Cohabitation with Sword Spirit-Chapter 102 - 86: It’s Just the Hot Weather, Don’t Misunderstand
August 21, 2017
Before lunch, Wang Jiu suddenly received an urgent communication request from Lu Xin.
After activating the Spirit Stone, Wang Jiu heard Lu Xin’s voice.
"Mr. Wang Jiu, I have obtained the Original Sword Essence."
Wang Jiu was shocked: "So fast!? Hey, is there something wrong with your complexion? It’s awfully red."
"The weather is too hot, please don’t mind!"
Wang Jiu asked curiously, "You cultivate the Lu Family’s Golden Crow Sword, with your current Realm, walking in a sea of fire should be nothing, how can you be afraid of heat? Could it be you’ve gone astray in your cultivation?"
On the other side, Lu Xin’s face became even redder, angrily questioning: "Do you want it or not!?"
"Wait a moment, I’ll come find you."
——
Moments later, Wang Jiu arrived at the Li Family Mansion, and as soon as he entered, he saw Lu Xin’s three loyal lackeys.
"Mr. Wang Jiu, the madam is waiting for you in her Fire Chamber."
"Oh, is it her private Training Room? I understand." Wang Jiu said, and recalling something, asked, "Where’s Li Ping, why is he not here again?"
The burly Li Peng answered naively, "Brother Ping is busy with countless duties..."
"Brother Ping got punished to run laps again." A companion couldn’t hold back and exposed the truth, "It seems he saw something he shouldn’t have seen, they say the madam wore the wrong headpiece or something, anyway... the madam said he must run until he forgets everything before he’s allowed back."
The internal structure of the Li Family Mansion was something Wang Jiu was mostly familiar with now. Lu Xin’s private Training Room was not far from her and Li Fengyun’s bedroom.
She practiced the Lu Family’s golden crow swordsmanship, but compared to her ancestors who connected the Five Elements with the Golden Crow and then linked the Great Dao, her talent was far inferior. Limited by her aptitude, she only extracted the fire element Divine Techniques from the Golden Crow Sword, focusing on this path. Although heavily biased, she managed to cultivate the Golden Crow Swordsmanship, and building her Training Room was much simpler.
However, Wang Jiu did not quite understand why Lu Xin insisted on handing over the Original Sword Essence in the Fire Chamber. If it was just for confidentiality, her study, tea room, or bedroom would suffice.
Upon entering the Fire Chamber, a surge of intense heat hit him, causing the illusions created by the Illusion Sword Technique to sway. Under such high temperatures, if ordinary people entered, they would likely get roasted instantly. Even regular cultivators would find it difficult to withstand without specialized fire resistance Divine Techniques.
Using the Spirit Wind from within the Sword World to stabilize the illusions, Wang Jiu became increasingly perplexed by Lu Xin’s strange actions. Why create such an extreme environment just to hand over an Original Sword Essence?
The Fire Chamber wasn’t large, and after entering, he rounded a firewall barrier, where the heat grew even more intense, and there was Lu Xin waiting in the center.
The woman wore a fitted short shirt and shorts in fiery red, made from fire silk, exposing her rounded shoulders and white calves, her face devoid of makeup, but two blushes on her cheeks added infinite allure.
"Mr. Wang Jiu, you’ve come." Lu Xin greeted with a smile.
"Hello." Wang Jiu nodded in response.
Lu Xin paused and asked, "Mr. Wang Jiu, don’t you feel it’s very hot here?"
"Of course." Wang Jiu couldn’t understand why such a question needed asking, "Aren’t you hot?"
"I’m certainly very hot... normally I can’t even wear my usual dress." Lu Xin said softly, "Only this set of short clothes can barely withstand the extreme heat of the Fire Chamber."
Wang Jiu felt more baffled: "So?"
Lu Xin’s smile gradually faded, and she seriously said, "So since it’s so hot, it’s reasonable for my face to be red, nothing strange about it!"
"...I understand."
Seeing Wang Jiu didn’t ask further, Lu Xin breathed a sigh of relief and shifted back to the topic: "I have obtained the Original Sword Essence, please take a look, Mr. Wang Jiu."
As she spoke, she took out a fist-sized, crystal-clear sphere from her close-fitting embroidered pouch. Inside the sphere was a hazy gray shadow, constantly executing various Profound Mysterious Swordsmanship.
Wang Jiu was startled at the sight of it and asked: "Where did you find this?"
Lu Xin’s face immediately turned several shades redder.
Though Wang Jiu was puzzled by this sudden change in expression, he remembered Lu Xin repeatedly emphasizing not to ask further, so he only repeated his question: "How did you obtain this thing?"
Lu Xin blushed deeply: "Does it matter?! How I obtained the Original Sword Essence, is it that important?! I know I’m not young anymore, my child is ten, but... but at least I still look young, right! Even when walking with Qingming, Sister Yan would tease us as sisters! Besides, I had no choice back then! It wasn’t for myself, and I took no pleasure in it at all!"
Wang Jiu couldn’t understand this tangled confession no matter how he tried, so he simply categorized it as noise and decided to ignore it completely.
Then he earnestly presented his question.
"This Original Sword Essence is expired."
Lu Xin was instantly stunned.
"Eh?"
Wang Jiu repeated, "This Original Sword Essence has expired. Look at that grey silhouette inside—it is proof of the essence’s loss and the external manifestation of the laws. An unexpired Original Sword Essence should be pure and formless inside. When it’s about to expire, a grey shadow appears. The longer it has expired, the clearer the shadow becomes until it transforms into a human shape, considerably weakening and concretizing what should have been the formless and indescribable laws into actual swordsmanship. At this point, its effectiveness is mostly reduced by seventy to eighty percent."
Lu Xin was dumbfounded, his body trembled slightly after a long time, and he uttered an even sharper, childlike sound.
"Eh!?"
While carefully observing the Sword Essence, Wang Jiu calculated, "Judging by the loss from this Sword Essence, it should have been placed in inappropriate storage conditions for over fifteen years."
"Fifteen years..." Lu Xin thought blankly, remembering how muddle-headed Li Tianya had been for almost over fifteen years too.
Wang Jiu continued, "However, there’s another issue. Subjecting it to extremely high temperatures while its essence is severely lost is essentially evaporating the scarce remaining Sword Essence."
"Ah?!" Lu Xin exclaimed in surprise, quickly reaching out to shut down the high-temperature array in the Fire Chamber. He also fetched a few pieces of Profound Ice, intending to cool the Sword Essence down.
Wang Jiu advised, "Sudden heat and cold might cause the basic structure of the Sword Essence to be destroyed due to thermal expansion and contraction."
Lu Xin quickly put away the Profound Ice, just staring at the severely expired Original Sword Essence, thinking of the cost he paid to acquire it... And most critically, if this Sword Essence was unusable, where would he find a second one?
After much thought, Lu Xin could only despairingly hold his head and squat down, unable to say a word.
Wang Jiu waited for a while, seeing that Lu Xin had no intention of getting up, he had to ask, "Can I have the Sword Essence?"
"Huh?" Lu Xin lifted his head, "The Sword Essence? Isn’t it expired?"
Wang Jiu replied, "Yes, but I only said it was expired, not unusable."
"You can use it even if it’s expired?!"
"Of course," Wang Jiu said curiously, "Why would you think something expired can’t be used? I’m not using it to break through the Sword Dao bottleneck, just as the core for the Demon-Pointing Sword Array to activate it. When it comes to the understanding of Sword Dao essence, how could a mere Original Sword Essence compare to me?"
"..."
"In fact, as long as the casing is intact, the loss of essence inside doesn’t matter," Wang Jiu explained, "So as long as you didn’t put the Profound Ice on it just now to crack the Sword Essence’s shell, it doesn’t matter."
Lu Xin finally couldn’t hold back and angrily said, "If it doesn’t matter, what’s the point in saying so much just now!?"
Wang Jiu explained, "Considering this Sword Essence is an expired inferior product, although it meets my needs, its value has depreciated. If you weren’t aware of the depreciation, you might spend more than necessary. There might even be malicious fraud involved by the seller, so I thought it was necessary to remind you timely to help recover your losses."
Lu Xin opened his mouth but found no words to say.
Wang Jiu, while personally taking the Original Sword Essence and swallowing it into the pure white Sword Body, asked, "So, how did you get this Sword Essence? If someone defrauded you, I can help confront the seller, using my professional qualifications to prove the quality flaw of the Sword Essence."
"No need!" Lu Xin took a deep breath, trying to suppress his anger.
Meanwhile, she finally understood why Qingming often complained about being so infuriated by Wang Jiu in their usual Spirit Stone conversations.
"Well, Mr. Wang Jiu, now that the Sword Essence is in place, can you use the Demon-Pointing Sword Array?"
Wang Jiu replied, "I’ve been ready for a long time; only the Sword Essence was missing. Hold on while I activate the Sword Array."
——
In the Sword World, a magnificent Sword Array with a radius of a thousand feet began to rumble and rotate under the consciousness command of the Sword World master, awakening thousands of Flying Swords from their slumber, which slowly ascended amidst the earth’s tremors.
Tens of thousands of Flying Swords were suspended in mid-air, with their blades shimmering brilliantly, akin to a dazzling galaxy. Having all this brilliance in view, one could vaguely make out the landscapes, the lay of the land.
This Demon-Pointing Sword Array is a Middle Core Level functional structure within the Sword World. Although the Profound Mystic Divine Techniques it contains might not be highly advanced, its grandeur, repeated structure makes it one of the most challenging gigantic constructions to build at the Middle Core Level. This reconstruction consumed hundreds of Blue Tier Flying Swords with excellent quality from the Li Family Mansion, along with various rare forging materials, not to mention countless ordinary tier materials, with a total cost exceeding two hundred thousand Spirit Stones, and over a million silver taels. The Li Family’s internal treasury momentarily felt as if it had been swept clean.
At the core of the array, Wang Jiu’s Sword Spirit body slowly raised a semi-illusory spherical energy body into the air.
In an instant, the stagnant galaxy started to animate, with the slight tremor from tens of thousands of long swords, the sky’s light began to ripple like water, allowing any detail within the sword array’s command to be precisely presented according to the owner’s will.
Then, Wang Jiu sent the prepared Demon Race Yang Body remnant into the Sword Array.
The next moment, the Sword Array emitted a sharp howl, and the result was calculated in an instant.
