A Heaven-Matched Technique

A'yi was determined to duel Li Banfeng and settle who was male and who was female. She raised the explosives in her hands. The bundle, originally the size of a school satchel, had expanded to the size of a quilted blanket, hovering weightlessly in her palm. Naturally, Li Banfeng wasn't about to sit by and wait for death. His shadow had already slipped around behind A'yi, poised to ambush her at any moment. His emotional state was severely unstable. Gourd Village was deeply bizarre, and A'yi was just as bizarre. Li Banfeng had barely any sanity left, but his fundamental instincts for combat remained razor-sharp. A'yi barked, "Yield yet? Ready to meet your maker?" Li Banfeng shouted back, "Tell me first—what kind of technique is this?" He was trying to distract her. His shadow was less than three meters away from her back. Sure enough, A'yi took the bait. She beamed with smug satisfaction as she looked at Li Qi and laughed heartily. "This is one of the three supreme arts of my pathway!" "And what's the name of this technique?" Li Banfeng continued to stall her. His shadow raised a sharp, jagged stone, aiming directly at the back of A'yi's skull. A'yi blinked, genuinely stumped by the question. She nibbled on her fingertip. "The technique's name is—" *Take your time thinking. I'm sending you on your way right now!* Just as the shadow was about to strike, A'yi suddenly remembered. She let out a boisterous laugh. "The technique is called 'Slaughter Every Bastard Fool Cultivator'!" Li Banfeng's face twisted. The shadow behind A'yi began to tremble. Anyone else might have brushed it off. The village chief was utterly unhinged, so talking nonsense was only par for the course. But at this moment, Li Banfeng was teetering on the brink of an episode. In an environment like Gourd Village, facing an opponent like A'yi, the only reason he had managed to preserve any shred of sanity was by leaning entirely on the dregs of his logical thinking. Yet A'yi was relentlessly bludgeoning his logic into dust. Li Banfeng asked, "Your technique's name is that long?" A'yi counted on her fingers. The name she had just made up was a whole nine characters long. "It is a bit on the long side. In that case, let's call it Fool-Slayer for short!" Li Banfeng's mouth twitched crookedly. Behind A'yi, his shadow shuddered uncontrollably. What was wrong with this woman? What kind of pathway was this? Could techniques really be named on a whim like that? Had she just made it up on the spot? Could an art conjured out of thin air be this powerful? Just how terrifying was this pathway? As the shadow quivered behind her, A'yi caught the faint rustle and spun around to look. The shadow stood there holding the stone, staring back at her. The two exchanged glances for a few awkward seconds before the shadow lowered the stone. A'yi beamed. "What's your name? When did you arrive in the village? Do you know Li Qi? Why are you so dark?" She was striking up a conversation with the shadow. The shadow scratched its head. It pointed first at Li Banfeng, then at the sun, and finally at A'yi's own shadow. A'yi frowned. "Why don't you speak? Pointing around like that—who can understand what you mean?" The shadow pointed to its mouth and waved its hands, signaling that it couldn't speak. A'yi grew displeased. "You claim you can't talk? Sounds to me like you just don't want to talk." The shadow gave a helpless shrug, insisting that it truly couldn't speak. A'yi huffed. "You think I'm crazy, don't you? You look down on me, so you refuse to talk to me. Isn't that it?" The shadow shook its head vigorously to deny it. A'yi's temper flared. "I can't stand people like you! If you despise me, just spit it out! What's with all the sneaking and hiding?" The shadow blurted out in desperate protest, "I really don't despise you!" A'yi snapped, "Then why didn't you talk to me just now?" "I don't know how to sp—" Halfway through the sentence, the shadow froze and looked at Li Banfeng. The shadow could talk. The shadow was terrified. It had never experienced anything like this before. Li Banfeng's facial features were contorted into an agonized grimace. He had no time to console his shadow, because he had no idea how to console himself. The shadow squatted on the ground, first clapping its hands over its mouth, then clutching its head tightly. A'yi turned back toward Li Banfeng and asked, "What's wrong with this guy? Is he a friend of yours? Is he sick?" Li Banfeng fell silent for a moment, then burst into a sudden, wild laugh. "That's my shadow. Bet you didn't see that coming, did you?" "Nonsense!" A'yi laughed as well. "Isn't your shadow right beneath your feet?" Li Banfeng looked down and saw a shadow beneath his feet. A'yi turned back to the crouching shadow. "See? He has a shadow too." The crouching shadow looked down at its own feet. The instant it saw its own shadow, it leaped in fright. Both Li Banfeng's shadow and the shadow's shadow stood up together from the ground. They clutched their heads, staring at A'yi in utter shock. A'yi looked at the two new shadows and smiled brightly. "When did you two arrive? What are your names?" "Hehehe... their names are the same as mine!" Li Banfeng grinned with growing ferocity. He had no idea why two more shadows had appeared, nor did he want to know. The last vestige of logic in his brain had completely shattered. A'yi glanced between the three shadows and Li Banfeng. "What rubbish are you spewing? How could they have the same name as you?" "It's the truth, I'm not lying! They're all my brothers! Good brothers who share my exact name and surname!" Li Banfeng's smile turned frighteningly sincere. In his ear, the companion dwelling urged repeatedly, "Ah Qi, wake up! Keep your head!" "I am awake!" Li Banfeng snapped aloud. A'yi looked at him in surprise. "Who are you talking to? Have you gone mad?" "Who says I'm mad? The doctors told me I'm not crazy at all! None of my brothers are crazy!" Li Banfeng swept his gaze over the cluster of shadows. "Brothers, don't be afraid! Whoever calls us crazy, we'll beat her to death! Once she's dead, none of us will be crazy anymore!" Inside the companion dwelling, Ninth Girl peered out through Room Five at the battle outside, muttering softly, "This is inverting cause and effect. He's using the technique on himself." Beside her, the projector chimed in, "Does that really count as using it on himself? He's using it on his shadows." Ninth Girl pondered for a moment. "The shadows are still him... I can't even tell anymore. In any case, his technique is proving quite effective." It was indeed effective. The three shadows, previously plunged into panic, had all settled down. Now they were united as one, with a single goal: kill A'yi, and normal logic would be restored. "Brothers, blow her to bits!" Li Banfeng roared an order and sprinted forward alongside the three shadows. All four figures vanished from A'yi's sight at the exact same instant. "Trying to use Viewing Flowers from Horseback?" A'yi chuckled and detonated the satchel of explosives in her hand. With an earth-shattering boom, a dense cloud of dust and smoke billowed outward. Li Banfeng couldn't lock onto A'yi's position. Without needing to think, Li Banfeng deployed his most familiar tactic. Charging into the smoke, he unleashed Treading Ten Thousand Rivers with a mighty kick. A'yi whipped off her outer jacket and swung it casually like a racket, batting Treading Ten Thousand Rivers aside and blasting one of Li Banfeng's shadows apart. The shadow shattered into six distinct pieces. In the chaos of combat, Li Banfeng couldn't even tell whether it was his original shadow or the shadow's shadow that had blown apart. Yet the six pieces didn't disperse; they hovered around A'yi. A'yi gasped in delight. "More new friends?" Li Banfeng grinned ferociously. "That's right! All of them are friends!" The six shattered fragments of shadow slowly began to stretch and reshape, soon reconstituting into complete shadows, albeit slightly smaller than Li Banfeng. The shadows had multiplied from three into eight. A'yi looked on in astonishment. "Is this a Heaven-Matched Technique?" Li Banfeng didn't answer; he had no idea what a Heaven-Matched Technique was. The companion dwelling was equally astonished. Fifth Girl continued projecting the scene outside onto the wall. Hong Ying leaned in to watch the spectacle and remarked in awe, "It truly is a Heaven-Matched Technique!" The projector was baffled. "Which pathway does a Heaven-Matched Technique belong to?" Hong Ying replied, "It doesn't belong to any pathway. Heaven-Matched Techniques are unreasonable, logic-defying arts mastered by a select few extraordinary cultivators." "What do you mean, logic-defying?" The projector still didn't understand. The Old Man spoke up. "It refers to arts wielded by fearsome cultivators that are nearly impossible to counter. Take Lühuazi, for instance. When you fought him, he was cleaved clean in half and could still keep fighting; even if you chopped him into finer bits, he could still fight. And if I recall correctly, the Ancestor of Literary Cultivators had a lost ultimate art called Ten Thousand Words and Countless Phrases. By simply opening a book, tens of thousands of written characters would transform into an army of thousands to wage endless slaughter against his foes." The projector thought about it. "Isn't that just Counting Ink and Tracing Lines?" Ninth Girl interjected, "It's nothing like Counting Ink and Tracing Lines. The characters summoned by the Literary Ancestor could distinguish friend from foe, and they lasted a very long time. What's more, even if you wiped out every single character, he could just swap to another book and conjure another army. Carrying a few books on him gave him inexhaustible fighting power. And even that wasn't considered the pinnacle of Heaven-Matched Techniques. To my knowledge, the most formidable of them all belonged to Ku Pozi. She had a technique called Boundless Sea of Bitterness. Once she invoked it, blades could hack her, axes could chop her, water could drown her, and fire could scorch her, yet she simply refused to die. Ah Qi's technique falls short of theirs, but it's remarkably potent all the same. The more his shadows are struck, the more they multiply. Without a method to utterly destroy the shadows, there's no way to defeat him. Arts of such terrifying might feel as if they weren't created by mortals, but bestowed by the heavens—hence the name Heaven-Matched Techniques." The projector recalled past battles. "What about He Caiyuan, the old patriarch of the He family? He was a tremendous cultivator who could manipulate written characters directly to fight. Did that count as a Heaven-Matched Technique?" "Not by a long shot!" The companion dwelling still remembered He Caiyuan. "Plenty of methods could neutralize that old wretch's characters, and fighting with characters exerted an immense toll on him. Ah Qi's shadows barely consume anything; he's merely invoking the art of Body and Shadow Comforting Each Other. Now, if you look at Zhang Gunli, he possessed half a Heaven-Matched Technique. Anyone who owed him money was subject to his suppression. Unless the debt was repaid, breaking free was nearly impossible. But the moment the debt was settled and the promissory note destroyed, his advantage vanished, which is why it only counted as half." "Even that only counts as half?" The projector vividly remembered how formidable Zhang Gunli had been. "His cultivation was monstrously high!" Hong Ying said, "It has nothing to do with cultivation level. Only an infinitesimal fraction of cultivators ever possess a Heaven-Matched Technique. I don't have one. Xiaowan is rumored to have one, but even I've never seen her use it. I have no idea where Seventh Brother managed to develop such an art." "Director Qi doesn't seem to have trained for it at all," the projector noted, studying the wall projection carefully and noticing Li Banfeng's erratic state. "Director Qi's Heaven-Matched Technique seems entirely out of his control." Hong Ying nodded. "Heaven-Matched Techniques are notoriously difficult to control. If anyone could master such an art with precision, nobody else would stand a chance." Li Banfeng's control was indeed abysmal. The pack of shadows mobbed A'yi without any coordination or form, slinging techniques at random. The scene was utterly chaotic, but it failed to pose any real danger to A'yi. Clutching her satchel of explosives, A'yi shouted at Li Banfeng's true body, "I'll entertain your new friends in a bit! Let's settle who's male and who's female first! Taste my Mad Cultivator art: Fool-Slayer!" Li Banfeng dodged a satchel of explosives, only for another to instantly appear in A'yi's grasp. He dodged again, stepping straight onto another satchel underfoot. They hovered behind his head, beside his ears, tucked in overgrown weeds, and wedged in tree forks. Li Banfeng ducked and wove past more than a dozen explosive satchels, yet the supply in A'yi's hands never ceased. She seemed to possess an endless stockpile. Li Banfeng's offense and defense had degenerated into pure chaos; when a satchel slammed directly toward his face, he desperately attempted to evade it using Carefree and Unfettered. It was a disastrous blunder. The blast radius of the explosives was massive, bound to engulf his entire body. How could Carefree and Unfettered possibly evade it? *Boom!* The explosives erupted. A'yi had packed in a colossal charge. Down at the base of the mountain, A'yun and A'mu felt the ground rock violently beneath them, and flying boulders and debris on the mountainside were plain to see from below. Li Banfeng's body was blown to smithereens. "Director Qi! Someone save Director Qi!" The projector cried out in sheer panic inside the companion dwelling. "This technique... it's far too rare—" Ninth Girl gasped in horror. "Seventh Brother, this is just too—" Hong Ying was at a loss for words. *Whoosh.* A gust of wind blew past, sweeping away the smoke and dust. A'yi gazed at the scattered, mangled limbs. "Why is it so black?" A'yi muttered, inspecting the mangled remnants. It didn't look like they had merely been scorched by fire. "Is this you?" A'yi asked aloud. "No!" Li Banfeng materialized right behind A'yi, raising his scythe high. The body blown to pieces had been a shadow, not Li Banfeng. The principle behind Carefree and Unfettered was using unnameable power to displace a portion of one's body elsewhere. Because the explosion's blast radius was far too vast, shifting to any physical spot nearby would have been futile. So Li Banfeng had pivoted his logic, shifting his body onto his shadow instead. As for how or why he could swap places with a shadow, Li Banfeng hadn't thought about it, nor did he have the mental capacity to care. Carefree and Unfettered was one of his weakest techniques, and he had never imagined he could push it to such an absurd extreme. He drove the blade toward the back of A'yi's heart, but the razor-sharp scythe failed to pierce her clothing. If it couldn't pierce the back, take the head! Li Banfeng brought the scythe down in a vicious arc. A'yi dodged swiftly, but the shattered shadow reconstituted into eight smaller shadows that lunged forward and pinned her arms and legs. Immobilized, A'yi watched helplessly as Li Banfeng's scythe lopped her head clean off. "Hack her to death!" the scythe shrieked in ecstasy. "Hahaha! Die, you little bastard! Die!" Li Banfeng roared in triumphant delight. Yet A'yi remained standing right where she was. A fresh head sprouted straight out of her neck. "Didn't kill me! That head was a decoy!" Li Banfeng's laughter cut off instantly. A'yi bellowed, "Come on, let's settle who's male and who's female!" "I'm male, and you're female. Does that even need settling?" Li Banfeng asked in deadpan seriousness. "Who says I'm female? I have a wife!" A'yi replied with equal gravity. "Come on, then! Call your wife out, I'll call my brothers, and we'll go at it!" Li Banfeng rallied his cluster of shadows and charged at A'yi. "Bring it on! New friends or old, you're all staying in Gourd Village!" A'yi hoisted her explosives and met them head-on. *Boom! Boom! Rrrrumble!* At the foot of the mountain, the villagers watched in awe. Blind to what was happening on the peak, they saw only thick plumes of smoke rising repeatedly into the sky. A'mu wiped sweat from his brow. "It's been a long time since the chief fought a battle this fierce." Uncle A'gen pulled out his dry tobacco pipe and took a puff. "Our chief has heavenly luck on her side; nothing should happen to her. But if something really goes wrong, what then?" A'mu glared at Uncle A'gen. "What are you implying?" Uncle A'gen said placidly, "I'm just saying, if the worst comes to pass, our village can't be left without a chief. As for me, I'm the oldest—" A'long spat to the side. "So what if you're the oldest? My cultivation is the highest! That seat would never go to you!" A'yun couldn't bear to listen any longer. "The chief is still alive, and here you are scheming for her position! She's always treated you generously—do you have no conscience? Besides, speaking honestly, the chief and I are like sisters. If she really passes, that seat belongs to me!" As the group erupted into an argument, the village chief's wife sat on the ground, stroking his thick beard before dabbing away tears. "You lightning-struck wretches! I'll butcher the lot of you! I've endured humiliation and hardship as the village chief's wife for all these years—one way or another, that title stays in our household!" *KABOOM!* A deafening roll of thunder blasted across the mountain peak. The onlookers looked up, feeling as though the summit itself had been sheared off. A'yun murmured, "Just how many techniques did the chief unleash?" Atop the peak, only a single shadow remained beneath Li Banfeng's feet; all the others had vanished. That last blanket of lightning and thunder had pulverized Li Banfeng's shadows into microscopic dust. When reduced to such fine powder, they couldn't extend or reform, effectively shattering the technique of Body and Shadow Comforting Each Other. Even A'yi hadn't anticipated that breaking Li Banfeng's technique would demand such immense exertion. "Li Qi, I really never imagined you had such formidable tricks up your sleeve." A'yi wiped blood from her face. She was wounded. Li Banfeng was also wounded. "I never imagined where these tricks came from either." He truly hadn't. He had never dreamed that his shadow could spawn shadows of its own, much less that he could swap places with them. A'yi had regained some sanity, and Li Banfeng had followed suit. Now that the phantom shadows had dissipated, Li Banfeng's mind felt considerably clearer. "Now that we've had our fight, let's go our separate ways," Li Banfeng said, brushing the dust from his clothes. "If you really make me stay here for half a month, you'll only bring an endless amount of trouble upon yourself." A'yi looked at Li Banfeng with disappointment. "You possess such incredible talent. Why do you dislike this village so much?" Li Banfeng shook his head. "It isn't that I dislike it. There are other reasons." "Drop the nonsense. If you really refuse to stay, so be it." A'yi finally yielded. "I can let you go, but you must promise me two conditions. First, you must stay in the village for a full three days, and during those three days, you must walk through every corner of the village." Li Banfeng nodded. "I agree to that." "Second, you must join my pathway." Li Banfeng shook his head. "Now you're putting me on the spot. You saw for yourself just now—I'm not crazy at all. Joining the Mad Cultivator pathway makes no sense; I wouldn't be able to cultivate it." "You're not crazy?" A'yi scoffed. "Not in the slightest!" Li Banfeng patted his chest in all sincerity. "Don't try to deceive me." "How am I deceiving you?" A'yi glanced down toward Li Banfeng's feet. "He says he's not crazy. Do you believe him?" The shadow beneath his feet rose, shaking its head. "I don't believe him." A'yi continued staring at the ground by his feet. "I want him to join my pathway. Do you think that's suitable?" Another shadow peeled itself from the earth and stood up. "Nobody could be more suitable! If he doesn't want to, I do!" Li Banfeng frantically pulled the shadow back, but more shadows sprouted from behind him: "Chief, take me! I'm way stronger than him!" "Chief, I think I'm plenty crazy! None of them hold a candle to me!" "Chief, this kid doesn't know what's good for him. Ignore him, I'm sticking with you for life!" Li Banfeng clutched, tackled, and shoved, barely managing to stuff all the shadows back down. A'yi, however, still seemed eager for more. She called toward his back, "Brother back there, you look the handsomest! Why don't you come out and chat a bit more?" "No more chatting!" Li Banfeng waved his hands in surrender. "I agree! I'll join your pathway!" If he refused any longer, there was no telling what else his fractured mind might produce. A'yi set out an incense burner and burned yellow paper. She announced, "From this moment on, you belong to my pathway, and I am your master." "Fine! You're my master from now on!" Li Banfeng agreed readily. As long as it adhered to some semblance of logical order, he could accept it. A'yi picked up the incense sticks. "Come, let's swear an oath of brotherhood first." Two shadows popped out behind Li Banfeng—one giggling maniacally, the other sobbing uncontrollably. Cracks formed across his logic once again. "Don't you think swearing brotherhood and taking a master are two completely different things?" A'yi stared at Li Banfeng. "What's wrong with that? In your Fool Cultivator pathway, don't you call everyone senior martial brother instead of master anyway?" *That actually makes sense!* Every pathway had its own rules, and every pathway had its own logic. It was no big deal. Li Banfeng stuffed the shadows back down. Li Banfeng asked, "How do we swear the oath?" "State your name first." "I'm Li Qi!" "I'm Yi Hulu Huapiao!" A shadow popped out again. Li Banfeng and the shadow both stared at A'yi. "Your name is that long too?" A'yi huffed. "Is having a long name forbidden? What does my name have to do with you?" Li Banfeng tucked the shadow away. A'yi wrote out the prayer, and the two chanted together: "From this day forth, Yi Hulu Huapiao and Li Qi become sworn sister and brother of different surnames. We shall share blessings and endure hardship together, united through thick and thin, unwavering for all our days!" With the oath concluded, Li Banfeng bowed solemnly to A'yi. "Elder Sister!" A'yi solemnly returned the bow. "Elder Brother!" Li Banfeng paused, bewildered. "Isn't addressing each other like that a bit inappropriate?" A'yi puffed out her chest. "You show me respect, so I return double!" The two stared at each other. Behind Li Banfeng, shadows began popping up one after another. He had constantly reminded himself to stay emotionally stable, yet in front of A'yi, stability was utterly impossible. A'yi examined Li Banfeng. "You are officially a member of my pathway now. There is just one thing that fails to meet our pathway's standards." "Which standard?" "Your appearance. You're not good-looking." Li Banfeng arched an eyebrow. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, wouldn't you say?" "Let me doll you up a bit." A'yi pulled out a case of rouge. Li Banfeng pushed it away. "Men don't wear this stuff!" "My wife wears it all the time." "I'm not your wife!" "Brother, are you disobeying your sister already? Think carefully: did the sister come first, or did the brother come first?" "I won't think about it!" Li Banfeng couldn't afford to think about anything right now; the moment he started pondering, his sanity would disintegrate. It was just powder, wasn't it? Let her apply it. Li Banfeng decided to throw caution to the wind. A'yi took a powder puff and dabbed some powder onto Li Banfeng's face. Li Banfeng let out a bloodcurdling wail, writhing on the ground in agony. "What kind of powder is this?!" "Our pathway's introductory medicinal powder, of course!" "Why did you smear it on my face?!" "Didn't I say I was going to doll you up?" Fortunately, Li Banfeng was a homestead cultivator with a robust physique. After a few minutes, the pain subsided. Rubbing his face, Li Banfeng asked, "Your pathway actually has an introductory medicinal powder?" A'yi huffed. "What do you mean, 'your pathway'? This is our family pathway! Mad Cultivators are a legitimate pathway officially recognized by the Peddler! This powder was personally concocted by the Peddler himself. Because I don't stay in Puluo Province, he left a portion exclusively for me to distribute as I see fit." *Distribute as she sees fit?* The Peddler maintained draconian control over medicinal powders. Such a precedent was entirely unheard of. Li Banfeng found it hard to believe. "The Peddler truly recognized the Mad Cultivator pathway? The conditions for creating a new pathway are notoriously strict!" A'yi nodded earnestly. "They were incredibly strict. He refused at first too, so I trailed him every single day. When he did business, I did business alongside him. When he fought people, I fought alongside him. When he slept with his lovers, I tagged along and slept with them too." Li Banfeng blinked. "Where did you sleep?" A'yi grinned foolishly. "I wasn't picky. Top bunk, bottom bunk, right in the middle—anything worked for me." "And then?" "Then he tried desperately to drive me away. I let him beat me, let him curse me, but I refused to leave no matter what. Until one day, the Peddler was in an exceptionally good mood, smiling at everyone he saw. He said he acknowledged my pathway and refined the medicinal powder for me right on the spot. Seeing how cheerful he looked, I figured he had great potential for our pathway, so I asked if he wanted to become my disciple." Li Banfeng was stunned. "Did the Peddler agree?" A'yi twitched her eyebrows. "He told me to take the powder and get the hell out. Truly a shame—such fine talent, yet the Peddler missed out on such a glorious opportunity."