CG Chapter 133: A Humble Wooden Sword
At the end of a plum tree's lifespan, when its once green leaves that were full of life turn yellow and hollow, drained of even their last drop of vitality.
And when its proud roots grow brittle and weak, no longer able to support it, it would fall, never to rise, and never to shine again.
The tree falls, and the forest remains…
From there, the damp soil would swallow what remains of the fallen tree to nurture the next cycle and the forest through another cold and harsh winter.
…
Inside a small, broken house, Aretius, now in the body of the old man known as Jin Mozi, continued to sit cross-legged on top of his coarse straw bed, holding the same rusty carving knife in his aged hand.
This time, however, he wasn't carving another worthless statue that would be sold to the self-indulged nobles.
Instead, he was making himself a sword from the plum tree outside. He intended to use it against his future enemies, not that he would need it.
Most mortals would crumble and fall before his decaying hands alone. And against those who wouldn't, a wooden sword wouldn't make much of a difference.
Still, and despite all of that, he decided to make use of anything that could increase his chances of survival, even if it was extremely slim. Besides, carving the sword wouldn't take much of his time.
But there was a more important reason that made him decide to make the sword.
Buried in one of the old man's fragmented memories was a faint image from when he was a child.
Back then, he had witnessed a strange encounter: a half-snake creature talking to itself.
From afar, this creature seemed as if it didn't belong to this world.
When he tried to tell the story to his parents, they didn't believe him. Instead, and for the first and last time in his life, his father slapped him with full force.
He still remembered the heat from that slap, the red eyes full of anger his father had, and the scream to never speak of it again.
That was until he told the same story to his grandfather, who secretly told him the truth.
The Fiend, the Bizarre. Call them what you want. They were among the many creatures that lived between heaven and earth alongside mankind.
Some were flesh-eating monsters. Others were ghostly beings that were hard to grasp or even fight for normal humans.
One of the stories he heard from his grandfather was that some of the weaker ghostly entities were weak to wood that came from an old plum tree.
Of course, that was only a foolish tale from an old man.
On top of the sword's hilt, there was the engraving of a strange character. If someone saw that character, they would become confused, as they wouldn't be able to tell what it meant.
This was only natural, as the character didn't belong to this world, but was something that Aretius made up by combining multiple languages into one as it formed a symbol of what he called Purple Spring.
As he finished making the sword, he finally decided to leave his shabby house to explore the power system of this world and begin his new journey.
According to the scattered memories of the original host, this world followed a martial arts system with two parallel and separate paths.
The first path was the Outer Path, known as Body Refinement, which was mostly used by the lowly scum of the kingdom and the lower-ranking soldiers.
It was easier to start with and offered faster and more noticeable results, especially at the very beginning, while the other path was still laying its foundation.
The second path was the Inner Path, known as Ki Cultivation. In this path, the practitioner would gather Ki from food and from the air as he attempted to control it and use it for a wide range of activities.
Which one was better, and which one was worse? None.
Both paths were equally important and had their own advantages and disadvantages.
However, the Inner Path was viewed as the more noble path, as it was used by high-ranking scholars and noble families who preferred an alternative method that didn't require mutilating themselves.
These two paths had their own respective realm names, but the general titles were that of Fourth Rate, Third Rate, Second Rate, and First Rate.
As for what came after, the old man didn't have the status nor the privilege to know.
The fact that he even knew about these four realms was a rare occurrence, and it was only due to his frequent travels in his younger years to the nearby city, where he interacted with some low-ranking nobles.
He would often carve statues for them or for their concubines, helping them feel good about themselves.
Rather than focus on training, those nobles chose to indulge in pleasure and lust.
Aretius shook his head.
How could the pleasures of the flesh ever be compared to the feeling of getting stronger and nearing a higher level of existence?
People usually wonder why immortal cultivators become indifferent to the lives of mortals that they once were.
But they don't realize that these cultivators are closer to demonic beasts than to mortals who can barely survive for a hundred years.
As for those who say that cultivators were once mortals and should not look down upon them, then they have misunderstood the nature of mankind.
These cultivators don't wish to be reminded that they were once mortals, or that they were once the same kind as those worms who they could easily crush beneath their feet.
Mortals are creatures who cannot stand the march of time, while they could live for thousands of years, and had hopes of attaining the Great Dao.
Not that it mattered now.
Aretius had once witnessed the death of a Supreme Lord with his own eyes. He knew that immortality was still far away.
At that moment, he decided to begin laying his foundation before leaving for the nearby city.
There he could acquire a training method for both the Outer and Inner Paths.
One way or another.