Green Lotus Sword Intent's Purity, Leaving Shrek Academy

One night passed.

Early the next morning, Li Qinglian climbed up from the ground.

Scenes from the previous night flashed through his mind.

Even now, thinking back on it, he still found it hard to believe.

"Did what happened last night really happen?"

Li Qinglian murmured.

Then he once again activated his martial soul, and the Green Lotus Sword appeared in his hand again.

He swung the longsword as though it were an extension of his own arm, each stroke giving rise to lotuses.

They were clearly the simplest sword moves, yet they carried a profound, mysterious feeling.

There was no sense of obscurity at all. Everything felt perfectly natural.

"So everything that happened last night was real. Green Lotus Sword Intent... I actually comprehended sword intent in a moment of enlightenment."

Li Qinglian was wild with joy.

In a flash of insight, he understood.

It was because he had recited Ode to the Lotus last night, grasped its true meaning, and gained the approval of the Green Lotus Sword that he had been able to comprehend Green Lotus Sword Intent.

This was also thanks to him holding fast to his true heart while the evil fire burned through his body, tempering both body and mind.

Only because these two things had occurred at the same time had Li Qinglian obtained this opportunity.

Sword intent was not a cultivation realm, nor did it represent strength.

But in the entire world, how many swordsmen could comprehend sword intent?

As far as Li Qinglian knew, only Sword Douluo Chen Xin of the Seven Treasures Glazed Tile Sect had comprehended Seven Kill Sword Intent.

But Li Qinglian believed that, in terms of conception, his Green Lotus Sword Intent far surpassed Seven Kill Sword Intent.

Seven Kill Sword Intent treated the sword as an instrument of slaughter, while Green Lotus Sword Intent treated the sword as an instrument of purity and nobility.

"I feel like my body is a little different too. The evil fire inside me seems to have receded quite a bit."

Li Qinglian then released his Phoenix martial soul.

Sensing the changes in his martial soul, he frowned slightly.

The martial soul had not changed much, but he could clearly feel that the sensation it gave him was different, and its aura seemed to have grown stronger too.

Most importantly, the impurities in the martial soul also seemed to have decreased greatly.

"Phoenix nirvana."

"Perhaps the evil fire itself is a kind of tribulation. Only by passing through the tribulation of evil fire burning the body can one be reborn through nirvana and become a true phoenix."

Li Qinglian murmured.

If he immediately went to a brothel to relieve himself at the slightest suffering from the evil fire, it might look as if the evil fire had been suppressed, but in truth, he would only be moving farther and farther from the proper path.

"Brother Li, why don't you come with me and the dean for a couple of good rounds?"

"Look at how weak you've gotten. Even your hair's turned white. If you keep being this stubborn, you'll drop dead sooner or later."

Ma Hongjun once again returned from the brothel with Flender. When he saw a streak of white hair appear at Li Qinglian's temples, his words sounded concerned, but in his heart, he was overjoyed.

The phoenix evil fire was an inherent flaw of the martial soul.

If one did not vent the fire, the evil fire would inevitably burn through the body, leaving one to die without a burial place.

In the past few months since arriving at Shrek Academy, he had gone out for a few good rounds almost every few days.

Li Qinglian, however, had remained stubbornly set in his ways.

He really could not understand why anyone would be unwilling to do something so pleasurable.

But if Li Qinglian wanted to court death, he was happy to see it happen.

"Qinglian, your body has been drained far too severely."

"The white hair at your temples is the first warning sign. If you still refuse to deal with it like Hongjun, I'm afraid you won't have long to live."

Following Ma Hongjun's words, Flender looked over and saw several silver strands at Li Qinglian's temples. His expression instantly changed.

"Dean, I think my body is perfectly fine."

"Besides, I disdain doing that sort of thing."

Li Qinglian said firmly.

If Flender and Ma Hongjun had looked more carefully, the hair at his temples was not graying white, but silver-white.

This was probably a physical change that had formed after he bathed in the evil fire and underwent nirvana.

He had a faint premonition that if he survived a few more eruptions of evil fire, then once all his hair turned silver-white, he would completely ascend into a phoenix, and his martial soul would become a true phoenix rather than the Evil Fire Phoenix.

"Qinglian, how can you be so muddleheaded? This evil fire is something even we Soul Sages would find difficult to withstand. Let alone you, a Soul Master whose martial soul only awakened not long ago?"

Flender looked utterly pained.

Compared with Ma Hongjun, he valued Li Qinglian more.

But Li Qinglian's stubborn insistence on his own path had disappointed him far too much.

Someone as stubborn as Li Qinglian would either become the strongest person in the world in the future, or die young.

He thought it was a pity.

"Dean, this is my decision. You don't need to persuade me anymore."

Li Qinglian sighed.

Even after comprehending Green Lotus Sword Intent, facing future eruptions of the Evil Fire would by no means be smooth sailing for him.

On the contrary, the Evil Fire's eruptions would only become more and more violent.

If he made the same choice as Ma Hongjun, the Evil Fire Phoenix would only become a fallen phoenix, and he would lose the Green Lotus Sword's recognition as well.

"In that case, leave Shrek Academy tomorrow. You're different from us. If Shrek Academy keeps you here, I'm afraid we'll only hold you back."

Flender hesitated for a while before speaking.

Over these past few months, he had already seen Li Qinglian's stubbornness.

If Li Qinglian would not go to the brothels to drain the Evil Fire, then Flender admitted he had no other way to help him resolve the problem.

"Hm?"

Li Qinglian raised his head and looked at the middle-aged man in front of him in surprise.

Flender was willing to let him leave?

He had originally been thinking of leaving behind a letter sometime and slipping away in the night.

"You brat, what kind of person do you take me for?"

"If I, Flender, don't have the ability, then naturally I won't hold you back. Besides, an eruption of Evil Fire is a matter of life and death."

"I think you can go to Blazing Fire Academy and see if they have any methods for purifying flames, or go to Tianshui Academy and use the chill of ice-attribute soul masters to suppress the Evil Fire inside you."

"You can leave now, or you can wait until after you obtain your first soul ring."

Flender spoke very seriously.

In truth, to those Flender and the others acknowledged as their own, they were still very kind and responsible.

"Dean, actually, I was wrong about you before. You're a good person."

Li Qinglian said with a smile.

Flender really was an old softhearted good guy.

He liked Liu Erlong, yet had given her up to someone else, then run off to a poor backwater to keep Shrek Academy going.

"You brat..."

Flender gave Li Qinglian's shoulder an irritated smack.

"I plan to leave tomorrow. I want to go out and take a look around."

"These past few months, I've already learned a lot of basic knowledge. It should be enough."

Li Qinglian said.

"All right."

Flender gritted out the words.

Li Qinglian nodded, turned, and returned to his room.

"Sigh."

"Dean, why are you letting Li Qinglian leave? He has innate full soul power."

Ma Hongjun did not understand.

Although he was jealous of Li Qinglian, he knew in his heart that Li Qinglian was far more outstanding than he was.

"You can keep the person, but not his heart. If he keeps being this stubborn, once the Evil Fire erupts, he'll definitely die. When that happens, wouldn't Shrek have to shoulder the reputation of teaching a full-soul-power monster to death? How would we recruit students after that?"

Flender sighed.

Li Qinglian himself was unwilling to visit the brothels. It was not as if Flender could force him to go.

But Flender knew.

He had seen this kind of temperament in some top-tier experts before.

If Li Qinglian truly crossed this hurdle, he would definitely shake the entire continent in the future.