Damn it! Let’s smash the darkness together!
Chapter 68 - 68 53 Did You Give the Wrong Script

68: Chapter 53 Did You Give the Wrong Script?

68: Chapter 53 Did You Give the Wrong Script?

[Sword Qi Continent, vast and expansive, with numerous empires.

Here, there are none of the fancy and beautiful magics, Taoist skills, witchcraft, Immortal techniques, Confucian skills, Buddha skills, incantations, summoning techniques, mechanical techniques, Ascend and Descend techniques, the Red Blood Mysterious Yellow Pioneering Technique, the Life Breath Charm Technique, the Eternal Blood Moon Breeding Technique…]

[What exists here is merely the proliferation at its peak of—Sword Qi!]

[Swordsmanship is the sole color of the continent.

Through the unceasing efforts and deductions of countless generations of ancestors, swordsmanship has reached its apex, and there are various cultivation methods.]

[Such as Magic Swords, Taoist Swords, Witch Swords, Immortal Swords, Mechanical Swords…

and so on and so forth.]

“?”

Xu Shu’s mouth twitched.

Goodness, did I really insert this passage into the Tai Chu Scroll back in the day?

This copy really is a bit cheap.

I really want to slap myself.

[On this continent, the strong are revered, and Sword Qi is intimately connected with human life.]

[To become a swordsman is a temptation no one can resist; beyond the power, wealth, and beauty that come with strength, there is the ultimate goal: immortality.]

[Time is like a knife, and each slice ages a person.

No matter how peerless your beauty, how you dominate an era, if you do not become an emperor, you cannot escape death.

A beautiful woman turns into a skull, and all that remains is a handful of yellow soil.]

[Who in this world can escape death?]

[The Sword Emperor can.]

[It is said that to proclaim oneself an emperor through the way of the sword grants immortality.]

[However, for countless millennia, the Sword Emperor seems to have existed only in legend.

Many prodigies have wasted their lives at the Sword Saint realm, reaching the end of their lifespans without ever touching the threshold of enlightenment.]

[Since the hope for immortality is too faint, people on the continent have turned their eyes from the sky to the earth.

Struggles for resources between the great empires have never ceased.]

[New tombs bury old bones across the land, and countless lonely graves receive no visitors’ tears.]

[Combat and slaughter are the most resplendent colors of the Sword Qi Continent.]

[But the Sword Qi Continent is too vast, and the reproductive ability of humans is so strong that even the Heavenly Dao is astonished; they simply cannot be completely eradicated.]

[It is in such a tumultuous era that the Da Qin Empire, located in the northwest corner of the continent, shines like the midday sun.]

[In twenty years of conquest, subduing the north and south and annexing thirty-seven nations, it has unified the northwest, and the southern campaign seems imminent.]

[In the year 3348 of the New Calendar of the Sword Qi Continent, in Wutan City of Qin Country (formerly the territory of the Gamma Empire), the Xiao Family Patriarch, Xiao Zhan’s concubine, He Yanyu, successfully gave birth to a son, who is also Xiao Zhan’s firstborn son.]

[Having a son late in life at over fifty years old, the entire Xiao Family was overjoyed at your birth, but your nominal father suffers a headache at the sight of you.]

[Because only he knows that he is infertile, having married 14 concubines, he has spent nights of revelry with 13 of them and already has 13 daughters, though none are his.

But having seen them daily from a young age, he could at least consider himself a foster father.]

[The sole exception is your mother, He Yanyu, a princess from a small nation swallowed by the Qin Empire, forced upon him to be raised by a certain important figure of the empire.]

[Your mother is nominally a concubine, but Xiao Zhan actually likes her; however, he never dares to harbor the slightest intention of touching her, for that represents a deathly offense to his family.]

[Now that He Yanyu has borne a son, Xiao Zhan is really both angry and afraid—afraid of how to explain this to that important figure, and angry that someone has cuckolded him right under his nose!]

[His heart has gone cold, so you were named: Xiao Han.]

[In the New Calendar year of 3348, a month after your birth, Xiao Zhan received news that his backer, Marquis Jiangyang Zhao Qian, had suddenly died a month before, seemingly on the same day you were born.]

[With the fall of his support, the Xiao Family’s business will face oppression from all sides, and everyone is very worried—except for Xiao Zhan, who is elated.]

[Good riddance!

Good riddance!

From now on, I no longer have to be restrained!

Xiao Zhan’s mood breaks through, his power greatly increases, and he seems to be approaching the peak of Great Sword Master, on the verge of breaking through to the Sword Spirit Realm.]

[After you turned one year old, he put on a grand feast to host the other two major families in Wutan City as well as various famous figures, announcing that you would be the next Xiao Family Patriarch.]

[At the same time, a child betrothal was arranged on site.

Among the guests your father invited, there was the Nolan Family, whose current Family Head’s daughter, Nolan Qiushui, was of the same age as you and had been accepted as a disciple by the superpower “Chaotian Sect” of the Qin Empire, with limitless prospects.]

Great!

Great!

Great!

This is how it should be!

Xu Shu burst into happiness upon seeing the name ‘Nolan Family’ and the sight of that young girl, carved from pink jade, similar in age to himself, on the screen.

It seems this legendary script should indeed be the one I had in mind!

There should be no mistake!

Although the name has changed slightly and history seems a bit skewed, this is normal.

Xu Shu had long known that the legendary stories of the Tai Chu Scroll were not literal adaptations of certain book tales he once filled it with but would meld with some reality, causing them to sometimes seem incongruous.

Like the cultivation methods it mentioned at the beginning that did not exist on this continent.

But none of that matters!

At this point, everything had come together: Wutan City, the Xiao Family, and the marriage alliance with the Nolan Family were all in place.

“Next, let’s see the once-young prodigy who’s now a grown-up good-for-nothing make his entrance!” Xu Shu said, full of enthusiasm, as he continued the legend:

“A strong coalition propelled the family to unprecedented fame, vaguely establishing them as the most powerful among the three great families of Wutan City.”

“Because of you, your mother He Yanyu’s status in the Xiao Family rose, and she became the main wife.

She spoiled you rotten, buying you anything you wanted and whispering to you every night, ‘Baby, remember, your real father is a world-conquering hero, and one day he will come for us on a rainbow cloud.'”

“You just smiled without a word.”

“Where does this confidence come from?

Wasn’t it just a fleeting affair?

Did she secretly carry you with the permission of that venerable master?”

“But you couldn’t tell her because, after all, you were still just a five-year-old child, not meant to understand so much, only practicing the Xiao Family’s secret sword technique in secret every night: the Jia Yi True Wood Sword Technique, but making slow progress.”

“At the end of the year 3353, while Xiao Zhan was away, assassins took the opportunity to break into the Xiao residence to kill you.

At that moment, He Yanyu was taking you to the backyard to practice martial arts, surrounded by only a few servant girls without any cultivation.

She had no choice but to draw her sword to fight back.”

“Her talent was poor, her strength merely at the entry-level of a Swordsman with ‘Third Rank of Sword Qi-7,’ and in the effort to protect you, she was tragically killed.”

“The family guards and four elders arrived too late, the assassin was stabbed to death by someone unknown during the fight, and all leads were lost.

By the time your Great Sword Master father arrived, your mother’s body was already cold, and he was stricken with grief.”

“Yet you saw all of this with your own eyes, knowing that at least one traitor was among these people.”

“You guessed that the elders wanted you dead, but you didn’t know who it was.

You remembered this grudge and started practicing your swordsmanship even more diligently.”

“Your mother’s autopsy report came out, and the forensic doctor secretly told your father that He Yanyu was actually a virgin.

Xiao Zhan was wholly shocked as if struck by lightning.”

“A few days later, all thirteen of Xiao Zhan’s concubines died mysteriously, some drowned themselves in basins, some hanged themselves at the head of their beds, some strangled themselves with their own hands, all sorts of bizarre methods, yet no one in the Xiao Family dared to speak a word about it.”

“Later, Xiao Zhan called you in, held you, and wept for a day and a night, constantly expressing his longing for your mother and his belief that you were the son heaven had bestowed upon him, his true flesh and blood.”

“He told you that his other thirteen daughters were not his, suggesting that if you liked any of them, they could later become your concubines.”

“You were just as shocked as if struck by lightning, and you said to him…”

“Thank you, you are such a good person, Father!”

“Your father was greatly encouraged by this, and at the age of 55, he attempted another breakthrough, aiming for the Sword Spirit Realm, but unfortunately, he failed and passed away soon after, ascending to the Western Heaven.”

“At the age of six, you became the Xiao Family Patriarch.”

“Uh…”

The scene on the screen was the ancestral land with Xiao Zhan’s father’s tomb at the back and fourteen smaller graves behind it, with He Yanyu’s grave at the very front.

Snowflakes as big as goose feathers fluttered from the sky, as Xiao Han and his sisters, clad in simple white, paid their respects to their parents, the desolation of their words hard to express.

Xu Shu was dumbfounded as he watched, stroking his chin.

Xiao Han had lost his parents at the age of six and had been saddled with the position of Xiao Family Patriarch, with at least one of the four elders already harboring ulterior motives, a situation that could be described as perilous.

What’s to be done now?

Xu Shu clenched his fists.

This life seemed a bit like his own real life, besieged on all sides, relying solely on himself.

Power!

He needed immense power!

“You began practicing swordsmanship day and night, passing out many times, but each time you rose and continued.

You knew that time was of the essence – you needed supreme power!”

“Days went by, and while your body grew, what worried you was that the brilliance of your youthful talent seemed unapparent.”

“Your cultivation was very stable, holding at zero, and you didn’t know where the problem lay, nor did you find any grandparent-like figures or things like rings on your person.”

“From the conversations of the elders, you learned that Naxi Tianyuan, the eldest son of one of the three great families of Wutan City, was a young prodigy – practicing swordsmanship at one, perceiving Qi at two, reaching Third Rank of Sword Qi at three!

“By the age of ten, he was already a formal One-star Swordman, a rarity in the whole of Wutan City.”

“And you?

Despite daily diligent practice, you were never able to generate even a wisp of Sword Qi.”

“Hilarious, a prodigy grown up to be good-for-nothing?

That’s not even troublesome; you were born a good-for-nothing, skipping the prodigy step altogether.”

“What’s interesting is that your thirteen half-sisters with no blood relation actually possessed exceptional skills.

Xiao Xuan’er, just a year older than you, was already a Two-star Swordman, known along with Naxi Yuan as the Twin Jewels of Wutan City, and even outperformed the other in strength!”

“Being the only male of the main line, your sisters doted on you, giving you anything you wanted, always ready to fight back for you if anyone dared to bully you.

After your assassination attempt as a child, they would take turns holding you as you slept, fearing you’d suffer harm.”

“Of these sisters, it was Xiao Xuan’er with the highest combat capabilities who spent the most time with you.

Although her personality seemed a bit odd compared to the other sisters, you didn’t think much of it.”

“It was clear, you had learned the true Secret Technique—

“Living Off Women Mastery!”