Was this... a great awakening after losing his sight?
The Sun Apostle, who by all rights should have flown into a rage and struck back, had instead praised the hunter who had destroyed his eyes. The contrast was astonishing.
Fu Qian had heard of similar storylines, though.
Having one's powers crippled only to attain enlightenment, or losing one's sight and finally seeing oneself clearly—those were classic reversals, too.
"Letting go was so you could truly take hold... You did very well, and I should thank you."
The Sun Apostle's praise continued, and he even offered his interpretation of A Fei's actions.
And in Fu Qian's view, it wasn't a bad interpretation.
That was right. Letting go was so he could truly take hold... A Fei's inconsistent results before and after could hardly be explained by simply fighting with all his might.
Shouting a couple of times while covered in wounds, then killing the Demon King with one explosive strike—sure, it was rousing, but no true swordsman should take that as an example.
Reaching the peak of anything required a professional methodology.
If all you needed to win was to get fired up and give it everything you had, why bother adding the step of throwing your sword on the ground?
So Fu Qian agreed with the Sun Apostle: A Fei had thrown it down on purpose.
It wasn't that he couldn't hold on. He had realized that he had never truly "grasped" that sword.
And the process of picking it back up was a process of correction.
In short, A Fei believed his sword was no less sharp than anyone else's—he simply hadn't learned how to use it.
And he really had completed his cultivation in this way, in the midst of life and death.
As someone well versed in