Transmigrating as the Heart Demon of the Ruthless Sword Venerable – Chapter 61
by Little PandaInterlude (3)
Cultivating on One’s Own
Tang Wenchun sat cross-legged, her eyes half-lidded, silently reciting the incantation1.
“…Clarity means the ten thousand entanglements ceasing in an instant. Stillness means not a single thought arising. Those who cultivate the Dao hold clarity and stillness as their wonder, and heaven and earth in their entirety return…”
In the darkened room, points of spiritual light gradually surfaced. At the sight, Tang Wenchun’s heart leapt — and in that very instant, the pinpricks of light scattered and vanished with the flutter of her thoughts.
She opened her eyes, clutched at her hair, and let out a defeated “aaah,” head drooping. “So cultivation is actually this hard.”
Earlier, in the confrontation with Yunzhongjun, Tang Wenchun had abruptly unleashed a technique called Frozen World at the moment of crisis. That move hadn’t come from Yu Zhaoming, nor had Xuanjiu taught it to her — it was, truly and entirely, comprehended by Tang Wenchun herself. In the instant she used it, she had understood every pathway of its spiritual energy, as though self-taught without a master — and in that same instant, an idea planted itself in her mind.
If she could create her own technique, could she also begin cultivating on her own?
Her cultivation came from Yu Zhaoming. Dying again and again had not only built Yu Zhaoming up — it had sapped Tang Wenchun just the same. Then what about spiritual energy gained through her own cultivation?
Before this, cultivation and spiritual energy had all come far too easily. Tang Wenchun had never even wondered why, never once considered stripping her cultivation back out and rebuilding it from nothing.
But now that the thought had risen, she suddenly felt the future might not be so bleak after all. Yunzhongjun’s obsession with Nüluo had birthed a heart demon. The heart demon wanted freedom, wanted to see its obsession through — and the only path was to kill the main body and become the main body.
But Tang Wenchun didn’t want to go that far with Yu Zhaoming.
Besides, she herself had been born from Yu Zhaoming’s obsession… uh, which, to this very day, she still didn’t know what it was. Yu Zhaoming just seemed normal — like an ordinary, run-of-the-mill person. Not that Tang Wenchun was calling herself abnormal, but Yu Zhaoming was almost… excessively normal, so much so that nobody had ever realized Tang Wenchun was a heart demon at all.
“Will you be my Dao Companion?”
Several days had passed since Yu Zhaoming first raised the matter. Tang Wenchun had no idea how to answer, so after getting back she’d simply shut herself in her room to meditate. She didn’t have much of a clue what she was doing yet, but at the very least it let her avoid seeing Yu Zhaoming!
What she hadn’t expected was that cultivating — starting cultivation from scratch — would be this hard!!
When she’d entered the Sword Sect, she’d already had Golden Core cultivation, so everyone simply assumed she’d mastered basics like Guiding Qi into the Body and skipped straight past them, supplementing her only with plenty of general-knowledge coursework about the cultivation world. Tang Wenchun used spiritual energy and cast techniques as naturally as eating or drinking, so she’d never once considered how difficult it would be to take all these things she took for granted, break them apart, and start over from the beginning.
It was like an elephant calf exercising its trunk after birth, the motion slowly becoming instinct. She was the reverse: she’d learned to use the trunk first, and only now was learning how to control each individual muscle.
The difficulty hadn’t merely doubled.
Starting from scratch, Tang Wenchun finally discovered that clearing stray thoughts alone was this hard.
“No wonder there are so few cultivators. This isn’t something humans are built to do!!”
After attempt upon attempt, Tang Wenchun watched herself unravel further and couldn’t help yelling a few times. But in the end she still bent her head over the book in front of her — one she’d dug out of the Scripture Pavilion, the 《Foundations of Stepping onto the Immortal Path》, issued specifically for newly inducted little disciples. The borrowing period was limited; she couldn’t afford to waste time.
Besides, because of the whole Yunzhongjun affair, a strange and ominous premonition lingered in her heart — the feeling that this kind of peaceful stretch, time in which she could quietly puzzle things through, wouldn’t last much longer.
An invisible voice in her heart seemed to be telling her: faster. Be faster still. Seize every moment you can.
And the future… that future touched on in a handful of spare lines in that book — no one knew when it would arrive.
Tang Wenchun flipped through the pages, weighing whether she ought to sneak into the Sword Sect’s foundational classes and audit lessons alongside the little baby novices. Suddenly, starlight scattered around her. She went “ah” — and the next moment, when she lifted her head, she was standing inside Yu Zhaoming’s sea of consciousness.
Yu Zhaoming sat in the little house within her sea of consciousness, holding a cup of tea, apparently lost in some thought. Seeing Tang Wenchun look over at her, Yu Zhaoming set the cup down. “The Sect Master summoned you. You didn’t reply to the message, so he came to me instead. I sent you a message as well, but you didn’t answer that either.” She paused, taking in Tang Wenchun — still sitting cross-legged, hands cupped as if holding something. She inclined her head slightly, the very picture of poise and refinement, courtesy itself. “I haven’t disturbed you, have I?”
She’d already done it — so what was the point of saying anything about disturbing her?
It was nothing more than Yu Zhaoming’s hidden streak of wicked humor.
Tang Wenchun stood and shook her head. “Just startled me, is all. Didn’t expect you’d learned reverse summoning2.”
All this time, it had been Tang Wenchun who actively returned to Yu Zhaoming’s sea of consciousness. Yu Zhaoming was like a fixed coordinate — she neither initiated nor refused. If Tang Wenchun came, she accepted it; if Tang Wenchun didn’t, she was at peace with that too.
In five years at the Sword Sect, Tang Wenchun hadn’t returned to Yu Zhaoming’s sea of consciousness even once. To Yu Zhaoming, it apparently hadn’t been anything worth minding.
“…What does ‘reverse summoning’ mean?” Yu Zhaoming paused, then asked.
Tang Wenchun was always saying words she completely didn’t understand. In the past, Yu Zhaoming hadn’t cared. But after the two of them made that trip down the mountain, Yu Zhaoming had watched Tang Wenchun chat and banter with Zhan Lun, watched her converse with Yunzhongjun.
They got along, spoke each other’s language — and still said words she entirely couldn’t follow. If Yunzhongjun and Tang Wenchun were both heart demons, then what about Zhan Lun? How could he click with Tang Wenchun so effortlessly?
Yu Zhaoming lowered her eyes, her palm tightening faintly.
Every single time, Yu Zhaoming seemed to be walled off from Tang Wenchun’s world.
And yet — the one who had always stayed at Tang Wenchun’s side was her. Tang Wenchun had been born because of her, and would even… die for her.
An intimacy closer than anyone else’s — closer, even, than Dao companions. Then why was it her, of all people, who got shut out?
Yu Zhaoming didn’t understand. And buried inside that incomprehension lurked a small, inexplicable dissatisfaction.
“It doesn’t mean anything, just something I said.” Tang Wenchun waved a hand, all set to brush it off — but the moment she turned, Yu Zhaoming caught her hand.
Touch inside the sea of consciousness always felt subtly different from the outside world. Even the instant of skin meeting skin seemed to overlap and interlace for a heartbeat, as if the two of them were about to fuse into one. Tang Wenchun froze, looking up at Yu Zhaoming in surprise.
“I want to know,” Yu Zhaoming said. Was it something she couldn’t be allowed to know? Or was it that Tang Wenchun was willing to explain it to Zhan Lun, but not to her? Her lips pressed tightly together.
Tang Wenchun paused. It wasn’t any great matter to her — but Yu Zhaoming showing such obvious curiosity gave her a subtle sense that the future might be about to change. She broke into a smile. “What’s gotten you suddenly interested?” And without waiting for Yu Zhaoming to answer, she launched into an explanation.
Yu Zhaoming listened with utter seriousness, exactly as she did when cultivating — brow drawn tight, gravity at the corners of her eyes, lips pulled into a straight line, nodding now and then. Partway through, Tang Wenchun started laughing. “Don’t be so serious, it’s really not anything important.”
Yu Zhaoming only shook her head and said nothing.
It was Tang Wenchun who, having finished, suddenly remembered: “Oh, right — what does the Sect Master want with us?”
Yu Zhaoming nodded and took Tang Wenchun’s hand. “Yes. Let’s go.”
Tang Wenchun looked back. The little wooden house in the sea of consciousness was no longer as bare as before — it had gained a good deal of furnishing, and now looked like an ordinary farm household, while a row of books stood off in the distance, lending the place a touch of scholarly air.
Sunlight spilled in from outside, dust dancing in the light where it fell across the books. The whole place was full of the traces of living. If Tang Wenchun hadn’t known this was Yu Zhaoming’s sea of consciousness, she’d have taken it for a real household — some reclusive family tucked away in the mountains.
It seemed, somehow, more “alive” than before.
The scenery flashed past, and the two of them reappeared in Yu Zhaoming’s cave abode.
Tang Wenchun blinked, then turned her head abruptly. “There’s sunlight in your sea of consciousness now?”
“The sea of consciousness evolves into its own heaven and earth. After Nascent Soul, sun, moon, and stars begin to appear; by the Soul Emergence stage, it can even nurture and sustain living things. It wasn’t there before… perhaps because I’d only just reached Nascent Soul and my control was still insufficient.” Yu Zhaoming glanced at her. “That’s from the 《Cultivation General Knowledge Course》. Were you slacking off back then?”
Tang Wenchun chuckled sheepishly — and then her eyes lit up. For foundational cultivation knowledge, asking a teacher couldn’t compare to asking Yu Zhaoming. Yu Zhaoming was emotionally steady, knew her true identity, would naturally never grow suspicious of her basic questions, and there’d be no need to invent excuses, either.
“Yu Zhaoming, if I want to draw in spiritual qi and cultivate, how do I keep my mind like still water3?”
“…You can recite the 《Classic of Clarity and Stillness》4…” Seeing the blank look in Tang Wenchun’s eyes, Yu Zhaoming added, “I have a printed copy. I’ll give you one in a bit.”
Tang Wenchun’s eyes curved into crescents. Her moods had always sat close to the surface — happy or sad, they showed easily in front of the people she was close to, simple and endearing.
Yu Zhaoming lowered her head. Tang Wenchun’s hand was still held in hers, soft. Of course — Tang Wenchun was a heart demon; even this body was one she’d manifested. It looked real, but it wasn’t a true body in the end. How could it have sword calluses?
Tang Wenchun, for her part, hadn’t noticed a thing. She’d begun firing off questions. Facing Yu Zhaoming, all those questions that had made her head ache at the mere thought of asking her teachers — questions she’d been unwilling to face — now came without the slightest burden.
And Yu Zhaoming, never impatient, never flustered, her voice carrying that steady calm, was quite simply the most suitable teacher imaginable.
The two of them walked and taught as they went, and a certain warm, harmonious ease settled between them.
Only once they’d left Taoli Peak and were nearing the Main Hall, the moment their eyes met, Yu Zhaoming spoke with her usual bluntness: “So — how have you considered it?”
“What? Considered what…”
Asked so abruptly, Tang Wenchun’s thoughts went straight to the Dao Companion business. Her eyes darted everywhere, not daring to look at Yu Zhaoming.
This thing — why won’t it just end already!
The author has something to say:
I stayed up too late last night, so I’m a bit foggy right now. If you spot any bugs, point them out in the comments and I’ll fix them. Thank you.
Wishing everyone a happy Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day double holiday! There’s a little red envelope5 for comments on today’s chapter. Thank you all for your support all this time, and for sticking with me and never letting go!
Footnotes
- 口诀 | Koujue | Rhymed or rhythmic verbal formulas at the heart of Daoist practice — cryptic mnemonic verses that guide breathing and qi circulation. Disciples traditionally receive them from a master and repeat them silently until the sequence steers the energy on its own.
- 反向召唤 | Fanxiang Zhaohuan | Gaming and fantasy-genre slang. A normal summon pulls a creature to the summoner's side; a 'reverse summon' flips the spell, dragging the summoner — or here, the guest — directly to the other party's location.
- 心如止水 | Xin Ru Zhi Shui | Literally 'a heart like still water.' A classical idiom of Chinese mental culture, tracing back to the Tang poet Bai Juyi, describing a mind undisturbed by a single ripple of thought — the prerequisite state for absorbing spiritual qi in this genre's meditation.
- 太上清静经 | Taishang Qingjing Jing | A genuine Daoist scripture of the Tang dynasty, also called the Qingjing Jing, traditionally attributed to Laozi. Only a few hundred characters long, it teaches that a mind emptied of desire and mental noise settles back into the Dao — closing with the famous promise, 'One who is ever clear and still, all heaven and earth returns to them.'
- 红包 | Hongbao | The hongbao, a red envelope of cash, is the traditional Chinese gift for holidays and celebrations. On webnovel platforms, the custom has gone digital: authors hand out cash-filled red envelopes in chapter comment sections as tips to thank loyal readers.
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