Chapter 285 - The Light in the Polar Night

Chapter 285 The Light in the Polar Night
He drifted and moved along the sea water, like roaming without a direction.
Li Tianlan indeed didn’t need a direction.
What he needed was quietness.
Whether it was cold or hot, whether it was hell or heaven, he just needed a quiet place.
Only in the quietest place could he temper the purest and most dedicated willpower, which was what he needed and would become a solid foundation of his Martial Arts.
The sky was dark all day, in the polar region during the polar night. Time had lost its meaning. Li Tianlan, who had completely let go of everything, walked past the glacier and walked on sea surface like a ghost, dimly discernible and illusory.


The polar region was rich in resources.
Resources meant benefit.
So the edge of the polar region wasn’t as desolate as he would have expected.
Every country had their own working station. Whether it was polar day or polar night, it was crowded and noisy on the edge of the polar region.
Li Tianlan kept moving forward.
In the dark, in his world, the lights in the working stations started to dim, fade out, then disappear completely.
The lonely and cold glacier.
The deep darkness.
The whistling wind and snow.
That was Li Tianlan’s path; he walked on it in silence, as if he was about to walk forever.


The polar region was very vast.
In the ice and snow, he could see the endless sea and the undulating glacier.
Li Tianlan didn’t know how long he had been walking; his world was getting quieter and quieter.
The snow and the glacier seemed to be the only things left in his world.
The darkness of the polar night started to fade away slowly.
Sun started to rise and the moon started to set in the polar region. Day started to alternate with night.
Li Tianlan reached an island covered with glacier.
He finally stopped his pace.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to move forward.
It was because after walking ten thousand miles, something had gone wrong in his body for the first time.


A sharp pain suddenly attacked his whole body.
He started to feel extreme coldness inside, which seemed to have been assimilated by the cold temperature.
The pain travelled through his whole body.
Li Tianlan could clearly feel his body getting stiffer and stiffer slowly; the sharp pain and coldness were tearing his body apart, as if they wanted to crush every bit of flesh and bone in his body.
He fell down on the crystal-clear and ghastly glacier, and his body started to shake.
A grown-up Golden Retriever was beside him.
He subconsciously held the Golden Retriever into his arms.
The Golden Retriever obediently snuggled in his arms, and occasionally licked Li Tianlan’s face.
His mind had fallen into a painful trance. Li Tianlan bit his teeth hard and struggled.
His state was too weak for him to hunt for food in the polar region.


The man and the dog had to starve.
The cloud-streaked clothes began to lose their activity.
But Li Tianlan slowly felt the heat.
As if the coldness came from deep inside his body, the glacier inside his body seemed to melt completely, then it turned into a erupting volcano.
The hot temperature was brewing in his body.
He started to feel numb to the pain in the heat.
Li Tianlan started to feel itchy.
The maddening itch seemed to come from the inside of his body; it started in his legs, then his arms.
He felt like there were countless ants crawling under the skin of his limbs.
Li Tianlan, who had been keeping his clear willpower, suddenly crashed into a complete breakdown.


Everything was quiet in the polar region; only his painful howling was echoing on the glacier.
He was rolling around and struggling on the thick ice; his clean fingers forcefully stuck into the ice.
The helpless and desperate howling echoed on the desolate glacier; dog barks joined in occasionally.
His limbs seemed to give up completely, that kind of indescribable pain and itch kept eating his nerves.
Li Tianlan used up all his strength and passed out completely on the glacier.
The sun rose and the moon set.
That was the warmest period of time in the polar region.
The average temperature was around ten degrees below zero.
But that was also the most desperate period of time for Li Tianlan since he started this journey.
Li Tianlan slowly woke up from the coma.
He had no idea how long had he been unconscious; the pain and the itchiness in his limbs were still there, but they had gotten better.
He felt hungry.
The dying hunger was torturing his nerves.
The Golden Retriever lay beside him; it looked as if it were at its last gasp.
Li Tianlan felt powerless, that state of his was even worse than when he lost all of his Martial Arts foundation.
He struggled to get up and dragged the Golden Retriever to somewhere away from the wind. Then he tried the best he could to kill a polar reindeer nearby.
When he dragged the reindeer back, the Golden Retriever had gained back some energy, but it still looked sick.
Li Tianlan, who was so exhausted that he might have passed out again, pointed at his prey.
He didn’t have any strength to start a fire.
The man and the dog roughly cleaned the body of the reindeer and directly ate the raw meat.
He swallowed down the raw meat and blood with the coldness in the polar region.
Li Tianlan’s eyes were calm, but he already couldn’t see clearly anymore.
He seemed to have starved for a long time; he ate the reindeer meat with blood streaking on it piece by piece.
The taste?
It was an indescribable taste.
He only cared about the energy that could keep him alive.
In a trance, the pain and itch in his limbs seemed to fade away as he ate.
Li Tianlan ate more and more.
The man and the dog almost finished the entire reindeer.
Li Tianlan passed out again.
The moonlight in the sky gradually disappeared.
The sun rose up and never set.
The sky had entered the polar day.
It was sunny all day above the Arctic Ocean.
The sunlight was bright but cold.
After waking up, Li Tianlan started to zone out again.
The feeling of weakness inside his body had disappeared completely.
The change that had lasted for a few days but was able to kill him had ended.
Li Tianlan finally realized that it wasn’t an illness.
It was an unimaginable fortune.
Or rather, it was a treasure.
Under the sunlight, a smile climbed on his calm eyes.
The smile spilled out from his eyes and spread to the corners of his mouth, looking more and more obvious.
He laughed out loud.
His clear laughter kept echoing in the thick ice of the glacier.
There seemed to be amazing divine light shining in Li Tianlan’s eyes.
Till that moment, he finally figured out his path.
The path led him to the destination of Martial Arts.
He stopped marching forward.
Right on the glacier where he stayed, he crushed the thick, hard ice with his bare hands and made a simple small hut for him and the Golden Retriever to stay.
Preys were stacked high in the hut.
Polar reindeer.
Polar bear.
Polar wolf.
And some local fish from the sea.
Li Tianlan became calmer and calmer. But when doing those things, strange but bright lights kept flashing in his eyes.
The polar day passed slowly.
Another Spring Festival was about to come.
The temperature had once more dropped to the freezing point; the polar region welcomed a snow storm.
For the first time, Li Tianlan held the Divine Punishment behind him.
Divine Punishment was still scarlet red like it used to be.
The long sword was straight and slightly wide.
But it looked a lot lighter and duller than it used to be.
Divine Punishment was very light.
It was light like nothing.
Li Tianlan still didn’t draw out the sword.
In the endless darkness of the polar night, the snow storm was howling violently.
Li Tianlan walked into the snow storm and started to wave the Divine Punishment with its sheath on.
The Golden Retriever was eating the cooked meat in the hut Li Tianlan built, while letting out happy whimpers.
Li Tianlan was waving the sword.
He moved in slow motion.
He looked very clumsy.
The scarlet red sword cut through the whistling wind and snow with its sheath on, making a dull, deep sound.
Li Tianlan didn’t use any force; he was just exploring the sword intent that had been carved in his bones with the smallest strength.
That was the Twenty-fourth Blade.
The First Blade — Wuji.
The Second Blade — Tacit Understanding.
The Third Blade — Burn Out.
The Fourth Blade — Mad Thunder.
The Fifth Blade — Flying Snow.
The Sixth Blade…
He practiced all the way to the Twenty-Third Blade.
The Twenty-fourth Blade was only half a movement.
Li Tianlan just skipped that half and started again from the First Blade, doing it over again and again.
His movement was getting lighter and softer, as if he were casually waving the Divine Punishment in his hand.
But the sword intent in the snow storm was getting clearer and clearer.
The sword intent blended into one another perfectly in the snow storm.
Li Tianlan started to fasten his movements.
The First Blade was still the First Blade, but it seemed to turn into something else.
All the sword intent started to change.
The perfectly circling sword intent was torn into pieces by Li Tianlan; everything was a mess.
All the sword intent finally crashed and disappeared.
Only the wind and snow were still howling, as if they were mocking something.
Li Tianlan put the sword back with a calm face.
He meditated, rested, then waved the sword.
The darkness of the polar night was still the same.
The Spring Festival had passed.
Li Tianlan’s sword intent became more and more out of order. The First Blade wasn’t the same, the Absolute Sword wasn’t the same; it was so messy that it looked funny.
But Li Tianlan didn’t give up.
He saw the path, the path that only belonged to him.
It was so clear that he had no reason to quit.
What was the Invincible Realm?
That was the ultimate sublimation of the Four Realms of Martial Arts.
Every superior of the Invincible Realm had their own ideology of Martial Arts. In the same realm, there might be difference in power. But in their own ideology, they were definitely the most powerful.
That was the Invincible Realm in a traditional sense.
It was the Invincible Realm, rather than being invincible.
Any impartation was from the ancestors’ path. Looking down from the invincible position, impartation was the start.
If the impartation was different, there would be a different starting point.
Most of the geniuses that amazed the world and the successors of top superiors were stuck in the Half-step Invincible Realm.
Because in order to improve from that realm, the faith in oneself and the practice of Martial Arts would be needed.
That was a process where people needed to get rid of any impartation and start to look for their true selves.
Step Forward to enjoy a better view.
Step back to end up a nobody.
Even to step back to ruin themselves.
After the Thunder-shocking Realm, any genius that aimed at the Invincible Realm would choose to practice his or her Martial Arts. While the Four Realms of Martial Arts were the direct stairs for them to look for their true selves.
Qi-controlling Realm, Ice-condensing Realm, Fire-flaming Realm, and Thunder-shocking Realm.
In order to find their Martial Arts, they would keep trying and practicing. The process might last five years, ten years, or a lifetime.
The Wang family of Beihai had the impartation of the Sword of Six Paths of Reincarnation.
The Li family had the impartation of Map of God of War.
But each superior of the Invincible Realm that came from the two superpowers was unique.
Wang Tianzong’s Sword of Six Paths of Reincarnation would definitely be different from the one of the Patriarch of the Wang family of Beihai.
Li Honghe’s Twenty-fourth Blade would also be different from Li Kuangtu’s.
Right now Li Tianlan was also practicing his Martial Arts.
But he didn’t need the so-called Four Realms of Martial Arts anymore.
He tempered the sword instead of his realm.
The sword only belonged to him!
During the polar night in the polar region.
His sword intent became more and more out of order.
His sword-waving practice time became less and less.
The polar night still covered the sky.
Li Tianlan was still waving the sword; the chaotic sword intent kept intertwining together in the freezing polar region.
Li Tianlan became calmer and calmer.
His sword intent was still chaotic, but the sword intent he brought out was less and less.
The sword intent disappeared bit by bit as he waved his sword.
When Li Tianlan waved the sword one more time, there wasn’t any sword intent left in the polar region.
Where the long sword reached, it was a void.
Li Tianlan himself was surprised as well.
He put away Divine Punishment, then sat on the glacier and looked at the dark sky.
The Golden Retriever walked toward him and rubbed itself on his arm.

We should get going,

Li Tianlan stroked the Golden Retriever’s head and said softly.
That place couldn’t make him stay anymore.
Because there wasn’t any sword intent left.
On that day, darkness still prevailed in the polar region.
In the outside world, that day would be February Second in the Zhongzhou State calendar.
It was the Dragon Head Raising Day!
Li Tianlan looked down at the Divine Punishment in his hands.
His hand held the sword hilt.
The whole Divine Punishment started to shake violently.
Li Tianlan’s eyes were calm like water; he drew out the famous sword from the Lin Clan bit by bit.

Thank you.

He said softly.
There wasn’t any sword intent left in Divine Punishment.
The sword intent that had been accumulating for hundreds of years had disappeared completely.
The blade was rid of the sheath completely.
A cold wind blew over.

Crack…

Divine Punishment, a sword that had existed for hundreds of years shook for a second. Along with the whistling wind, thousands of cracks appeared on the scarlet red and heavy long sword.
Li Tianlan let go of it.
Divine Punishment fell down. Before it hit the floor, it dissolved in the cold wind.
The metal pieces flew around in the air as if they were weightless. In Li Tianlan’s eyes, all of them became invisible dust in the wind.
Divine Punishment no longer existed in the world.
Li Tianlan stood up.
In the night wind, the faint sword intent, vast like the mountain and sea was surging under the night sky.
The whole glacier started to shake violently.
Li Tianlan carried the Golden Retriever on his back.
A bright white figure directly broke through the shaking polar night and went straight to the high sky.
The glacier below was crushed quietly; the thick ice pieces fell into the sea.
The faint sword intent went straight into the sea from the high sky.
In the towering giant waves, the polar night lit up in the polar region.
It was vague and illusory, but yet so bright.