Chapter Thirty-Two: Deviation of Inner Breath

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Meng Xiaoli shook her head dejectedly and sat beside Elder Dugu at the bamboo table.

“There has been no improvement at all.”

Elder Dugu grew anxious. “How can there be no improvement? Have you been concentrating? Have you practiced according to the method I taught you?”

Meng Xiaoli lowered her head. “I do not know why, but I have never been able to enter a meditative state. Not only have I failed to improve, I feel as though I am actually regressing.”

“How can that be?” Elder Dugu urged her on. “How long has it been? You remain exactly as you were, and there is still so much you have not learned. How many more years will I be able to stay with you?”

As he spoke, Elder Dugu began coughing violently.

Hearing this, Meng Xiaoli hurried over and rubbed his back, cutting him off. “All right, all right, please stop. I will work harder. Please do not keep saying that you may not have many years left. Without you, I have nothing. The more you say such things, the more miserable I become.”

Elder Dugu could only soften his tone and sigh. “Birth, aging, illness, and death are the ordinary lot of mankind. They are not matters human strength can overcome. I would like to accompany you for several more years, but life and death are not mine to command. I was left with a chronic illness after fighting another man, and now that I am old, it has become even more difficult to cure. I have barely managed to sustain myself with internal energy all these years. I was merely anxious for you; I should not have pressured you.”

Afterward, he coughed lightly several times and struggled to suppress it.

Unwilling to hear any more, Meng Xiaoli rose and said, “You must live a long, long life. I am going to the market to buy some of the things you like to eat. Wait for me to come back!”

With that, Meng Xiaoli turned and descended the mountain.

The market in Qingzhou was utterly different from what it had been three or four years earlier. The streets that had once been filled with misery and mourning were now crowded with people. Goods were plentiful, every trade was flourishing, and shops stood in endless rows.

Meng Xiaoli entered a teahouse and chose a window seat on the second floor. Her thoughts churned as she sipped her tea and watched the endless stream of traffic below.

Among the crowd, she noticed a dark, lean man carrying a long sword on his back. Beside him walked a woman who was equally dark and thin, holding a little girl of two or three in her arms.

Meng Xiaoli could not help recalling Elder Dugu’s former words—that he had never wished to marry because he did not want to roam the martial world burdened by a wife and child. She sighed inwardly.

“So there truly are people who travel the martial world with their families in tow.”

She continued drinking tea while watching the family of three with curiosity. When they drew nearer, however, she began to feel deeply perplexed.

Why did the husband and wife look so familiar?

She leaned forward and took another look. The lean, dark man below, his features, his build, and the long sword on his back—all of them proved that he was none other than Long Ye, her husband and childhood sweetheart. Six years had passed since they last met. Though Long Ye had grown stronger, he had also become astonishingly gaunt, and his skin had darkened considerably.

Meng Xiaoli rose abruptly and clutched the window as she looked down.

The woman following Long Ye was none other than Jin Xiaodao, who had once caused the death of her daughter and torn their marriage apart. The little girl in Jin Xiaodao’s arms called out to Long Ye again and again.

The resentment Meng Xiaoli had suppressed within herself for years surged into her heart in an instant. The internal energy in her body began to run wild, and her blood boiled violently. Her legs moved beyond her control, carrying her backward step by step until she struck the corner of another table. A waiter caught her and asked, “Miss, what is wrong?”

But Meng Xiaoli murmured in grief and fury, “Why is it her? How could it be her? Any woman in this world would have been acceptable—anyone but her!”

She knew in her heart that although she had not spoken of it for six years, her hatred had always lain buried deep within her, held down but never released and never resolved. For the sake of the man she loved, Meng Xiaoli had tolerated the person who had murdered her child continuing to live. Yet Long Ye had actually become Jin Xiaodao’s husband.

There was no way Meng Xiaoli could accept such a reality. Grief, loathing, and hatred intertwined within her, disturbing her mind. After years of practicing internal energy on the mountain without the slightest progress, she suddenly began to advance by leaps and bounds.

Even as images of her daughter, Long Ye, Jin Xiaodao, and every painful experience she had endured since leaving home tangled within her mind, all her sorrow and suffering were magnified by her emotions. She recalled being robbed, ambushed, stabbed in the back, poisoned, humiliated, and every cold, vicious face she had encountered. In the end, she laid all the blame upon Long Ye and Jin Xiaodao.

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Meng Xiaoli’s vital energy gradually turned upside down and began flowing against its proper course. Even the techniques Elder Dugu had taught her became disordered. This perverse progress left her unable to pull herself free. Her emotions grew frenzied, and she was consumed by a deviation of the spirit.

During this period, Meng Xiaoli had constantly told Elder Dugu that she was making tremendous progress, and that her advancement was extremely rapid. Elder Dugu could indeed sense that she had risen from the early sixth level to the late sixth level in the blink of an eye. Worried that something might be wrong, he went to the place where she practiced.

Before he even approached, he could sense that Meng Xiaoli had already reached the early seventh level. Leaning on his staff, Elder Dugu hurried to her side.

Her eyes were darkened, her lips purple. When he reached out to feel her pulse, he found her nutritive and defensive energy flowing backward, her vital energy and blood running in reverse. It was clearly a sign that she had fallen into a dangerous deviation.

He immediately interrupted her and cried out, “You must not practice any longer. Stop at once!”

Meng Xiaoli opened her eyes and stared at the frail old man before her in confusion. “Why? Master, is it not a good thing that I am improving so quickly?”

Elder Dugu felt her pulse and advised her, “The fault is mine. I should not have kept urging you. You must understand that one must never seek rapid results when practicing internal energy. You have now reached the early seventh level, which is already no small achievement. You cannot continue.”

Meng Xiaoli did not understand. “Master, I am advancing now. How can I stop?”

Elder Dugu paced back and forth anxiously. “You have fallen into a deviation. If you continue, you will die.”

“A deviation?” Only then did Meng Xiaoli realize that she had taken the wrong path. She collapsed onto a great slab of blue stone and asked, “Then what should I do, Master?”

Elder Dugu let out a deep sigh. “A deviation can rapidly increase one’s power, but the price is a shortened life. Once this malignant energy enters the body, it will eventually cause a sudden death. The evil energy has already penetrated you deeply. You cannot continue practicing.”

Meng Xiaoli nodded hurriedly. “All right. I will listen to you, Master. I will stop here and never practice again.”

Elder Dugu glanced back at her. “Having malignant energy in your body means not only that you cannot practice any longer. Even using your internal energy will damage you. You cannot simply abandon martial arts after all these years of hardship. I can transfer the evil energy from your body into mine. I can neutralize it; you cannot.”

Meng Xiaoli looked into his eyes. “Transfer it into your body? Would that not harm you?”

Elder Dugu gave a dry chuckle. “How could it? I am at the late eighth level. Do you really think malignant energy can injure me so easily?”

Meng Xiaoli asked him repeatedly to confirm it, and each time Elder Dugu sincerely assured her that it would cause him no harm. Only then did she agree to let him draw the evil energy from her body.

The two returned to the wooden hut and sat facing each other. They joined all four palms. Meng Xiaoli felt an unbearable agony spread throughout her body, as though her skin were being peeled away and her bones scraped clean.

Gradually, the pain began to lessen as the malignant energy was drawn out. From dawn until evening, most of it was transferred into Elder Dugu’s body.

When Meng Xiaoli saw him suddenly spit out a mouthful of blood, she realized that his body had not been left unharmed as he had claimed. She immediately withdrew her hands and cried, “You said it would not affect your body!”

Elder Dugu opened his eyes and shouted, “The malignant energy in your body has not yet been completely transferred. Do not interrupt me! I am already old, and my end is near. Do you intend to die before me?”

Meng Xiaoli refused to continue under any circumstances. She leapt from the wooden bed and wept. “If I had known this would happen, how could I have agreed to let you take it? I would rather die myself than let you suffer.”

Elder Dugu wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and snapped, “Why do you still not understand? As long as the malignant energy remains, it will continue to threaten you. Since it has already entered me, let me absorb all of it. I was never going to live much longer, while you are still young.”

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Meng Xiaoli wept and shook her head. “If I let you absorb all the malignant energy now, you will leave me at once. I cannot allow you to do that. You must live—even if only for a year, a day, or long enough to say a single sentence. Please, do not leave me.”

Elder Dugu suddenly spewed out another mouthful of blood. Meng Xiaoli hurriedly supported him as he collapsed sideways onto the bed.

With trembling hands, Elder Dugu grasped her arms and urged her, “My vital energy and blood are already flowing in reverse. I am doomed to die. Why will you not let me transfer all the malignant energy from your body?”

Her eyes red, Meng Xiaoli clasped Elder Dugu’s weathered hand and sobbed, “If you leave me, what meaning will all the martial arts I have learned possess? Where am I supposed to go from here?”

Elder Dugu let out a long, deep sigh and closed his eyes without speaking.

Meng Xiaoli rose, lit a candle, and sat beside his bed, gripping his hand tightly. Helplessly, she said, “Master, did you not say that nothing would happen to you? This is all my fault.”

Elder Dugu kept his eyes closed for a long while before finally sighing. “In truth, this is not your fault. From the beginning, I told you that you had no talent. That was not merely a polite refusal. When an ordinary person lacks talent, he is like a vessel with a flaw. There is a limit to how far he can cultivate in a lifetime. You could barely reach the fifth level, and even the sixth would have been an ordeal for you—a challenge that might have broken you. Yet I still tried to force you to defy your nature and climb higher. In the end, my eagerness for quick results harmed you.”

Elder Dugu drew another long breath and continued, “Everything follows the course of fate. I have known the condition of my body for these past few years. I am old now, no longer young. I have merely been allowing nature to take its course. None of this has anything to do with you. Promise me that you will never blame yourself.”

Meng Xiaoli rose and asked, “Who in this world can save you? I will find them now. The leader of the Beggars’ Sect? The Divine Wood Sect? Can Zhuge Gaoshan do it? Or should I go to the Wind and Cloud Hall and ask them? Tell me what I should do!”

Elder Dugu only shook his head. “No one can help me. My internal organs are damaged, and my life is drawing to its end. I must follow the laws of nature.”

“No.” Tears filled Meng Xiaoli’s eyes as she spoke with fierce determination. “I cannot let you die because of me.”

Elder Dugu trembled as he pressed down on her shoulder, making her sit calmly. Then he slowly comforted her. “If there is truly no way to save me, will you spend my final moments speaking with me like this?”

Meng Xiaoli could do nothing but weep. Tears poured down her cheeks and slipped from her chin.

Elder Dugu looked into her eyes and said, “Remember this in the future: do the things you love. Do not abandon something simply because it cannot make you money. Whether something is meaningful should not be decided by wealth. Do what you love. Your life belongs to you, and you have the right to decide how to live it. Even if you end up destitute, if you have lived your life happily, your master will still be proud of you.”

With tears clouding her vision, Meng Xiaoli nodded frantically and promised him.