Return to Sword School, Part 2

Ugly?

Tang Yueling raged, “Nonsense, where’s the ugly?!”

She had clearly drawn eyes that were eyes, a nose that was a nose, a mouth that was a mouth, practically an incipient human form!

If Tang Yueling’s exquisite ink painting and fine line drawing were considered ugly by Tian Ning, then how would she react to Su Qing’s two-dimensional anime girl art style?

Those large, sparkling eyes that took up half the face, and the flowers that inexplicably appeared behind the characters… Looking at Su Qing’s expectant gaze, Tian Ning thought carefully, and for the first time, doubted, “I thought I was still considered good-looking?”

At least since she was a child, she had never been criticized for her appearance. Of course, she didn’t care much anyway.

But it was precisely this attitude of being clearly beautiful yet not caring that was most captivating.

Su Qing was captivated. She praised intensely, “You’re too humble. You’re a great beauty.”

All her roommates were beauties, which was very pleasing to her eyes. Cultivating immortality was so hard; female university students needed to see more beautiful women to have the energy to make a living.

Tang Yueling snorted, but didn’t raise any objection.

This was common knowledge. Although Tang Yueling loved beauty and dressing up, she also loved looking at beautiful women. If Tian Ning hadn’t been so pretty, she wouldn’t have had the patience to play with her.

Tian Ning seemed in a good mood.

As for where she went or what she did, since she didn’t volunteer the information, Su Qing didn’t ask.

Their dormitory’s composition was actually a bit complex; their ability to get along relied entirely on grouping similar traits and constantly mediating.

However, Su Qing actually felt that no matter their backgrounds, they essentially had similarities; otherwise, even if it seemed peaceful on the surface, cracks would appear behind the scenes.

With everyone present, Tang Yueling finally brought out her golden leaf cards and slammed them onto the table. She vowed to avenge her previous humiliation.

Su Qing originally thought Tian Ning wouldn’t join the game, but to her surprise, she joined without much hesitation.

Su Qing immediately recalled her own experience of losing every hand, losing completely, and then a string of bad luck.

Su Qing: ‘For my future fortune, it’s time to reclaim everything that belongs to me.’

This time, she swore she wouldn’t be Tang Yueling’s downstream player. She swapped positions with Tian Ning, making Tang Yueling switch her bombardment target.

Su Qing, relying on her mediocre card-picking skills, Tang Yueling’s indiscriminate bombardment, and her superb mind-reading abilities specially for Tian Ning, surprisingly won the championship of this card-king competition.

Speaking of which, Su Qing felt that playing cards with them didn’t require any intelligence at all

. Just understanding people was enough to make accurate guesses. It was psychological warfare.

“Pay up, pay up!”

Tang Yueling and Tian Ning each slapped a second-tier beast core onto the table, pushing them towards Su Qing.

Tang Yueling was vexed and puzzled: During this beast tide riot, only Su Qing had been exceptionally unlucky, missing throughout. She and Tian Ning, however, had been killing demon beasts fiercely every day, going in and out seven times, accumulating so many beast cores that their storage bags were almost full.

She had intended to use this opportunity to go easy and share some resources with Su Qing, but who knew she kept losing.

‘Kept losing! Why?!’

‘Wasn’t she the smartest in this dormitory?’

Tang Yueling slammed down five beast cores in a row, defiantly saying, “Again!”

Su Qing happily counted the beast cores, but for some reason, she always had a bad premonition. She couldn’t live too smoothly, otherwise, bad luck would follow. The phrase “joy turns to sorrow” was the best reflection of her.

After a few rounds of cards, Tian Ning announced a piece of news at a very untimely moment. She said it so casually, as if discussing what to eat for dinner.

“After I go back, I’m going into seclusion to break through to Golden Core.”

After returning to the Sword School, she would enter a death seclusion beneath the Boundless Pavilion, vowing not to emerge until she reached Golden Core.

For this, she had tirelessly fought on the beast tide front lines, accumulating enough beast cores and other materials to exchange for contribution points, which could sustain her for at least two years down there.

At these words, the cards in Su Qing’s hand instantly scattered across the table.

“At the age of thirty, to be able to challenge Golden Core?”

Anyone would exclaim, ‘I give up, competing with you geniuses.’

Su Qing’s and Tang Yueling’s faces involuntarily grew serious.

They believed in Tian Ning’s innate talent, but wouldn’t being too hasty lead to the opposite of what she desired?

Su Qing was a little unsure how to describe it. She asked, “Did you feel that sense of opportunity? That feeling of things falling into place naturally?”

It was known that breakthroughs to major realms often came with a sense of predestination.

Once that ethereal feeling was grasped, there was a high probability of breaking through.

Conversely, if that sense of divine destiny didn’t come knocking, no amount of seclusion would help.

The effect would be no different from just sleeping behind closed doors.

Moreover, Tang Yueling frowned and said, “What’s the rush? Breaking through to Golden Core at fifty is already praised as astonishing talent, a young genius.

You’ve only been at Great Perfection of Foundation Establishment for two years. Your current stagnation is perfectly normal, isn’t it?”

Before any breakthrough to a major realm, there was always a period of calm.

Great Perfection of a realm was like a bowl full of water; spiritual energy accumulated drop by drop, but due to the surface tension, it could not successfully overflow for a long time.

And this period was also considered the stage of quantitative change.

Only when enough quantitative change accumulated could qualitative change be possible.

Only when enough water drops accumulated, coupled with a hint of enlightenment and opportunity, could the water naturally overflow, transitioning to the next realm.

Tian Ning understood these principles. She shook her head slightly and simply said, “My decision is made.”

Being twins was both a curse and a blessing.

The twin bond of the Yan family’s twins was symbiotic, but there were also forms of twin competition, a struggle for survival from the womb.

Even when twins became independent individuals, this competition would accompany them throughout their lives.

It was as if an invisible umbilical cord connected them.

She couldn’t be left too far behind; otherwise, one would easily become a subordinate to the other, serving as nourishment for the other for life, making it extremely difficult to rise again.

This was a situation she absolutely could not tolerate.

The path of cultivation, ultimately, could only be walked alone.

If Tian Ning was resolute, there was no need to persuade her further. And Su Qing felt that if it was Tian Ning, she would definitely succeed.

This was the weight of a genius.

She also had to quickly catch up. She would cultivate when she returned, cough, no, she would eat first.

Heaven and earth were vast, but eating was paramount.

She would think about it after eating.

But, things quickly took a turn.

Upon receiving news of the Sword School’s return, all the merchants in Tianque City eagerly awaited, daily murmuring three times, “Are they back yet? Are they returning today?”

This year’s sales performance depended entirely on this group of vagrant Sword School disciples returning.

After spending many days in the wilderness and working for several years, their hearts were full of consumer desires, and their pockets were full of all kinds of resources.

When these resources flowed into various merchant houses, turning into gleaming spirit stones, and then flowing into the market… these days were full of hope.

The entire World Sword School was also eagerly awaiting. Large amounts of contribution points were already prepared.

These points didn’t cost money anyway; just ask the Sect Leader for more if they were short. They were just waiting to exchange them for the students’ leftover resources.

Su Qing actually had no material gains from this trip.

Although she refined her spirit, and tempered her body with her spirit, she was mostly confined, not participating in hunting.

It could be said that besides the beast cores she won on the cloud boat, she was utterly empty-handed, walking with the wind.

In this way, she didn’t have enough resources to exchange for contribution points.

Without contribution points, she couldn’t exchange for the sect’s resources.

Man Qing Sword’s rations for next month would have to be bought with her own money. And she had promised to change its food, to feed it at least third-tier top-grade spiritual ore…

Moreover, the medicinal bath formula Lin Hebai copied for her, though effective, was incredibly expensive.

One casual bath cost three years of Honey Spirit Tea’s profit. Her small milk tea shop, heaven help it, had to endure so many twists and turns!

She clutched her pitiful storage bag, calculating that she had to find a way to get money from others’ pockets.

Three days later, the cloud boat safely landed in the World Sword School.

The timing was just right, only a quarter of an hour before dinner.

The cabin door hadn’t opened yet, but the students were all diligently poised on their tiptoes, waiting for the door to open to take off and rush out.

Su Qing thought, ‘What’s the difference between this and students in university waiting for the last class bell to ring, then rushing to grab food?’

Especially if you wanted to eat at the popular cafeteria window, wouldn’t you have to prepare early?

At this time, the Sword School was somewhat livelier than when they left, because the second and third year students were all within the sect, not out for training. Seeing the cloud boat land, and white steam rising, these seniors all showed wary expressions.

Then, very experienced, they began to speed up, turning to dash towards the cafeteria.

“Report—enemy attack!”

“Cloud boat has landed, less than five hundred meters from the cafeteria!”

“Run, quick! The first-year students, those starving ghosts, are back! If we’re late, there’ll be no food left in the cafeteria!”

Indeed, just as they had imagined, seeing the cloud boat’s cabin door open, the first-year students instantly displayed all eighteen martial arts, charging out in unison.

The Sword School forbade flying, so no sword-flying was allowed, but it didn’t say they couldn’t use instant movement talismans, movement techniques, or footwork.

If there were teleportation scrolls that could directly teleport to the cafeteria, they would also be used without hesitation, but spending expensive teleportation scrolls just to grab food was a bit wasteful.

Students surged forward in a dense mass.

Although the cabin door wasn’t small, it was completely blocked, with only arms reaching out, desperately trying to squeeze through.

Anyone unaware might think the Sword School had specially transported back a batch of zombies.

Several teachers ran even faster than the students, having long since vanished using their ‘Shrink the Earth to an Inch’ ability.

If the spell of ‘Shrink the Earth to an Inch’ knew that the day it was invented would be used to snatch food, it… who knows, maybe it was invented precisely for snatching food.

The room Su Qing was in was the furthest from the cabin door.

By the time she, Tang Yueling, and Tian Ning arrived, the front was already completely congested.

The three of them exchanged glances, not even saying a word.

Tian Ning directly drew Snowfall Sword.

The sword tip touched the ground, and pure white frost instantly spread, freezing the ground ahead into a smooth sheet of ice.

Immediately after, Su Qing gripped Man Qing Sword.

Man Qing Sword accumulated power and burst forth, propelling her rapidly forward.

She thought very understandingly: ‘They are all fellow disciples. Swords drawn against each other would be too harsh. It’s better to fight hand-to-hand.’

At this moment, the advantage of a body cultivator became apparent.

Su Qing merely pushed forward with casual ease, not even using full strength.

Yet, her immense power sent the crowd blocking the way flying across the smooth ice like bowling pins.

Even the strongmen of the Artifact School who daily operated bellows and forged iron, the Talisman School with their powerful arms, and the Beast School who developed muscles from cuddling their reluctant spirit pets, were all delicate and weak in front of a body cultivator.

For a moment, some flew, some fell, creating utter chaos. Only Su Qing and a group of arrogant body cultivators burst through the door.

The remaining students couldn’t help but feel resentful: ‘Indeed, as the seniors said, the possibility of being killed by a body cultivator is very small, but definitely not zero!’

Wang Quan stood on the upper floor of Boundless Pavilion, looking down at the chaotic scene of chasing and running.

He fanned himself and sighed contentedly, “The poor heart of a Sect Leader. Seeing the students so energetic, I feel at ease. The beast tide truly tempers people. The first-year students have all improved their strength. I imagine there won’t be any failing students this time. Otherwise, these resources would truly be wasted.”

He turned to look at the pale-faced female cultivator beside him, and said in a good mood, “It’s rare for everyone to be here. It’s also time to put them through some rigorous training, wouldn’t you say, Elder Qin?”

Elder Qin Suzhi of the Affairs Hall had a stern face, but inwardly she felt a faint sense of collapse.

She suppressed the urge to flick her sleeves and leave, saying coldly, “As the Sect Leader commands.”