Only the instructors watching from the sidelines had truly seen the craft behind that last fight.
The sharp edge Zhao Cheng had honed in his spirit was secondary. The strongest part of his swordsmanship lay in his keen perception and extraordinary decisiveness.
Swordsmanship had never been a tool for the weak to defeat the strong. It was a tool for the weak to become strong, then for the strong to defeat the strong.
Unlike swordsmanship ranks, practical combat ability was difficult to quantify, yet crucial.
Life and death were decided beneath the sword. Only such decisiveness could let one transcend life and death with a single stroke!
Decisiveness sounded simple, but truly cultivating it was no easy task.
Everyone understood the principle, but putting it into practice during a real fight was far more difficult.
It wasn't enough to keep telling yourself to be decisive, to be resolute.
The kind of person someone was could be glimpsed in the way they wielded their sword.
If Shi Tianyi hadn't said what he had earlier, the instructors might have been astonished by what they'd just seen. But now, faced with this scene, they could only marvel inwardly. As expected of Sword Ghost, who seeks the Way through killing. Even as a mere seed, he still displays qualities beyond ordinary people in certain respects.
They also felt a newfound respect for Shi Tianyi, thinking, As expected of Director Shi. What a discerning eye. At first glance, this butcher looks like a good, well-behaved boy. You wouldn't guess his murderous nature until you saw him fight. Even so, he couldn't escape Director Shi's keen gaze.
"Success" in "successful career," huh? I almost believed you.
Meanwhile, the student Zhao Cheng had just struck at the throat had already been dragged off the field by someone he knew.
He'd been scared senseless, reduced to a stunned goose, and was no longer capable of reacting to anything around him.
Even Zhao Cheng hadn't expected this.
His sword was indeed fierce, but that reaction was a little exaggerated.
Still, Zhao Cheng had no intention of holding back. His swordsmanship had only just begun to take shape, and what a sword demanded was ferocity.
He was nowhere near the point of turning from demon to Buddha. If he held back his claws because they were classmates, deliberately suppressing his ferocity at this stage, it would only make his swordsmanship regress.
Once the sword was drawn, there could be no regrets. It was an expression of the heart's intent, not something one could simply rein in at will.
These thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant.
They also gave Zhao Cheng a fresh understanding of swordsmanship and the Way of the Sword.
In this life, Zhao Cheng had read all sorts of miscellaneous books, including many tales of people who killed their fathers, mothers, wives, children, and every last relative in pursuit of the Way of the Sword.
He'd always found them hard to believe, thinking they were exaggerations from novelists. But after truly grasping some of swordsmanship's mysteries, he understood that such stories weren't exaggerated.
A sword's edge was honed by the heart. Much of the time, it was a change that followed the natural flow of things.
Once Sword Thought first took shape, if you didn't nurture it and instead kept suppressing it, your spiritual will could never grow strong.
Of course, you couldn't just keep strengthening it without restraint. Once it matured to a certain point, your own will had to break free of it and establish which was master and which was servant. Otherwise, you'd enter the demonic path and become not the master of the sword, but its demon.
The benefits of having read so many miscellaneous books showed themselves at once.
More than anything, they served as a warning.
Taking the past as a mirror, he reflected on himself.
Soon, the second opponent stepped onto the field.
In his first match, Zhao Cheng had challenged the student ranked twenty-eighth and won, so he'd risen to twenty-eighth place. Now, in his second match, he was once again leaping five places to challenge the student ranked twenty-third.
Because of what had happened earlier, the student ranked five places above Zhao Cheng had prepared in advance. So Zhao Cheng didn't have to wait long.
"Please!"
Zhao Cheng said.
"Please!"
His opponent returned the courtesy. This time, he was facing a girl with her hair tied in a bun.
When it came to training in swordsmanship, girls actually had some advantages over boys. They matured earlier and were more attentive to detail, though their physiques were naturally weaker.
That was only true at the beginning, though. By the Swordsman level, gender offered little advantage.
As for Sword Masters, women's overly sensitive minds made it harder for them to cross that threshold.
A Sword Master was a hero of the sword. Only someone with great Spirit Aura could grasp the Way.
What an arduous thing it was to become a hero of one's age.
Still, girls made up only a third of Qingyuan's Kendo Class; most of the students were boys.
This wasn't because the boys in Qingyuan were more outstanding. It was simply a social issue: there were far more boys than girls.
The girl facing Zhao Cheng looked slender, with fair skin and a delicate, fragile air. In truth, though, her body's explosive power was certainly no worse than anyone else's.
Her fair, soft skin showed that she took good care of herself.
Training at the Quietude stage wasn't about desperately building muscle. Its purpose was to stimulate the nervous system and thereby improve explosive power.
The deeper one progressed at this stage, the more fit and lithe one became. Unless someone was exceptionally gifted or practiced a specialized form of Iron Body training, there was no way they'd grow into a hulking mass.
Zhao Cheng didn't know the girl, but she was quite pretty and full of youthful energy. She wasn't the literary-girl type like Wu Yiran; she was more the cute type.
That sort of girl wasn't especially popular in high school. She wouldn't become popular until late in college, or even after graduation.
From the little details, Zhao Cheng judged that her family was probably well-off. There weren't that many naturally beautiful people in the world. Cultivation could cleanse the marrow and reshape the bones, but no one at this stage could manage that.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Once again, three swords struck in quick succession, and the girl held steady. Clearly, she'd learned from the previous loser's experience. Of course, her swordsmanship was also more refined.
A gap of five places was neither large nor small.
But one of swordsmanship's charms lay in its variability. The sword was dead, but the person wielding it was alive. If all you could do was follow fixed routines, that only proved your swordsmanship hadn't truly matured.
So, after three strikes, Zhao Cheng suddenly changed his sword's course and gathered a little strength. He ignored everything else and, just like Zhuan Zhu Stabs Liao, thrust straight at his opponent's brow, showing no concern that she was a cute girl.
If Zhao Cheng's strike landed, the wooden sword wouldn't be lethal, but it would definitely hurt for a while. Of course, Zhao Cheng would also be eliminated on the spot.
On the other side, Zhao Cheng had made his move, so his opponent naturally couldn't just stand still. Her sword came slicing through the air, straight toward Zhao Cheng's arm.
Faced with this, the girl's mind hadn't yet reacted, but her body instinctively did, far faster than her thoughts.
She changed the course of her sword and parried Zhao Cheng's strike, while her body instinctively retreated.
That retreat was where things went wrong.
By the time the girl's mind caught up, it was already too late.
Another strike to the throat!
This time, a chorus of gasps rose from the sidelines.