Chapter 73: Deception Enters the Sword

Pan Yunzhou’s saber had been knocked aside. Faced with Ding Songyan’s rebounding thrust, which bore straight for his chest, he was in genuine and extreme danger.

In a flash, he twisted his body half to the side and leaned back, driving force through his waist and hips, his entire left leg snapping taut and cracking upward like a whip.

The kick connected with Ding Songyan’s blade, sending it slanting off to the side.

Flying Star Moon Rush!

Beyond its saber techniques and footwork, the Sun Moon Divine Saber also encompassed movement techniques, kicks, palm strikes, and fist techniques—all in service of the saber art.

Slash! Slash! Slash! Seizing the moment while Pan Yunzhou had not yet regained his footing, Ding Songyan thrust out several more sword strokes.

His moves came in an unbroken chain, forcing Pan Yunzhou to scramble frantically from side to side. Only by drawing on every last resource did Pan Yunzhou manage to avoid being overwhelmed.

Pan Yunzhou was drenched in cold sweat, his back soaked through. Apart from holding his power below the Great Proliferation Realm, he had long since abandoned the slightest trace of underestimating his opponent.

He now only regretted having been too overconfident at the start, focused entirely on demonstrating moves and showing off the subtleties of the Sun Moon Divine Saber, and so had failed to seize the initiative and fallen into a passive position.

The two of them circled continuously across the training ground, the clear ring of saber meeting sword punctuating the air. Pan Yunzhou, who was at a disadvantage, tried time and again to turn the tide, yet beneath Ding Songyan’s seemingly unremarkable chain of sword strokes, he could only react passively and found no opening for a counterattack.

One misstep, and every step thereafter was wrong.

In the heat of the fight, just as Pan Yunzhou was about to step to his own right—his opponent’s left—he saw Ding Songyan’s sword tip give a faint tremor and thrust toward him, and quickly folded his waist like a wave, pivoting left instead.

His posture had not yet settled into place; it was as though a bead of quicksilver lived inside him, perpetually ready to flow in any direction.

At that moment, Ding Songyan’s wrist turned and his longsword swept a half-circle, slicing toward Pan Yunzhou’s left.

Left Support, Right Aid.

Pan Yunzhou’s heart clenched. He arrested his movement immediately and forced himself to halt in place.

In the next instant, he saw Ding Songyan’s forearm draw in toward his chest, compress to its limit, then spring outward.

The longsword shot straight up the center, blazing into a bolt of brilliant, radiant lightning.

Direct Fall to the Central Palace!

It lit up Pan Yunzhou’s face and revealed an instant of total stillness.

Time had not actually slowed; rather, Ding Songyan’s thrust had come too fast, and Pan Yunzhou, having changed direction twice in quick succession, could not catch his breath. He could only stand his ground and take the blow head-on, his whole body as rigid as a wooden carving.

His saber was already held horizontally before him. In theory, there was still time to block Ding Songyan’s thrust, but he was caught in that dead interval between his spent strength and strength not yet renewed, and might not have been able to deflect the attack.

Pan Yunzhou gritted his teeth, twisted his wrist, and abruptly channeled his remaining Star-Sequence True Qi into the saber, igniting it.

The saber’s radiance erupted in an instant, like the great sun in its final moment, pouring out its light and heat with total abandon.

Clang! Ding Songyan’s swift and fierce thrust was knocked directly upward and deflected.

Dusk on a Terminus!

One of the finishing moves of the Sun Moon Divine Saber.

Had Pan Yunzhou used it at his full Great Proliferation Realm strength, this move would have carried multiple further variations, its power far beyond what was shown here.

The saber’s blazing radiance was followed by utter dimness, but Ding Songyan was entirely unaffected by the fact that Direct Fall to the Central Palace had not landed. He continued sword stroke after sword stroke, as though that move had been nothing more than one ordinary thrust among all the rest.

Even after unleashing Dusk on a Terminus, Pan Yunzhou could not escape his predicament. He was driven to keep changing direction while constantly trying to save himself.

Wan Guhong, watching with his sword clasped in his arms, narrowed his eyes slightly and murmured to himself, Is this still the Piercing Dawn Sword Art? Is this still the beginner sword art given to new disciples to practice?

It was plain and unadorned, neither subtle nor profound, yet every single stroke landed with exactly the right measure—perfectly natural and seamless!

Pan Yunzhou cycled through the full repertoire of the Sun Moon Divine Saber’s moves one by one, holding on by sheer force of the saber art’s subtlety and his hard-won experience of jianghu combat.

Once again, just as he was about to move toward Ding Songyan’s left, the longsword gave that faint tremor and thrust toward him.

Trying to force me to stop again, so you can repeat that combo of killing moves? Pan Yunzhou instinctively ignored the thrust and treated it as a feint.

His footwork continued as before; he kept moving.

At that very moment, Ding Songyan drove force through his shoulder and pushed it forward. With shoulder driving arm, arm driving wrist, he instantly wrenched the concealed sword momentum back on course. It was still a thrust to the left, but faster and with greater force behind it.

Wh... By the time Pan Yunzhou thought to react, it was already too late.

The sword flashed and came to rest against his chest—no way to dodge, no way to block.

Ding Songyan pulled back his force in time, and the longsword held still, pressing no further.

Though it was a still-sealed sword, had it truly struck at that speed and with that force, Pan Yunzhou, who had restrained himself below the Great Proliferation Realm, would likely have blacked out.

Watching from the sidelines, Wan Guhong could not help raising an eyebrow.

"I thank you for the match." Ding Songyan withdrew his longsword and cupped his hands in salute.

Pan Yunzhou looked down in a daze at his own chest and the saber in his hand, then returned the salute blankly.

"Young Hero Ding, the first time you used that move, were you deliberately misleading me into expecting only one variation?"

Ding Songyan smiled and said, "The variation is too simple. If you had stayed on guard as you were at the start, it would have been very hard for me to land it. I could only use the move once as a setup first, so that you would no longer guard against that particular variation."

Without the setup, how can there be a twist?

Every deception requires groundwork laid in advance!

What Ding Songyan left unsaid was that the first time Pan Yunzhou faced Left Support, Right Aid, he had not treated it as a feint. It meant that even if Ding Songyan had wanted to deceive him then, he had no opening to do so.

However, if Pan Yunzhou had at that point treated Left Support, Right Aid as a feint while also staying wary of the variation, Ding Songyan would still have held back, laying the groundwork for the deception to come.

If Pan Yunzhou had failed from the very start to guard against a feint turning real, Ding Songyan would simply have gone with the flow and ended the sparring match early.

When the timing is right, false becomes real!

Ding Songyan had to admit that he had known Master Yan Changqing for only a few days, yet had learned a great deal from him—in deceiving oneself as much as in deceiving others.

Thinking of how Master Yan had also gifted him the Chaos remains, the Celestial Heart Seed, and the first half of the Celestial Heart Art, not only had these helped him make a quantum leap in strength, they also allowed him to conceal his outward abnormalities on a daily basis and cultivate the Myriad Star True Qi within two hours. Ding Songyan could not help but marvel inwardly, Master Yan was truly a treasure trove!

Having heard Ding Songyan’s answer, Pan Yunzhou paused, then blurted out, "You had this in mind from the very beginning?"

"Yes," Ding Songyan admitted without hesitation.

This was a sparring match to test his sword arts, so of course he would try out every idea he had, including using deception in his sword.

And the task his master had assigned was also accomplished. If the Sun Moon Divine Saber were adapted into a sword art, it would indeed complement the incomplete Celestial Stars Formation.

Pan Yunzhou could not help asking one more question, "Have you ever fought someone in a real battle before?"

"Never." Ding Songyan was certainly not going to tell him the legendary story of "an ordinary man killing a Supreme Master."

Pan Yunzhou was silent for a few breaths, then spoke with a mixture of bitterness and longing.

"Young Hero Ding, you have boundless prospects ahead."

Uh, does he mean up to Grandmaster, or all the way to Supreme Master? Ding Songyan grumbled silently to himself.

He had intended to escort Pan Yunzhou back to the Lanternwarm Tower and stop by the Hall of Myriad Stars to report to his master, but Pan Yunzhou took the initiative to suggest strolling about the area and taking in the scenery of Alpine Lake.

Since every important location in the sect had strong disciples on watch, Ding Songyan did not stop him, and stayed behind himself. Starting from First Division of the Two Principles and ending with Cradling the Taiji, he went through the entire Nine Primal Arts from start to finish, stretching his body.

Just as Ding Songyan was about to head to the Hall of Myriad Stars, he suddenly felt a pair of eyes quietly watching him.

He turned to the side and found Senior Brother Wan Guhong on the verge of speaking, then holding back, then on the verge again.

After a moment, Wan Guhong squeezed out a smile.

"Junior Brother Ding, your thinking is quite good. Let’s continue working on improvements to the Piercing Dawn Sword Art today."

The Piercing Dawn Sword Art that Ding Songyan had just demonstrated surpassed all of Wan Guhong’s expectations. Though it had not yet reached the level of the Northern Dipper Killing Sword or the Seven Swords of Candlelit Night, it was nonetheless impressively accomplished. It was usable even at the Great Proliferation Realm, and at the aperture refinement level of the Human Realm it could serve as a supreme art. Its advantage over those subtler, more profound sword arts lay in how easily it could be learned and mastered.

"Gladly." What Ding Songyan lacked most was experience, and Wan Guhong, having walked the jianghu twice, had seen a great deal.

......

Pan Yunzhou left the Dipper-Mansion Training Ground and wandered in a daze along the shore of the Alpine Lake, until a faintly cool breeze brushed past him and he gradually came back to himself.

Though he had restrained himself below the Great Proliferation Realm just now and had been overconfident at first, wanting to show off his saber art, in the fierce exchange that followed he had in truth drawn on everything he had ever learned.

In that state, he had still lost. From the moment of his overconfidence to the moment he was put at a disadvantage, he had struggled perpetually on the edge of defeat, never once managing to claw back a single time.

Sigh... no wonder Sect Master Tao holds Young Hero Ding in such regard. His talent for sword arts is truly exceptional. As Pan Yunzhou mused on this, a scene suddenly flashed into his mind, his first meeting with Ding Songyan: This personal disciple of the Brightnight Sect had been crouching beside some shrubbery near the boundary marker, watching ants crawl with complete absorption and reaching out to prod them.

I thought at the time that Young Hero Ding simply had a childlike heart. Pan Yunzhou reflected for a while and murmured to himself, But thinking about it now, given his martial talent, that could not possibly have been idle play. There must have been a profound meaning in it!

Without thinking, Pan Yunzhou walked toward the Brightnight Sect’s boundary marker, crouched eagerly in the exact spot where Ding Songyan had crouched before, and began scrutinizing the still-green weeds, the yellow leaves drifting down from the trees, and the insects crawling slowly by.

He saw nothing of significance, but he believed that Young Hero Ding’s behavior could not possibly have been without purpose, and so forced himself to pour in even more concentration.

The two Brightnight Sect disciples standing guard at the boundary marker looked at each other, both wearing identical expressions of bewilderment.

Could Junior Brother Ding’s "condition" of daydreaming actually be contagious, like a plague?

Young Hero Pan had only just met Junior Brother Ding, and he’s already like this?

......

With Wan Guhong’s assistance, Ding Songyan’s refinements to the Piercing Dawn Sword Art accelerated considerably. In only half a morning, he had resolved all the outstanding questions left from the day before.

The only problem was that the look Wan Guhong gave him grew increasingly strange, as though he wanted to pry open the top of Ding Songyan’s skull and examine the contents thoroughly.

"Junior Brother Ding, have you ever studied swordsmanship before?" Wan Guhong finally could not help but ask.

Ding Songyan shook his head.

"Never."

Wan Guhong fell silent. Only after his junior brother had walked out of the Dipper-Mansion Training Ground did he scratch his hair and murmur with self-deprecating resignation, "People really cannot be compared to one another..."

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