Every morning, at the first glimmer of dawn, a figure practicing swordplay appeared beneath the plum tree in the side courtyard of North Suppression Manor.
There were no earth-shaking eruptions of sword qi, nor any dazzling, elaborate sword techniques. Gu Chengming simply repeated the most basic movements of the Huiyuan Sword Art over and over.
Thrust, lift, sweep, slash.
Gu Chengming drew his sword back and stood still, his brow faintly furrowed. He realized that the angle of his last thrust had been off by three degrees, increasing the strain on his wrist by twenty percent during the follow-up.
Meanwhile, within his sea of consciousness, the Huiyuan Sword Art, who had once occasionally competed for his affection out of jealousy, now displayed unprecedented diligence.
Man and art seemed to be competing with each other, finding endless enjoyment in these monotonous basic drills.
—It was as though he had returned to those days of practicing his sword every day at the Wenjian Sect.
At the other end of the courtyard, Nuo Tao, bundled up like a dumpling, squatted on the stone steps with a steaming bowl of tofu pudding in her hands, slurping away as she watched Gu Chengming practice.
Although she knew nothing of the intricacies of the Sword Dao, her keen instincts as a Thief Cultivator told her that something about Gu Chengming had become cleaner.
Nuo Tao marveled at what a monster Little Brother Gu was. Then, as though remembering something, she pulled a ranking scroll from inside her clothes that she had barely had time to warm against her chest and excitedly ran over.
Waving the scroll in her hand, Nuo Tao told Little Brother Gu to stop practicing for a moment. She had big news, she said, urging him to guess what it was.
Gu Chengming