Chapter 33 Somebody’s Kindness

In the past, after he became a swordsman, Li Fuyao kept thinking about a question most of the time. What were the swordsmen in this human world like? Were they all the same as Chen Sheng? So even though Li Fuyao had started to practice swordsmanship, he still didn’t know what the swordsmen should be like. However, later he stopped worrying, because he would go to the Sword Mountain, the swordsmen’s holy land. There would be many swordsmen there, so he could find the answer.

Li Fuyao knew that there were many cultivators in this human world, and the female ghost in red they had met before was not one of them, but Yang Wei they had met later was one cultivator. However, as for that scholar from Hengyang Academy, Qing Huai didn’t take him seriously and said that it was uncertain how many times such a cultivator could resist Li Fuyao’s sword.

This was Li Fuyao’s first time to fight against a cultivator. This scholar named Zuo Sifan once studied in the Yanling Confucian Temple and even had a magic tool, and none of those people could compare with him.

After the cyan brush pen returned to Zuo Sifan’s hand, he didn’t take actions in a hurry. Instead, he went back to the table and turned the pages of the book he had read on it.

Li Fuyao watched the scene carefully. The oil lamp on the table was the only thing that could brighten the tent, and the scholar was the only cultivator who could kill him. Li Fuyao stayed silent for a long while and moved before Zuo Sifan withdrew his hand.

Nobody knows if Zuo Sifan acted like this on purpose, but in Li Fuyao’s eyes, since Zuo Sifan had such a reaction which seemed to show his weakness, it was enough. Li Fuyao grabbed his machete more tightly and rushed forward with all his strength. The machete was like a line, starting from Li Fuyao’s hand and ending above Zuo Sifan’s head.

Zuo Sifan turned his head and saw that, getting distracted unexpectedly. Especially when he saw Li Fuyao’s eyes, he sighed with emotion for no reason. The expression in the teenager’s eyes was the same as his in the past, with determination and confidence. In the past so many years, Zuo Sifan had entered the Yanling Confucian Temple, as a genius scholar admired by countless people, and then he had witnessed how the real geniuses defeated him, a short-sighted man. He had studied in the temple for twenty years, but he hadn’t even finished the Awakening Stage yet. The last thing he could accept was not the waste of time, but that he watched as a senior with great talents was disliked by the temple and left decisively at last to travel around the world. He couldn’t accept that he didn’t speak for that senior because he had no courage.

These years, Zuo Sifan didn’t promote his stage. Who knew that he was affected by that thing?

He sighed but still grabbed the cyan brush pen.

Before Li Fuyao’s machete came, he wrote the word “courtesy” in front of him.

The Confucian sages could contact the heaven and earth, and their well-written essays could even frighten the evil spirits and their beautiful handwriting could prevent the demons from approaching. While Zuo Sifan was in a low stage and didn’t have the sages’ spirit, but when he started studying in the Yanling Confucian Temple, he had heard that the third Confucian sage was once an ordinary scholar but could write wonderful essays. Even the emperor of Yanling at that time highly praised that sage’s essay as it could shake the world. Later, that sage started cultivating and had never been frustrated. Although he didn’t get promoted quickly as he took the road step by step, after several hundred years, he became the third Confucian sage. Now the sage’s wooden statue was the third in the worship hall of the temple, and even in other places of Yanling, many academies and schools had this sage’s wooden statues.

The order of the four Confucian sages’ wooden statues was not decided by their stages but by their history as a sage. After the other sages died, their wooden statues would be removed from the worship hall, so there were only four sages’ statues left in the hall.

Zuo Sifan held this sage in esteem. When he chose a magic tool, he saw the sage’s brush pen in his hand, so he chose a cyan brush pen.

…

After the word “courtesy” was finished, it soon became a cyan light and was shot to Li Fuyao. He chopped the cyan light with his machete, and when the two met, there was a sound like a collision between golden stones.

Li Fuyao felt severe pain on his wrist, but he didn’t move backward. He twisted his waist and abruptly cut the cyan light floating around him.

The energy poured out from his heart, and there were more white lights on the machete, appearing to be fierce.

This time, the cyan light was split by him and soon scattered before disappearing.

Zuo Sifan just sighed. “No wonder nobody in the human world likes the swordsmen.”

Before he finished speaking, he wrote one word beside him, “gentleman”.

This time, after the word was written, it didn’t turn into a cyan light or scatter. Zuo Sifan was absent-minded and seemed to be out of wits.

In a second, he mocked at himself. “How can I be a gentleman after losing my real self?”

Then this scholar waved away the word and then wrote another word.

This time the word was “resolute”.

The word was from a sentence of that sage’s essay, “An educated gentleman cannot but be resolute and broad-minded, for he has taken up a heavy responsibility and a long course.”

However, before the word became a cyan light, Li Fuyao walked to Zuo Sifan and ignored the word’s future change. Then he stabbed the scholar with his machete.

No cultivator wanted to be so close to a swordsman, so in the next second, Zuo Sifan tried to retreat, but the machete was in front of his chest, and he couldn’t dodge.

Looking at the stab with the machete, Zuo Sifan looked solemn. The word “gentleman” made him restless. Now seeing the swordsmanship, he felt bored.

Zuo Sifan was a cultivator, but he spent more time on reading. Even when he fought against his friends in the temple sometimes to learn from each other, they stopped at a point. He had never had a life-and-death fight with anybody, let alone a swordsman.

In the past six thousand years, the swordsmen in the human world had gone through difficulties, but they still existed all the time, and it could explain something.

Next second, the machete was about to cut through his chest, and even Zuo Sifan could feel the coldness piercing to the bone.

However, Li Fuyao withdrew his swordsmanship.

It was because of nothing but the word turning into a cyan light.

It flew to Li Fuyao’s back. In some situations, it was worthwhile to risk his life, but obviously, under this circumstance, it was unworthy.

So he withdrew his machete.

Afterward, Li Fuyao didn’t turn around but waved the machete to his back and happened to block the cyan light’s attack. He staggered to move backward, and the machete in his hand was full of chips.

Who expected that the cultivator chosen by Qing Huai for him almost finished the Awakening Stage? And it would be not difficult for him to enter the Fundamental Stage after some time.

But somebody knew that.

The girl in black sitting on the high platform outside the tent looked up at the full moon in the sky and suddenly laughed. She was a cultivator in the Fundamental Stage, so she naturally knew what stage these cultivators inferior to her were in. And she was even clear about how much energy Zuo Sifan had in his chest, but she still chose such a cultivator for Li Fuyao in order to drive the boy to desperation.

There were few swordsmen in the human world and fewer swordsmen with great achievements. Qing Huai hoped that Li Fuyao could be one of them.

So she intentionally didn’t show up in Zhuyu Town and chose such a cultivator by the Luosang River for him.

She wanted Li Fuyao to enter the third stage of swordsmen, the Sword Qi Stage before he reached the Sword Mountain.

However, she did that resolutely and cut off the tent from the outside world. Even she didn’t know what was happening in the tent.

Anyway, only one person could walk out at last.

It was the best if that was Li Fuyao. If it was not him, she would kill the survivor to avenge him.

Sitting on the high platform, Qing Huai rarely talked to herself, “Li Fuyao, if you let me down, you deserve to die. Don’t blame me or tell your master on me.”

“Right, if you die, you won’t have the chance.”