Comprehending the Sword and Creating an Array, Immeasurable Takes Shape

It was impossible to say how much time had passed before Ye Guchen slowly opened his eyes.

The Sixth Soul Ring now hovered steadily beneath him, pitch-black as ink and radiating a faint, icy gleam.

Yellow, purple, purple, black, black, black.

Six Soul Rings revolved beneath his feet. If anyone else saw this configuration, their jaw would hit the ground.

"Made it. My Soul Power has also reached level sixty-two!" Ye Guchen rose to his feet and stretched, feeling strength coursing through his entire body.

Dugu Bo walked over and gave him an appraising look, clicking his tongue in amazement. "A Six-Ring Soul Emperor, and at your age?"

Ye Guchen smiled but didn't reply.

He raised a hand and summoned the Shark Tooth Sword. The moment he channeled Soul Power into it, a layer of dark silver light appeared along the blade. It was the effect of his Sixth Soul Skill, Iron Bamboo Resilience, which greatly increased the toughness and sharpness of his Martial Soul.

"Let's go, Old Poison." Ye Guchen put away his Martial Soul and headed toward the valley.

"Back to the valley?"

"Yeah. I had a few insights while fighting it just now. I need somewhere quiet to absorb what I've learned."

At that, Dugu Bo didn't dare delay. After years of cultivation, he knew better than anyone how precious such moments of insight were.

The two of them hurried back to the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.

Ye Guchen sat cross-legged on a jutting platform above the valley, going over his fight with the Iron Bamboo Soul Beast again and again.

The sword array formed from bamboo leaves had been inexhaustible...

Ye Guchen sat cross-legged on the jutting platform above the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well. Below him lay the extraordinary spring, shrouded in mist of icy blue and fiery red. Two currents of air, one cold and one hot, intertwined as they rose, brushing against his clothes and face.

He paid no attention to anything happening around him. His eyes were half-closed, his mind completely immersed in the memory of his battle with the Iron Bamboo Soul Beast.

That battle had left a deep impression on him.

The entire bamboo grove had been his enemy. Thousands upon thousands of bamboo leaves had become sharp blades, attacking from every direction as if they would never run out.

He cut through one, and two more came flying. He scattered one wave, and two more surged in.

Those bamboo leaves weren't simple Hidden Weapons. They were connected to one another somehow, as if an invisible net linked them together. Each leaf's flight path was not independent, but part of an entire system of attacks.

The Iron Bamboo Soul Beast hadn't been relying on brute force. It had been using an array.

The realization jolted Ye Guchen.

He recalled the details of the battle. The leaves had seemed to fly at random, but in truth, they moved in groups of three, each group following the last at a fixed interval. They covered one another from the front, back, left, and right, sealing off every route of escape.

As he darted among them with Heaven and Earth Shift, he had also noticed that the leaves didn't disappear after missing their target. They traced arcs through the air, returned to the sky above the bamboo grove, and waited for the next attack.

Endless, repeating, without pause.

That was what made the Iron Bamboo Soul Beast so difficult to deal with—not the strength of its attacks, but the fact that they never ended.

What if... my sword could do the same?

The thought suddenly struck Ye Guchen, like a flash of lightning in the dark.

He opened his eyes, and the Shark Tooth Sword appeared in his hand.

The blade shimmered with dark silver light, the effect of his Sixth Soul Skill, Iron Bamboo Resilience. It made the already sharp sword even tougher.

Ye Guchen stood and slowly swung the sword across the platform.

One slash, two, three...

He moved slowly, but carefully calculated the path of every swing.

At first, he was simply testing his sword without any clear purpose. Gradually, he began trying to incorporate the principles behind the four sword strikes produced by Horizontal Sweep.

Horizontal Sweep could produce four variations of sword strikes in an instant because Soul Power vibrated rapidly along the blade and split apart.

If he could magnify that principle, making every blade of sword energy split again after leaving the sword, one strike could become ten, and ten could become a hundred.

But sheer numbers weren't enough.

The Iron Bamboo Soul Beast's leaves could attack in an endless cycle because they were essentially still part of the Soul Beast's body. They were connected by Soul Power, allowing them to be retrieved and reused.

Once his sword energy left the blade, however, it was water without a source. Once it dispersed, it was gone for good. He couldn't retrieve it.

"Is there a way to retrieve sword energy?"

Ye Guchen fell deep into thought.

He stood on the platform, sometimes swinging his sword, sometimes stopping to ponder. He seemed utterly possessed.

Below, Dugu Bo glanced up. Seeing Ye Guchen like this, he didn't disturb him. He merely reminded Dugu Yan not to make any loud noises.

Time passed, little by little.

From sunrise to sunset, from moonset to sunrise.

Ye Guchen remained on the platform for three whole days and nights.

During those three days, he tried again and again, calculated countless possibilities, and repeatedly scrapped his work to start over.

He had tried leaving marks of Soul Power on his sword energy and using mental power to guide the blades after they flew out. None of these methods was ideal. The retrieval distance was either too short or the speed too slow. He couldn't make the cycle truly inexhaustible.

Then, on the night of the third day...

Above the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well, the icy blue and fiery red mists intertwined beneath the moonlight, forming a vast vortex that turned slowly.

Ye Guchen happened to look up. At once, he froze.

A vortex.

Rotation.

The two entirely different forces of ice and fire were incompatible, yet interdependent in the valley, forming a perfect cycle.

Hot air rose, cold air sank. Heat and cold alternated, flowing without end.

It was, in itself, an inexhaustible cycle.

Ye Guchen looked down at his hands, a flash of insight in his eyes.

"A domain..."

"What if I could incorporate the properties of the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well into my fighting?"

He sprang to his feet, holding the Shark Tooth Sword before him as the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Domain instantly unfolded.

A blue and a red ring of light spread outward from him. The air filled with two entirely opposing forces: biting cold and searing heat.

Within the domain, he sensed everything.

Ye Guchen closed his eyes and felt the flow of power within the domain.

Ice and fire maintained a delicate balance, like a vast Taiji symbol: yin within yang, yang within yin, and an endless cycle.

"That's it."

He opened his eyes and slashed with the Shark Tooth Sword in his hand.

The first slash.

Sword energy shot through the air, shimmering with icy blue light and leaving a trail of frost in its wake.

But this strike was different from those before. A thread of Soul Power, almost invisible to the naked eye, connected the base of the sword energy to the tip of his blade.

It was a technique he had learned from Dugu Bo.

The reason the Jade Phosphorous Serpent Emperor's poisonous mist could be controlled so freely was this very method of using threads of Soul Power.

"Still not enough." Ye Guchen shook his head.

A single thread of Soul Power could control only one blade of sword energy. If he wanted to release thousands upon thousands of blades, wouldn't he need to split off just as many threads?

That would consume far too much mental power. Even with his immense reserves, controlling tens of thousands of blades to attack with precision was nothing but a fool's dream.

He fell into thought again.

After an unknown amount of time, he suddenly thought of something: a fishing net.

You didn't need to hold every single strand of a fishing net in your hands. You only had to weave them together and hold the main cord at the net's edge to control the whole thing.

What if the blades of my sword energy could also be linked together, woven into a net...?

Ye Guchen's eyes grew brighter and brighter.

He immediately began to experiment.

He released three blades of sword energy. After they flew out, each produced a thread of Soul Power, linking with the others to form a triangle.

Once the triangle was stable, he tried to retrieve the three blades.

Whoosh—

All three blades turned at once and flew back along their paths, returning to the Shark Tooth Sword and transforming into Soul Power that the blade absorbed.

"It worked!"

Ye Guchen was ecstatic, but quickly composed himself and continued to work out the principles.

A triangle was the most basic unit. Three triangles could form a larger hexagon, and six triangles could form a circle...

In theory, if he released enough blades of sword energy, he could weave a sword net that covered his entire domain.

Once formed, this sword net could attack an enemy from every direction. If its attacks missed, it could retrieve the blades, redistribute them, and strike again.

Endless, unceasing.

Ye Guchen drew a deep breath and began weaving sword energy on a larger scale.

Ten blades, thirty, fifty...

Every additional blade increased the demands on his mental power and Soul Power. At the same time, the difficulty of weaving them together grew exponentially.

But he didn't give up.

When he failed once, he started over.

When he failed ten times, he started over.

When he failed a hundred times, he started over again.

Watching the tireless figure on the platform, Dugu Bo couldn't help but marvel. "That kid... he's gone mad."

As for Dugu Yan, whenever she wasn't cultivating, she rested her chin in her hands and gazed up at Ye Guchen with a smile.

By the fourth day, Ye Guchen could weave a hundred blades of sword energy at once, forming a sword net that covered a radius of fifty meters.

But he wasn't satisfied.

"The Iron Bamboo Soul Beast could cover the entire bamboo grove, nearly a hundred zhang across. I've only managed fifty meters. It's nowhere near enough."

He kept working it out, kept practicing.

On the fifth day, the radius reached eighty meters.

On the sixth day, it reached a hundred and twenty meters.

On the seventh day, it reached two hundred meters.

By the eighth day, Ye Guchen stood on the platform, eyes blazing with brilliance, his entire body radiating a fierce sword intent.

Dugu Bo and Dugu Yan below both felt that imposing aura and looked up in unison.

Ye Guchen slowly raised the Shark Tooth Sword.

"Immeasurable Sword Array."

His voice wasn't loud, but it carried clearly to both of them.

The next instant, the world changed color.

Centered on Ye Guchen, the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Domain abruptly expanded. Icy blue and fiery red light intertwined to form an enormous dome, covering a radius of three hundred meters.

The temperature within the domain shifted sharply. Half the area was bone-chillingly cold; the other half, scorching hot.

Before Dugu Bo could even react, blinding sword light erupted from the Shark Tooth Sword.

Countless blades of sword energy shot from the sword, surging skyward like a volcanic eruption. They came in such numbers that they blotted out the sky, dense as rain.

One hundred, two hundred, five hundred, one thousand...

The sword energy kept splitting in midair. As each blade flew, it produced new blades of sword energy, just like the Iron Bamboo Soul Beast's bamboo leaves—endless and inexhaustible.

But the blades didn't fly about in a chaotic mess.

Countless threads of Soul Power connected them, intertwining to weave a three-dimensional sword net that covered the entire domain.

A thousand blades were only the beginning.

Once the sword net formed, the first wave of sword energy came crashing down.

Hiss, hiss, hiss, hiss—

Every blade that struck the ground left a deep sword mark. The icy and scorching sword energy alternately ate away at the earth, blasting clods of soil in every direction.

The first wave missed. But it didn't disappear.

The blades bounced off the ground and flew back into the sky, guided by the threads of Soul Power, merging into the sword net once more. The net gave a faint tremor, redistributed the retrieved sword energy, and launched a second wave.

The second wave fell, was retrieved, redistributed, and then the third wave fell.

Wave after wave, relentless as the tide.

That was the heart of the Immeasurable Sword Array. It wasn't a single, explosive attack, but a sustained barrage of overwhelming strikes.

As long as Ye Guchen's Soul Power held out, the array would never stop.

Sword energy attacked from every direction: overhead, beneath his feet, before him, behind him. There were no blind spots.

No matter how fast someone's footwork was, they would find nowhere to flee within this airtight sword net. Their only choice was to meet the attack head-on.

Unlike other area-of-effect skills, its greatest advantage was that it could be controlled and its sword energy retrieved. It could attack a crowd or precisely target a single enemy.

Standing below in the valley, Dugu Bo stared at the sword net blotting out the sky above him. His expression shifted from surprise to shock, then from shock to sheer disbelief.

Within a radius of three hundred meters, the ground had been blasted beyond recognition. The once-smooth earth was covered in countless sword marks, as if it had been plowed over and over.

Yet the array continued to turn, the sword energy continued to fly. It showed no sign of stopping.

"That kid..." Dugu Bo muttered, a hint of wariness in his voice that he himself didn't even notice. "What kind of monstrous sword array has he created?"

Dugu Yan was even more astonished, her mouth hanging open as she stared without a word.

Though she was only level thirty-something, her eye for detail was sharp.

She could see clearly that there was nowhere safe inside the sword array.

Sword energy fell from overhead, pierced up from the ground, and swept in from every side. It moved so fast that even its afterimages were hard to make out.

If someone were trapped inside, they wouldn't just be unable to counterattack—they wouldn't even know which direction to defend against.

At last, Ye Guchen lowered his sword.

The sword energy filling the sky vanished in an instant. The threads of Soul Power snapped, and the sword net collapsed.

Everything fell silent, as if the terrifying array had never existed.

Only the devastated ground bore silent witness to what had just happened.

Ye Guchen stood on the platform, panting heavily as sweat rolled down his forehead.

The Immeasurable Sword Array consumed far more than he had expected. His Soul Power had been drained by more than half in an instant.

At his current cultivation level of sixty, he could maintain the array at full power for no more than half an incense stick's worth of time.

But half an incense stick's time had been enough.

In a real fight, half an incense stick's time was enough to kill every opponent caught in the array.

He lowered his head to look at the Shark Tooth Sword in his hand, the corners of his mouth slowly curling into a smile.

"The Immeasurable Sword Array... it's done."

Dugu Bo flew over from the distance and landed on the platform, watching him with a complicated expression.

"Kid Ye, what do you call that move?"

"The Immeasurable Sword Array."

"Immeasurable... boundless and without end, ceaselessly renewing itself." Dugu Bo savored the name and nodded. "It certainly fits."

He paused, then asked, "Combined with the dual-attribute suppression of your Ice and Fire Domain, this move could probably overwhelm even an ordinary Soul Douluo."

Ye Guchen smiled. "It's still a long way off. Right now, I can only maintain it for half an incense stick's time, and its range is only three hundred meters. There's still plenty of room to improve."

Dugu Bo's mouth twitched.

Three hundred meters, half an incense stick's time, and a saturated, indiscriminate covering attack—and this kid still said it was "a long way off"?

Meanwhile, Dugu Yan had already become Ye Guchen's biggest fan.

She hadn't noticed her grandfather's twitching mouth, and as soon as Ye Guchen finished speaking, she broke into enthusiastic applause.