The name of the saber technique, wave-cleaving, said it all. If you trained to cleave waves without actual waves, how good could the results be?

He had taken a saber into the great lake of the Panlong Dreamscape more than once. The water was deep enough there, but no matter how he practiced, he had always felt it was lacking something. The currents were tame. The chill was bone-deep, but the waves were too calm.

Now, Heaven itself had delivered him this opportunity, so how could he not seize it?

The current grew stronger with every breath. The first dozen strikes he made into the water did nothing but spray water everywhere. The force of the river shoved his saber aside, twisted his posture, and nearly knocked him off his footing more than once. His feet slid on the rock, and he swallowed more river water than he cared to admit.

Up above, the sentries on the bank pointed and muttered, laughing at the idiot flailing about in the water below.

But slowly, the flailing subsided.

Soon enough, he no longer staggered as much, even though the stone beneath him had been scoured slick as polished jade by the rushing current.

He drew on the true energy stored in his dantian and sent it surging into his legs. It poured down like molten iron, flooding his calves and feet, anchoring him until his stance felt as unshakeable as bedrock.

Then his saber strokes became slower and slower.

Only slow strokes could be steady, and only slow strokes could link into one another like a chain.

It was only when he slowed his strokes with the saber that the river’s force met his saber head-on, full and unmitigated.

The waves churned around him, muddy-yellow and foaming. Water spun into vortices and crashed past his body. As he was training, he recalled the scenes he had witnessed before of Officer Xiao Maoliang at Xiqing Gorge, spear in hand, charging the giant Meng Shan. Every thrust had crashed forward like thunder with unstoppable might. He also recalled the scenes of Nian Songyu, possessed by a god, fighting the black flood dragon in the Panlong Illusion Realm. Each stroke of that saber technique had been vast, open, and domineering, with saber light splitting heaven and earth.

Compared to those two, his own Wave-Cleaving Saber was still nothing but child’s play. However, as he repeatedly analyzed the rise and fall of the waves—their swelling, their collapse, and the way they rolled into the next and the next unendingly—he came to realize their lack of form yet undeniable might.

Wave after wave slammed into him, each akin to a carriage slamming right into him. For the first time, he truly understood what it meant to be pushed, squeezed, and ripped at from all sides at once. Every joint and muscle shrieked in protest.

Perhaps this, too, was part of wave-cleaving’s essence. The art of using force, understanding it, borrowing it, and returning it.

He gritted his teeth and refused to yield. When he finally hacked his saber down for the sixty-seventh time, the wave surging toward him seemed to hesitate, though just barely. The force of its impact diminished.

Barely a heartbeat later, Shan Youjun’s voice carried from the west bank, “Master, come up! There’s a giant wave coming!”

A towering swell smashed into him head-on like an iron wall. It rolled over his head, plunging him underwater.

He choked on a mouthful of river. Instinct snapped his mind clear. He drew the saber back, fumbling for the rope at his waist.

He was here to train, not to throw himself into the river as an offering.

On the bank, a line of personal guards braced together and hauled on the rope. As a team, they dragged him out of the water.

He Lingchuan staggered onto shore, soaked from head to toe, water streaming from his hair. He had barely shaken the water from his eyes when another great wave crashed over the riverbank, slamming into the spot where he had been standing moments ago.

The impact hit with a boom, and the rock that he had used as a foothold vanished beneath the churning waters.

The wave was terrifyingly large. Everyone instinctively scrambled further back from the edge.

The Han River had always run clear. Now the wave from the west was a raging, filthy yellow, laden with mud and sand, stones and snapped branches. It roared like a furious yellow dragon.

The ground trembled beneath their boots from the force of the flood.

He Lingchuan planted Fleeting Life in the earth and leaned on it, breathing hard. He closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the roar of the river, to the pounding in his veins. He felt the shared rhythm between the two.

Water had no fixed form, but it had power. Just like the saber intent he had been chasing, intangible yet overwhelming.

Rain ran down his forehead and cheeks, dripping off his chin. His hand settled on the saber hilt at his hip almost of its own accord. He took one step forward and, in a diagonal blur, slashed out a single stroke.

A little tree in front of him whipped and thrashed wildly in the gale, branches flailing in every direction. When his blade fell, not a single twig dropped.

His swing did not even look impressive. The saber’s path was skewed, his speed unhurried. It was the kind of strike that, at first glance, invited ridicule.

Shan Youjun and the others kept their silence, but a pair of sentries further off could not help snickering.

Is this Young Master He just a decorative silver spear with a wax head? In this torrential downpour, he headed into the river to cleave the waves but nearly drowned. And now he’s showing off again on shore, yet he failed to even lop off a single leaf. How pathetic.

They had thought guard duty by the river would be dangerous and dull. Who knew it would come with a show?

He Lingchuan kept the saber with a clear metallic clang and gave them a brief grin before turning away.

He and Shan Youjun walked ten to fifteen meters along the bank. Behind them, the two sentries were still trading quiet jokes when a muffled cracking sound cut across the rain.

They turned just in time to see a chunk of the riverbank, larger than a round table, split open. First, a single fissure, then a widening crevasse, and then the whole slab of hardened soil broke free and tumbled into the roiling river.

It had fallen from a spot about three meters behind the little tree He Lingchuan had just “aimed” at.

The two sentries stopped laughing. They stared at each other, expressions slowly changing.

Could it be that Young Master He’s saber qi had slipped through the whipping branches of the little tree and sliced into the ground behind it, severing the earth along the river’s edge?

The riverbank had been baked dry and hard through an entire rainless winter. Everyone knew how solid the soil was. How much force would it take to cut it clean through?

And the branches, there were hundreds of them whipping back and forth in the wind. For the saber qi to thread through all that without nicking a single leaf...

It must be a coincidence, surely.

It must be.

He Lingchuan did not care what they believed. That one stroke, timed perfectly with the wild pulsing of the river inside him, had washed away the heavy numbness that lingered from his time in the water. His mind felt sharper, his breath came easier, and something inside his chest had... loosened.

He wondered if he could repeat that strike on command.

He honestly did not know.

But in that moment, by sheer chance and hard work combined, he had brushed against the threshold of saber intent. He did not dare claim a cultivation breakthrough, but his comprehension and internalization of the intent behind wave-cleaving had taken a small but genuine step forward, smoothing into something more fluid and whole.

He had advanced in his mastery of the Wave-Cleaving Technique.

Now, he needed time and practice to fix that gain in place.

Elated by the feeling, he strode back toward the camp in high spirits, even whistling a little tune as he went.

On his way past the central command tent, he caught the sound of raised voices from inside. There was unmistakable agitation in the tones, and one of them was his father’s.

He Lingchuan did not stop to think. He headed straight for the entrance.

The guards stepped in front of him at once. “Halt. No one enters without a summons.”

He could not be bothered to argue. He tipped his head back and shouted, “Father!”

“Chuan’er?” He Chunhua’s voice came through the canvas. “Let him in!”