Chapter 76: Incomplete

Li Miao looked Zheng Zelin over from head to toe, but did not move at once. Instead, he went to the side, sat down, rested against the armrest, and regarded him in silence.

He truly did want to hear what Zheng Zelin had to say.

Although Zheng Zelin now looked on the verge of collapse, as though a single kick would send him coming apart, Li Miao could sense the vast and surging inner force within him.

Stronger than Lan Lechuan.

One might even say that, among everyone Li Miao had heard of or seen since arriving in the Great Shuo, Zheng Zelin was the strongest.

Zheng Zelin sat down as well, covering his mouth to cough several times before looking at Li Miao.

“Sir Li, let us begin with you.”

“If I am not mistaken, your present state is actually much the same as mine.”

“Oh?” Li Miao replied, neither confirming nor denying it.

Zheng Zelin went on, “I relied on the achievements of Master Ji and took a shortcut.”

“My comprehension was always exceptional, and cultivating the first stage came as naturally as water flowing downhill.”

“But the second and third stages require talent. I was born incomplete. Others have the extraordinary vessels and eight channels, along with the twelve regular meridians. I, however, have only three of the regular meridians open.”

“If one were to speak honestly, even a crippled body would be better suited to martial training than I was.”

Zheng Zelin gave a self-mocking smile.

“Though the Netherlight Sect made up for my deficiencies, I still could never reach the level of Vice-Lord Lan. So I could only try the crooked path.”

His hand rose to his chest as he spoke slowly.

“Master Ji was a genius beyond compare. He forged a new road, combining it with the poison arts of the southern tribes to find a path no one had ever walked.”

“The five viscera are where spirit, essence, blood, breath, and soul are stored.”

“The heart is the root of life. By using gu worms bred with the essence blood of the Left Guardian, I obtained the second stage.”

“The kidneys govern the intake of breath. By using gu worms bred with the essence blood of Vice-Lord Lan, I obtained the third stage.”

“By now, I already stand above the realm of the three supreme paths.”

Li Miao smiled. “And then you turned yourself into this half-dead state.”

Zheng Zelin was not angered in the least. Instead, he nodded in agreement.

“Yes. Naturally, I cannot be compared with you.”

“In my humble view, there are countless fools in this world who think themselves chosen geniuses. In truth, they are nothing more than common men peering at the sky from a well, or spying the sun through a crack in the wall.”

“Master Ji included, and myself included, we are all merely common men who took shortcuts.”

“The only one truly walking the right path is you, Sir Li.”

“Only now can I barely see it clearly. Sir Li, you have also cultivated the second, third, and first stages at the same time, have you not?”

“However, unlike a mediocrity like me, eager for quick success, you reached the end, and when you were only one step away, you stopped yourself.”

“You deliberately left all three paths unfinished.”

Li Miao sneered. “Nonsense. If I had completed them, I would have ended up looking like you.”

For the first time, someone had truly seen through Li Miao’s martial realm.

That was right. The reason Li Miao called himself only “half a martial legend” was precisely because he had already gathered the second, third, and first stages in one body, standing just one step away from the realm of the True Man of Mount Zhong.

And it was not as though he could not take that step.

If he wanted to, he could bring all three to perfection at this very moment.

He had stopped himself of his own accord.

Because he had faintly sensed that something was still missing, something he had not yet found.

If he rashly took that step, he would end up like the prodigies of the past who had tried to cross the heavenly moat and failed: in the decline of heaven and man.

For that reason, none of his three paths had been brought to completion. He had deliberately left one step untraveled.

That was why Lan Lechuan’s palm strike had been able to leave a mark on him.

“Enough about me. Speak of you,” Li Miao said. “I am rather curious. You made such a grand display, crippled the Netherlight Sect to half its strength, and left yourself half dead. What exactly are you after?”

Zheng Zelin smiled and said nothing for a moment.

He lifted a withered, bone-thin hand and tapped several points on his chest.

At once, a thick and fishy stench began to pour from his body, while wisps of white smoke rose from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, shrouding him completely.

Whoosh—

Li Miao struck out with a palm.

True force swept forth and dispersed the white smoke.

When Zheng Zelin came back into view, Li Miao gave an amused sound of surprise.

“Interesting.”

By then, Zheng Zelin no longer looked as senile as before. The wrinkles on his face had faded considerably, and the flesh no longer hung so loosely.

Even the wound on his forehead, where Li Miao had struck him, had once shown bare, pallid bone. Now it was a raw red wound, the skin still absent, but a thin layer of flesh had already begun to grow.

“I did all this to catch up with you.”

Zheng Zelin made no effort to explain the strange changes in his body, and calmly resumed the topic from before.

“I still need a little more time. Would Sir Li be willing to hear me out a bit longer?”

Li Miao gave no answer, so Zheng Zelin went on speaking on his own.

“My father was a direct disciple of a major sect.”

“From childhood, my comprehension was extraordinary. At the age of four, after merely watching him demonstrate a few moves in the courtyard, I was able to complete the entire sword art on my own, surpassing the sect’s inherited version by only a little.”

“That day, I took a wooden branch and showed my father the sword art I had comprehended. I still remember his stunned and ecstatic expression as though it were yesterday.”

“From that day on, all the elders of the sect appeared before me with great frequency. The sect master celebrated my birthday, and the elders came to offer congratulations. My father’s status rose with the tide, and everyone believed he would be the next sect master’s father.”

“But when I turned ten, the sect finally began preparing to lay the foundations for my cultivation. That was when they discovered that my bones and constitution were inherently flawed.”

Li Miao gave a disdainful laugh. “How trite. No sect leader’s daughter came to break off an engagement?”

Zheng Zelin naturally did not understand that remark.

Li Miao idly rubbed his fingers together and said to him carelessly, “I’m not interested in your childhood trauma.”

“There are miserable people and miserable stories everywhere in this world. I’ve heard enough of them. Get to the point.”

Zheng Zelin smiled. “Very well, very well.”

“In short, certain things happened in between. And so, at eighteen, I poisoned my father and secretly betrayed the sect.”

“At first, I was unwilling to accept it.”

“There are plenty of martial arts in this world, and beyond the borders of the Great Shuo lie paths entirely different from the martial world of the Central Plains.”

“So I began wandering everywhere, secretly learning the martial arts of various schools while trying to create a technique that even someone of my constitution could cultivate.”

“I achieved some results. By the time I was twenty-eight, I had finally reached the second-rate level in the martial world.”

“It was also that year that I joined the Netherlight Sect and met you in Shuntian Prefecture.”

As he spoke, Zheng Zelin lifted his hand and tapped his chest again several times.

In an instant, his features seemed to grow a few years younger, until he looked like a delicate, middle-aged man.

An expression almost devout appeared on his face.

“What is called comprehension, in plain terms, is nothing more than vision and will.”

“Others could not see through you and only thought your bones and constitution were extraordinarily fine. Only I, who have spent more than a decade studying how to improve one’s constitution, could see that your bones and constitution are unprecedented in all history.”

“That one sword of yours awakened me from this tedious world filled with mediocrities.”

The end.