Surprisingly Enough(NOT), Common Sense Is Overpowered in Cliché Cultivation World

1.77 Unity~

“So, is this the brat you want me to train, Ling Xin?” Li Houran asked curiously, assessing the boy before him.

“That's right, he is my first disciple, Ji Ning,” Ling Xin nodded, and then added, “Also, don’t call him a brat.”

Ning cupped his hands politely and bowed. “Greetings, Elder Li. Thank you for agreeing to guide me. I’ve heard that you are one of the greatest spear masters in the sect.”

“That I am,” Li Houran nodded without modesty. Then he leaned slightly closer to Ning and added, “Still, it’s strange. Someone as eccentric as Ling Xin actually has a polite disciple like you.”

“Hey, I’m right here, you know.” Ling Xin interrupted.

“That’s exactly why I’m saying it,” Li Houran shot back, glaring at her. “And you, stop adding random, unlabelled pills when you refine medicine for me. I don’t want to go bald again.”

Ning paused, then quietly leaned toward Ling Yinran, who was standing nearby trying very hard to remain a background character.

“Senior Sister,” Ning asked in a low voice, “does Master have many enemies in the sect?”

After all, from what he had seen, cultivators took great pride in their hair. Being bald usually meant one was a Buddhist cultivator. If Ling Xin casually turned people bald, that was practically asking for trouble.

Ling Yinran patted his shoulder lightly. “Um… how do I put this? They might be annoyed, but her skills make up for her… quirks. So you probably don't have to worry, junior brother."

“That didn't sound reassuring at all." Ning sighed.

“Then, how am I supposed to test the effect of my pills for foundation building stage?” Ling Xin muttered, clearly still thinking about it. “Moreover, in my defense, I always compensate everyone with extra pills.”

“Then test them on yourself,” Li Houran said bluntly. “Anyway, you said your brat has some problems with spear cultivation?”

“You’re still calling him brat…” Ling Xin muttered, then continued, “Yes. He’s stuck at the Penetration stage and can’t seem to reach Unity. After he made a ‘unique’ pill, I wanted to reward him, so he asked for guidance to break through this bottleneck.”

“Unity, huh?” Li Houran nodded. “That’s the first step toward forming intent. It’s normal to get stuck there.”

He paused, then narrowed his eyes slightly.

“Wait. You said ‘unique’ pill?” he asked. “Don’t tell me your disciple is also making those strange pills of yours.”

“I don’t like calling them strange,” Ling Xin replied calmly. “But yes. He somehow turned a fasting pill into an aphrodisiac.”

Ning, who had been quietly fading into the background of the conversation, felt his lips twitch.

He really did not want that information spreading.

“Tsk.” Li Houran clicked his tongue. “I take it back. This brat is exactly like you.”

He looked at Ning again, this time with a more interested gaze.

“That means this might actually be fun.”

Ning felt a faint sense of danger as he saw the menacing smile on Li Houran’s face.

His master could afford to be carefree because of her strength.

That did not mean others would treat him the same way.

“Alright,” Li Houran said, rolling his shoulders slightly as he picked up his spear.

“Let’s begin.”

...

“As far as I know, Unity is the first hurdle in any form of weapon cultivation. I hope Junior Brother can successfully cross this barrier.” Ling Yinran said as she sat at the sidelines, watching.

“Mm. While I am not too well-versed in weapon cultivation.” Ling Xin added, “Unity is the first step toward comprehending intent. It is the process of making the weapon an extension of one's will. Using the weapon becomes as natural as moving your own limbs. So yes, it is a hurdle. You are turning something external into something internal.”

She spoke calmly, instructing her niece.

Neither of them truly walked the path of weapon cultivation. While Ling Yinran’s puppet techniques could be considered a branch of it, they did not follow the same structure from Scattered Hands to Unity. Instead, her path focused more on the number of puppets cultivated and the level of refinement each puppet reached.

“That sounds quite difficult,” Ling Yinran admitted. “For us puppet masters, we use strings as a shortcut, to make external puppets feel internal, as if they are part of us. Junior brother might have some trouble with this."

“Don’t worry about it.” Ling Xin said. “Li Houran may be a jerk, but he is one of the most accomplished spear masters in the sect. Given how rare true spear masters are here, he is one of the best instructors you could find.”

In truth, spear users were not as rare as they appeared in the wider cultivation world. Their scarcity within the sect was more a matter of trend.

Whenever a cultivator reached the Golden Core stage, a wave of disciples would try to follow that same path. Whether out of admiration or a desire to share in that path’s fortune, the result was the same.

And since the Golden Core cultivator of the Pure Qi Sect was the sword master Ge Xuan, the sect was overwhelmingly filled with sword cultivators.

...

In the middle of the training ground, Li Houran stood. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a spear resting loosely across his back in a casual manner that suggested complete familiarity with the weapon.

“It’s rare for Ling Xin to ask me for a favor, especially for someone else.” Li Houran said. “So I’m quite interested in your skills. She told me you reached the Penetration stage on your own. Show me what you can do first. Let’s see where you stand.”

“Yes.” Ning lifted the spear.

He settled into his stance, feet shoulder-width apart, rear heel angled, weight evenly distributed, shoulders level. The Eight Stabilities had been ingrained into his body: shoulders, hips, arms, legs, everything aligned.

He began.

The first form of the Falling Leaf Spear Technique: the grounding thrust.

Power traveled from the rear foot, up through the spine, into the shoulder, and extended through the arm. The spearhead drove forward with unified force without scattering any power.

Li Houran watched.

Ning continued through the sequence.

A sweeping arc controlled lateral space.

A retreating step flowed into a counter-thrust.

The Double Dragons movement followed, his waist rotating, spine acting as the axis, the spear an extension of that line.

Then, Overturning the Dragon.

The signature move of the technique. Force gathered from the entire body, redirected and amplified in a single motion.

Ning completed the sequence and returned to a resting stance.

Silence followed.

Li Houran had not moved the entire time. He stood with his arms loosely at his sides, watching with an expression that had gradually shifted from mild curiosity to something more thoughtful.

“Again,” Li Houran said.

Ning repeated the sequence.

“Stop. Grounding thrust.”

Ning held the position.

Li Houran began to circle him slowly.

He examined everything, the angle of the rear foot, the line of the shoulder, the grip, the slight forward lean of the spear.

“Your footwork is clean,” he said. “Your grip is correct. Your weight distribution is textbook.”

He completed the circle and stopped in front of Ning.

“Did you learn this on your own?”

“I had some guidance from another disciple, Zhang Feng, for a time,” Ning replied.

“Never heard of him,” Li Houran said, glancing at the spear and then back at Ning. “Still, your skills are not bad.”

At first, Li Houran had assumed Ning’s foundation would be flimsy, not for any particular reason, but because he had learned most of it from books at the foundational stage.

For weapon mastery, the base had to be built properly. And usually, that required hands-on guidance from a master.

But now, seeing Ning’s textbook-perfect form, he had to reconsider his earlier assumption.

It seems this brat has some talent, Li Houran thought.

Without knowing about Ning’s unique ability, he naturally attributed such precision to talent. In a way, he was not wrong, since Know Thyself was an integral part of Ning.

But, perfect form did not guarantee success.

“Your foundation is very solid for someone who learned without a dedicated teacher,” Li Houran said, crossing his arms. “Every position is correct. Every transition is correct. Your weight flow is right, your axis rotation is right, and your grip tension is right.”

He tilted his head slightly.

“So. Do you understand what that means?”

“That the problem isn’t the foundation,” Ning said, glancing briefly at the panel.

[Falling Leaf Spear Technique: Penetration (Completion)]

It had remained that way for three months.

Not from lack of practice. He had drilled the technique consistently, through the competition preparation period, through his transition into the inner sect, and even during his alchemy sessions with Ling Xin. Zhang Feng had taught him the fundamentals clearly: Scattered Hands, then Penetration. The body and spear working in concert, knowing not just how to swing, but where to swing.

He had reached Penetration. He understood Penetration. By any reasonable measure, he was good at Penetration.

The problem was Unity.

In the manual, Unity was described as the stage where the body stopped thinking about the spear and instead became the spear. The separation dissolved. Technique stopped being a series of steps and became something continuous, instinctive, alive.

Ning had attempted this.

He had approached it methodically, the same way he approached every problem: reading the theory, isolating variables, drilling each component, and adjusting one thing at a time.

But the panel had not moved.

Which meant the problem was not technical.

And that was precisely why he had come to seek guidance from an expert.

Li Houran reached back and took the spear from his own back.

“Let’s find out exactly what the problem is.” he said. “Come at me.”

The first exchange lasted three seconds.

Ning closed the distance, using a grounding thrust to test reach. Li Houran stepped offline and redirected with a lazy half-rotation of his spear, not blocking, but simply nudging Ning’s line of attack aside, like a door being gently pushed open.

The second exchange lasted slightly longer.

Ning used a sweeping arc to force Li Houran’s lateral movement, then drove through with Overturning the Dragon.

Li Houran let the arc pass, stepped into it, and placed the butt of his spear lightly against Ning’s sternum.

Defeated.

“Your technique is correct,” Li Houran said as he circled him. “The arc was the right choice. The follow-through timing was correct. The force generation was correct.” He tapped his spear shaft absently against his palm. “So why didn’t it land?”

Ning said nothing.

“Why didn’t it land, brat?”

“Because you knew it was coming,” Ning replied after thinking. 

“Wrong,” Li Houran said pleasantly. “Try again.”

Ning thought for a moment. “Because you are that good?”

Li Houran pointed the spear at him. “True that, but that’s still not the complete answer.”

Ning paused, searching for the right words.

“The technique was… telegraphed,” he said slowly. “Not in the movement itself, but in the intention behind it. You read the intent before the motion.”

Li Houran lowered the spear. "Correct. You know what you just described?"

“A problem?” Ning said.

“A problem with a name,” Li Houran replied. “Your spear is a machine, brat. Technically perfect. Logically ordered. But absolutely, completely predictable.”

He began walking a slow circle again.

“You approach it the way you approach a formula. Step one, step two, step three. Condition A leads to response B. Threat from the left means counter from the right.”

He stopped.

“Am I wrong?”

Ning did not answer.

Which was, effectively, an answer.

“You’re not bad,” Li Houran continued. “In fact, you’re quite good. I’ve seen inner sect disciples at late Penetration who move worse than you do. Some of them trained for five years.”

He crouched slightly and spun his spear once in a loose, casual motion that carried effortless control.

“But a machine fights like a machine. And a spear that is only a machine hits harder when the opponent is weaker than you, and becomes completely useless when they’re better.”

He gestured lightly toward himself.

“Case in point.”

They went again.

This time, Li Houran took a different approach.

“You know,” Li Houran said conversationally, sidestepping a thrust and letting his own spear drift across Ning, “your spear-fighting style is boring.”

Ning rolled under a sweep and drove upward with a rising counter.

Li Houran caught it on his shaft and redirected it skyward, barely moving his feet. “And a boring style like yours will never go far. You are careful, methodical, even. You think before you move, always looking for the right answer.” He smiled, not unkindly.

Ning said nothing. He drove forward with Overturning the Dragon, all of his proper form behind it.

Li Houran turned it aside.

“The spear doesn’t reward careful thinkers,” Li Houran said. “It rewards people who feel.” He pressed forward suddenly, the pressure in his spear tripling as he abandoned ease for intent. “Anger, joy, grief, killing will, all of it channels through a spear and becomes something the other person can feel coming. That’s what unity is. That’s what makes a technique unpredictable.” He drove a thrust at Ning’s shoulder that forced him to throw himself sideways to avoid it. “A spear with soul. And yours has none.”

Ning landed and steadied himself.

“I feel at this point you’re just wasting my time. Your attacks are too predictable. Even with my eyes closed, I could see through them. I thought you had some talent at first, but it seems you’re a dime a dozen.” Li Houran spoke casually, almost lazily.

The two separated after another exhange.

Ning took a deep breath, slowly gethering his breath. He thought for a moment, then asked, “Elder, are you trying to get a rise out of me?”

“Yes.” Li Houran paused. He stopped the lazy rotation of his spear and looked at Ning with genuine interest. “But it doesn't seem to be working with you."

Li Houran had tried to bait Ning into evolving beyond his standard form. It usually worked with his disciples, smack-talking while beating them down often provoked some kind of breakthrough. But the brat in front of him was calm. Too calm.

“yes?” Ning tilted his head.

From the beginning of his journey, Ning had known that face-slapping and provocation led to most deaths in this cliché world. So he had stayed chill the entire time. Even insults were just words.

Being so calm had its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage was that he was immune to being baited. The disadvantage… was this situation now.

Li Houran was quiet for a moment. Then he laughed.

“I’ll be honest,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for eighty years. That doesn’t happen often.” He lowered his spear slightly. “Usually, by this point, they’re fuming.” He looked at Ning with the renewed interest of someone encountering an unexpected variable. “Hm.”

“So emotions help in breaking through Unity?” Ning asked.

“It does,” Li Houran agreed. “Strong emotion floods the technique with will, and will is what animates the spear beyond pure mechanics. Anger is easy to produce and easy to direct.” He paused. “But it’s not the only emotion that works.”

Ning looked at him. To be honest, using anger to introduce change was not a bad idea in this world. While, they were not saiyans who could evolve into a new form just due to rage, this world was still idealistic in nature. Thiught affected reality to a certain extent.

“Anger is just the loudest,” Li Houran said, lifting his spear again. “What do you care about, brat?”

The question landed somewhere unexpected.

Ning turned it over.

What did he care about? What actually mattered?

The numbers going up.

Fields yielding high-grade grain in the morning light. A cauldron producing a pill with clean purity and no waste. The panel ticking forward. The sensation of a calculation resolving correctly, a problem identified, a method found, a result confirmed.

To keep going. To understand the mysteries.

For Ning, transmigrating into this world had been strange at first, but he had gradually grown used to it. That didn’t mean his desire to understand it had diminished.

He looked at the spear in his hands.

All this time, it had been a weapon, not an extension of his will and body.

A falling leaf didn’t follow a fixed method.

It followed the wind.

Zhang Feng had said it early: the spine is the great dragon, the spear is the first dragon, and with each thrust, man and weapon overturn the sea together.

Not two separate systems in coordination.

One thing.

“One more try,” Ning said. He had understood his problem, now he wanted to try revise this.

“If you say so. I’m just getting paid anyway.” Li Houran raised a brow, interest flickering in his eyes.

Ning stepped forward.

The grounding thrust, but this time, something was different.

Li Houran stepped offline to redirect it and found the line had already shifted. Not by much. A few degrees at most.

He redirected anyway. He was a Foundation Establishment cultivator. His instincts were not slow.

Ning gave ground, and then didn’t.

He planted his rear foot and rotated his spine, the Dragon Turn, and the spear swept in an arc that should have been familiar, one Li Houran had turned aside four times already.

Except this time, the arc lingered.

Not in movement, the movement was as fast as before, but in intent. The arc felt like it meant something. Like the spear had become nimble, flexible, bending to will rather than form.

Something’s changed, Li Houran thought.

“Again,” Ning said.

They exchanged five more bouts.

In the third, Ning’s Overturning the Dragon came at a timing Li Houran had not anticipated, not because it was faster, but because it was no longer telegraphed by intention. It arrived like a wave: when it chose to, reckless and true.

Li Houran blocked it cleanly and grinned. “Let me go on the offense next.”

He reached Ning in an instant. His spear moved differently now, it felt inevitable, like a strike that had already landed.

Ning’s eyes glowed blue, struggling to keep up. So he let go of conscious thought and gave himself to instinct.

I understand it now. Unity was about meaning. About making the spear an extension of oneself, an expression, not a tool.

Ning spun his spear, his perception locking onto the perfect point of deflection. Before, his spear had been rigid, focused purely on penetration.

Now, it was different.

It moved, and parried.

The next strike came. Ning parried again.

Another. He parried once more.

Then Ning went on the offensive.

Overturning the Dragon.

His spear surged forward, striking at a vulnerable point, but his opponent was a true master of the spear.

“Good! This is better. Come, show me your limits.” Li Houran laughed. For him, seeing another seed of the spear path begin to bloom was a joy.

Ning did not respond. He had already entered a flow.

His spear moved, and for the first time, it no longer felt like a tool in his hands, but something alive, something that breathed alongside him. The rigid structure he had relied on began to dissolve. The sequences, the steps, the calculations he had repeated thousands of times all faded into the background, replaced by something far more natural.

He no longer thought about what came next.

He simply moved.

Shadow Steps anchored his footing, while his perception sharpened to an almost frightening degree. Every subtle shift in Li Houran’s stance, every minute change in pressure, every faint twitch of muscle became clear to him. Yet he did not analyze these details as he once would have. Instead, he responded to them instinctively.

For the first time, Ning understood.

The core of his spear style was not complexity, nor precision alone, but swiftness. It was momentum building upon momentum, power generating more power, everything converging into a single, decisive thrust. It was the same thrust he had practiced hundreds, thousands of times, but now stripped of rigidity and filled with agileness that was not present before.

All of it existed for that one moment.

That one strike.

He stepped forward.

His spear shot out.

It did not follow a fixed path. It bent, shifted, and adjusted in the instant of motion, guided not by thought, but by will.

Li Houran’s expression changed slightly.

“Good,” he said quietly.

Ning did not hear him.

He attacked again.

Each strike flowed into the next without pause. There was no longer a sequence of techniques, only a continuous stream of intent. His spear was no longer predictable. It arrived as it willed, like a sudden gust of wind or a crashing wave.

Unity.

He had touched it.

Ning drew in a breath, and then released everything in a single motion.

His rear foot pressed into the ground as his spine rotated like a coiling dragon. Force traveled cleanly through his body without obstruction, gathering, compressing, and finally erupting through the tip of his spear.

THRUST

All that he had learned, all that he had accumulated, and every ounce of his physical and spiritual qi converged into a single, overwhelming attack.

Li Houran moved to intercept, but Ning's eyes glowed blue, as he stepped on the ground once more, accelerating even further.

The clash rang out across the training ground.

Ning was blown away by the sheer impact, but he had accomplsihed his goal. Li Houran was forced half a step back.

Silence followed.

For a brief moment, everything stilled.

Then Li Houran smiled. It was no longer casual or teasing, but genuine.

“Good,” he said. “Now that is a spear.”

Ning exhaled slowly. The flow began to recede, but something fundamental had changed within him. The spear in his hands no longer felt separate from his body.

Li Houran closed his eyes for a moment, as if considering something.

When he opened them again, his gaze had sharpened.

“Watch carefully,” Li Houran said.

His spear moved.

There was no warning, no visible preparation, and no transition between stillness and motion.

One moment he stood there calmly.

The next, Ning felt a sharp pressure at his brow.

His pupils contracted instantly.

Before he could react, before his mind could even begin to process what had happened, the tip of Li Houran’s spear was already resting against his forehead.

It was perfectly still, mere millimeters away from his forehead. As though it had always been there, waiting.

Ning froze. A bead of sweat slid slowly down his temple.

“…I didn’t see it,” he admitted.

All he had perceived was a flash of sharpness, and in the next instant, he had already lost. If this had been a real fight, he would have been dead before he even understood why.

It was frightening. Truly frightening.

And yet, Ning’s eyes brightened.

A faint, uncontrollable excitement rose in his chest.

This was it.

This was the gap.

This was the path forward.

Instead of fear, what he felt was curiosity, almost hunger. He wanted to understand it, to break it down, to reach that level himself. The cleaner the defeat, the clearer the direction.

“How interesting,” Ning murmured, recalling the brilliance of that strike. "I didn't even see it."

Hearing this, Li Houran could not help but laugh aloud, esepcially glancing at Ning's eyes which seeemed to glow with brilliance. “Hahaha! I wanted to test your resolve, to see if you could withstand my intent. But it seems I underestimated you. Your spear style is not boring at all.”

Li Houran let out a low chuckle and lowered his spear.

“Of course you didn’t see it,” he said. “What you just reached is Unity.”

He tapped the shaft of his spear lightly against Ning’s chest.

“What I just showed you… is intent. Not bad. At your level, I can stop calling you ‘brat.’”

A faint smile appeared on his face.

“Congratulations. You have stepped into ten steps, one kill.”

He turned, resting the spear across his shoulder as he began to walk away.

“The first step toward mastering spear intent.”

...

Thanks for reading~