Cultivation Results

After sparring with the divine condor in one breath for over half an hour, even though Lu Chen had steadily eaten three snake gallbladders every day for the past ten days, and his current inner power was comparable to five or six years of bitter training, with his stamina and arm strength greatly increased as well, constantly wielding the eighty-one-jin heavy sword at full force against the incredibly powerful divine condor gradually drained both his inner power and physical strength.

After deflecting another peck from the divine condor's iron beak, Lu Chen hurriedly withdrew from the fray and called out:

"Condor Brother, hold on! I'm spent. Let me rest for the night and reflect on what I gained from your guidance today. We'll fight again tomorrow!"

Seeing him drenched in sweat and swaying unsteadily, the divine condor knew he had truly reached his limit. It cooed twice, flapped its wings, and made several gestures, signaling for him to return and rest before coming again tomorrow.

Lu Chen struggled to shoulder the Profound Iron Heavy Sword, called to Huang Rong, then bade the divine condor farewell before heading down from Sword Tomb Mountain.

Huang Rong picked up the four-foot sword as well, waved at the divine condor with a grin, and followed Lu Chen with light, brisk steps.

"Lu Chen, this sword is impressive too."

Huang Rong handed the four-foot sword to Lu Chen.

"Senior Dugu passed away many years ago, and this sword has gone unmaintained for all that time, yet it still gleams with blue light, as sharp as ever, without the slightest trace of rust. It's another rare Precious Sword made from quite unusual material."

Lu Chen took the gleaming blue four-foot sword and gave it a few light swings. Spotting a small tree by the roadside as thick as a bowl, he casually swept the blade out. With a soft shhk, it severed the little tree at the waist with almost no resistance.

"It really is exceptionally sharp!"

Lu Chen praised.

Huang Rong smiled.

"Senior Dugu never named this sword. Since it is wholly deep azure, how about calling it the 'Azure Adamantine Sword'? Hmm, the adamantine from heavenly adamantine."

Naturally, Lu Chen had no objection. He nodded with a smile.

"Fine. We'll call it the Azure Adamantine Sword."

Huang Rong asked with another smile, "Then which sword do you intend to use?"

"Why can't I use both?"

Lu Chen carried the Profound Iron Heavy Sword in one hand and gripped the Azure Adamantine Sword in the other.

"The heavy sword is utmost simplicity; the light sword is utmost complexity. Senior Dugu placed equal weight on both paths, until in the end he was not hindered by external things—no sword surpassing a sword. Of course, I'll pursue both utmost simplicity and utmost complexity. I'll use them all."

He possessed the Sword Intent of Extermination of Immortals, so he was meant to explore all manner of sword paths in pursuit of that supreme realm of the Sword Immortal: using the sword to enter the Dao, until, as in that vision, one sword opened the firmament, one sword split the vast sea, and one sword pierced the Golden Crow.

Thus, whether heavy sword or light sword, he would use them both, alternating between them.

Unfortunately, both swords could only be used in the Condor Heroes World; he could not bring them back to the Main World. When traveling between the two worlds, he could originally carry no more than one percent of his own body weight in supplies.

After unlocking "Sword One," his carrying limit had doubled, allowing him to carry supplies equal to two percent of his body weight. Lu Chen guessed this was a reward from the Sword Intent of Extermination of Immortals, urging him to press on and continue climbing.

Yet even with the supply allowance doubled, given his weight, not to mention the Profound Iron Heavy Sword, he could not even bring back the Azure Adamantine Sword. At four feet long and made of special material, it was much heavier than an ordinary three-foot steel sword, likely weighing four or five jin.

Of course, once he returned to the Main World, he would not lack swords to use.

Even if he could not obtain some miraculous metal like "profound iron" to forge a sword, he could still forge an alloy sword in the Main World. In a low-martial world, it might not be inferior to the Azure Adamantine Sword, and could likewise be called a rare Precious Sword.

The two chatted and laughed all the way back to their dwelling. Huang Rong began preparing dinner, while Lu Chen reflected on the insights he had gained from fighting the divine condor. Once he had thoroughly digested those realizations, he took up the Profound Iron Heavy Sword and practiced Half-Move Sword One.

Training with the Profound Iron Heavy Sword was far more effective than training with a light sword.

Every time, he had to gather all the strength in his body with all his might, squeezing his physical potential to its utmost limit. Even without snake gallbladders to assist him, the true qi he cultivated was purer and more condensed, and greater in quantity.

This method of pushing oneself to the limit would absolutely cripple anyone else's body.

But Lu Chen had no need to worry.

After all, his recovery ability—so absurdly powerful that no matter how brutally he trained, it never left behind any hidden injury or lingering harm—could, in Huang Rong's words, be called a "superpower."

After that, Lu Chen and Huang Rong went to Sword Tomb every day to practice swordsmanship with the divine condor, eating snakes along the way.

However, ever since they began practicing swordsmanship, the divine condor no longer caught three snakes a day. It caught only one each day. Presumably, they had eaten too many in recent days; the expendable Bosiqu Snakes were steadily dwindling, and most of those remaining had to be saved to lay eggs and breed. For the sake of the future, it could only reduce its hunting.

Lu Chen estimated that before long, there might not even be one Bosiqu Snake a day.

But he did not find it regrettable.

Even eating just one snake gallbladder each day, combined with the limit-squeezing sword-training method using the Profound Iron Heavy Sword, still increased his inner power considerably.

And through daily sparring with the divine condor and contemplating the traces of Dugu Qiubai's swordsmanship, his heavy-sword technique—evolved entirely from several basic sword forms—gradually took shape. He wielded the Profound Iron Heavy Sword with increasing ease, and his strength improved day by day.

Before he knew it, another ten-odd days had passed.

The Bosiqu Snakes indeed ran out, and Lu Chen's inner power no longer surged forward as wildly as before. But by his own estimation, if he had relied solely on practicing "Sword One" to accumulate it little by little, it would have taken at least seven or eight years of diligent, bitter training.

As for what level of true qi seven or eight years of effort amounted to...

Martial Artists differed from one another as well.

With the same ten years of hard work, depending on one's talent and the differences in cultivation methods, some Martial Artists could train bitterly for ten years and be fortunate merely to reach the third tier of the jianghu, while a handful of geniuses could rise into the first rank of the Martial Arts World, their true qi terrifyingly powerful.

Although Lu Chen did not practice internal cultivation, relying solely on the cultivation method he had devised from "Half-Move Sword One" to accumulate true qi, the true qi cultivated by this "Half-Move Sword One" was anything but ordinary.

With his current inner power, when he formed a sword formula with his fingers and channeled qi to his fingertip, one jab into a tree trunk could easily drive his entire finger into the wood.

One had to know that he had practiced martial arts for only a short time, and all his energy had gone into swordsmanship. He had never practiced any finger technique or claw technique, nor had he ever practiced palm or fist arts capable of strengthening the hands.

The only reason his fingers could become as tough and sharp as steel awls was the support of that pure, condensed true qi, which faintly possessed a "keen edge" quality.

With the power of his current finger strike, he could kill without even using a sword. It was likely no weaker than Mei Chaofeng's Nine Yin White Bone Claw, which she had bitterly cultivated for many years.

While his inner power advanced greatly, his heavy-sword technique, whose moves were of utmost simplicity, finally took shape as well. He could now trade blows back and forth with the divine condor, even holding a slight advantage by relying on the superiority of his weapon.

Calculating the time, Lu Chen and Huang Rong had cultivated in this valley for barely over a month, yet compared to before they entered the mountains, their strength had already undergone changes that could only be called earth-shattering.

The only regret was that it was late autumn, with clear skies and crisp air. In more than a month, there had been only one drizzling rain, lasting less than half a night, so Lu Chen had never gotten to enjoy training beneath a waterfall...

Clang!

Amid a deep ring of metal against stone, Lu Chen thrust his sword beneath the lower edge of a stone weighing over two hundred jin. With a powerful pry, the boulder whooshed into the air. Lu Chen immediately drove the heavy sword forward again in a straight thrust. With another clang, he pierced the stone apart in midair, shattering it into four pieces.

With such force, at least in this low-martial world, no body of flesh and blood could withstand it head-on. Even someone who had mastered tough external arts and donned the Jin Dynasty's heavy "Iron Pagoda" armor would certainly be unable to endure a single thrust of the heavy sword.

The shattered stones shot toward the Divine Condor like shrapnel. The condor flapped its short wings repeatedly, knocking aside every hurtling fragment, but was still forced back several steps.

Lu Chen took the opportunity to step forward in a sudden advance—the heavy sword greatly hindered his movement techniques. Even though Lu Chen's inner strength had become quite formidable and his physical strength had increased considerably, with the Profound Iron Heavy Sword in hand, he still could not use overly light and graceful movement techniques.

Of course, his straight-line burst speed was still extremely swift. In a single step, he arrived before the Divine Condor, and the heavy sword whooshed out in a direct thrust at its chest.

The Divine Condor's wings were still blocking the stones. Forced to defend in haste, its wings were easily pushed aside by the heavy sword. The rounded, blunt tip lightly touched its chest without releasing any force, then immediately withdrew.

Though he had not injured the Divine Condor, restraining the tremendous inertia of an eighty-one-jin heavy sword in time—touching without harming—was clearly even more difficult. At this point, the Heavy Swordplay could be considered mastered.

"Condor Brother, you let me win!"

Lu Chen laughed heartily. But as soon as the words left his mouth, he froze slightly. The Sword Intent of Extermination of Immortals in his Sea of Consciousness trembled faintly and delivered a prompt: one of the two prerequisites for unlocking Sword Two—"two Extraordinary Sword Techniques"—had apparently been fulfilled.

That was an unexpected delight.

He had never thought that sparring with the Divine Condor, studying and comprehending traces of Dugu Qiubai's swordsmanship from the condor's offensive and defensive stances, then using that to forge Heavy Swordplay, could actually count as an "Extraordinary Sword Technique." Amid his delight, Lu Chen could not help pondering:

In the future, if he encountered swordsmanship masters who had no sword manuals or treatises, whose techniques were passed down only by word of mouth, and who refused to teach him, could he likewise spar with them continuously and gradually figure out their swordsmanship?

Sword arts like the Nine Swords of Dugu, with their profound mental methods and intricate transformations, certainly would not be as easy to comprehend as Heavy Swordplay, which followed the path of utmost simplicity. But his aptitude in the sword path was also steadily improving.

As the Sword Intent of Extermination of Immortals continued unlocking and the sword principles it touched grew ever deeper, perhaps one day his aptitude in the sword path would also reach the realm where all sword arts beneath heaven could be picked up as easily as fallen leaves.

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