Book 4, Chapter 204: Breaking Free Of The Mind And Returning To The Body

Xiaoyue Zhai sensed something after Chen Chuan finished saying those words, and he positioned his saber horizontally in front of him.

The next moment, they heard a thunderous crack.

Hu Kan, who was taking his medicine, flinched and nearly dropped his pills. Since his eyes weren’t on the square, he didn’t see what was going on. All he saw was the two disappear.

A large hole appeared where Chen Chuan originally stood with cracks spreading outward. Wisps of golden-white light shone out of them.

Behind where Xiaoyue Zhai stood, a horizontal mural filled with carvings of dragons and snakes was pierced by a hole, which was about eight meters tall. The shattered stones shot out from behind it before spilling all over the ground and bouncing about a bit.

Loud explosions came from a distance away, as if thunder was ringing in the hall. The pillar under Hu Kan’s butt and the floor trembled violently, and it wasn’t just occasionally. The tremors kept going until they nearly shook him off.

“Holy crap...” Hu Kan patted his head, shocked. The new kid’s so fierce!

He shoved all the pills into his mouth, sat still for a bit, and shouted, “I’m done!”

He stood up again, and his body grew. Since he was in a hurry, he ignored all the armor on the ground, grabbed his hammers, and rushed to the back.

***

Boom!

Xiaoyue Zhai crashed into a stone pillar with chants carved into it. Cracks spread down it as he slid down, and purple-white light flickered nonstop.

He looked up and saw Chen Chuan landing in front of him before walking over slowly. After a few steps, he vanished again.

Xiaoyue Zhai’s eyes went wide in shock, but he didn’t rely on his vision to track Chen Chuan. After all, it was impossible. He could sense a person rapidly getting closer in his mind’s eye, and his saber started trembling faintly.

He stayed still, but a transparent figure rose from his body. With an equally transparent saber, he swung at the person.

The sound of a clean crack rose in the air. The transparent saber cut into the person, but it was like glass hitting stone. The saber shattered together with the transparent figure, but they managed to stop the person for a brief moment.

During that brief pause, Xiaoyue Zhai took a step back, and that was enough for him to regain his composure. He wasn’t expecting Chen Chuan to be so fast and strong, but it was mainly because he was still stuck in the rhythm he used when he fought against Hu Kan and hadn’t adapted to this one. If his mind hadn’t forced his body to react and squeezed out enough spirit flames to protect him, he might have been crushed already.

He wasn’t expecting the Great Shun Republic to send such a powerful martial arts master, and he knew that he couldn’t keep defending. Once Hu Kan recovered and joined the fight, his chances of winning were going to drop to zero.

When the transparent figure shattered, he took a step forward and swung the saber at the same time Chen Chuan slowed down. A blinding light shone on his saber, but it didn’t come from the blade alone. The light seemed to come from his entire being. Buzzing sounds resembling Zen chants followed after.

Chen Chuan immediately sensed a restrictive power pressing down on him attempting to pin him down. This power was clearly supposed to be used together with an attack. As he watched the slash coming at him, his gaze sharpened. He didn’t do anything to block it. Instead, a wave of refined force filled his body.

When Xiaoyue Zhai swung his saber, the purple-white light gathered on his weapon. The concentrated spirit flames became another sharp blade wrapped around the saber that could easily cut through biofields. Chen Chuan’s outermost golden-white spirit flames started melting away rapidly.

This was an attack that used firm spirit flames to crush immaterial spirit flames. With how concentrated the spirit flames were, they looked to have gained physical form that could pass through the gaps in the opponent’s defenses.

The slash tore through most of Chen Chuan’s spirit flames, but when the saber was about to touch skin, it was blocked by a tough but thin layer of light and wasn’t able to push forward any further.

This was a body hardening-type refined force executed with true power.

Once Xiaoyue Zhai noticed that things weren’t going well, he pulled back to retreat, but Chen Chuan shot forward past him. On his way, he reached out, wrapped his arm around Xiaoyue Zhai’s neck, grabbed his waist with his other arm, and switched his refined force to a takedown-type refined force. The moment he touched Xiaoyue Zhai, his true power seeped into the man’s body. Xiaoyue Zhai’s spirit flames were extinguished, as if someone had thrown water on them.

With Xiaoyue Zhai in hand, Chen Chuan used the momentum of his charge to twist outward. Cracking sounds rose, and he snapped Xiaoyue Zhai’s neck and spine. When he let go, Xiaoyue Zhai went limp.

Chen Chuan threw him on the ground. When he noticed that the body was no longer breathing or making any sound, understanding rose in his eyes.

“Mental form...”

He nodded. It made sense.

Xiaoyue Zhai’s techniques already gave him some clues, but this truly showed the path he took.

If a martial arts master walking down the path of the mental form wasn’t far enough down his path and his mind had yet to replace the mental energy he parked in the other world, his body was still relatively important. However, once they reached a certain degree of mastery, even if their bodies were destroyed, they wouldn’t die. As long as they could find a suitable vessel and attach themselves to it, they could continue living, though their training in the future wouldn’t go as smoothly.

Still, it was better than dying in battle.

Rumbling sounds came from behind Chen Chuan. It was Hu Kan. With his mouth wide open in shock, he stared at Xiaoyue Zhai’s arched, broken back on the ground. “You’ve opened my eyes, brother. It feels like I just blinked, and you already killed him.”

“I haven’t,” Chen Chuan corrected him gently and looked into the distance. “He’s taking the path of the mental form. I think he ran off to look for another body.”

“Huh. You’re right,” Hu Kan said after examining the body. He scratched his stubble. “I heard that Serene Radiance School has a technique called Returning Heaven to the Body. It has something to do with traversing life and death, and the mind being free to enter any vessel of its choosing. Honestly, I wasn’t able to tell. I thought that he was walking down the path of the human form. He’s such a fox.”

Hu Kan looked around. “Where the hell is the guy? As long as someone is willing to host him, he can attach to anyone, and the island is full of Clear View Hall’s believers. There’s also the Serene Radiance School disciples. All of them can become his vessel. He can go to whoever he wants. If a person walking down the path of the mental form wants to hide, he can run us around in circles.”

“I think I can figure out where he’s hiding,” Chen Chuan said.

Among the island nations, the major martial arts schools with a legacy all had a gap. They weren’t just the foundation of their schools, but also contained the bodies of their predecessors. A regular person’s body was useless to a martial arts master. They would just waste the martial arts master’s mental energy.

So, it was highly likely that Xiaoyue Zhai went to his gap.

While he didn’t know where it was, Chen Chuan had a hunch that it was underground. It should be at the core of the school so that it would be easy to protect it.

He shared his theory. Hu Kan was taken aback for a moment, but quickly recovered. “The core? We’re at Clear View Hall, which is smack dab in the center of the island. This should be the core, right?”

Chen Chuan considered it before looking up. Over there was a large statue chiseled out of a stone wall. The sitting man’s face was identical to that of Master Hongfa’s statue outside.

“Is that Master Hongfa?” he asked.

“Yup. His successors carved it. Pretty tall, huh? That place is really windy. I reckon that Master Hongfa doesn’t like his head being exposed to the cold all the time, but if his disciples wanted to put him so high up, he couldn’t do anything about it, could he?” Hu Kan mused.

“That should be the place,” Chen Chuan said.

He took two steps forward and was about to speed up when he thought of something. He went back to pick up the horse-cutting saber. After giving it a quick once-over, he plunged it so deep into the wall beside him that only the hilt was left visible. Only after that did he leave for the statue.

When Hu Kan saw Chen Chuan moving, he instinctively followed, but he came to a quick stop when Chen Chuan turned around. The motion almost made him twist his back. Then, Chen Chuan started running again, and Hu Kan cried out, “Hey, brother, slow down! Ah, forget it...”

Chen Chuan had already vanished from sight. Feeling resigned, Hu Kan set his hammers on his shoulders and ran in the direction Chen Chuan disappeared to.

Even though he was huge, he wasn’t slow. His agility only lacked in jumps, which led to loud rumbling sounds whenever he landed. Soon, the two reached Master Hongfa’s statue.

Chen Chuan knew without having to look that he came to the right place, because he could sense a clear wisp of mental energy from a spot under the statue’s lotus flower seat.

While those walking down the path of the mental form could cast aside their bodies, they were still in a state between the material and immaterial world. Their minds were a highly concentrated form of a martial arts master’s biofield and mental energy. Before reaching mastery, they left some traces wherever they went.

Chen Chuan bypassed the candles and walked up to put his hand on the statue. His spirit flames flickered, and one of the lotus petals let out a rumbling sound as he pushed it inward. A passage wide enough for two people showed up.

Chen Chuan walked over and saw a corridor made of stone. Lotus flower lanterns shone on each wall. When he stepped inside, his second self turned fainter.

Yes. This was definitely where Serene Radiance School’s gap was.

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