Chapter 315 Discuss
Two days later, Fang Xingjian smiled as he looked at the dragon’s scale. He could sense an extremely sharp and majestic aura moving around in his body, releasing an extremely curious emotion.
After trying to tempt it for another day, Fang Xingjian handed out half of the Rebirth Sword Technique before he finally got the Heaven’s Volition Sword Intent to circulate and move around in his body.
Although the Heaven’s Volition Sword Intent was still unwilling to be subdued, this would still count as huge progress.
Fang Xingjian could sense that deep within the Heaven’s Volition Sword Intent there was an extremely strong greedy devouring emotion. He was convinced that he just needed to constantly lure the Heaven’s Volition Sword Intent with sword techniques in order to successfully subdue it, and finally pick up this set of Heaven’s Volition Sword Technique.
Just then, the door was pushed open and the Heaven’s Volition Sword Intent acted as if it had gotten a fright, slowly shrinking back. However, this time around, Fang Xingjian could sense that it could not bear to part with the sword techniques in his body. It had not left as readily as it had the first time.
Fang Xingjian smiled and let the Heaven’s Volition Sword Intent leave. He turned to see Sword Saint Sasa walking in.
The Sword Saint continued to greet him as usual, “How is it, Xingjian? Is everything going well? We’ve successfully deciphered 50% of the inscriptions. Hehe, everyone is showing great enthusiasm.”
Fang Xingjian shook his head and said without caring for Sasa’s words, “Is that so? You guys might find that you’ve wasted your time. In half a month at most, I’ll be able to complete this set of sword technique.”
Sasa’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Fang Xingjian coldly.
Seeing how confident Fang Xingjian was, Sasa felt anxious. He was bent on getting his hands on the dragon’s scale, so how could he possibly tolerate Fang Xingjian beating him to it?
‘I must hurry. I must definitely not let the secret of the dragon’s scale land in someone else’s hands.
‘I must stop Fang Xingjian from probing any deeper.’
The other specialists who had been working with Sasa in deciphering the ancient characters walked in, yawning. Most of them were ordinary Knights, while some of them were ordinary people. The consecutive long nights were taking a toll on their bodies. It was impossible for them to feel as refreshed as Sasa, without a trace of fatigue.
Sasa looked at the few of them and asked, “Where are Xelloss and Benjamin? Why aren’t they here?”
“They’ve fallen sick. We’ve been working through the night for consecutive days. They are both over 60 years old and their bodies can’t keep up.”
“They’ll have to come even if they can’t keep up,” Sasa coldly replied. “I’ll double the salary for this month. All of you can forget about getting any rest. Within half a month… no… within a week, we’ll need to complete deciphering all these ancient characters.”
Immediately, agonized cries rang out.
One of the specialists said, “Working so many consecutive nights might not be a problem for a Conferred Knight like yourself, but there’s no way that we would be able to keep it up like this. It would even affect our efficiency.
“Moreover, you broke it into parts, making it impossible for us to analyze it in relation to the other sections in front and in the back that we’re working on. As a result, our progress is slower. You should let us have the whole ensemble.”
Sasa forcibly nodded. With very limited time and based on their current analysis, he was basically sure that the secret to the dragon’s scale was hidden in the sword intent within. One could not find out the secret merely from reading the inscriptions.
Therefore, he agreed, “Then we’ll combine all the paragraphs for analysis. I need the results to be out within three days.”
After giving it some thought, he realized that his expectations were really too high. He softened and said, “I’ll get more people to help. You guys will just need to hang in there for a little longer.
“As long as the dragon’s scale can be fully deciphered, I’ll ensure an additional bonus of 1,000 gold per person apart from the conditions I promised you earlier.”
Hearing this news, those present cheered. A reward of 1,000 gold was considered a huge sum. Even Sasa felt a small pinch. However, as long as they could decipher the whole text before Fang Xingjian, these were investments he could afford to make.
‘Fang Xingjian…’
…
“Xingjian, it didn’t work.” James shook his head and said, “When we went to investigate, the school’s teacher and those three students were no longer there. Someone is keeping them hidden.
“It seems like they are bent on doing this. We had better prepare for the worst.”
Fang Xingjian’s brows knitted tightly together. He did not have a lot of time, and right now, the thing he hated the most was to waste his time on such ridiculous things.
He asked, “What would happen if they were to report this matter to the association?”
“The association monitors each set of martial technique in the Knight’s handbook very closely, since there could be thousands or tens of thousands or Knights, hundreds of thousands or even millions of Knight apprentices who might pick them up.
“They would rather wrongfully accuse 1,000 rather than let a problematic one get away unscathed.
“The association as well as myself have evaluated your Rebirth Sword Technique, and verified that there weren’t any problems with it before it even got into the Knight’s handbook. Now that a problem was found, it won’t just implicate us, but the association as well. Therefore, they will act very quickly and first release an announcement to stop all cultivation and experimentation of the Rebirth Sword Technique.
“They will then request for you to submit all relevant materials, interrogate you, and put you through arbitration. If you are unable to prove that your sword technique has no problems, the Knight Association will form a team of professionals to retest and re-evaluate the entire sword technique.
“If they can’t come to any conclusions, they may get apprentices of varying conditions to go through one, two, or even three rounds of testing until they are sure that there are absolutely no issues.”
James frowned and sighed, “With that, you may need several years to clear up your name. Even if your name will eventually be cleared, the negative impacts it brought you would be irreversible. In the end, there might not be many people who would dare to pick up your Rebirth Sword Technique.”
Fang Xingjian said, “We can’t let them test and examine the case without a time limit. We must make sure that the Rebirth Sword Technique is proven to have no problems at the arbitration.”
The most practical and reliable way of proving this would obviously be to get a large number of people to pick up the Rebirth Sword Technique. However, this would take up too much time and resources. Not many people would use such a method to prove that a sword technique had no problem, regardless what sword technique it was.
So how could people who were not experts in sword arts determine whether a sword technique was good or bad? Of course, they would take advice from the real experts.
Just like how, for the Knight Association’s arbitration, one factor was to see the materials which Fang Xingjian had prepared himself, and another factor was to see whether Fang Xingjian could invite enough important characters who held weight to speak for him.
Sword arts had always been for the highbrows, and most ordinary humans did not know any profound sword theories. When they could not rely on their own brains to assess a sword technique, the only thing they could do was to listen to experts’ suggestions.
The stronger the experts, the greater their reputations, the more people would listen to them.
“I’ll send people to continue keeping a lookout for those three students, but we also need to make our preparations.” James was infuriated by the thought of there being a scandal that a sword technique created by a Great Western Region’s Conferred Knight had resulted in students suffering from internal injuries.
“Don’t worry, I’ll look for a few heavyweight old friends. Even if you were to be put through an arbitration, you definitely won’t be on the losing end.”