Chapter 742: Nature

Back in the Essence Pavilion, Immortal Peng had once said to Chu Nanping when he was less than ten years old, “Try to abandon your thoughts and desires. Each and every thought is harmful to you. Only by giving up everything can you truly have everything.”

No disciple of the Essence Pavilion could actually reach this state and Chu Nanping was no exception, but he’d always been trying his best. He was indifferent to his elder brother’s death, he didn’t care about the friendship between Xu Xiaoyi and him, and the Dragon King’s trust in him was far less important to him than the former two issues.

Only Tie Linglong made him feel different, but he’d been controlling his emotions well and seldomly showed them to anyone. That was, until he started practicing the Sumeru Mustard Divine Power.

He’d been changing gradually, bit by bit, without even realizing it. Chu Nanping’s enthusiasm, which was suppressed for so many years had suddenly burst out of him as he confessed his true feelings to Tie Linglong, his heart filling with an unprecedented delight.

But after that moment of exhilaration, a patch of emptiness had appeared in his heart like when a genital wart was cut out. He felt satiated, but also slightly lost. As the emptiness deepened, one day, Chu Nanping found that he could no longer dual wield swords.

That emptiness used to belong to the Emotionless Swordsmanship.

At first, Chu Nanping had thought it was because he didn’t practice hard enough, but it didn’t take him long to realize that it was actually because his mental state had been disturbed. In order to dual wield swords and cultivate the Emotionless Swordsmanship which was supposed to be performed by two people by himself, he had to be in a mental state that was as calm as still water.

Chu Nanping had been pondering this issue even before the Dragon King told him to make a choice.

This was the first time that he had ever contemplated an issue, which was completely counter to Immortal Peng’s instruction.

That same night, the Dragon King took 500 men with him and went out to uncover the truth. Meanwhile, Chu Nanping was also seeking his own truth by going to Doctor Sun for help.

Doctor Sun was sleeping, but he opened his heavy eyes and stared at the teenager who had unexpectedly turned up in his tent. “Anything you want to talk about can be discussed tomorrow. You look fine. You won’t die.”

“I’m not sick. It’s just that I have a problem that I can’t figure out by myself.”

Doctor Sun forced himself to sit up, shook his head several times, frowned, and then said, “All I can do is diagnose and treat illnesses. If you have anything on your mind and want to talk about it, you probably should’ve gone to…” After searching his mind, he failed to think of anyone in the camp who might be able to clarify this teenager’s confusion. “Fine. Go ahead and ask. I might or might not be able to help.”

“The Sumeru Mustard Divine Power. Is it true that it can change its user’s nature?”

“Oh, so you’ve also practiced that Three-in-One Power. Let me see.” Doctor Sun was relieved to hear Chu Nanping’s issue. He pulled Chu Nanping’s wrist closer to him and felt his pulse for a while before exclaiming, “Eek, you’re in a different situation from that of Dragon King and Shangguan Fei’s.”

Doctor Sun let go of Chu Nanping’s hand, jumped off of his bed, put on his clothes, and lit the lamp. “You’re in a far better condition than they are. The Daoless Divine Power has naturally transitioned to the Sumeru Mustard Divine Power without even a bit of conflict.”

“But I feel that my nature is different now, and I can no longer split my concentration to dual wield swords.”

“You only have one heart. Why do you have to halve it? Just concentrate. You feel like you’re not as good as you were, right? Rest assured. When you successfully master the Sumeru Mustard Divine Power, you won’t need to use two swords any more. You will be invincible with just your bare hands.”

“I like swords.”

“Alas,” Doctor Sun yawned as he leaned on the table. “You can practice swordsmanship if you like. Just start learning a Buddhist Meditation. Any random Buddhist monk can teach you that, but I truly can’t.”

“So, the influence of the Sumeru Mustard Divine Power is just temporary and won’t change my nature?”

All Doctor Sun wanted now was to quickly end this conversation and then return to his sound sleep, so he became impatient and harshly said, “Your nature is something intrinsic to you, and nothing can change it. I can treat illnesses, so my nature is that of a divine doctor’s nature. If someday I can’t treat illnesses any more, then I merely will be a common bald old man. You tell me; in this supposed case, did my nature change? Everyone is the same: they have different respective natures in different situations – the poor, the rich, the weak, the strong. Can you tell me if they all changed their natures? Kid, forget about this nonsense. Nature belongs to only you yourself, irrespective of time or place. It’s not that your nature determines your ability to dual wield swords, but rather that dual wielding swords determines your nature. Got it?”

“Kind of. But…”

“No buts!” Doctor Sun was angry and this was his ‘nature.’ “Find a spot where nobody else is around and try to figure it out yourself. This kind of stuff can never be clearly explained by someone else. Go, go. Don’t waste any time.”

After pushing the teenager out of his tent, Doctor Sun could no longer sleep. He kept tossing and turning in bed, wondering whether he had said anything wrong…

“A bunch of kids,” Doctor Sun said to himself in a vicious tone. “The Dragon King is also like a child. All you want is to be ruthless and callous, right? And you need an excuse to act like that? Alas, what a shame.”

Chu Nanping took Doctor Sun’s words seriously and did find a place where nobody else was around – the livestock’s pen in the camp, where large numbers of cattle and sheep were kept and where the main food source of the whole army came from. In a thick odious cloud, the teenager gradually drew a conclusion from Doctor Sun’s words: ‘Nature belongs to yourself, so you can choose what kind of person you want to be and then strive to be that person.’

“Look, it’s about to start raining,” he said, raising his head and staring into the thick dark clouds.

“Can’t you just pretend that you didn’t see me?” Tie Linglong walked out from behind him, pinching her nose. “What are you doing here? It’s so stinky.”

“I want to be a swordsman.”

“You already are a swordsman.”

“No. I used to be, but not anymore.”

Tie Linglong frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Thunder started rumbling in the sky, and a giant lightning bolt split the night into two halves. The rain was torrential. Tie Linglong had barely taken her first step away to go find shelter when Chu Nanping suddenly grabbed her.

Tie Linglong was startled. Although she had accepted his confession of love, there had never been any intimate physical contact between the two. She poked him with her finger instinctively, but didn’t put much strength into her finger when it reached his chest. “Moron, it’s raining.”

Chu Nanping held her hands tightly, as he spoke out, “I’ll become a swordsman, but I’ll also keep loving you. Give me some time and let me regain my power to dual wield swords.”

The rain was getting heavier and heavier and Tie Linglong was now drenched. She heard his voice and felt his firm, strong palm, but she didn’t see the sorrow etched into his face.

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“What are you trying to say?” she also raised her voice.

“I need some time of my own, and I need to forget you first…”

Tie Linglong drew her hand back. “Are you saying that I’m holding your swordsplay back?”

“No, no, it’s me. I…”

“You don’t have to explain. You want to forget, so just forget it. I won’t pester you any longer. Go practice your dual swords, and may you become invincible as soon as possible! – But don’t try to find me ever, ever again.”

“But I love you, I just want to be a swordsman again…”

“I don’t love swordsmen!” Tie Linglong yelled angrily, turning and disappearing into the torrential pouring rain.

In the space of a moment, Chu Nanping lost sight of her.

Standing there transfixed in the rain, he felt misunderstood, but another voice in his head was telling him, ‘Maybe it’s better this way, since you can forget her more thoroughly now.’

As the rain let up, he found the right direction and walked towards his tent slowly with a searing pain in his heart, and yet his will was more determined than ever. He hadn’t actually killed the person he cared about the most, but the effect was no less than that. Finally, he knew what it felt like to ‘sever love,’ which had been the barrier for practicing a higher level of the Emotionless Swordsmanship.

The spacious emptiness was fixed, but the teenager didn’t notice that another one had emerged – though it was just a small bubble at the moment.

In his tent, Chu Nanping took out the sword that Gong Ziying had given him as a gift before his death, and recalled the swordsman’s last words. “Take my sword, and if anyone tries to snatch it away, kill him.”

It was the first time that Chu Nanping had contemplated those words. Some ancient, complex pattern was engraved on the blade and there seemed to be some words inscribed on the edge, but he couldn’t recognize any of them. He gently stroke the sword with his fingers and it started quivering with a faint sound.

There was still searing pain in the corner of his heart. Chu Nanping gave a sword strike towards the sky and the pain was slightly eased, but that wasn’t enough. With a longing for actual killing, he believed that he needed to extinguish a life to console another.

As a result, when it was about noon, and the Dragon King still hadn’t returned, all Chu Nanping could think about was killing rather than the results of the competition when he volunteered to fight.

Running through the rainy night, Tie Linglong was also suffering from a searing pain in her heart, and after a while, a sense of great humiliation exacerbated the pain even further.

When the rain abated slightly, she met another runner.

Nie Zeng was practicing his lightness skills, leaping around Han Wuxian’s tent.

The two whipped out their sabers at the same time.

“It’s you,” Nie Zeng who was soaking wet, said in surprise.

“We agreed to have a kung fu competition. Let’s do it now,” Tie Linglong said flatly, swinging at him with her saber.

‘His previous words that he would kill for me or something were all lies,’ she thought. ‘I’ll do it myself. I’ve killed people before and it’s not difficult at all.’

Reliving the training she’d received in the Waning Moon Hall, Tie Linglong was growing increasingly murderous, and Nie Zeng was reduced to nothing but a target that served the purpose of improving disciples’ courage.

To her surprise, the pain in her heart was slightly alleviated.

Nie Zeng was flustered. He wasn’t ready for a kung fu competition, and it seemed that Tie Linglong had just been crying, as even the darkness and the rain couldn’t stop him from seeing that her eyes were red and swollen, which made it even harder for him to put his heart into his moves.

His kung fu skill was originally not as good as that of Tie Linglong, so his hesitation and evasion immediately landed him in danger.

Her narrow saber cut his left arm, the wound immediately starting to bleed, but the blood was washed away by the rainwater. Nie Zeng was provoked, believing that regardless of why she felt heartbroken, she shouldn’t be taking it out on others.

Nie Zeng pounced on her and began to fight in a self-destructive, lose-lose style which was the exact reason why Hu Shining constantly lamented that he could never be a top killer.

It was like the two were irreconcilable enemies and every saber strike of his was vicious and ruthless.

Before things got uglier, Han Wuxian intervened. She had been sitting in her tent, inspecting Nie Zeng – who was practicing kung fu in the rain – through the open curtains, and giving him a tip or two occasionally, but spent most of her time combing her long hair.

Apprentices as good as the two were not easy to find, and she didn’t want to lose either one of them too early.

It was still raining and Han Wuxian didn’t want to leave the tent, so she took off one of her embroidered shoes and casually threw it towards Nie Zeng.

Nie Zeng drew back his saber to parry it, but the embroidered shoe turned in midair and dashed towards Tie Linglong. Before Tie Linglong could react, it made another turn and flew back into the tent like a lost bat.

“Alas, it got wet anyway,” Han Wuxian sighed regretfully.

Outside, Nie Zeng and Tie Linglong started staggering after smelling a puff of an unexpected faint fragrance.

“You want to kill someone, huh. Fine. I’ll give you a chance,” Han Wuxian said gently. “There’s a traitor of the Waning Moon Hall in my tent. Alas, I’m done with her. So just kill her.”

The knockout powder was not very potent, and part of its effect had been alleviated by the rain, so Tie Linglong recovered in a short time and strode towards the tent, saber in her hand.

Nie Zeng stood where he was, paralyzed with confusion. When he finally raised his head, he found that the rain had stopped.