Although the martial arts in the Lotus Sutra Nine Chapters can be considered "suitable for all ages," with no real barrier to entry, to truly unleash their power, you still need a foundation in the Innate Realm. Take the White Cloud Sword Canon, for example—a sword technique manual of unparalleled sophistication. The most demanding aspect for a martial artist isn’t sword skill or wrist strength, but rather the lightness skill and movement technique. Without Innate-level agility, there’s simply no way to perform this majestic, domineering, yet graceful swordplay.
Jack Young is an eager learner. Ever since he started with the Flash Swallow Step, he’s paid close attention to mastering lightness skills. Among everyone he’s met, when it comes to the subtlety of movement, the top spot goes to Embroidered Jade. In aerial maneuvering and rapid direction changes, Embroidered Jade is the master of masters. But if you’re talking pure speed, no one beats Wind Supreme.
Jack may not know the secrets behind Wind Supreme’s lightness skill, but after so many encounters, his "Sharingan" has helped a bit. By blending the techniques of various lightness masters and adding his own fresh insights and innovations, Jack’s lightness skill is unheard of in either martial arts world.
He might not be the strongest in lightness skill, but he’s definitely the most unique.
Because, within his sense of "lightness," there’s also a touch of "weight." If the lightness skills of martial arts masters are like wisps of smoke drifting away on the wind—a feeling of insubstantiality—then Jack’s is like a shuttle piercing through the air. And this shuttle can turn and change direction on a whim!
Jack’s innate true energy has its own distinctive colors—a blend of moonlight white and sky blue. White at the core, blue around the edges: dazzling and mysterious. Physical strength, aerodynamics, momentum, and martial arts agility—all fused together. When Jack leaps from the rooftop with his sword, he’s like a streak of blue-white light flashing across the sky.
Down below, the guy holding the ground with Jasper Xiao was stunned: "Am I seeing things, or is he actually flying? Man, we’re all Chosen Ones, but the gap is kinda huge!"
Chainsaw Girl squinted and muttered to herself for a while: "No way I’m ever teaming up with him again. Otherwise, how am I supposed to get any kills...?"
That’s right—Jack turned into a streaking halo, darting and refracting through the void. At this distance, nobody could see how he attacked; they only saw wherever the light passed, airborne monsters silently lost power and dropped from the sky one by one.
The halo spiraled around the hundred-story building, showing no sign of coming down. It made people want to shout in disbelief: "Is he flying? Has he completely broken free from gravity?!"
Rachel Luo could just barely make out that Jack was only using the flying monsters as stepping stones, dashing and turning among them. A swarm of mutated mosquitoes screeched toward Jack, but his form didn’t pause—his sword suddenly became invisible. It was moving so fast, she couldn’t see it.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—dense blue-white sword trails flashed and fell in the void. The speed left afterimages on the retina, as if a massive web of sword light had sprung up in front of Jack.
Web passes, Jack passes, never slowing down, shooting higher in an eyeblink. The mutated mosquitoes split in half almost simultaneously, their corpses evaporating black mist as they crashed to the ground like a hailstorm.
"Badass!"—and this time, it wasn’t Lee Yuncong, but Professor He. Professor He’s eyes sparkled as he watched the streaking halo—yes, it’s possible! With a hero like this, we have a chance! Humanity still has hope! He suddenly yelled at Jack: "The jade shard was snatched by a monster bird! You have to find that shard—it’s the only thing that can plug the hole in the Jade Effigy’s forehead! The bird has two pairs of wings and three legs!"
On such a noisy, chaotic battlefield, at such a distance, Professor He blindly believed Jack could hear him.
Did Jack hear him?
He did, in fact, hear it.
"Monster bird?" In the void, Jack’s silhouette flickered as he landed on the back of a massive beetle. Using the flying beetle as a platform, wind whipping around him, Jack’s hair and clothes billowed. His eyes glowed with eerie light as he scanned around—but there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of monster birds circling above and below.
This might be tricky.
Looking up at the sky, the black vortex spun faster and faster, while the black droplets gathering from all around the city were dwindling. Looks like time is running out.
Yeah, he could do this before, but not this easily, not this casually.
This sensory experience—was just mind-blowing!
Boom! In the real world, the Silent Titan used the Dragon-Slaying Blade in his left hand as a lever, climbed up to the twentieth floor, and swung a mighty sword at the three-headed monster dog. With a thunderous crash, the monster dog dodged, but the building was struck by the high-speed sword, sending rubble flying everywhere. A steel bar shot across to a nearby building, smashing a window and stabbing into the wall—just fifteen centimeters from Richard Luo’s head.
“Ahhh! I’m gonna die!” Richard Luo ducked and covered his head, dodging a few monster birds that crashed into the room and flew out again. With a rumble, the ground shook, and Richard saw huge cracks rapidly spreading across the wall, then the whole outer wall was ripped off by some giant monster.
Richard Luo fell to the ground, scrambling away from the breach in a panic. Right in front of him, the giant monster that tore off the wall lunged at the building under siege by monsters. Then, a blue-white streak flashed by, and the big guy was sliced cleanly in half and fell away.
“No, no way… This is impossible!” Richard Luo stared at the unstoppable blue-white streak, completely stunned. “How could a human be this strong?!”
He remembered yelling at his daughter not long ago—just a Chosen One, how strong can they possibly be? How many armies could they withstand? But now, a living example was right in front of him. Facing someone like this, he wondered if the guns and bullets modern armies pride themselves on would still work.
“No, modern technology is unbeatable! No matter how strong an individual is, can they survive a nuke?” Richard Luo desperately, instinctively, from the depths of his soul refused to believe it, because if personal strength could surpass national military might, everything he was proud of, everything he’d worked his whole life for, would be trash—a joke. 'No, no, no, I refuse to accept such nonsense!'
Leaving aside Richard Luo’s self-deception, Jack’s eyes flashed—he found it! In this chaos, he still spotted the bird! Not just because his senses were sharp, but because the bird was special. It was small but fierce, faster than any monster, and no flying creature could catch it. Any that tried ended up dead.
Looks like that Jade Fragment is unusually attractive to mutated monsters.
Whoosh—a bright light bomb exploded nearby, burning a swarm of killer bees into sparks. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—holy light bombs kept coming, clearing a wide area in an instant.
That was Jasper Xiao, supporting from the ground battlefield.
“Nice assist!” Jack shouted, then leapt forward, charging at the bird.
The bird shot up the side of the building, and Jack became a blue-white blur racing up the wall after it. In this completely vertical world, even gravity felt weaker. Jack felt like he was sprinting down a track full of pits, chasing a paper airplane ahead. Holy light bombs exploded all around, helping block that paper airplane. But now and then, something nasty popped out of the “pits” to get in his way.
Jack held his sword backward, sprinting and slashing out sword trails like lightning, slicing every monster that popped up clean in half.
Almost there, just a little closer! Jack raised his left hand, and with a hum, a burst of finger force shattered the void, striking at the agile monster bird.
But at that moment, another mutation occurred.
With a crunching sound, the giant centipede tunneling through the building finally broke through something. Amid the tooth-grinding screech of twisting steel, the building snapped and collapsed from the fiftieth floor.
The monsters on the ground all stopped fighting. The guy holding the ground with Jasper Xiao stared and shouted, “Whoa! Oh my god, that’s right where the hero is!”
From Jack’s perspective, the “track” suddenly lifted off the “ground” and came crashing down! Who knows how heavy that massive thing was, roaring straight at him!
Jack raised an eyebrow, eyes flashing. Instead of slowing down, he sped up. In a blue-white flash, he stuck close to the monster bird and dove straight into the falling half of the building!
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In that instant, all sense of up, down, left, and right blurred. As Jack charged into the building, he felt all the walls, columns, ceilings, and floors flipping over. Furniture, papers, and even monsters fighting in the building spun, crashed, screamed, shattered, and flew about like ice cubes in a bartender’s shaker, turning into dazzling fragments!
Even amid the flying scraps of paper, Jack never lost his direction. The blue-white streak stuck close to the monster bird, weaving back and forth through the broken building in a chase.
Whoosh—a creature attacked Jack from the darkness. It was a human, laughing maniacally, bouncing off the walls and lunging at Jack. Without missing a beat, Jack slammed him in the chest with an Iron Mountain Lean. Like a baseball, the guy crashed through a wall, while Jack burst out the other side of the building.
He paused on the outer wall of the falling building, wind howling around him. Jack glanced at the sky—the black vortex had stopped absorbing. The black whirlpool churned, brewing something. Time was running out, and the bird—he hadn’t lost it, it was still just ahead!
Whoosh—a blue-white halo shot out, heading for the fortieth floor of the still-intact section of the building.
On the fortieth floor, part of the giant centipede’s long body was still crawling, its tough armor nearly impervious to blades and bullets, making it unbothered by most monsters. The monster bird darted into the fortieth floor through a gap, but Jack couldn’t squeeze through such a small opening.
But Jack focused his strength, and his ice sword glowed blue-white. Whoosh, whoosh—he swung twice, sending two sharp sword beams flying—the Innate Sword Qi! Less than a year into sword training, he already wielded such powerful sword energy!
With a squelch, like slicing a baguette, the sword qi cut through the centipede’s weakest link and froze the wound, sealing anything that might spray out. Jack kicked the severed segment away and chased after the monster bird.
But as Jack rushed into the building, a strange power suddenly hit him, making him freeze.
“You?” Jack looked toward a corner of the building. There was a person there, covered in black markings, like someone scribbled on the same sheet of paper all semester—complex, gross, and meaningless. Even so, Jack instantly recognized him—the half-grown kid from Zhu Ming’s bachelor party.
“That’s right, it’s me.” The half-grown kid grinned weirdly, one hand reaching toward Jack, the other holding the monster bird in midair. “You’ve been trying to catch it all this time, but I did it easily. Aren’t you useless? Look at you, showing off in front of me days ago, and now…”
“No time to chat!” Pop! Jack flicked his finger, sending a burst of force through the air, hitting the kid’s chest. Jack broke free of the psychic hold and dashed for the bird.
The kid froze, face twisted, eyes fierce, but couldn’t move at all—he could only watch Jack dash past to chase the struggling bird. Boom—the outer wall suddenly broke open, and a giant blade stabbed in, slicing the kid cleanly in half.
On the outer wall, the Silent Titan stabbed the three-headed monster dog to death, pinning its body to the building. He climbed quickly up the blade, winning the monster chase—and now, it was time to claim his prize.
He knew his prize was up above.
His massive body moved with incredible speed. Holy light bombs burned his skin, causing huge damage, but he didn’t care. He stood on the blade, straightening up until his whole upper body was outside the building. Amid the chaos and rubble on the fiftieth floor, the crystal coffin miraculously remained intact.
The jade figure in the coffin hadn’t changed at all. Dressed in a dark imperial robe, silent, dignified, mysterious—even the monster giant twitched strangely at the sight, as if afraid.
But the next moment, he forgot his fear, because the black vortex in the sky finally did what it wanted. In the center of the swirling vortex, the densest black liquid poured down like a waterfall onto the jade figure. The sticky liquid wrapped around the figure like amniotic fluid, surging into the hole in its forehead.