Settlement

People like this had all been terrifying killing machines in ancient times.

You had to understand: an ordinary person who had never trained could exert only a tenth of their strength. Even someone proficient in techniques for generating force could unleash no more than a fifth.

But those at the pinnacle of swordsmanship could exert their full strength—a fivefold difference.

And bear in mind, a swordsman's stamina and basic strength were also several times greater than an ordinary person's.

Some with exceptional natural gifts could train until their physical capabilities were five or even ten times those of ordinary people.

Take the ancient overlord, for example. He had been born with truly divine strength, able to lift a massive bronze cauldron before he ever began training. Once he had mastered his art, he could stride onto a battlefield clad in heavy armor and wielding a greatsword. He was an unfeeling meat grinder, killing gods when gods stood in his way and Buddhas when Buddhas stood in his way.

Above the Swordsman was the Sword Master, whose stage of cultivation was called Image Entry.

The "image" referred to the Myriad Phenomena. The Sword Heart gathered and reflected the universe, drawing its mighty spirit from heaven and earth and refining it into one's own Sword Heart, honing its edge until it became unstoppable.

At this stage, physical ability became secondary. What mattered was the spirit.

A powerful Sword Heart meant absolute clarity. Not only could one's thoughts flow without obstruction, but one's spiritual will could also sharpen into an edge, striking through the open sky and subduing an enemy without a fight.

Zhao Cheng had no idea how one cultivated to this stage. There was some scattered information online, but the specifics were beyond his reach for now.

In any case, it was incredibly powerful.

Above that came the Sword Saint, whose cultivation was also called Sitting and Forgetting. In ancient times, figures like these were grandmasters who founded entire schools, the sort who appeared like dragons and vanished like gods. Even in the modern information age, they were just as elusive.

Zhao Cheng only knew that, supposedly, the soul was born from the heart, and one forged a Sword Soul—or, in other words, a spirit.

Various theories claimed that people had souls, but ordinary people didn't actually have anything like one. What was called the spirit was merely a concept formed by the combination of the subconscious and conscious mind. Though it could be observed using scientific methods, all those methods detected was an unstable fluctuation. It couldn't exist apart from the body.

A Sword Soul, however, was the ultimate condensation of the spirit.

Forget the self, and the soul is born!

Such powerful spiritual force could even interfere with matter, allowing one to cut iron with a wooden sword or split gold with a flick of the finger. And "gold" here didn't mean metal—it meant diamond.

The Sword Saint was already this fantastical, yet even that wasn't the end of the path.

Above the Sword Saint, there was supposedly the Mythology level: a myth of the sword, or, in other words, the Sword God. Its cultivation was also known as Divine Transformation.

At this stage, the soul supposedly reversed its innate nature and transformed into a Primordial Spirit.

Once the Primordial Spirit was formed, it was no longer bound to the flesh. The spirit reached its zenith and transformed, gradually approaching an incomprehensible realm. It became divine and wondrous, capable of changing the heavens and striking the earth, even transforming into a sword to kill someone from a thousand paces away.

Online, one could still find evidence supporting the Sword Saint's existence, proof that certain descriptions weren't artistic embellishments but things that could actually be done.

But when Zhao Cheng first read about the Sword God, his immediate reaction was that he was reading a myth.

In the strange tales of his previous life, there had been stories about cultivating immortality and forming a Primordial Spirit.

But those tales always involved cultivating for a thousand or ten thousand years and drawing on all kinds of spiritual energy from heaven and earth. In short, it was an unimaginably difficult process, and only then could one form a Primordial Spirit.

This world had no supernatural energy to speak of. It was purely a matter of the body and spirit "evolving," yet somehow people could forge a "soul" and cultivate a Primordial Spirit. It was downright terrifying.

But since the concept existed, it couldn't have come from nowhere.

To transform one's Primordial Spirit into a sword and kill someone a thousand paces away—that was no longer human. That was an immortal, a true Sword Immortal!

Only later, after Zhao Cheng devoted himself to practicing the sword, did he feel that this might not be impossible after all.

If he didn't compare himself with his previous life, he wouldn't have thought much of it. But when he did, his swordsmanship talent in this life would have made him a once-in-a-century prodigy in his previous one.

Yet in this world, compared with the people around him, his swordsmanship talent was nothing special. Forget Xiangnan City—even in his own class, there were several students with greater talent than him.

If even ordinary people were like this, it was hard to imagine just how formidable the true geniuses of this world could be.

But now that the Panel had appeared, Zhao Cheng had a rough idea why the two worlds differed so enormously.

The Sword Seed in the Traits section already explained the reason.

Sword Seed (Incomplete) 13% (Red): Sword skill level cap +3; affinity with swords moderately increased; proficiency required to improve sword skills moderately reduced

That was the Sword Seed's effect description. When he focused on Sword Seed (Incomplete) 13%, a detailed explanation appeared.

Sword Seed: A world-given talent born from the dual influence of interference by strange information and the world's source. All living beings with spirits are affected by this interference.

The rough meaning was that everyone in this world had this talent. Even a dog possessed it.

Zhao Cheng's Sword Seed was only 13% complete, yet its effects were already this impressive. The truly talented would surely have a higher degree of completeness, and their gifts would be all the more frightening.

A complete Sword Seed was a red talent. According to the Panel's classification, there were five talent levels: white, blue, purple, gold, and red.

Generally speaking, even a white talent meant someone was better than at least 99 percent of the population. Truly ordinary people had no talents at all, or even had gray talents.

Gray talents were negative ones, such as being born with a physical defect or being born bald. These were debuffs, and weren't included among the Panel's five talent levels.

Everyone in this world was born with a red talent. Even an incomplete one was extraordinary, and this was the fundamental reason swordsmanship cultivation had flourished so brilliantly here.

According to history, all of this could be traced back to the Shang Dynasty. Something had definitely happened back then.

As for the five attributes below Traits, including Vitality, they didn't have any profound meaning. The values in parentheses were the averages for humans in this world, assuming no special training and natural physical development, measured at the peak of life—around twenty-eight years old.

Zhao Cheng's five attributes were

Vitality: 1.5 (1.0)

Strength: 6.1 (5)

Agility: 6.5 (5)

Constitution: 5.5 (5)

Spirit: 7.2 (5)

Each actual point of increase represented a 1.5-fold improvement.

As one could see, every one of his attributes exceeded the average, especially his Spirit, which was more than twice the average.

His smooth progress in cultivation over the past six months had much to do with his powerful spiritual strength.

When the spirit grew strong, the will naturally became firm. It was a natural change, and the reverse was true as well.