"They all treat destruction as a dead end to be shunned, to be feared."
"Even those who wield the sword themselves avoid the word 'destruction,' as though touching it would sully their Sword Heart."
The dark-red sword gleam at his fingertips suddenly doubled in length, and a faint, searing sound like sandpaper grinding filled the air.
"But let this old man ask you—when a sword is drawn, what is it for?"
"To cut."
Ye Lin answered without hesitation.
"And what is cutting for?"
"To win."
"And after winning?"
"...To end the opponent."
This time, Ye Lin hesitated slightly.
"See."
At that moment, the sword gleam at the man's fingertips gave a faint tremble. Its dark-red edge swept through the air, as if severing an invisible thread.
"You too have been trapped by that lie."
"Draw the sword, cut, win, end—within your heart, the ultimate purpose of every sword leaving its sheath is still to bring something to an end."
"But this old man tells you: destruction has never been an ending. Destruction is a beginning."
Ye Lin's brow twitched.
His cross-legged posture remained unchanged, yet the ten thousand eight hundred sword veins within his consciousness all grew faintly warm at once, as though those words had stirred some dormant resonance.
"You split open a stone and take the iron ore from within."
"The stone is destroyed, yet the iron ore is extracted."
"You throw the iron ore into a furnace. The shape of the ore is destroyed by the heat, yet molten iron is refined from it."
"You pour the molten iron into a mold and cast it into a sword. As the molten iron solidifies into a sword, it is destroyed once again in form—but at the instant that sword takes shape, is that not the birth of something