Chapter 646: The Clearwind Wood-Jade Fan

After dinner, Marcus settled onto the soft sofa with Anya curled comfortably against his side and Chloe sitting beside them. Their conversation had returned to the cultivation manual hidden within the Langhuan Immortal Ring, the mysterious Olympian Jade Art.

Over the past few weeks, apart from resting and spending time in the game, Marcus had devoted two hours every day to serious training. In addition to cultivating his own Human Rock, he had spent a considerable amount of time deciphering the Olympian Jade Art, working through its ancient characters and obscure passages. The explanations were surprisingly detailed, yet the deeper meaning remained frustratingly difficult to understand.

Fortunately, he wasn’t trying to decipher it alone.

With Anya, Chloe, Crystal, Talia, and Professor Tina all contributing their knowledge, along with Marcus’s own talent and ability to draw connections between seemingly unrelated pieces of information, they had made considerable progress. If everything continued at this pace, they should be able to fully decipher the Olympian Jade Art within a few more days.

Once that happened, his girls would finally be able to begin cultivating.

The discussions had benefited Marcus as much as anyone. Before this, his theoretical understanding of martial arts and cultivation had been practically nonexistent. Now, with several genuine martial experts helping him fill in the gaps, his foundation had improved by leaps and bounds, and that understanding had, in turn, allowed him to accelerate his own Human Rock cultivation.

Professor Tina’s contribution had been especially valuable. By combining the traditional medical theories with her knowledge of the human body’s meridians, she had helped Marcus establish a proper theoretical framework for understanding martial cultivation.

The results had been remarkable.

Even better, they had managed to identify several of the mysterious items stored inside the Langhuan Immortal Ring. Anya, Chloe, Crystal, Talia, and Professor Tina were all daughters of ancient, influential families, and over the years, they had encountered descriptions of many unusual treasures in their respective family collections and ancient texts. Although the records were incomplete and often treated as little more than legends, they were still enough to give them a rough idea of an item’s origin and purpose.

One example was the emerald-green jade fan.

Talia had picked it up, circulated her inner energy, and given it a gentle wave. A fresh, green breeze immediately swept through the room, clean and natural, carrying a faint sense of coolness that was surprisingly soothing. It lingered for more than ten minutes before gradually fading away.

Marcus stared at the fan.

’Damn.’

It was better than air conditioning.

Everyone else had been just as stunned, including Talia herself. She stared at the fan in her hand for a moment before slowly explaining, "Marcus, there’s a piece called Dance of the Clearwind Willow Fan among the ancient dance scores preserved by my family. It’s incomplete, but I remember the description. The dancer wears elegant green silk, golden bells around her wrists, and holds a legendary artifact called the Clearwind Wood-Jade Fan."

"According to the surviving passages, when the dancer performs the Dance of the Clearwind Willow Fan while channeling true energy into the fan, it creates a gentle natural breeze. The dancer can even use the force of the wind to rise two meters into the air, moving like a willow swaying in the breeze."

"The wind also moves the golden bells on her wrists, creating a series of beautiful chimes that are said to sound more enchanting than any ordinary musical instrument. The entire performance is supposed to create an incredibly peaceful and serene atmosphere."

Talia’s expression became increasingly thoughtful as she recalled the ancient text.

"The score even claims that the dance can cause a hundred flowers to bloom, while the sound of the bells can attract white birds and make them dance alongside the performer."

She glanced down at the jade fan.

"And the jade itself is called Woodwind Jade. According to the records, it can only form in forests that have existed for more than five thousand years. While the dance is being performed, the fan’s wood-element energy can restore the dancer’s stamina, eliminate fatigue, and accelerate the recovery of true energy."

"Really?"

The others looked at her in disbelief.

A jade fan with all those abilities sounded like something out of a fairy tale.

"I didn’t believe it either."

Talia gave a helpless smile. "The surviving dance score is incomplete, and the descriptions are so fantastical that my family always assumed they were exaggerated ancestral myths. If the illustrations hadn’t been so beautiful, I probably wouldn’t have paid much attention to it."

She paused before continuing, "But the fan in Marcus’s collection matches the illustration almost perfectly. And since the Langhuan Immortal Ring is clearly a divine artifact, I decided to try the movements described in the score. The moment I did, the breeze appeared."

Talia looked at the fan again, still seeming somewhat amazed herself.

"So it has to be the Clearwind Wood-Jade Fan."

"Incredible."

This time, nobody questioned her.

Amber was particularly excited. She immediately leaned forward and asked, "Talia, can you make the fan carry you into the air?"

Everyone looked at Talia expectantly. They were obviously eager to see whether the legendary dance really worked as described.

Talia shook her head. "Unfortunately, my family’s copy of the Dance of the Clearwind Willow Fan is incomplete. We never recovered the entire sequence of movements, and because the surviving descriptions sounded so unbelievable, nobody ever considered them practical instructions. According to the score, true flight requires the cultivator to combine their true energy with the complete dance."

She gave the fan a small wave, producing another cool breeze.

"With my current level of internal energy, I can only activate the fan itself. So, for now, I can give everyone a much more expensive version of air conditioning."

Amber’s eyes immediately lit up.

"Talia! Once we all start cultivating the Olympian Jade Art, you’ll be able to use the fan properly!"

"Mm."

Talia nodded.

"Of course."

Marcus smiled as he looked at her. Talia had a mature, graceful beauty that was different from the other women around him, and seeing her standing there with the emerald fan in her hands inevitably sent his thoughts in a rather predictable direction.

His Human Rock was a cultivation treasure.

’Heh.’

He was already looking forward to seeing what would happen once Talia truly began cultivating.

Next, Crystal took her turn examining the pair of white jade lions.

The moment she circulated her inner energy, she sensed a strong, righteous aura contained within them. Their gleaming white eyes weren’t made from ordinary jade at all, but had been formed entirely from that concentrated energy.

Crystal’s expression changed as recognition dawned on her.

"Righteous-Aura Lions."

She had seen an ancient illustration of them in her family’s records.

According to the description, Righteous-Aura Lions were carved from five-thousand-year-old luminous jade and then nurtured for more than three thousand years within an ancient royal temple. After absorbing the righteous aura of heaven and earth for countless years, the jade was eventually carved into a pair of white lions and positioned according to specific celestial and terrestrial principles.

Their purpose was to suppress evil and ward off demons while bringing the household protection, prosperity, and lasting good fortune.

They were also known as the Fortune White Jade Lions.

’Ward off evil and demons.’

Honestly, Marcus wouldn’t have believed something like that existed a few months ago. But now that cultivation was a reality, the idea of demons didn’t seem nearly as absurd as it once had.

And these lions weren’t merely decorative.

After placing them in their proper positions, Marcus could sense their effects through the true energy of his Human Rock.

Boom!

The lion representing the heavenly position suddenly released a fierce, radiant energy that reminded Marcus of sunlight. The lion representing the earthly position responded with a softer energy, cool and gentle like moonlight.

The two forces blended together, creating an unexpectedly comfortable and harmonious balance throughout the room.

Professor Tina naturally wanted to test them herself.

She reached into her bag and produced a poison needle before waving it lightly through the air. The instant the black toxin coating the needle came into contact with the surrounding energy, it evaporated as though it had never existed.

Marcus could sense exactly what had happened.

The energy released by the two lions had completely neutralized and vaporized the poisonous substance.

That level of power was at least comparable to a mythic artifact.

Professor Tina continued examining the remaining jade objects. She recognized most of them, and even when she couldn’t identify a particular piece, her knowledge of ancient texts and traditional medicine allowed her to determine its likely properties and effects.

Her formal expertise was American archaeology and history. She had spent years studying the nation’s history, culture, origins, and civilization, but that wasn’t the only source of her knowledge. Her family came from an ancient traditional-medicine lineage and possessed a vast collection of old medical and cultivation texts.

Professor Tina’s breadth of knowledge was genuinely remarkable.

In another era, she might well have been remembered as one of those legendary scholar-beauties whose reputation survived for generations.

And when it came to jade in particular, Marcus was beginning to suspect that Professor Tina’s knowledge might even surpass that of the old man at Jade Spring.

Among the artifacts they examined, two more treasures stood out. The first was a black wooden comb.

Nobody could identify it.

At a glance, it looked completely ordinary, with nothing particularly unusual about its shape or material. Yet whenever Marcus used the true energy of Human Rock to examine it, he could clearly sense an enormous amount of energy hidden within.

It was definitely not an ordinary object.

The second treasure was even more remarkable. Among the five elegant dresses was a strange black cloak.

Willow Moran’s white dress was already extraordinary, possessing the ability to allow its wearer to fly, but the other garments were hardly ordinary either. One was woven from celestial silk that ordinary blades couldn’t cut. Another was made from a special water-silk material that could repel water. A third was a red silk peony dress with the ability to resist fire.

But the black cloak was the most extraordinary of them all.

Once it was draped over the wearer’s shoulders, activating it required nothing more than a thought.

The wearer would simply disappear.

The duration of the invisibility depended on the user’s internal energy and true energy. Anya, whose Phoenix Cry had already reached great mastery, could maintain the effect for roughly ten minutes using her internal energy alone.

Lady Rouyu, the daughter of the Sky Mother, had apparently filled the Langhuan Immortal Ring with treasures beyond anything they could have imagined.

Unfortunately, the black cloak had clearly been designed for a woman. It didn’t fit Marcus’s broader frame properly, and when he tried using it himself, the invisibility effect refused to activate.

That wasn’t the only thing frustrating him.

With his current strength, Marcus still couldn’t penetrate the three immortal mountains, the two lakes, or the two mist-shrouded pavilions hidden within the Langhuan Immortal Ring. No matter how much true energy he poured into his attempts, the mysterious areas remained beyond his reach.

It was frustrating. Infuriating, even.

And there was nothing he could do about it yet.

But five days earlier, something unexpected had happened.

During a period of deep meditation, a single thought had somehow unlocked a new ability within the Langhuan Immortal Ring. When activated, it could project a strange spatial field roughly the size of three football fields, complete with grass stretching beneath the feet and a gentle breeze moving through the open air.

More precisely, Marcus could use a thought to channel the ring’s energy and transform the living room into that space.

Anyone inside the room would automatically be brought into the field.

Right now, Marcus, Anya, and Chloe had been sitting together in the living room when he activated it.

The scenery immediately warped.

In the blink of an eye, the three of them were standing in the middle of an enormous grassy field.

Mist surrounded them in every direction, thick enough to obscure what lay beyond. Yet Marcus could still sense that an immense world existed on the other side. His current strength simply wasn’t enough to penetrate the mist or leave the small area he had managed to unlock.

Even so, the discovery was astonishing.

The Langhuan Immortal Ring truly was worthy of being called something akin to a divine artifact.

The field felt remarkably similar to Dominion in one particular sense. It was like entering another world, except that in Dominion, they controlled game avatars, while here, they were controlling their actual bodies.

The difference was enormous.

Everything that happened inside the field remained synchronized with reality. Injuries were real, food was real, and time passed normally. It wasn’t a dream or an illusion, merely a separate space connected to the real world.

And for martial training, it was practically perfect.

At home, they could only practice internal energy quietly. They couldn’t spar seriously, and releasing large amounts of true energy would inevitably create disturbances that other people might notice.

Here, none of those problems existed.

They could fight freely, use their internal energy and true energy without holding back, and practice techniques that would otherwise be impossible to use indoors. The energy wouldn’t leak outside the field, meaning that even someone standing directly outside the living room door wouldn’t sense anything unusual.

That was why, five days ago, Marcus had converted one of the rooms in the house into a dedicated training chamber.

Enter the room, activate the Langhuan Immortal Ring and the ordinary room would become this vast training field.

Here, Marcus could finally unleash the true energy of Human Rock without worrying about damaging the house or alerting anyone nearby, allowing him to practice its more powerful techniques properly.

For the first time, he had a genuine place to train.

Of course, the field hadn’t simply appeared from nowhere.

It was actually part of one of the three immortal mountains hidden inside the Langhuan Immortal Ring.

Normally, Marcus’s true energy was completely incapable of reaching those sealed areas. But five days ago, something about Human Rock’s unique spirit-tempering effect had finally activated.

Through the divine power of the ring, Marcus had managed to enter the mountain.

His spiritual power was still far too weak to explore the entire space. For now, he could only open an area roughly the size of three football fields, and even that limited space contained no animals or other signs of life.

To expand the field further, he would need to strengthen either his spiritual power or his true energy.

Still, there was no denying it, his cultivation journey had truly begun.

Now, the field had become their regular training ground.

Marcus had been sparring there with Chloe, who practiced Thunderbird’s Cry, and Anya, who possessed Phoenix Cry, using the two of them to sharpen his own combat abilities.

Chloe was a genuine martial prodigy. She had already reached the sixth layer of Thunderbird’s Cry, and the strength that came with it was staggering. Among the ancient martial clans, she was recognized as one of the ten strongest young experts of her generation, with many placing her within the top five.

Anya’s situation was different.

Before meeting Marcus, she had barely known anything about martial arts, and her natural talent was somewhat lower than Chloe’s. But after cultivating together with Marcus, her Phoenix Cry had advanced to the realm known as Phoenix Rebirth, Initial Awakening.

Her current strength had already surpassed Chloe’s.

That made the two women the perfect opponents for Marcus.

Anya possessed overwhelming strength, while Chloe’s exceptional talent and combat instincts made every exchange difficult to predict.

Together, they were the most suitable opponents he could ask for, and also the most challenging.