Chapter 729: The Blind Man Becoming Increasingly Human

Chapter 729: The Blind Who Grew More Human

Having taught it, nothing went wrong, at least proving that teaching in this "borderline" manner didn't violate any rules.

Perhaps it could also be said that the rules did exist, but the Blind's ability was enough to step beyond them to a degree without consequence. In any case, she was certainly no passive artifact spirit; her actions were far too proactive, including dragging people from another world and even throwing punches in Kunlun. A book spirit passively manifesting rules could never do such things.

Back then, that one in Kunlun must have been the Dao Venerable... He sounded overwhelmingly powerful, leaving Yu Xu with no choice but to appease him, and Ye Wuzong so wary he fled to Miaojiang. Yet in truth, the Blind slapped him back with a single blow. His boss-level status was far inferior to the Blind's...

Xia Longyuan, hunted by all as the ultimate boss, also had a boss in his heart. Even at his peak, he couldn't be sure of turning against her, only able to vent through spiteful writings.

This was the true boss.

But if viewed through the lens of "karma," she had now taken on the cause of this teaching, and the unknown effects it would bring—Zhao Changhe was somewhat looking forward to it.

The Blind's expression shifted, and after a long moment, she said, "Haven't you always thought the Heavenly Book had some backdoor or something, refusing to study it deeply? Like your Blood Fiend Art—you learned half of it and then started avoiding it. Could it be that seeing Lie's magnanimity made you think I'm also magnanimous? You're wrong. I'm very petty."

Zhao Changhe laughed. "I did think that before, but lately, I've been feeling something's off."

"Oh?"

"If the Heavenly Book really had such an obvious backdoor, why would those gods and demons try to seize it? Were they too stupid to think of it?"

The Blind sneered. "Because the Heavenly Book used to be fine... But that doesn't mean it's fine now. They were careless and didn't think of it."

"Then let's say I'm careless too." Zhao Changhe said, "Anyway, I'm under your watch. Whatever happens, I can't escape. No point."

The Blind taunted, "So that's why you've been using the Heavenly Book more often lately?"

"Because not using it means I can't keep up..." Zhao Changhe sighed. "In all these years of this era, only one or two have broken through to the Imperial realm. First, because of the rift between past and present, few have access to the methods of breaking through. But with such a large population over the years, the total number of people with those methods should be in the hundreds or thousands. Yet how many succeeded? The difficulty is there. Relying on so-called geniuses won't get you there. For me personally, when it comes to profound matters, my talent is indeed lacking. Collecting the Heavenly Book through immense effort and not using it feels a bit stupid."

The Blind let out a "hmph" but didn't comment.

Indeed, Zhao Changhe's talent was good, but not top-tier from the start. To be fair, his talent might not even surpass Yue Hongling's. His early rise owed much to the Heavenly Book. Later, when he thought he was impressive, the Heavenly Book became an old flame... Forget it, not worth criticizing.

Zhao Changhe said, "Everyone knows that using cheats might get your account banned, but they still can't resist. That's probably my mindset now. But Blind Blind, there's another, more important reason."

"What?"

"What if I said... I want to try trusting you? Would you tell me more?"

The Blind leaned lazily in her chair, sipping wine. "Whether you trust me or not, what's it to me?"

Zhao Changhe let out a "hmph" and said nothing.

They sat in silence, drinking. When the Blind's bowl was empty, Zhao Changhe refilled it.

The Blind finally raised her head to "look" at him.

"Can you open your eyes? Your instinctive reaction clearly shows you're used to using your eyes."

The Blind said flatly, "Afraid I'll scare you."

Zhao Changhe said, "Am I that shallow?"

The Blind said, "Yes."

Zhao Changhe: "?"

The Blind said leisurely, "If I looked like some desolate calamity or dark fiend, guess how you'd treat me? Still 'I want to try trusting you'? Ugh..."

Zhao Changhe: "emmmm... Actually, it wouldn't be that bad. As long as you looked like Wubing or Buqi."

The Blind chuckled softly, then drained her bowl and set it down. "I don't care how much of your words are fake. Since you're willing to use the Heavenly Book, use it well. If you really don't understand something about qi veins or karma, ask again. Whether I teach depends on my mood."

With that, she vanished, leaving only the bowl with a trace of wine, still warm.

Zhao Changhe suddenly wondered, did her bowl have saliva on it?

Just as he thought this, his heart stirred. The sound of someone flying through the air came from afar. He turned to look out the window. The morning sun had risen, and soon Sisi's pretty face appeared, cautiously peeking in.

Zhao Changhe guessed that the Blind had sensed Sisi's approach and left to avoid further talk. Roughly calculating, Sisi might have still been ten li away at that time... To be sensed from such a distance—her power was truly incredible. But was it even a matter of power?

She could see everything happening everywhere, except in places isolated by space. From this perspective, the gap in power was immense. Had the rift between past and present really closed? This still seemed like the difference between mortal and immortal.

"Not resting? Sitting by the window so early in the morning? Huh?" Sisi suddenly flew in through the window. She glanced at Yue Hongling, who was sleeping soundly on the bed, then at the still-warm wine on the tea table. Finally, her gaze fell suspiciously on Zhao Changhe's face. "You... were drinking with someone through the night?"

Zhao Changhe scratched his head.

The wine was still warm, and Yue Hongling clearly hadn't just lain down. Saying it was leftover from Yue Hongling's bedtime drink seemed unlikely. How to explain this?

Sisi sniffed. "I said I occupied you all night the day before, and Sister Yue came all the way to help and got injured, so I didn't have the heart to steal the show last night. I let her have some time with you. But you had someone else. If I'd known, I might as well have come myself..."

The Blind: "?"

Zhao Changhe quickly said, "Why can't I have been chatting with a man here?"

Sisi said, "That faint fragrance... If it were a man, he'd have to be a pretty boy. Our Ling clan doesn't have such people!"

Zhao Changhe suddenly realized that the Blind really did have a body scent. He had noticed it before... Strange, why would she have a body scent? She was a spirit! If her touch could feel warm and smooth, that could be explained by her spirit body being exceptionally solid like jade, but where did the scent come from?

Sisi sniffed and headed for the door. "I want to see which traitor is sneaking around behind my back! I haven't even had a night drinking with the master, and these little sluts are already drinking with him!"

Zhao Changhe broke out in a cold sweat, afraid that the Blind, called a "little slut," would strangle Sisi to death. He quickly grabbed her. "Hey, hey, don't go. That... I was just fooling around..."

Sisi said, "Is our Ling clan a brothel? So lacking in self-respect! Don't let me find out who it is. When I do, I'll show her!"

The Blind's brows furrowed.

Come on, show me.

Zhao Changhe suspected Sisi was about to be thoroughly dealt with, so he pulled her back into his arms. "Let's drink. Let's drink."

Sisi said, "Change the bowl. I won't use one that slut used!"

Zhao Changhe wiped his sweat as he watched Sisi pout and fetch a new bowl. He looked around—no sign of anything. Apparently, no matter how much Sisi cursed, she was fine... It seemed the book spirit really couldn't act against people casually. Even when he used the Heavenly Book to wipe things, the Blind was furious but didn't hit him. The only one lucky enough to be personally beaten by the Blind was the Dao Venerable.

But Zhao Changhe suspected Sisi would suffer in other ways, though he didn't know how... The Blind, who mastered karma and such mystical skills, had methods that weren't immediately obvious.

Sisi brought a new bowl, her earlier displeasure vanishing instantly. She smiled like a flower. "Isn't it a bit early to be drinking? Ah, whatever. If that slut could drink, so can I."

So, if the Blind could, Sisi could too, huh? Zhao Changhe watched helplessly as Sisi happily warmed the wine, swaying as she did so, eventually settling onto his lap. She wrapped her arms around his neck and breathed softly, "Master..."

Zhao Changhe said, "Still calling me master?"

"Old habits. Sisi is willing to be your maid." Sisi cooed, "What kind of master never orders anyone around and just comes to save and help people all day? Being your maid might be better than being someone else's wife."

The Blind wanted to vomit.

Sisi whispered in his ear, "How did that little slut serve you? Just drinking?"

Zhao Changhe: "..."

Sisi slowly slid down, lowered her head, and bit open his belt. "Did she do this?"

"Hiss..." Zhao Changhe's expression twisted as he leaned back slightly, imagining the Blind in such a scene. He couldn't hold it together.

"Hee hee..." Sisi mumbled indistinctly, "I know you like this best..."

Well, he did like it... But was this really the time?

Seeing his expression, Sisi knew he liked it. She laughed, "Sister Yue and the others are too reserved. They never thought of doing this, and you're too embarrassed to ask them. We Ling clan don't have such scruples... That slut just now must have been like me..."

"No, Sisi..." Zhao Changhe's face was stiff. He didn't know whether to tell her to stop or to keep going. Could you please stop calling that "slut"? No, that "king"... If you keep this up, you'll die horribly...

He tried to change the subject. "Aren't you busy reforming the Ling clan? You should be swamped. How do you have time to come here?"

Sisi mumbled, "We've tried reforming before, but the old forces were too stubborn, and it ended up a mess. Now we're just going back to what we were doing... Once tasks are assigned, I don't need to keep giving orders. In fact, I'm leaving the Ling clan's secret realm today. The Miaojiang matters need my attention more. I need to lay the groundwork in Dali."

Zhao Changhe said, "So you're actually here to say goodbye today?"

“Mm.” Sisi served in silence for a while, then said, “I know you still have some business here. I came to ask if there’s anything you need me to do.”

Zhao Changhe said, “Actually, there is. I was wondering if I could borrow some of your Spirit Control arts for reference.”

Sisi was puzzled. “But the Spirit Control arts themselves were taught by you to us. What do you need us for?”

Zhao Changhe shook his head. “I need the basic techniques. Even if you gave me something too advanced, I couldn’t grasp it directly.”

Sisi paused, her eyes turning seductive. “So you’re complaining that I didn’t share the spirit clan’s methods with you during dual cultivation…”

“Hey, no, that’s not…” Before he could finish, Sisi stood up and embraced him. “Then come and take it yourself, my lord…”

“Xiang Simeng!” From the bed finally came Yue Hongling’s gritted voice. “Do you think I’m dead?”

Sisi didn’t mind at all. “Sister Yue, join us. It’s only a matter of time…”

Yue Hongling couldn’t hold back anymore. She rolled off the bed in one swift motion, stormed over, grabbed Sisi by the ear, and pulled her up. “You are now a ruler of a nation. Look at your behavior! Anyone would think you’re nothing but a useless ornament clinging to a man all day, with your eyes closed, only focused on that one thing!”

For some reason, the Blind One felt that every word Yue Hongling said also seemed to describe her.

Sisi smiled apologetically. “But that’s the most efficient way…”

“Efficient, my foot! Once he starts dual cultivation, it never ends—half a day won’t stop him. Your spirit clan’s basic techniques? Let him glance at them, and he’ll master them in an hour or two!” Yue Hongling tugged her angrily. “Come on, I’m part of this Dali business too. I’ll go with you. Just have someone give him the spirit clan’s basic techniques. He has a lot to study here recently, and there will be plenty of time for you to cling to him!”

Sisi reached out toward Zhao Changhe’s direction, but couldn’t grasp him. Her expression was one of tearful despair, like a little fox torn away by a jealous wife, without even a sip of the freshly warmed wine.

Zhao Changhe twitched the corner of his mouth. “Is this your revenge? Using the Way of Causality or something? Explain a bit?”

The Blind One parted her cherry lips. “Get lost.”

Zhao Changhe thought that if this was the Blind One’s revenge, then the one being revenged was actually himself. From having two girls by his side, worrying about how not to make one feel neglected, he had suddenly become utterly alone.

But Yue Hongling was right. When it came to truly studying martial arts, not everything could be done through dual cultivation. At the very least, you couldn’t practice your techniques during it.

Now, with peace and solitude, it was truly the time to train hard.

Zhao Changhe shook off the chaotic thoughts in his mind and the inappropriate fantasies about the Blind One, then climbed the grave hill again. The spirit clan was now busy burying the earth, bustling with activity. Zhao Changhe didn’t disturb them. He found a secluded corner, crouched beside a skeleton, and studied the Heavenly Book slowly.

After last night’s research, he had gone from not knowing what corpse energy was, only sensing its coldness, to now crouching here, faintly able to detect a kind of stagnant, unmoving death energy, different from other energies.

At this level, combined with the aura-reading technique he had gleaned from the Qi Fortune page of the Heavenly Book, he could vaguely see various kinds of energy—earth energy, the energies of metal, wood, water, fire, and this death energy, as well as his own life energy, blood energy, and killing intent—all categorized before his eyes.

So this was how the world appeared to true experts: it could be deconstructed, unlike the world seen by ordinary people.

And he could intuitively feel that life energy and death energy were two sides of the same origin… This meant that, in the eyes of experts who manipulated life and death, they might be interchangeable. In other words, if one could revive a corpse, one could probably also kill a living person instantly.

Zhao Changhe suddenly broke out in a cold sweat. He finally understood why the Blind One had been so anxious to enter his dream. She was genuinely worried that he wouldn’t study the path of corpse energy.

If he didn’t study this and faced the Nine Abyss unprepared, not only would he die inexplicably, but none of his companions except Vermilion Bird would survive.

It also proved that the pages of the Heavenly Book were not independent. Everything in the world was interconnected, and so were the laws. The pages of Nature, Life, Light and Shadow, Qi Pulse, and Causality might seem separate, but they should actually be used together.

This single corpse energy encompassed almost all the pages. Even the Light page obtained on Tianya Island should strictly be called the Light and Shadow page. Where there is light, there is shadow. The interchange of light and dark served as an absolute reference in the interchange of life and death, and could even be applied to causality.

His previous study of the Heavenly Book had been far too shallow… He had mostly used only the General Outline page to evolve martial arts, barely touching the others. It was a complete waste.

Among them, the Life page should be the bane of corpse energy, and it was likely the page the Nine Abyss desired most—this page had originally been obtained from the spirit clan’s secret realm. The Nine Abyss had sent Yin Kui to invade the spirit clan, possibly for this page, or at least as one of their goals.

No matter. It wasn’t too late to start studying in depth now.

Stubbornly rejecting the Heavenly Book was simply impossible at this point. He had already used it countless times these days, yet he still insisted he wasn’t using it. Being hypocritical was pointless. If he was going to use it, he might as well enjoy it. As for the so-called backdoor… as long as his study of the Pai Tian Zhen Hai Gong was hidden among these matters, he would always have a fallback.

Moreover, Zhao Changhe increasingly felt that the Heavenly Book might not have a backdoor, at least not the same kind as the Blood Fiend Art’s backdoor. If there were a backdoor, wouldn’t the Eye Behind be more direct? Why go through all this trouble?

If he could get closer to the Blind One by accepting the Heavenly Book, especially to find out what she really wanted, it would be worth it. As for those fantasies, he could just think about them. They were impossible…

“Holy Envoy.” A timid voice startled Zhao Changhe from his thoughts. He turned to see a young maid holding a booklet, offering it to him while looking away. “This is what the king ordered—our basic Spirit Control techniques.”

Zhao Changhe looked down. He had been lost in thought, unconsciously stroking a skeleton, and the place he was touching was rather inappropriate… In the maid’s eyes, the Holy Envoy must have seemed like a complete pervert.

“I’m not a pervert,” Zhao Changhe said seriously as he took the booklet.

“Yes, yes, yes.” The maid nodded and quickly turned to run away.

Zhao Changhe ground his teeth. “Blind One, you’re definitely getting back at me.”

“Am I?” The Blind One’s tone sounded quite pleased. “I’m just teaching you a little about the wonders of causality. Isn’t that what you wanted to learn? Watch closely and learn well.”

Zhao Changhe didn’t mind being tricked. Instead, he found the Blind One’s human-like behavior amusing. “Blind One…”

“What?”

“You’ve become cute.”

“Get lost!”

“Are you saying you were already cute before?”

The Blind One was speechless. “Stop with this cheesy talk. If you have something to say, say it.”

Zhao Changhe immediately changed the subject. “How did you make that happen? Even if there was the cause of Sisi ordering someone to fetch the techniques for me, how did you make the maid appear right when my hand was in an inappropriate position? Without deliberately controlling her?”

“I didn’t control her. I just tweaked the threads of causality a little,” the Blind One said with a smile. “You should understand a principle: the same cause can lead to different effects. For example, with this cause, the effect could be nothing happening, or it could be her tripping in a pit and spraining her ankle on the way, or even spraining her ankle and falling right onto you, adding another romantic entanglement.”

“That sounds good.”

“…Before anything happens, countless dashed lines spread out from a single cause. If you have the ability, you can choose which path to take. On the surface, everything seems natural, and no one knows someone is manipulating your fate.”

Zhao Changhe fell silent. The Blind One knew what he was thinking about and smiled without saying more.

Of course, part of Zhao Changhe’s fate had been manipulated by him. He had felt and suspected it before, so there was nothing to hide. But the Blind One was also a little helpless, because most of it had nothing to do with her.

She had interfered very, very little. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have let certain things happen. She had even tried to stop San Niang from being with him and had made some moves, but in the end, it stubbornly went in the direction of them being together. It was ridiculous. Overall, the cases where she successfully interfered were extremely rare. If Zhao Changhe thought everything was her doing, it would be hard to explain.

But what Zhao Changhe said next surprised the Blind One. He wasn’t talking about his own feelings of being manipulated. Instead, he asked, “Then, Blind One, can you see your own threads?”

The Blind One was taken aback. Then Zhao Changhe continued, “There’s a saying that doctors can’t heal themselves, and fortune-tellers can’t divine for themselves… I want to know, if I master these things, can I master my own fate?”

The Blind One fell silent. She looked up at the sky as if thinking. After a long time, she said, “Every cultivation has its levels. Perhaps at the highest level, one can freely control one’s own causality. But for now, I can’t… Just as I can’t always succeed in manipulating others’ fates.”

There was a hint of self-defense in her words. Zhao Changhe didn’t know if he caught it. He was gasping, seemingly shocked that even the Blind One hadn’t reached the highest level.

The Blind One suddenly smiled. “Are you going to say, ‘If you can’t do it, that’s good, because it means you’re not that impressive’?”

“I don’t even know if your ‘can’t’ is true or false,” Zhao Changhe said with a smile. “I just think that cultivation truly has no end… Even you haven’t reached the peak. How long is this path? How hard is it for me to master my own fate?”

“What’s so strange about me not reaching the peak?” the Blind One said lazily. “I told you, I’m not the Heavenly Dao… Even though the Heavenly Dao is dead, I can’t compare. In other words, the fact that the Heavenly Dao can die proves that your idea of cultivation having no end is correct. There’s still higher and farther, with no end in sight.”

Zhao Changhe nodded. Suddenly, he said, “If what you say is true, and you can’t even master your own fate, it means that individual power is limited… Maybe one day, I can help you?”

“Save that talk for your women. Keep it away from me.” The Blind One withdrew her smile, turned, and walked away. “Practice your skills. At your low level, probing around all day is just laughable.”