Chapter 12: The Sword Sect Visitor: The Old Ancestor's Daily Routine of Stealing Techniques

Shen Yan’s fingertips still felt hot, and the faint glow in his palm was like an unfinished program thread, hanging in midair, unwilling to fade. He stared at the blood characters that had just formed on the bamboo leaf—“Initiate Terminal”—but the characters flickered for less than two seconds before being snuffed out by an invisible force.

The Tranquil Spirit Barrier was still too harsh, suppressing even the bioelectricity in the plants as if they were in power-saving mode.

But he refused to give up. Last night, Pei Yue’s bottle of Foundation Establishment spiritual liquid wasn’t for nothing—his meridians still surged with a molten heat, and even the gaps between his bones felt as if they had been recompiled.

He bit his finger, smeared the blood on a bamboo leaf, and whispered, “Distributed sensor network, node binding.”

The leaf veins faintly glowed green, as if a circuit board had been powered. Immediately after, another leaf three steps away lit up, then another… In the blink of an eye, the tips of every leaf in the entire bamboo forest shimmered with tiny specks of light, forming a swaying data network.

“Success.” He grinned, and his phone screen finally displayed a black background with green text: “System loading… Hibernating in 0.8 seconds.”

It was enough. In that brief moment, he had captured sufficient environmental parameters.

Next was the real task—optimizing the Sword Control Script.

He sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and summoned the code interface in his mind. Ever since the automatic Sword Flight incident at the subway station where he saved Ye Zhao, he had been pondering how to standardize Sword Qi output. But every time he ran the “Sword Intent simulation module,” the fox-shaped brand on his chest would heat up, as if the system had reported an unignorable compatibility error.

“Demon Power buffer intervention… Asynchronous non-blocking mode initiated.” He silently recited while rewriting the underlying logic. “Sword Qi generation function suspended, triggered only after synchronizing with the Demon Power signal.”

The air suddenly trembled.

A translucent Sword Shadow slowly materialized, tracing an arc above his head. The tip of the sword actually wrote a “zero” in the air, followed by a “one,” alternating back and forth for seven seconds before dissipating.

“The binary Sword Qi rhythm model… it’s running!” He nearly jumped up but quickly covered his mouth.

If the Medicine Valley disciples patrolling outside heard this, they’d probably think the bamboo forest was haunted.

Just as he was gleefully preparing to save the progress, his phone vibrated.

【Warning: Detected anomalous heat source approaching, distance thirty steps, moving speed slow, carrying alcohol concentration exceeding standard】

“Who is it?” He squinted toward the bamboo forest path.

A hunched figure staggered in, cradling a wine jar and humming an off-key tune: “Sword come… no, wine come… Oh, these old arms and legs of mine…”

The old man wore a grimy gray robe, his hair as messy as a bird’s nest, his face stained with wine, and he swayed unsteadily as he walked, looking like a beggar who had drunk himself to death on the streets.

But Shen Yan immediately sensed something off—every step the old man took precisely avoided the nodes of the Medicine Valley’s night patrol formation, and even the angle of the crushed grass under his feet seemed calculated.

A master. And with a clear purpose.

Without a sound, Shen Yan lightly tapped the ground with his fingertip, activating the “Maze Matrix” he had set up last night. Using bamboo roots as data nodes, he instantly wove an invisible labyrinth, trapping the old man in place.

The old man took two steps, then suddenly stopped, scratching his head: “Huh? Why is this bamboo forest getting denser the more I walk?”

He continued forward, turning left and right, circling for half an hour, yet still returned to the same spot, nearly unable to hold onto the wine jar.

“Marvelous!” He slapped his thigh, not annoyed at all, but rather delighted. “This Formation… isn’t the traditional Five Elements cycle of generation and restraint, nor is it the Eight Gates and Nine Stars. It seems more like… recursive calls in a maze?”

As he spoke, he actually pulled out a charcoal pencil from his sleeve and began drawing on the ground.

Shen Yan, hiding in the shadows monitoring, almost burst out laughing when he saw it—on the ground was a crookedly drawn little figure holding a short stick, tracing the trajectories of “zero” and “one” in the air, with a note beside it: “Third move from last night, can’t remember clearly, drew based on feeling.”

This old man… is secretly learning?

Even more absurdly, after drawing, he wasn’t satisfied, so he took out a small notebook, flipping to a page that read: “If condition holds, then strike; else, retreat. This is called ‘ifelse strike,’ the Dao simplified to its essence.”

Shen Yan’s lips twitched: “Can the Comments I wrote be copied as sword techniques?”

The old man wandered in the maze Formation for three full hours, stubbornly not using any Spiritual Power to break it, instead growing more excited as he remained trapped. Finally, he sat cross-legged on the ground, murmuring to the moon: “So swords can be practiced this way… This isn’t Cultivation, it’s Programming!”

As dawn approached, the maze Formation automatically dissolved.

The old man wobbled to his feet, patted his butt, pulled out a worn sword manual from his chest, placed it in the center of the bamboo grove, turned, and walked away, muttering as he went: “Kid, your ‘if strike’ set points more directly to the essence than our thousand-year Sword Canon.”

Shen Yan waited until he had gone far before emerging to pick up the sword manual.

The cover was mottled, inscribed with four characters: “Nameless Sword Manual.” Opening the first page, the first thing he saw was that childish-looking little figure holding a stick posing, with a line of crooked writing beside it: “Third move from last night, can’t remember clearly, drew based on feeling.”

He couldn’t help but laugh aloud.

Turning to the second page, he discovered a bamboo leaf stained with wine tucked inside, with charcoal writing on the back: “Kid, your ‘ifelse strike’ set points more directly to the essence than our thousand-year Sword Canon. Signed by the Sword Sect Old Ancestor.”

Shen Yan froze.

Sword Sect Old Ancestor? That legendary mad old man who a hundred years ago split the Kunlun snow ridge with one sword and then vanished without a trace?

It was said that in his later years he obsessed over “the Heavenly Dao can be solved,” insisting on using sword principles to deduce cosmic laws, was regarded as insane by the entire sect, and in anger sealed his sword and retreated into seclusion, never heard from again.

To think… he came here disguised as a drunkard to secretly learn?

Looking down at the sword manual, Shen Yan suddenly felt a warmth.

This old man didn’t fear that he might be some demonic fiend or outsider, nor cared whether he was an outsider, simply recognizing that one move of “zero and one” Sword Shadow, eagerly sneaking in to learn, trapped in the maze Formation without rushing to break it, instead pulling out a notebook to copy the movements.

Pure like a novice Programmer just starting out, unable to walk away upon seeing an elegant piece of Code.

Sunlight slanting into the bamboo grove fell upon the sword manual.

As Shen Yan was about to close it, his phone suddenly vibrated.

【Detected High-Level Sword Intent residual traces, analyze?】

He glanced at the nearly invisible etchings along the edge of the manual—notes left by the Old Ancestor using Sword Qi, undetectable by ordinary people, yet captured by his System.

He tapped “Yes.”

Code Flow instantly surged into his mind, a unfamiliar Sword Intent rushing into his Consciousness Sea, faintly Resonating with the “asynchronous non-blocking Sword Qi” he had debugged last night.

“Goodness…” he murmured, “So I’m not the only one trying to learn from others.”

He looked up in the direction the old man had left, a smile curling at the corner of his lips.

“You’re the true master.”

The wind rustled through the bamboo tips.

In the distance, a crow perched on a withered branch, its claws pressing down on a half-faded Bronze Mask.

(End of Chapter)