Alienated Martial Arts

The sky is getting brighter and the morning light is shining.

A hare emerged from the hole, looked around cautiously, and then began to look for grass stems that could still enter.

The faint smell of blood drifted in the wind.

Several wild wolves followed the trail, their fur stained with ice and snow mud, as if they were wearing a layer of gray armor.

Whoosh!

The hare panicked and ran away desperately.

He almost hit the rocks near the entrance of the cave.

The alpha wolf noticed the noise made by the rabbits, but showed no sign of coming to hunt them, even though they were so hungry that they were all skin and bones and didn't know if they could survive until spring came.

They were completely attracted by the tent not far away.

Several crows with black feathers and red eyes landed and quickly disappeared into the tent.

The smell of blood seems to be stronger.

The wolves lowered their bodies and moved forward slowly.

The closer they got to the tent, the more restless they became.

After all, this is not another place, but the territory of those two-legged and terrifying bipeds.

And it is the most dangerous core area.

For every prairie wolf, the fear of humans is innate. This is a memory condensed with countless blood. It has been deeply engraved in the depths of the blood and can never be forgotten from generation to generation.

If it hadn't been for the unbearable winter, they wouldn't have been so reckless, following the smell of blood and heading straight to the settlement of the Northern Wilderness tribe.

But something was strange today.

The alpha wolf stopped and lay down in the snow.

Minimize the exposed area of ​​​​the body as much as possible.

In its simple memory, this place shouldn't be so quiet.

Even late at night, there should be various noises and sounds.

But at this moment of dawn, there is a deathly emptiness and silence.

Although it couldn't think and could only act based on experience and instinct, it also smelled something unusual.

It was mixed with the strong smell of blood and entered its nostrils.

Finally, the alpha wolf stood up and started walking towards the outermost tent.

A body lay behind the tent, cold and stiff.

Then, as if a mysterious switch was turned on, more and more corpses came into view.

Their breathing became heavy.

The impatient one has already lowered his head to eat.

The sharp teeth bit into the frozen flesh, making a series of clicking sounds.

Suddenly, there was a soft crash.

The cotton curtain of a tent was lifted from the inside.

A tall and slender figure walked out.

"It's a pack of wolves. They probably came here following the smell of blood."

Ni Xun glanced at it from a distance, then turned around and said, "Do you want me to get rid of them?"

"I know, don't worry about them."

Wei Tao nodded, picked up the bag full of kumiss and took a sip, then turned his attention to the old man in green shirt in front of him again.

The master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion sighed, "Can you give me a drink?"

"cannot."

Wei Tao refused directly, "I am a kind-hearted person and I don't want to see the fruits of other people's labor being wasted."

Facing the somewhat puzzled look of the Master of Hidden Sword Pavilion, he added, "You have such a big hole in your stomach, and it will leak out even if you drink. If it's not a waste, what is it?"

"Okay, the Pavilion Master continues, maybe if I listen to you, I can reward you with a sip of wine."

"I must have been plotted against."

The master of Hidden Sword Pavilion moved his body with difficulty to make himself feel a little more comfortable.

“Just when I entered the Northern Wasteland, I met a very strange person.

He looks ordinary, nothing special, but in my perception, he is like a tangled and twisted black shadow, incompatible with the surrounding environment, but able to blend into it in a strange way.

This man made a sneak attack without warning and injured one of my disciples. Then I cut him in half with my sword control skills and took his life. "

“I didn’t take this matter too seriously at first, I just regarded it as an ordinary attack.

After all, the world is huge, there are many warriors, all kinds of weird and weird cultivation techniques are emerging one after another, and there are so many people without eyesight that you can kill them all. If you kill one of these people, it will be over, and I didn’t pay enough attention to it.

But looking back now, the killing of that man was not the end, but just the beginning.

The seeds of my disciple should have been planted at that time, and the seeds were eroded and disturbed unknowingly.

Then in the subsequent encounters in daily life and on the road, even I accidentally fell into the trap, which ultimately led to a series of things happening last night.

The few of my disciples who came to stay in the tent were also implicated, causing bloody killings in this settlement. "

Wei Tao was lost in thought, stroking a strand of ink-black hair between his fingers.

He drank the wine in the bag in one gulp and stood up slowly, "I am sure that this thing is not the mysterious silk, but after careful observation and perception, it seems to be inexplicably connected with the mysterious silk.

As the master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion, the old gentleman also likes to read a lot of books and read all the classics. Can you recognize the foundation of it? "

"I haven't seen it before, so I don't dare to speak nonsense."

The Master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion shook his head, and after a moment of silence, he continued, "But after I came back to my senses, I reviewed the details of last night again and again, and I came up with a guess. I don't know if it is right or wrong."

Wei Tao picked up another wine bag, "You have a story and I have wine. Let's not talk about whether it is right or wrong. It is only right to tell it first and listen."

The master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion said slowly, "The chaos in the Sword Pavilion a hundred years ago probably contained the shadow of this kind of thing."

"The chaos of a hundred years ago."

Wei Tao's eyes flashed, "What do you mean, the war in the West and the coming of the Jiange from the East are actually related to this thing?"

“In the ancient books of our sect, there were once fragmentary records that carried the sword’s intention like threads.

When I first saw this, I was a little confused for a long time. I couldn't figure out why the sword intention that everyone realized during practice could still be passed down in this way. "

"Later, I met a warrior from the Dingxuan sect in Mozhou, and learned from him the secret of Guishu's reappearance of the mysterious silk threads and the secret of Dingxuan's head cultivating the knot of hearts.

At first, I thought I had found the origin of the silk-like thread that carries the sword's intention. I was even quite surprised and sighed, thinking that the sages of our sect were really powerful. They were able to reproduce this thing a hundred years ago, which is better than Zhou Zhou. The imperial sect has even advanced by more than sixty years.

But after in-depth research, I discovered that the Mysterious Silk Silk cannot carry the sword's intention at all, so this thing is not the same thing as the Mysterious Silk Silk, but it is similar in some aspects.

Then I looked through all the texts left by our ancestors with doubts, which mainly included practice experiences and various diaries, and then I discovered secrets that I had not noticed before. "

"What secret?"

As Wei Tao spoke, he put the wine bag to the mouth of the Master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion and asked him to drink heavily.

The Master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion slowly breathed out the breath of alcohol, "I never thought that being able to breathe and take a breath, and having a drink of wine would actually become such a luxury."

He closed his eyes and thought about it for a moment before continuing.

"I looked through the records of the ancestors in the pavilion, and found that after they were like threads and carried the sword's intention, the content of their writing suddenly changed, as if they were different people, and even gave people a feeling of crazy distortion and confusion. .

After that, there was chaos in the Southern Xinjiang, Northern Wilderness, and the West Pole. Jiange originally adhered to the motto of cutting off secular ties with the sword and being independent from the world, but driven by this increasingly crazy emotion, it joined the chaos in the West Pole. . "

The master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion opened his eyes, with a slight smile on his bloodless face, "During this period, divine will shined, various spiritual intentions manifested, and even various changes occurred in the seven blessed lands of the Great Zhou Sect.

You should also know what happened next. Emperor Wu of the Great Zhou Dynasty came out of nowhere and suppressed all the chaos until today, a hundred years later. "

Wei Tao remained silent and listened quietly.

Time passed little by little.

It wasn't until the Master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion stopped talking that he asked again, "What does the Master of the Night Pavilion have to say about the idea that divine will appears and the world is in chaos?"

"The past is dusty and difficult to recall. If you want to find out the true meaning of this sentence, you have to ask Emperor Wu what he is thinking in his heart."

"Pavilion Master Ye said it, but he didn't say it. Although the emperor's corpse has risen from the Nine Sacred Mountains, there is only a trace of unresolved obsession left. How can he answer various questions like ordinary people?"

The Master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion sighed, "Perhaps the world should have been in chaos a hundred years ago, but it was precisely because of the strong suppression of this man who was the best in the world in terms of cultivation and status as the Emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty that the chaos was postponed for a hundred years. .

And the words "God's will appears and the world is in chaos" shows that he also knows that all he does is delay, rather than completely solve and eradicate it.

As for how long it can be delayed, whether it is one year, ten years or a hundred years, I think even Emperor Wu himself is not sure, and he cannot even estimate the approximate time. "

"It seems that this old man doesn't believe in the wisdom of future generations."

Wei Tao picked up the third bag of milk wine, pulled out the cork and took a sip, "Otherwise, I wouldn't have made such an arrangement before my death, even if it disturbed my sleep after death."

Speaking of this, he suddenly remembered something, "Just now, Lord Ye Pavilion mentioned that the ancestors of Jiange Pavilion had changed their minds and become crazy and twisted.

So Emperor Wu kept copying Jinghong Tie at the last moment of his life, and seemed to have fallen into madness. Is there any connection between the two? "

The master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion fell into deep thought and asked after a long time, "I have never seen the emperor's corpse, and I don't know if there are traces of these ink threads on the emperor's corpse, so I don't dare to talk nonsense."

Wei Tao said, "If we can judge based on this standard, then I'm sure not."

"oh?"

The master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion tried his best to look up and asked, "Have you ever had close contact with the emperor's corpse?"

"I had contact with him, and I even exchanged two moves with him. I was directly hit by two Emperor Seals. It took me a long time to recover."

Wei Tao said as he picked up the wine bag, drank half of it himself, and then brought the remaining half to the mouth of the Master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion.

He watched the wine bag empty little by little and asked with a serious expression, "Master Ye, do you want to eat some more dried meat to go with the wine?"

"No, that's enough."

The Master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion slowly shook his head, "I used to like to drink books with wine. Although the conditions are simple now and there are no books to read with wine, it is still very happy to be able to sit and communicate with you, a rising star. , endless aftertaste.”

Wei Tao nodded and said, "Senior, when you come to the Dharma Realm, you will remember the high level and the powerful swordsmanship in your heart.

If the senior had not been corroded and disturbed his mind, could maintain his clear sword mind, and truly demonstrate the method he had learned, the outcome of last night's battle was still unknown. "

The master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion just smiled at this, "Time is also luck, and luck is also destiny. There is no point in thinking more about what has already happened."

Having said this, he raised his head and took another look, with no concealed surprise and emotion in his eyes, "It has only been so long, and most of the sword wounds on your body have healed.

Even if the Vajra secret method has reached the level of unification of yin and yang, it is impossible to have such a powerful recovery ability. What kind of practice method is this? "

Wei Tao opened another wine bag, with a calm expression and a gentle tone, "Actually, it's not a profound secret method, it's just the Xuanwu True Interpretation of the Turtle and Snake Chapter."

"The true interpretation of Xuanwu, the intersection of tortoise and snake?"

The master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion was silent for a moment, and said slowly word by word, "Although I am in the Xiji Sword Pavilion, I have dabbled in the martial arts of the Great Zhou Sect.

I dare not say much else, but I had done in-depth research on Xuanwu Zhenjie Turtle and Snake Chapter, but I could not figure out how it could reach such a high level. "

Wei Tao smiled again, "The master of the pavilion thinks that it cannot reach this level, just because you haven't studied it deeply enough, and you haven't truly reached the realm where Xuanwu gradually grows and turtles and snakes regain their light."

"Xuanwu gradually emerges, and turtles and snakes become bright again?"

The master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion seemed to have thought of something and suddenly fell silent.

After a long time, he sighed and said, "You are so young, but you can reach amazing heights. In my eyes, you can no longer be described as amazingly talented.

Even Emperor Wu of the Great Zhou Dynasty a hundred years ago might not have achieved as much as you when he was as old as you. "

After a pause, the master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion turned to look at the door.

His eyes fell on Ni Xun who was dismantling the sword box wooden table and reassembling the solid wood boards.

He continued with a tone of sigh, "And your partner, her qualifications in sword practice are absolutely excellent. If I had met her in my early years, I would have accepted her as a close disciple and devoted all my efforts to training her."

"Pavilion Master, you have given me too much praise. Regarding my talent in martial arts practice, I have always had a very clear understanding of myself. I am definitely not a genius. I am just mediocre at best."

"If you are mediocre, then I can only be a fool."

The Master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion laughed, "No, I'm not even an idiot. Compared with you, I feel like a monkey who just knows how to swing a branch."

Wei Tao shook his head, "The Pavilion Master may not know yet, but when the monkey comes down from the tree to walk independently and learns to use tools, it represents the arrival of a new era."

"Oh? This formulation is very interesting. This is the first time I have heard it. Can you elaborate on it?"

Next, the two of them had a great conversation, sitting across from each other and talking.

From time to time he would pick up the wine bag and take a few sips.

It was like old friends reunited after a long absence, gathering together in the tent to have a drink.

Even if there is no food, the enthusiasm is not diminished at all.

Time passed little by little.

I don't know who said something, but they both laughed at the same time.

He was just smiling and laughing, but the atmosphere in the tent became strangely dull.

Wei Tao suppressed his smile and put away the wine bag he had just finished drinking. "The auspicious time has come. Does the Pavilion Master have any funeral arrangements?"

"When a person dies, it's like a lamp going out. Everything becomes in vain. There is no point in arranging things but not arranging them."

The master of Hidden Sword Pavilion also suppressed his smile, "But for the sake of enjoying this drink, I have two words for you."

"Pavilion Master, please speak, I am all ears."

"For these things like ink-colored hair, you should not take it lightly or be too careless before you really understand its roots."

Wei Tao nodded, deeply agreeing with this.

The master of Hidden Sword Pavilion sighed, and then closed his eyes little by little.

"The second thing is that misfortune lies behind blessings and misfortune lies behind. You two have practiced the sect's techniques and reached such a state at a young age. It is unknown whether you will be able to climb up step by step in the future and reach unprecedented heights.

This is a good thing, but it is not necessarily a good thing. You need to be firm in your heart and be clear about your true nature, so as not to end up on a crazy, twisted and self-destructive path. "

"Thank you for your parting words, senior."

Wei Tao straightened his clothes and bowed deeply.

When he straightened up, a cold light suddenly flashed across his body.

The master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion slowly lowered his head and looked at the Sancai Killing Sword that had penetrated his vital part, with a smile on his face.

"Being able to die under the sword of our three talents can be regarded as a fallen leaf returning to its roots in another sense."

He opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something more.

In the end, he failed to achieve his wish and died with his head tilted to the side.

Ni Hao slowly walked over and helped contain the body of the Master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion.

He was wrapped in a brand new blanket and put into the coffin that had just been made with several table boards.

Click!

The coffin lid was sealed tightly, hiding the calm face inside.

Soon after, the two people leveled the newly dug grave pit, pierced a row of broken swords into the soil, and let them sleep together with the master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion.

Wei Tao sighed lowly, "The old gentleman is also a wonderful man. It's a pity."

He stood up slowly and looked at the northern sky where dark clouds gathered. "After Brahma's spiritual power erupted several times, it suddenly disappeared. I don't know what happened."

Ni Hao said, "It may be silence, it may be accumulating strength, and of course it may be hiding. Before we find the Brahma Jiao in the Golden Tent in the Northern Wilderness, everything may happen."

Wei Tao was thoughtful, and after a moment he changed the subject, "Just last night, I clearly sensed the breath of the Zen Heart of the Dark Abyss, but when I searched for it later, I found nothing.

I don’t know if he was suddenly attacked like the Master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion, or if he was afraid of having his leg broken by me, so he deliberately avoided it. "

Ni Hao said, "Junior brother carries the spiritual meaning of the Dark Abyss. I practice the Hunyuan Chapter to absorb the Qinglin Mountain's Qi, and it seems to have some connection with the Black Abyss' Qi.

Next, we will work together. As long as Zen Heart Buddha takes action again, we should be able to roughly determine his location. "

Wei Tao nodded, "Now that this is over, we can leave. Unfortunately, without the guidance of Brahma's spiritual will, it will be twice as difficult to find the location of the Golden Tent. I don't know if we will miss the final confrontation between Emperor Wu and Brahma."

Before he finished speaking, he remained silent without any warning.

His body tensed up little by little, as if he was facing a powerful enemy.

Ni Hao beside him frowned slightly, his expression becoming solemn and solemn at this moment.

Accompanied by a pleasant jingle, the two of them slowly turned around at the same time and looked behind them.

All they saw was a beautiful woman in complicated palace clothes, slowly walking out from a tent not far away and approaching them.

With each step, the clothes swayed in the wind and the ornaments jingled, adding a bit of freshness to the settlement that was littered with dead bodies at dawn.

But as he got closer, he could see that her movements were mechanical and stiff. Coupled with the red line on her neck, life suddenly turned into death, and it was a little more indescribable weirdness.

Wei Tao only glanced at her and then looked away from her.

He looked beyond the tent and continued to look far back.

Under the slightly white light of the sky, Wei Tao could vaguely see a standing figure, looking towards this side as well.

It seemed to be a man with a high crown and golden clothes.

Standing quietly in the white snow, it seemed as if they had been waiting there for a long time, just for the two of them to turn around and look back.

Ni Hao took a deep breath and exhaled gently.

The voice suddenly became very soft at this moment, "Gaoguan Jinfu, is this person Emperor Wu of the Great Zhou Dynasty?"

"He's just an old friend. I didn't know I could meet him here."

A smile appeared on Wei Tao's face, and he patted Ni Hao's arm gently, "Senior sister, let's go first. I'll go over and catch up with him. I'll be back soon."

"If junior brother doesn't leave, I won't leave either."

Ni Xun held his palm with her backhand and responded with a clear smile, "Since we are old friends, you should introduce us to each other, so as not to lose due etiquette."

Wei Tao was silent for a moment, and finally nodded slowly.

He took a deep breath of cool air to slowly calm down his turbulent mood.

When he spoke again, there was an inexplicable sigh, "Just like what the Master of the Hidden Sword Pavilion just said, time is also luck, and luck is also fate. I don't know whether our luck is good or bad, but we can actually get it at this time. At this place, I suddenly met this person."

"But what's interesting is that maybe he knew that my senior sister and I were a couple, so when he came to find us, he didn't bring any other masters under his command, but only one concubine, who also made us a couple.

From this point of view, Emperor Wu was also a particular person. "