Qin Ming was stunned. Could this saber manual truly be exceeding all expectations, delivering one surprise after another?
The elder's saber technique was already breathtaking, giving him a glimpse into an exceptionally lofty realm of the saber path. It was only because his heavenly light had just taken form that he could not yet fully display the might of that most powerful strike.
Now, before he had even practiced the elder's heavenly light force, this "Tathagata force" was already reacting?
Soon, Qin Ming shook his head again. He should not set his hopes so high; if someone had truly cultivated the Tathagata force, they likely would never have looked twice at this saber manual in the first place.
The Sky-Upholding force and the Tathagata force were stronger even than the Giant Spirit God force, belonging to legendary methods of force. One had to keep in mind that the goal of the Giant Spirit God force was to achieve godhood, making it already exceedingly formidable.
After reflecting on this, Qin Ming reached a judgment: the legendary heavenly light forces could not possibly be recorded in this manual.
He threw all his thoughts entirely into the book, immersing himself in the text and resonating with the emotion within.
The more focused he was and the tighter he concentrated his mind, the clearer the sounds and images became.
Qin Ming turned first to the page regarding the "Tathagata force." A single sentence had stirred such turbulent emotion, revealing just how profound the obsession of the person who left the note had been.
Before him, a burly, rugged man appeared. His face was covered in a bushy beard, and a broad saber was slung across his back. Standing beneath a thunderstorm, he looked up at the night sky and sighed.
In the end, he shouted aloud, "Tathagata force? Like hell! I just cultivated a damn nail!"
*What is going on here?* Qin Ming froze, nearly losing his concentration and dropping out of the resonance because of that shout.
A moment later, understanding dawned. The bearded man had followed clues through endless hardships, finally uncovering a secret cache left by predecessors and obtaining several pages of manuscript.
The opening was deeply intimidating, its very first passage informing future readers that this secret method was related to the Tathagata force!
Yet when the man read through it carefully, eagerly flipping to the final page, he nearly ripped the paper to shreds. The last line stated that this was a nail force with exceptionally sharp penetration.
The earliest owner of the paper had earnestly informed future generations that within the complete composition of the Tathagata force, the nail force was an indispensable part.
Qin Ming was left speechless, fully understanding the bearded man's frustration.
In truth, any sect-defining supreme art was formed by combining many different methods of force, ultimately forging a rare heavenly light force.
That was even truer of legendary forces.
Everyone knew that the single sheet carrying the true transmission of the Tathagata force would undoubtedly be densely packed with various force techniques.
Qin Ming sighed. No wonder the bearded man's note carried the word "hate." He had probably been thoroughly dumbfounded and bitter, given the immense effort poured into hunting down those pages.
Afterward, Qin Ming began to follow along and learn.
Cursing aside, the man had still studied this force technique, practicing it with fierce indignation because he felt utterly swindled.
Resonating with him, Qin Ming was affected as well, almost caught up in his fiery temper.
At first, Qin Ming tried to suppress it. But he soon realized that the more he gave in to that anger, the stronger the mental resonance grew and the clearer the insights became.
Immediately, he let go completely!
When he closed the book, his lips were still muttering, "Cultivated a damn nail, my ass!"
Qin Ming closed his eyes, spending a full quarter of an hour calming his mind before completely shaking off that emotional state.
He walked into the courtyard and began to practice earnestly. The movements flowed with absolute ease, without the slightest hesitation or stiffness, as though he had studied it for half a lifetime.
The heavenly light within his body surged swiftly, gathering at his fingertips into sharp points of radiance as the nail force gradually took shape.
By echoing the predecessor's emotions, it felt as though he had lived through those experiences himself. Those insights and trials were firmly seized by him, becoming the fuel for his own growth.
Yet this did not mean his nail force possessed decades of accumulated cultivation strength.
He had merely witnessed those moments and resonated with the insights and experiences; he had not inherited raw power, and still needed to train himself.
In a sense, this emotional resonance yielded the greatest value and effect when applied to technical skills—such as studying saber manuals, spear forms, or sword scriptures. It enabled him to master them with swift efficiency, achieving sudden enlightenment in a single morning as if he had practiced for decades.
However, elevating his life order—such as progressing from the second Newborn to the third Newborn—and accumulating the overall reserve of heavenly light force still required his own patient accumulation.
In those realms, there were no shortcuts.
*Even so, this is more than enough! After all, some forces are extraordinarily difficult to practice and thoroughly comprehend.* Qin Ming was deeply satisfied. Holding the crystallizations of his predecessors' efforts and aligning with them on a spiritual level had granted him immense gains.
Studying it closely, he found the nail force quite formidable. Though the name was not particularly grand, it was immensely practical in actual combat.
With Qin Ming's natural talent, cultivating the nail force would not have been difficult on his own, but entering the threshold swiftly by drawing upon those experiences and insights was naturally welcome. It saved him precious time.
Without exerting much effort, Qin Ming lightly poked a finger forward, driving it cleanly into the stone millstone.
The heavenly light force he produced from practicing the silk book possessed various properties such as adhesion, tearing, and penetration. Without a doubt, the nail force could be incorporated into it!
Suddenly, Qin Ming heard weeping, and he pushed the door open to step outside.
"Old Master Li just passed away," he heard people say on the street.
Qin Ming's heart skipped a beat. Looking up at the night sky, he roughly gauged the location; the patch of black mist that had appeared earlier had descended near the Li family's home.
A chill crept into his heart. *What is going on here?*
Could this world truly harbor soul-reaping ghosts and specters? He did not believe in such things; even the so-called mountain monsters were merely higher-order variants.
Yet he had indeed spotted that black mist, invisible to ordinary eyes, gliding from afar like a spirit serpent.
"Is that what Cao Long and Mu Qing spoke of—something invisible that even prominent clans dread?" Qin Ming felt a tightening in his chest.
He observed the surroundings without giving away his thoughts, but he did not see the black mist again.
Twin Trees Village was not large, with only about forty households. If the wind stirred the grass, word spread through the whole village in no time.
Xu Yueping came over, sighing. "Now that grain from the outside has been brought in, mutated creatures have pulled back from the outer edges of the mountains, and hunting has become safer. Days were just about to get better, yet some elders chose this very moment to pass away."
Hearing this, Qin Ming immediately sensed something amiss and asked, "Have many elderly people passed away recently?"
Xu Yueping nodded. "Yes. In the surrounding villages, elders have been dying every day lately."
Then, as if recalling something, he added, "A few young men injured during hunts couldn't pull through recently either."
He lowered his voice. "Some say the young men who died might be tied to entering the mountains to gather abandoned weapons, so no one dares go anymore. Still, another group brought weapons back and nothing happened to them."
Qin Ming frowned, suspecting that all of this was connected to the black mist.
Furthermore, the place where he had first seen the mist was precisely that Grand Rift Valley strewn with weapons.
Qin Ming's mood grew heavy, yet he could not speak of these things to anyone.
The bright, buoyant mood from mastering both the silk-reeling force and the nail force was utterly ruined. Would that fathomless, highly perilous black mist return?
Qin Ming felt uncertain and sensed an intense urgency; he had no wish to leave his fate in the hands of unpredictable factors.
He strode toward Old Man Liu's house to ask where a blacksmith shop could be found.
"You want to forge a saber, and do it with your own hands?" Old Man Liu looked surprised.
Qin Ming nodded. "Yes. I need a dependable blacksmith shop. I urgently need a good blade right now."
Old Man Liu shook his head. "So much has happened recently, and people can hunt in the mountains again, so business at the blacksmith shops is booming. They're swamped right now, so there's no way they can clear a spot for you. How about tomorrow early morning, before they start their shift?"
Qin Ming considered it and finally nodded. He figured the smiths would surely refuse him if he showed up right now, and offering an extravagant price would draw too much attention in these sensitive times.
He reckoned that since the black mist had just visited Twin Trees Village, it would likely move to another area for the time being. If people kept dying in such a small village, it would look abnormal no matter what.
"Let's set out in the middle of the night. This is my first time forging a blade, and without experience, I don't know how long it will take."
"Why put yourself through the trouble? Just have someone make it for you." Old Man Liu knew the blacksmiths well, but since he was currently undergoing his third Newborn transformation, it was inconvenient for him to step outside to greet them. He kicked the big yellow dog. "Dog, get up and deliver a letter for me."
...
Returning home, Qin Ming studied the saber manual attentively to calm his mind.
He saw the elderly man once more, swinging his blade.
The elder had mastered an intercepting force, an exquisite heavenly light force forged by blending multiple ordinary methods of force.
Qin Ming did not know how many kinds had been combined, as that particular emotion was not intense and the imagery remained relatively dim.
Qin Ming obtained the final intercepting force. The moment he began to practice, he realized this heavenly light force was exceptionally powerful and remarkably complex.
If he had to research and comprehend it on his own, it would have taken a very long time, for it was no longer a single-attribute force, but something rather profound.
Qin Ming glimpsed that segment of the elder's memories: his pursuit of the intercepting force had actually been aimed at seeking the legendary Sky-Severing force!
Unfortunately, though the elder possessed extraordinary aptitude and had advanced far along the saber path, his progress in life order could not keep pace, and he had no access to renowned forces. Developing the intercepting force was the limit of his reach.
*Just this intercepting force alone makes using the three-colored flower worth it!* Qin Ming already understood its true value.
"Severing a thread of the heavens, hoping to tear open the curtain of night..." He clearly saw that even the saber manual was evolved entirely from this heavenly light force; the intent of that most powerful strike lay in those very words: Severing the Heavens.
Qin Ming sat quietly, silently digesting it for a long while. The intercepting force was indeed remarkable.
Before long, a look of surprise crossed his face. His own heavenly light force indeed shared traits with various elements and could incorporate the intercepting force!
Now he finally understood why that note had been inscribed on the silk book—it was indeed meant as a pointed reminder to posterity: the word was *Fuse*!
"One must seek within oneself, and also draw upon things without."
Clearly, seeking within alone was not enough. Without spiritual substance, how could he rapidly elevate his life order merely by slowly grinding away on his own?
And without other force methods, what would he fuse?
Qin Ming drank down the last of the spiritual substance. That night, as his body grew burning hot once more, he thoroughly completed his third Newborn transformation, doing so even faster than during his second.
He felt the change within himself. His strength had unquestionably surpassed three thousand jin, while his speed, physical resilience, and other attributes had advanced alongside it, resulting in a considerable surge in overall fitness.
In the middle of the night, Qin Ming opened his eyes, stepped out of his house, and met up with Old Man Liu.
The blacksmith shop was located in Silver Vine Town. At this hour, the town was dead quiet; no matter how thriving business was, nobody would be working in the dead of night.
Old Man Liu was brimming with vigorous vitality, personally working the bellows for Qin Ming to raise the furnace's heat.
Yet to Qin Ming's dismay, they could not melt that piece of mutton-fat jade iron no matter what they did; in the end, it only turned red-hot.
"What kind of rare treasure is this? You truly are something—it must be some mysterious product from the deep mountains, right?" Old Man Liu guessed immediately.
"Keep working the bellows!"
In the end, Qin Ming gave up on melting it down entirely. Taking advantage of the mutton-fat jade iron glowing red, he swung the heavy hammer and pounded it with fierce vigor. Fortunately, they were underground; otherwise, the noise in the dead of night would have been deafening.
Even with Qin Ming's immense strength, he was thoroughly exhausted by the end, for he never stopped, pouring full power into every strike.
"Did I achieve my third Newborn transformation just to end up as a blacksmith's apprentice?"
Old Man Liu could no longer bear to watch and took over personally. His craft was somewhat better than Qin Ming's; after all, he was very familiar with the smiths and had forged blades here with his own hands before.
Qin Ming learned quickly. Taking back the heavy hammer, he poured in every ounce of effort and finally hammered the blade into shape.
After quenching, however, neither of them could sharpen it at all; it could not be ground down in the slightest.
Old Man Liu could not tear his eyes away, marveling, "I think once you reach a bigger place, you can have this blade reforged. There's truly nothing we can do here; the material is simply too extraordinary."
"Yes. I still can't say for sure what weapon I'll use in the future, so I'll make do with this for now." Qin Ming looked at the jade-white blade body. Such a material was far too conspicuous.
He brushed on the mineral coating he had prepared beforehand and dried it over the fire.
If he ever wished to strip the coating, the adhesive property of his heavenly light force would allow him to pull it completely clean with a simple wipe of his hand.
Due to the limited material, even including the hilt, the weapon was not as long as an arm, yet it was ample for his needs, and Qin Ming found it quite comfortable in hand.
As for the tiny piece of glowing blue jade iron, Qin Ming did not touch it; forging such a fine, delicate item was even more impossible here.
Qin Ming asked, "Would it be a bit early to visit that household to borrow their secret text?"
"The sky is black as pitch, and not even the breakfast stalls in town have opened. It's inappropriate to drop in this early."
The two wandered a wide circle around town, unable even to find a place for breakfast.
Qin Ming's pupils suddenly contracted. The very thing he dreaded had arrived—he spotted that patch of black mist once more.
It was actually haunting the town, having just emerged from a household. It seemed to have noticed the two of them and was drifting swiftly toward them.
"Uncle Liu, let's head home first," Qin Ming said, turning him around and giving Old Man Liu a meaningful glance through the thick gloom of night.
Having undergone his third Newborn transformation, Old Man Liu could clearly read his expression even in such heavy darkness, and immediately nodded. "All right!"
The two slipped into a narrow alley, changing their route.
The black mist shifted its heading as well, following close behind.
Qin Ming realized they were firmly targeted. Perhaps because no one else was on the streets in the dead of night, the two of them stood out too conspicuously.
Another possibility was that they had encountered the mist back at the Grand Rift Valley; this was not their first encounter, and the mist might well have remembered them.
*Or could it be that when I noticed it yesterday, it noticed me too?*
Regardless of which was true, this encounter could hardly end peacefully today!
"Let's go back to the village, and hunt some game on the way!" Qin Ming said, naturally gripping the hilt of his saber as he left Silver Vine Town alongside Old Man Liu.
The black mist seemed entirely pleased that they were heading toward deserted lands, trailing them in absolute silence.
When the trees flanking both sides of the road grew dense, the black mist could restrain itself no longer and lunged abruptly toward the two of them.
Qin Ming did not hesitate either. Having been on guard in secret for a long time, the moment it drew near, he swung his saber around in a vicious backhanded strike!
Chapter 52