The first light of early dawn passed through the window and illuminated the Carefree House.
Stimulated by the ray of light, Tang Jie opened his eyes and looked out the window.
It was a clear day.
He smiled.
The formation that had been placed around the Carefree House had been removed.
From this moment forward, Tang Jie was no longer Tang Jiye.
He had truly made a break with the past.
Several days had passed since his return from Fairy Peak.
The room was the same as before and didn’t seem to have been turned over at all. Glancing at the Heartbreak Saber hanging from the wall, Tang Jie got up and took it down. He walked into the courtyard and began to practice the Twelve-Form Horizon Sword.
But the Twelve-Form Horizon Sword was a sword art, and practicing it with the saber didn’t feel very right to Tang Jie.
Unless it was a spell art that was made for using all kinds of different weapons like the Divine Court Thousandshift, sword arts were sword arts and saber arts were saber arts. Every weapon had a different method of moving energy, and it wasn’t possible to just mix them together. A normal spell art not only was limited in the number of weapons it could be used with, it even had specific requirements when it came to the attributes of the weapon.
It was precisely because the Twelve-Form Horizon Sword wasn’t a real spell art, making it simple and universal, that Tang Jie could occasionally use a saber in place of a sword. This would be very hard to do with any other kind of art.
Even so, Tang Jie still found it rather awkward.
“I should find a suitable saber art,” he muttered.
He was now in Spirit Lake, and he had exchanged for the next level of his mantra a few days ago. He had yet to redeem his spell art.
He immediately put away his saber and headed off for Heaven One Pavilion.
Many students gawked at him, but all of them had looks of scorn, and some people even pointed at him.
The wind delivered their words to his ears.
“He’s Tang Jie?”
“Right, that’s him. To stand out, he didn’t even mind pretending to be a wanted fugitive.”
“How audacious.”
“But he was still exposed in the end.”
“So no matter how you scheme, your plot will eventually be exposed.”
“It’s not that there’s no recompense. It’s just that it takes time to arrive!”
“That’s exactly it.”
Tang Jie bitterly smiled.
This was a side effect of laundering his identity.
Once the matter of his “deceiving” the academy had been exposed, many students no longer looked at him the same way. Their eyes were filled with scorn and disdain, and even joy at his suffering.
Tang Jie had once been a very illustrious figure in the academy, but now, he had plunged from heaven to hell, and everyone rolled their eyes at him. It was probably only his friends from the Freedom Society that still treated him warmly.
Even so, the Freedom Society’s reputation was also not what it had been, and many students had withdrawn, clearly unable to take the pressure. Fortunately, Ping Jingyue had managed to hold the fort, so Tang Jie hadn’t been compelled to withdraw from the club.
Tang Jie had mentally prepared himself for this, so he didn’t mind and continued forward.
When he arrived at Heaven One Pavilion, the supervising student sneered, “Oh, isn’t this Tang Jie? What brings you to Heaven One Pavilion today?”
Tang Jie replied, “Greeting, Senior Brother. I have entered Spirit Lake, so I would like to redeem a spell art.”
“A spell art?” The student snorted as he moved in front of the entrance. “Haven’t you already redeemed a spell art from the ninth floor of Heaven One? You’ve already learned from the Divine Firmament Sword Classic, so how can the ordinary spell arts of the third floor earn your attention? I think you should forget it.”
“It is not up to Senior Brother whether I should forget it or not,” Tang Jie said. “Senior Brother should permit me to go up upstairs.”
“And what if I don’t?” That student raised his chin and proudly said, “As a student, you deceived the academy. The headmaster should have expelled you, and you still have the face to redeem a spell art from here?”
Tang Jie grew angry and was just about to teach this guy a lesson when someone behind him said, “Senior Brother, are you questioning the academy’s decision?”
The two of them turned in shock and saw a person standing behind Tang Jie.
An Rumeng.
She was wearing a silver dress decorated with butterflies, and her hair was tied up in a tall bun in which a phoenix hairpin had been thrust. She was standing there and looking at the two.
The supervising student was taken aback. “An Rumeng? Junior Sister, what are you saying? How could I dare to do such a thing?”
“If that is so, there is no need to block our way,” An Rumeng said, stepping forward.
The student instinctively moved to the side. As An Rumeng made her way up, Tang Jie followed. The student wanted to stop him, but he didn’t have the guts. All he could do was stomp his feet and say, “You got off easy this time.”
In truth, he never had the authority to stop Tang Jie and was just trying to make trouble.
As the two of them went upstairs, Tang Jie said to An Rumeng, “It’s a good thing that Senior Sister was also redeeming a spell art and was there to help me out. Thank you. Right, I also have to congratulate Senior Sister on entering Spirit Lake.”
An Rumeng lightly said, “We are schoolmates, so there is no need to be so polite. You may simply call me An Rumeng. In addition, I didn’t come to choose a spell art. My Thousand Passions Sect has given me spell arts to cultivate. I have come here only to learn the Heart Questioning Origin Dao of the Basking Moon Sect. Moreover… I have yet to enter Spirit Lake.”
Tang Jie froze. “If you haven’t entered Spirit Lake, then why did you come?”
“I came to find you.”
Tang Jie was taken aback. “‘Find me’? For what?”
The two of them stopped.
An Rumeng slowly turned her head, her bright eyes focusing on Tang Jie. After a long while, she finally said, “I want to know: how did you manage to resist Godhead Palace’s Soulscour spell?”
“So that’s what it was about,” Tang Jie chuckled. “How could I have the ability to resist Soulscour? It was just that Gu Changqing felt the Soulscour was too risky, so he refused to use it until the last moment and relied solely on torture. I already explained this to the headmaster.”
“But Zhao Xinguo, who escaped the Hawk Hall and returned to Godhead Palace, said that they used the Soulscour spell, yet you somehow managed to resist it.”
“They also claim that I’m bait put out by the Basking Moon Sect to frame Godhead Palace. If they didn’t say that I could resist Soulscour, how could they prove that I’m bait? The Hawk Hall got the wrong man, so they could only find some excuse to offer as an explanation to Godhead Palace, but in the end, it’s just another trumped-up charge.”
He knew that there was no one to confute him, so briskly denied it.
An Rumeng raised one of her thin eyebrows. “Do you think I would believe that?”
Tang Jie spread apart his hands. “Whether you believe it or not, those are the facts.”
An Rumeng looked deep into his eyes, and then she slowly said, “Tang Jie, there’s no one else here. If you are willing to tell me the truth, I promise that I will tell no one else. Not only that, you and I can become good friends.”
Tang Jie smiled. “Strange. Why are you so concerned about this matter?”
An Rumeng lowered her head. “Because I have a need for this kind of secret art.”
Tang Jie was startled. “You need a secret art that can resist Soulscour? But you’re not…”
“It’s true that I’m a genius student of the Thousand Passions Sect, but I also have my own secrets. If I don’t want others to know them, I must find a solution,” An Rumeng said. She looked again at Tang Jie. “Tang Jie, if you really have this kind of secret art, I hope that you can teach it to me. I, An Rumeng, can swear an oath on my Heart Demon that I will never divulge this matter to anyone else. So long as you are willing to teach me…”
Her voice suddenly dropped, becoming a whisper. “I can agree to any request of yours.”
When a girl said that she would “agree to any request”, the meaning was obvious.
The temptation of this sort of promise from someone of An Rumeng’s status was clear.
At this moment, even Tang Jie couldn’t help but imagine An Rumeng under his body, softly moaning. This was a thought that would have every man’s blood pumping, the fire of desire burning in their hearts.
But this thought passed by in a flash, and Tang Jie smiled and shook his head. “It is a very tempting suggestion, but alas, I don’t have it.”
“You don’t believe me?” An Rumeng glanced at Tang Jie.
“It’s you who doesn’t believe me,” Tang Jie replied.
An Rumeng looked in surprise at Tang Jie, and Tang Jie stared right back, his eyes clear and confident.
After a long while, An Rumeng whispered, “Forget it, forget it. In the end, you can’t trust me, so let’s drop the matter.”
With this said, she began to walk away.
As she walked past Tang Jie, she suddenly smiled at him. “You can reject me today, but one day, you will be willing to teach me that secret art. Remember: my offer is always on the table.”
Her smile was like a blooming flower, bathing the entire room in the light of spring.
Tang Jie was dazed in fascination as An Rumeng dropped her head and left.
As she passed him, Tang Jie was able to see the profile of her face.
In the faint light, she appeared like a fragile flower, a pitiable existence that could be blown away by a strong gust of wind.
For a moment, Tang Jie felt like he had seen the most beautiful thing in the mortal world.
As she raised her feet and lowered her head, she exuded endless temptation and warmth, an impression that was deeply branded on Tang Jie’s mind.
The charming sight that he had suppressed rushed out again, and Tang Jie felt like he could see that fair body splayed out on his bed, the most primal flames of youth roaring up in his body, and he instinctively moved to lunge forward…
But a moment later, another graceful figure appeared in Tang Jie’s mind. Like a gust of wind, it blew away that image of An Rumeng.
Tang Jie felt his heart tremble, and then he calmed back down. He wondered why he had been so easily tempted.
What he did not know was that as An Rumeng turned the corner to the stairs, she suddenly groaned, a little blood coming out of her mouth.
Her beautiful face had paled!
After saying goodbye to An Rumeng, Tang Jie calmed down and began to search for the saber art he needed.
He already had an idea of the saber art he wanted, so he quickly found it.
The Windcleaver!
The Windcleaver Saber, as could be seen in its name, was an extremely swift saber art.
Unlike the Twelve-Form Horizon Sword, the Windcleaver Saber was a real spell art that emphasized attacks as quick as lightning and as nimble as the wind, able to cleave through the wind itself. It was rather similar to Cai Junyang’s Pilewave Sword.
But the Pilewave Sword emphasized constant and unending attacks that came again and again. Meanwhile, the Windcleaver Saber, other than attacking quickly, could also break through armor.
This was an important reason behind this choice of saber art. Now that Godhead Palace’s Hawk Hall had been dealt a devastating blow, Tang Jie could finally choose normal techniques.
There were many spell arts that went with the Lesser Sea Grotto Metal Mantra. He had chosen the Windcleaver for two reasons. First, his Violet Lightning Lunge fulfilled one of the other requirements of the Windcleaver and would allow him to maximize its power. Secondly, the Windcleaver was a close combat spell art, and all of its power was focused on breaking through armor and increasing one’s speed. While it was strong and fast, it could not be used on distant targets.
But this was actually what Tang Jie needed.
Only in close combat could he use his powerful body to its full effect.
