"Shujun, there is something I must ask you. You must report it truthfully."
Five Swords Lord spoke in a grave voice. "Three months ago, when you went to gather herbs near Spirit Pearl Island, did you encounter a young man? He should have been a sword immortal of the orthodox path. Was that so?"
Five Swords Lord was not himself an orthodox cultivator. He was a third-generation elder of the Black Baleful Sect, an unorthodox sect. Yet he had never committed any evil deeds and possessed an exceedingly solitary temperament. Disliking the struggles between the Black Baleful Sect's former leader's daughter—now the current Holy Maiden, Shen Yao—and the current sect leader's faction, he had left the Central Plains for the overseas lands, founded his own school, and established the Five Swords Sect.
The Five Swords Sect enforced its island rules with great severity. Disciples who broke them faced execution by flying sword in serious cases, or flogging and expulsion from the sect in lighter ones. Normally, they associated often with several nearby Rogue Cultivators and had some friendship with them.
Five Swords Lord himself was an expert who had formed a Golden Core. Through quiet contemplation, he had come to realize that within the next fifty years, an immortal tribulation would descend upon the righteous and unorthodox sects alike. Becoming wary, he used a forbidden art to seal off the area around this isolated island. Without his orders, no one was permitted to leave freely, lest his disciples provoke enemies from either the righteous or unorthodox paths and invite trouble.
He had several disciples under him. The green-skirted woman, Chen Shujun, was his first disciple, while there were four men and three women besides her. All were intelligent and gifted, and had received his true teachings; their cultivation was by