Cultivating in Online Games

Chapter 26 – Sword master

“Spirits are different from yao,” Dugu Zhuo explained. “If a yao hasn’t eaten some sort of powerful elixir that allows them to embody themselves early, they will all take the form of a young man or woman. Spirit cultivators, however, take the forms of three-year-old children. That’s why you hear stories of ginseng babies and the like.”

Everyone: “…”

“You know so many myths,” Aotian said.

“This didn’t exist in the PC version,” Ye Zhou said. “Does the game company think they can abuse their players however they want because it’s a VR game?”

Qingyue and Black Cat shared a look and both smiled wickedly at the same time. “Since we aren’t doing anything, let’s check out the excitement!”

They all had enough experience to reach level 20, so they weren’t in a rush to advance. All they had to do with their remaining time was wander around exploring the game while waiting for maintenance, so they definitely had nothing better to do.

Black Cat was always up to watch chaos unfold, so he charged off for Tanye Temple ahead of everyone else.

The bailiff had said earlier that Widow Yang’s son would be under the care of Tanye Temple, and the lingzhi had been taken to heal the child, so the number one leaderboard player was probably at Tanye Temple right now.

At the moment, there was already an impenetrable crowd of people before the Tanye Temple doors which no one could force their way through, giving people flashbacks to train stations during the New Years rush.

During the day, you were forbidden from hopping the walls of Tanye Temple too, with a martial monk standing guard and ready to kill any player who dared try with one strike of his staff.

“How do you know you’ll get killed?” Qingyue asked Black Cat.

“Because it’s happened once before…” Black Cat covered his face with one paw, feeling embarrassed.

“Things might be different now,” Dugu Zhuo said.

“Mrow?”

“You are now a disciple of the Tanye Temple,” Dugu Zhuo said.

Black Cat’s eyes brightened, and risking the wrath of the Punishing Vajra once again, he bent his body and leapt to the top of the wall in a graceful arc. The moment his feet landed on the wall, a martial monk who had previously been surrounded by players came forth riding the wind, Buddha’s light enveloping his staff. “Ho! Miscreant, take this humble monk’s— shidi[1]?”

Black Cat had already been prepared to flee, but he saw the young monk with “Ho!” popped up over his head smile at him gently as a spring breeze, toss aside his staff, and bend over to pick him up. He smoothed down Black Cat’s spiked-up fur and said amiably, “There’s no need for our shidi to leap the walls when he wants to return to Tanye Temple. Just show the monk at the door your rosary and someone will let you in from the side door.”

Most of the players lining up outside Tanye Temple were there to see the level 20 lingzhi, since he was the first embodied player and everyone wanted to know what would happen. The line was extremely long, though, and the people in the back couldn’t squeeze through.

Upon seeing a black cat who was clearly a yao get brought inside by a warrior monk, the players started to shout, “There’s an exploit!”, and loudly protest.

“There’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while,” Qingyue said. “Every time these monks hit people, a word pops up over their heads. How is it read?”

“Ho!” said Aotian.

“So the monks of Tanye Temple have been openly saying dirty words all this time, and no one cares?[2]” Qingyue said.

“If normal players get a little too close to each other, they’ll activate the censorship software, yet the Tanye Temple monks can pick up players and stroke their backs, and they won’t be restricted?” Ye Zhou said.

Several people exclaimed, “This game has a double standard between NPCs and players!”

Qingyue saw that the warrior monk had vanished with Black Cat in his arms and sent him a private message. “You’ve got in, but what are we supposed to do now?”

They quickly received a reply from Black Cat in the party chat. “Mrow~ I’ll open the side door for you guys.”

A large temple such as Tanye Temple couldn’t only have one set of doors. There was a main door for worshippers, a back entrance for hired workers, and a side gate for important guests. With the cat on their side, everyone made it to the inside of Tanye Temple with no trouble.

Even the players who had managed to squeeze through the main doors hadn’t caught sight of Pang Du Du. After all, Tanye Temple was for offering incense, not sightseeing.

Looking proud of himself, Black Cat said, “I already asked Chan’er-shixiong[3], and he said the lingzhi is currently throwing a tantrum inside the temple.”

“Chan’er[4]?” Ye Zhou said. “Shixiong?”

“I recall the monk who took the lingzhi to perform treatment was called Chanyi[5]?” Aotian said. “I had thought it was ‘yi’ as in ‘intention’, but it was actually the number one. Are all the NPCs of Tanye Temple named this thoughtlessly?”

“With the way you’re bragging about your shixiong, it sounds like you’re asking to get your ass kicked,” Qingyue said.

Joking around, the party arrived at a side building in the back courtyard, where the monks reportedly held their morning prayers. The area was a bit smaller than the main temple hall, and the door was facing east.

Right upon entering, they could see a plump three-year-old child draped in a monk’s robe and wearing a red bib, rolling around on the floor. “I don’t care! How can I let people see me like this? How can I fight monsters? Tanye Temple needs to look after me!”

Chanyi put his palms together and said to Pang Du Du, “Amitabha, benefactor, this temple cannot receive female guests. Please leave as soon as possible.”

Everyone sputtered in laughter. Not only had the lingzhi transformed into a three-year-old, but it was also a little girl. It was fortunate that the Tanye Temple monks had lent her a robe, otherwise it would be quite improper.

“Are you a female player?” Qingyue crouched down in front of the lingzhi, poking her cheeks.

“No!” the lingzhi said in indignation. “I made this account using my sister’s ID, and picked a genderless spirit character because I thought I’d be able to choose the gender when I became embodied. I didn’t know you would be assigned a gender according to your account!”

“Hahahaha, cough, cough, cough!” Aotian laughed himself into a coughing fit.

Black Cat only calmly stroked his whiskers, but inwardly he was glad he had used a young male’s identification to make his account.

Pang Du Du grumbled, “I wouldn’t mind playing a female character. It could be fun to be a pretty young maiden. But am I a pretty young maiden right now? I can’t even walk properly like this, and I’m expected to fight and gain experience? What will I do to gain experience?”

Dugu Zhuo was the only one who wasn’t laughing. He said calmly, “Spirit cultivators can use wood and earth meld to move extremely quickly. A cultivator at the same level would never be able to catch one.”

“Hm? Is that so?” Pang Du Du looked enviously at Dugu Zhuo’s long legs underneath his robe. “Let me try it out.”

He (according to his original gender, he should be called a he) did a few squats on the spot, but nothing happened. He glared at Dugu Zhuo.

“There is a warding array inside the Tanye Temple, so you will not be able to use movement techniques without Mahayana-level power,” Dugu Zhuo said.

Under Chanyi’s grateful gaze, Dugu Zhuo picked up the lingzhi baby and brought him out into the Karmic Forest, while the rest of the party came along to see the action.

The Karmic Forest was no longer as peaceful as it had been that first day. Many players had found this map, and now there were more players in here than monsters. A bunch were leaping around in the trees, waiting for the monsters to respawn.

“Try it now.” Dugu Zhuo tossed the lingzhi onto the ground.

The moment he touched the ground, the lingzhi baby vanished. The next moment, he poked out his head from a bamboo stalk ten meters away.

“Woah! This is fun!” the lingzhi exclaimed. “The earth near me looks kind of like a hologram. I don’t feel any pressure at all, and can see all of you even through deep earth.”

“Spirits also seem like a lot of fun,” Aotian said excitedly. “How’s the speed?”

The lingzhi baby dove into the bamboo again, but everyone could still hear his voice. “Ridiculously fast. I checked my stats just now, and my agility’s now 100. Jeez, my normal agility is just 50!”

“You couldn’t do this before becoming embodied?” Ye Zhou asked.

“Nope. I could only wriggle bit by bit in the dirt.” The lingzhi baby appeared again at Ye Zhou’s feet, and also mischievously poked his leg.

“I had thought that spirits could only be healers, but looking at this, they could be great assassins!” Black Cat said, sitting on the ground.

“That’s right.” The lingzhi baby reappeared next to Black Cat and gave his tail a pull.

“Meow! Don’t get too cocky!” Black Cat said, his fur sticking up.

“You can’t get me! You can’t get me!” The lingzhi baby instantly moved five meters away and stuck out his tongue at Black Cat.

“He’s kind of asking to get beat up,” Ye Zhou muttered.

Dugu Zhuo’s ears twitched slightly, and he formed a hand seal. Countless earth blades emerged from the dirt, forming a cage and raising the lingzhi baby up. He was stuck firmly inside the cage, and would be injured by sword aura if he touched the bars.

Dugu Zhuo manipulated the cage to come to him and grabbed the lingzhi baby by the nape. The earth swords turned back to soft dirt and fell away.

He handed the lingzhi to Ye Zhou. “You can beat him.”

Ye Zhou’s face reddened for some reason and he avoided Dugu Zhuo’s eyes. “Nevermind. He’s too little, it feels kind of like child abuse. It’d look bad.”

“True,” Dugu Zhuo said. He placed the lingzhi baby before Black Cat. “You can scratch him.”

It wouldn’t look good for a grown person to hit a child, but the cat and the three-year-old looked adorable together.

“No, no, no!” the lingzhi begged upon seeing Black Cat unsheathe his sharp claws. “Dashen, you’re too badass. You knew everything about my technique immediately and you used such an impressive move. I’ll be your little bro— little sis, so let this disobedient little brat off the hook for once, alright?”

“That’s right,” Ye Zhou said. “You’ve used that technique a lot of times by now. Where’d you learn it?”

Dugu Zhuo had used the Five Phases Swordplay three times on players, and the system had also prompted him three times to submit it. Dugu Zhuo didn’t want to always be on server announcements, though, and instead wanted to keep a low profile and protect Ye Zhou. He had been ignoring the system all this time and never submitted the Five Phases Swordplay.

“Do you want to learn it?” he asked.

“Of course! It’s such an awesome sword technique, and the special effects look so good.” Ye Zhou stuck out two of his fingers and made a movement like he was directing a storm of swords. “It’s just too cool!”

Dugu Zhuo expressionlessly tossed the lingzhi baby to Aotian, ordering, “Don’t let him touch any dirt or vegetation.”

He took out the blank jade that the system had sent him and recorded the Five Phases Swordplay within it. The people here who were familiar knew that he was about to create a new technique again and immediately held their breaths, waiting.

The system needed to validate every new technique. If a powerful technique like this could be copied and taught to them, they would be extremely lucky.

The Five Phases Swordplay was far more complicated than the Misdirection Array, and the system took longer to approve it this time too. They had to wait a full hour.

By then, Aotian and the group were crouching down and idly doodling circles on the ground, and the lingzhi baby was also looking up at Dugu Zhuo, waiting for a miracle to appear.

They waited until 6:30, which was past Ye Zhou’s designated time to log off. The nurse was about to come give him his IV any moment now, and Ye Zhou was nervously pacing around Dugu Zhuo, when the system announcement finally came.

[Notice: Dugu Zhuo has created the <Five Phases Swordplay>, which has passed verification by the system. He has gained the title “Sword Master”.]

[Notice: The <Five Phases Swordplay> has been classified as a high-level sword art, which can only be learned by sword cultivators.]

[Notice: Dugu Zhuo has earned the titles “Array Expert” and “Sword Master”. Upon obtaining a title for footwork, he will be able to create his own sect and take in players or NPCs as disciples.]

The string of announcements spooked all the players in the game, and in a moment everyone was asking the same question: “Just who is this Dugu Zhuo?”