Chapter 3: Is this a flag?

Me and Hu Anjing walked together to see Yuan Jia, the matriarch.

Sect’s main hall is not located in Sword Mountain if you expected so, it is located in a place named Sword Valley.

Sword Valley is exactly what its name implies, it’s a valley full of swords. These swords were either made by my sect’s forge masters or were brought here by some means. There are a few precious swords there too, like swords from the previous generation of the sect and also one sword from each sect founder. There is also the mysterious sword, which was the reason that sect was founded in this place.

This sword is told to have been dropped from a crack in the sky. About that day there are many legends but in the end, they are nothing but legends.

After the sword was plunged into the ground it divulged its location with a strong sword Qi. This sword Qi was so strong that it was felt in all of Divine Central Continent. There are also some records about sea monster shrinking their borders and moving further from the divine central continent’s shores.

The monster kind trusts their survival instincts and even after countless evolutions they know by their soul that they have come so far relying on this instinct.

But the humankind is not driven by survival instincts but an insatiable greed that knows no bounds.

Feeling this sword Qi, instead of fearing how easily they could die in close approximation to it, they started daydreaming about the power that it could bring them.

Luckily for humankind, six other objects were dropping from the cracking sky on that day.

Why was this good fortune? Because each of these objects was from different kinds of martial art practices. This made people come under a flag and fight for not only obtaining this treasure but to keep the treasure safe from other groups.

When there was only one kind of treasure, a sword, the swordmasters were happy and the others were on edge to stop the swordsman from taking this sword and achieving new heights. But now everyone has something to gain and lose at the same time so there won’t be any rash movements.

Each faction sets some rules so that they can choose the owner of these artifacts. How would one know which faction is where he/she belongs?

Like how you can detect the density of Qi in the air, you can do the same with weapon Qi like sword Qi, saber Qi, etc. In the same way that there is an attraction to a place with rich Qi, there is an attraction to weapon Qi and it is said to be far more evident.

So in no time, seven factions were made with little to no infighting. Why? Because as long as you can comprehend even a bit of profundity in the weapon Qi you can go far in your path.

This way years passed and slowly factions turned to sects and with formations keeping most of the weapon Qi inside the weapons changed from a beacon who would attract people here to pillars for these newly established sects.

As mentioned before there were seven weapons and so there were seven sects created, they are: Blue Bulls Sect and they practice the way of Axe, Divine Arrow Sect and they practice the way of Archery, Sky Pillar Sect and they practice the way of Staff, Heaven Reaching Spear Sect and they practice the way of Spear, Temple of Emptiness and they practice the way of Buddhism and the weapon they are fascinated by is a Horsetail Whisk, White Moon Sect and they practice the way of Fan and they are a female-only sect, and finally we have Heavenly Sword Sect and we practice the way of the sword.

The name of our artifact is Mingyun; meaning fate, destiny, and weirdness. Fate because the day that this sword dropped to the divine central continent it changed the fate of its inhabitants. Destiny because it was destiny that brought the prideful swordsmen under the same banner and made it possible to create the heavenly sword sect.

There was no one in the history of the divine central continent that could wield even one of these weapons. It is not like the world is short of geniuses who tried to claim them but these weapons have sapience and they chose who can wield them.

So yeah there is no one as of now who can move them so we can use the sword Qi to train ourselves-

Wait a minute.

God fucking damn it.

Isn’t this a flag?

It is like these weapons are saying “Yo, handsome child of the plane. Can you pluck us from this cold earth and give us the warmth of your hand? Please?”

I might have gone a little overboard in my choice of words but you get the gist of it.

‘Hmmm… let me think to see what could this flag be…’

~~ inside Li Huang’s mind in his imagination ~~

“Young master of heavenly sword sect, I, ****** am here to challenge you.” said a black-haired youth.

Li Huang snorted and looked at the youth and said nonchalantly “the fact that you need to tell me your name means you are not qualified to talk to me directly, much less challenge me.”

The youth gritted his teeth and said with furry evident in his eyes “Don’t you dare look down on me.”

Li Huang waved his hand dismissively “I’m just stating the facts.”

The youth -Uh- let’s call him tom. Tom was so angry that started his attack before speaking.

After the attack hit the seemingly dazed Li Huang, Tom laughed while he said “Hahahahaha… what is it? Do I qualify now? Hahahaha.”

As the dust settled you could see Li Huang there, without a speck of dust on him and unharmed.

He looked at Tom and said “OK, let me finish it soon I have places to be.”

Looking at Tom he pointed on a finger to him “Eclipse devourer sword art, piercing finger.”

A moment later there was a hole in Tom’s chest and he staggered backward.

With trembling hands, he looked at Li Huang “Y-you ..!”

After that, he dropped to the floor.

Li Huang didn’t spare him even a glance and turned around.

Just as he was about to order others to clean this up, the formation in the center of sword valley shock.

Horrified everyone in the heavenly sword sect looked in the direction of sword valley.

In a blink of an eye, the core formation was broken, and after that outer formations broke like paper in front of the power that was coming from within.

From there came forth a sword that everyone in the sect knows about full too well.

It was Mingyun. The artifact of Heavenly sword sect.

Just as everyone thought it can’t be any more weird moved toward the black-haired youth.

But it didn’t harm him, instead, Tom’s chest was getting repaired at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Seeing this Li Huang was staring wide-eyed at Mingyun.

The moment that Tom was fully healed, he grasped the sword and looked at Li Huang coldly.

Immediately after he attacked Li Huang.

Looking at the attack Huang knows that he can not stop the power of this sword so instead of dying while struggling, he clasped his hands behind his back and there was a smile on his face ‘Father, Mother I’ll be seeing you soon.’

At that moment there was a shout from the sword mountain direction.

“Stop!”

But tom paid it no heed and continued his attack.

In the next second, there was nothing left from Li Huang’s body.

~~~

Coming back to reality from the overactive imagination he nodded to himself.

‘Yeah something along these lines could happen and after that my grandpa can’t kill him because he is the wielder of Mingyun and other grand elders stop him or some other bullshit.’

rolling his eyes he added in his mind ‘Well I can’t say this is a flag… This is a fucking landmine.’

‘The best way to look at it is “a known threat is no longer a threat”, so I just have to be careful not to step on this land mine…’

Well, I should be careful not to let this happen in reality.

“Junior uncle, why are you so deep in your thoughts today?” Hu Anjing asked by the side.

“It might be my puberty making me feel dazed when you press yourself to me.” I answered absentmindedly.

She was stunned for a moment and after that playfully answered “This can be a problem junior uncle, but worry not, I would add a dose of myself to your daily life so that you can adjust to womanly touch sooner.”

Now was my turn to be stunned ‘give an inch and she’ll take a mile’.

“I might overdose with you, how about you focus on your training and I find someone else to give me lessons on ‘womanly touches and how to adjust to them’?”

“…Now that I think more clearly this subject might be over my head, so how about we consult with my master about it?” she said with a caring face but you could see it in her eyes that she was grinning inside.

‘So this is how you want to play?’

“Let us first see what she has to say, after that, I will ask her about it…” I tried to play it cool but you have to know that although Yuan Jia is like my big sister she has a severe case of “brother” complex, so if she knows about it… Well, let’s not think about it…

Entering the main hall we cupped our fists and bowed.

“Meet the matriarch.”

“Meet the matriarch.”

Yuan Jia looked at us with no emotions and said to me “Junior brother, you are here at last. I have a mission for you.”