Chapter 594: Taoist Priest Descends the Mountain to Remove the Mountain

**Venturing Alone to Northern Mang**

Xuanyuan Qingfeng watched helplessly as the long rainbow of fist-qi surged towards her. In the eyes of a second-rank junior grandmaster, this mistress of Daxueping likely seemed somewhat vulnerable.

Ordinary martial artists believe that once they luckily attain the Heavenly Phenomenon realm, their internal vital energy can connect with heaven and earth, becoming inexhaustible. This understanding isn't entirely wrong, but it's only half true. Experts of the Heavenly Phenomenon realm are, after all, not terrestrial immortals who roam freely. Gao Shulu once likened practitioners at this level to someone building a ladder to the clouds, distinct from the next level, which is like sitting atop Kunlun Peak and gazing at the sea. One is still ascending, while the other has already reached the summit. Therefore, if anyone destroys this ladder to rapid ascent, progress will halt. Han Diaosi excels at slaying Heavenly Phenomenon experts precisely because his 'Finger of Profundity' is ideal for dismantling this 'ladder.' However, Han Shengxuan needs to engage in close-quarters combat to slowly dissect his opponents, whereas Wang Xianzhi is different. From beginning to end, the City Lord of Wudi City did not engage Xuanyuan Qingfeng closely. Breaking chains with bare hands, the 'Azure Dragon Entering Water' move, and two consecutive punches—even including the distance covered by walking along the cliff—their distance was never close.

In that moment, Xuanyuan Qingfeng's mind went blank; she couldn't recall anything. She didn't remember the full-flowing osmanthus rain in Huishan, nor the lingering aroma of 'Daughter Red' wine, nor the heavy rain on Daxueping.

When she slowly exhaled a turbid breath, it was as if she released her last bit of energy, allowing the remaining vital energy to dissipate. Her purple robe became even more adrift in the wind. Xuanyuan Qingfeng closed her eyes, her mind as still as water. Her last thought was, "It's all cleared now." As a child, naive and inexperienced, she always liked to ask her bookish father various questions, and somehow the topic of romantic love came up. Her father, who always enjoyed dissecting characters, explained 'qing' (情, love) using 'qing' (清, clear). He pointed out that the radicals of the two characters are 'water' and 'heart.' He said that only when one's heart is as still as water has one truly let go, and then everything is "cleared."

Wang Xianzhi stood atop the cliff. Seeing the purple robe at the point of impact from the long rainbow, he frowned. This woman achieved enlightenment at the brink of death, but alas, it was too late.

It wasn't that Wang Xianzhi couldn't change his mind, destroy his fist-qi, and spare the woman's life. But the old man, having stood by Jieshi in the East for sixty years, was simply too weary to wait for the next significant development in the martial arts world to crash upon the shore.

Just as the white rainbow fist-qi was about to obliterate Xuanyuan Qingfeng, Wang Xianzhi suddenly turned his head. He gazed towards the left bank of the Guangling River, and within his sight, he saw a middle-aged Taoist priest rushing towards the iron pillar remains of the 'Iron Chains Sunk in River' site. Then, with a high leap, the priest crossed the wide river, landing with his sword on another iron pillar on the opposite bank. His speed was astonishing; even Wang Xianzhi, who was truly unrivaled throughout the world, couldn't help but look on with admiration. In terms of light-footedness alone, the priest's single leap across the river was far beyond merely 'leaving no traces in snow.' But the priest was more than that: his body arrived, and only then did his sword energy arrive. This was one of the essences of an immortal wielding a sword. The rapidly advancing fist-qi was, without warning, cut clean in half precisely when the priest landed, vanishing into thin air in an instant. Had Song Nianqing, with his Fourteen New Swords, launched any attack, it wouldn't have been so swift and decisive. Even if the fist-qi had been cut into two, Wang Xianzhi's fist-qi, empowered by its residual force, could still have used its front half to forcefully kill Xuanyuan Qingfeng, rather than vanishing completely as it did now.

Wang Xianzhi stood proudly on the cliff top, instantly guessing the identity of the sword-wielding Taoist: Wang Xiaoping, the 'Sword Maniac,' renowned for the purity of his sword-heart. Legend has it that he practiced swordplay without fixed stances. When the eighty-one peaks of Wudang faced the main peak, with varying distances between them, Wang Xiaoping would always stand on one peak, pointing his sword at another. His fellow disciples on the other peak would casually toss a fallen leaf, and only when his sword energy struck the leaf without piercing it was his practice considered complete. Wang Xianzhi used to wait patiently in the East Sea for the world's top martial artists to enter the city and climb his tower. Those he waited for but never arrived were few and far between, and Wang Xiaoping was one of them. Wang Xianzhi was curious whether this Taoist, who shouldered Wudang's sword legacy, had the potential to surpass Deng Ta'a's unparalleled killing aura. Wang Xianzhi felt no anger at Wang Xiaoping's sudden appearance today, nor at his shattering of the fist-qi with an unsheathed sword. He didn't become enraged and seek to 'kick a man when he's down,' leaving the saved Xuanyuan Qingfeng to fall into the water unnoticed. Even if she survived that ordeal by a stroke of luck and achieved insurmountable heights in the martial arts world in the future, it was no longer something Wang Xianzhi cared about.

Now, Wang Xianzhi merely wished to experience Wang Xiaoping's next sword strike.

Wang Xiaoping stood on the bank, holding an ordinary Taoist peach wood sword, and looked up at the old man. This old man, since defeating Li Chungang, had faced no truly equal opponents. In the hearts of all swordsmen, including Wang Xiaoping, this fact was an inexpressible frustration, because Wang Xianzhi had ascended to the pinnacle of the martial arts world by stepping on the very head of sword dao. The flourishing community of swordsmen had always claimed to occupy half the martial arts world. After Li Chungang's defeat, even powerful figures like the new Sword God, Deng Ta'a, couldn't pull Wang Xianzhi from his pedestal. The grandmaster of sword dao who followed, Song Nianqing of Dongyue Sword Pool, former master of the Plain King's Sword from the Wu Family Sword Tomb, likewise couldn't express his true feelings with a single strike. As long as Wang Xianzhi lived, swordsmen would remain overshadowed. How could a single sword strike resolve the situation?

From a young age, Wang Xiaoping practiced the sword, always intending to one day 'challenge' Wudi City with his sword. He wanted to ask Wang Xianzhi, who once declared, "I view the world's swordsmen as mere performers": "Are there truly no swordsmen left among us?!"

Wang Xianzhi proclaimed loudly, "Wang Xiaoping, before this old man enters Beiliang territory, I can only wait for three of your sword strikes."

Wang Xiaoping did not reply loudly. He averted his gaze, looked at the peach wood sword in his hand, and softly said, "One sword is enough."

Wang Xianzhi's journey to Beiliang this time was not particularly fast. Moving too quickly would render the long-awaited battle meaningless, but he couldn't move too slowly either. When the young woman named Jiang forcefully opened the Heavenly Gate, Wang Xianzhi could entirely dismiss it. But if it were the person named Xu performing the feat, it would be a different matter. That devilish figure, Huang Longshi, who feared nothing but order, had injected the residual fortunes of eight fallen kingdoms into the martial arts world. As a result, various opportunities arose, and chaos ensued. Martial arts prodigies like Cao Changqing, Deng Ta'a, and Chen Zhibao emerged one after another. To call them a 'hundred-year rarity' would be an understatement; 'fifty-year rarity' is not an exaggeration. They were like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, appearing all at once in the same spring, without any regard for whether there would be a harvest next year. One must remember that many things have 'big years' and 'small years'; if a 'big year' is too big, the 'small year' truly becomes insignificant. Among this great surge of 'bamboo shoots,' the young man named Xu was undoubtedly a rising star. Yet, his position was directly beneath Wang Xianzhi, the ancient evergreen bamboo!

In truth, Xuanyuan Qingfeng's defeat was not as unjust as one might imagine. Over the years, only a select few had managed to get close to Wang Xianzhi: Deng Ta'a's flying sword, Cao Changqing's sleeves, Gu Jiantang's 'Inch Thunder,' young Song Nianqing's last-ditch sword energy, and Jianjiu Huang Zhengtu's dying sword strike. Their numbers were truly very few.

Of course, the most recent instance was the fist of that young prince.

Wang Xiaoping suddenly looked up and smiled slightly, "Wang Xianzhi, why stand so high?"

After speaking, Wang Xiaoping slightly raised his left arm, holding the sword, twisted his wrist, and pointed the pommel of the peach wood scabbard towards the canyon wall, angling it slightly downwards as if indicating something. With his right hand, he lightly tapped the sword hilt.

The sword in his hand was one of more than ten new peach wood swords crafted this summer. Because it wasn't made from the superior Feicheng peach wood, known for its fine quality for Taoist swords, its color was only a faint reddish-brown, and it certainly didn't emit a pleasant woody fragrance. After he settled in a thatched hut with the 'Useless Monk' Liu Songtao, nearby villagers had heard that hanging peach wood at their doorways could ward off evil and protect their homes. However, they dared not carve the swords themselves. After finally catching hold of a proper wandering Taoist priest, at first, only one fisherman asked Wang Xiaoping for a peach wood sword. Later, word spread rapidly, and people flocked to his door. Wang Xiaoping didn't refuse; he agreed to all requests, and to this day, he still owes eight of them. Peach wood is known as 'ghost-fearing wood.' Almost every person on Wudang Mountain carried a peach wood sword. Before descending the mountain, Wang Xiaoping, who carried the Talisman Sword Shentu, was actually an anomaly. He recalled that when he first descended, his junior brother Hong Xixiang saw him off at the mountain gate archway, smiling and saying he had carved half a peach wood sword for his 'Little Senior Brother Wang.' At that time, Wang Xiaoping descended the mountain with his primary sword; he wouldn't have cared about a peach wood sword that was easily obtainable both on and off the mountain.

After the tap, the pommel of the peach wood sword slightly tilted upwards.

"Rise."

Wang Xiaoping softly uttered a single word.

After a moment of silence, a continuous, rumbling roar erupted.

Below Wang Xianzhi's feet, the canyon wall, from bottom to top, seemed to be 'lifted' by a great mountain-splitting sword. The cliff face split into two halves, with rocks constantly tumbling into the river, stirring up countless waves.

"To summon the sword with such grandeur already, it seems you wish to emulate Li Chungang's unsheathing feat? Since you are only willing to use one sword strike, this old man will oblige you."

Wang Xianzhi chuckled lightly and gracefully leaped down the cliff. His descent speed was not too fast. Just before his feet touched the water, a giant boulder, several times a person's height, broke off from the mountain. Wang Xianzhi extended a palm to support the heavy rock face and then began to run across the river towards Wang Xiaoping.

He carried the ten-thousand-jin boulder with one hand, yet on the river surface beneath Wang Xianzhi's feet, only almost imperceptible ripples were formed.

Wang Xiaoping looked at the strange scene of rolling rocks on the river, and inexplicably recalled his senior brother, the sect leader, severing the Canglan River with a finger back then. It wasn't to show off the mystical abilities of a mountain immortal to the common people, but because a sudden downpour had made several ferries precarious in the storm. Only then did his senior brother block the surging upstream river water until the ferries safely reached the shore.

Before, on the mountain, Wang Xiaoping was the most diligent and dedicated among his fellow disciples in cultivating martial arts. He always felt that his senior brothers didn't take cultivation seriously enough. While not strictly pursuing immortality was fine, they seemed too indifferent to the four words, 'Wudang Shall Flourish.' His senior brother Wang Chonglou always said, "No hurry, no hurry." And his junior brother Hong, who called him 'Little Senior Brother Wang,' always made him feel a bit resentful for his lack of ambition. However, when he later heard that his junior brother had actually descended the mountain one day, Wang Xiaoping couldn't help but wonder if it might have been better for his junior brother to stay on the mountain his entire life, cultivating that ineffable dao.

Wang Xiaoping was utterly lost in thought, as if he hadn't seen Wang Xianzhi already approaching like thunder, carrying the giant boulder.

Wang Xiaoping smiled knowingly.

He recalled his childhood, when Sect Leader Wang Chonglou, who was both a senior fellow disciple and a benevolent father figure, would often toss a child high into the air, then catch him with a smiling "Gotcha!"

He remembered riding on Senior Brother Song Zhiming's shoulders to watch the sunset from the peak of Great Lotus Peak. He remembered his youth, when he won a sword fight against Senior Brother Chen Yao, whom their master had once called the most competitive; yet, Senior Brother Chen showed no disappointment, simply turning his back and walking away. Later, he heard that Senior Brother Chen had been beaming with joy at the time. He remembered Senior Brother Yu Xingrui always seeking him out in the Purple Bamboo Forest to share interesting stories from down the mountain whenever he descended, regardless of whether Wang Xiaoping was annoyed.

Wang Xiaoping returned to his usual sword-holding stance, simultaneously stepping back with his right foot and gripping the hilt of the peach wood sword with his right hand.

Slowly, he closed his eyes.

On the bank of the Guangling River where the middle-aged Taoist stood, the lapping river water began to recede.

Behind him, the old iron pillar, which once held chains across the river, began to shake violently, and its base cracked inch by inch.

In his mind, Wang Xiaoping thought of only four words.

Wudang possesses a sword.