There were ways to deal with cultivators who came to issue challenges—ways that followed the rules, and ways that did not.
The latter was exemplified by Sikong Jingxiao's treatment of Xiang Qian and Bai Yuxia.
Xiang Qian had come to Sword Pavilion several months ago and challenged Inner Palace cultivators of the same realm, finding no match. There had been nothing inherently wrong with that; Xiang Qian himself had promised that he sought only to verify his Sword Dao, and that the results of the battles would not be spread.
But Sikong Jingxiao had been deeply dissatisfied with the junior brothers who lost, believing they had disgraced Sword Pavilion's name. He declared, "Their skills are inadequate, yet they let petty scoundrels stand above them, losing supreme arts to trivial tricks and ruining Sword Pavilion's ten-thousand-year mighty name!"
The ancient Three Peaks of Flying Sword, in terms of history, truly amounted to little beside Sword Pavilion's thirty-thousand-year legacy.
The entire Flying Sword Era lay within the history of The Present World; it could not be traced back to the Near Ancient era.
The Flying Sword Era had been brilliant yet brief, lasting only one hundred and seven years before vanishing. It began in Dao Calendar 733 and ended in Dao Calendar 840.
Sword Pavilion, standing atop Tianmu Peak, could be said to have witnessed the Flying Sword Era's birth and its curtain fall. It truly knew that "its rise was blazing, its fall abrupt."
Their contempt for flying sword arts was not entirely without precedent. The ancient looked down on those who came later; what remained looked down on what had perished.
But Xiang Qian was naturally dissatisfied.
If someone called him a petty scoundrel, trash, or anything of the sort, he did not care in the least. But disparaging the