Zanxing

Chapter 134 - Inheritance (1)

Zanxing extended the flower in her hand to Fairy Qinghua.

Fairy Qinghua accepted it, lowering her gaze to the flower at her fingertips. The scene overlapped with memories of that hidden realm long ago. Back then, the flower was vibrant, but now it had withered, just as the goddess of breathtaking beauty, with skin like snow and the face of a flower, had only a trace of her former spirit left.

So much had changed.

Watching her, Zanxing spoke. "So, it turns out the origin of Qing'er Nianhua Staff is rooted in such a story."

For cultivators, the creation of a personal technique is a rarity even among the most talented of sects. Fairy Qinghua was born with an extraordinary spiritual root, and Zanxing always believed she developed the Qing'er Nianhua Staff to advance her own cultivation. But witnessing the memory within this flower revealed that the technique was originally crafted in memory of her beloved.

Fairy Qinghua's gaze shifted. The flower vanished from her hand as she raised her head and spoke quietly. "It seems you've comprehended much."

"Not comprehended," Zanxing replied, raising her staff horizontally before her. "Merely... nostalgic."

She suggested, "Fairy, let's try once more."

Her staff, a muted green, swept toward the white-robed woman. The clash of the two staves stirred clouds of dust, splitting the surrounding void with a fine crack.

The technique was the same as before, but her intent was entirely different.

It was no longer about a relentless pursuit of strength, nor a need to prove herself. Each strike of the staff was a mark of the past—a memory of supporting each other in the barren wilderness, of slowly building a thatched hut beneath a stony mountain, of stepping into a warm glow on a stormy night, and of watching ethereal fireworks light up the distance from beneath the Biyi blossom.

A kick, a stance, a step, a thrust, a swing, the search for a hidden snake, a mountain strike, the weight-bearing gait of a warrior...

The flowers, the trees, the sweet water in a stone basin, the lamps, the rain, even the swaggering tailless wild pheasant in the courtyard—all were part of the technique.

What could Fairy Qinghua have been feeling all those years ago, when she was cultivating her staff technique alone on Taiyan Sect's Chuhong Platform? When she planted the Biyi tree in the Xiaoyao Palace, did she ever feel lost?

No one knew.

Qing'er Nianhua. In that moment of beauty, only the painter in the hut truly understood. And over these years, the painter had long vanished, leaving only the faded beauty portrait hidden behind a wall as a faint remnant of the goddess' elegance.

The staff gleamed green like an illusion, its pressure intensifying. The gust of her staff made the white-robed woman's dress flutter like drifting clouds, her dark hair blown loose and framing her moonlit face.

Dodging the oncoming staff, Zanxing took a step forward and murmured, "If the Qing'er Nianhua Staff was created in remembrance of someone, then, Fairy, what were you thinking of when you first crafted it?"

A shadow of a staff lunged from behind her; Zanxing sidestepped, grasped her staff, and said, "If I were you, recalling the past, I'd surely wish for it all to begin again, cherishing a love regained."

She gripped her staff with both hands, and lightly swung it forward.

That gentle swing carried a thunderous force.

"Mirrored Flowers and Moonlit Water—"

A continuous stream of flowers poured from the staff's tip, forming a mirror in the air. The soft mirror rippled like a clear lake, gradually revealing countless figures.

The tailless pheasant, the sky too blue in the hidden realm, the stream winding down the rocky mountain, the thatched hut where the warm light always lit up at dusk, the gentle rain falling, and someone hiding inside, penning line after line of poetry.

"Gu Caiyu!" the woman's voice held a trace of anger.

The person at the desk flinched, hurriedly hiding his unfinished painting, and turned around. His face was indistinct, but his splendid, neat robes and slightly flying headband could be seen...

The endless flower stream wrapped tightly around the green staff, exploding into a pillar of light in the void.

Crack.

The green staff broke in two, its pieces clattering to the ground with a crisp sound.

The ocean of flowers and mirages in the mirror vanished, returning everything to silence.

Zanxing put away her spiritual weapon and looked at the woman before her. "You lost."

Fairy Qinghua looked up at Zanxing.

Her gaze had shifted from emptiness to complexity, now filled with a sense of peaceful relief. Her voice softened. "So, the destined one was you."

Zanxing was left in bewilderment.

Fairy Qinghua bent down and picked up the broken pieces of the green staff from the ground. She said, "Many years ago, my senior brother and I observed the stars at night, and we divined that, twenty years from then, a catastrophe would descend upon the mortal world. Only the destined one could avert it. I foretold that this would be the place where we would meet, so I left a trace of my spirit hidden within the painting, awaiting the destined one's arrival to inherit my legacy and face the tribulation."

Wait, why does this sound so familiar? Zanxing shivered, instinctively preparing to politely decline, but Fairy Qinghua's palm had already struck her forehead.

The blow was fierce, catching Zanxing completely off guard, and a surging wave of spiritual energy rushed into her mind. She heard Fairy Qinghua's voice beside her ear: "You defeated me and understood the essence of Qing'er Nianhua Staff, proving that you are indeed the destined one. Now, I shall pass on my life's cultivation to you."

No! Zanxing screamed inwardly. Though the original At The Peak of the Nine Heavens didn't include this particular arc with Fairy Qinghua's hidden realm, in all the cultivation novels she'd read, the destined one who saved the world was always the main character.

But she was not the main character, and now she'd somehow snatched away the protagonist's destiny and inheritance. She feared that, upon leaving this hidden realm, all manner of inexplicable "troubles" would immediately come her way.

She had wanted to defeat Fairy Qinghua and then have a good conversation with her. Who would have thought that this Fairy would be so decisive, not even giving her a chance to speak before forcibly starting the transfer.

In a daze, countless things flooded into Zanxing's mind. Golden characters surged toward her from afar, crowding into her thoughts. She felt like a small stream receiving the unending waves of an ocean, or a vast cauldron filled with countless spiritual herbs and fruits pouring into her boundless sea of consciousness.

Among the golden characters, fragmented memories occasionally appeared, flickering into wisps of smoke, filling her mind bit by bit. Zanxing couldn't fathom the depth of Fairy Qinghua's cultivation or mastery, but at that moment, she was overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what was now merging into her consciousness.