Sword Dao Chen Xin, Listening to the National Preceptor's Sermon!

Just as the whole continent waited with bated breath...

The golden light on the screen slowly faded.

Immediately after, three brand-new names emerged one after another upon the Sky Screen, accompanied by a low hum.

[New explorer: Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, Sword Douluo, Chen Xin.]

[New explorer: Clear Sky Sect, Clear Sky Douluo, Tang Hao.]

[New explorer: Shrek Academy, Evil Fire Phoenix, Ma Hongjun.]

The moment the names appeared...

Some rejoiced, while others worried.

On the training ground of Shrek Academy...

Ma Hongjun froze solid.

His mouth hung open as he pointed at his own nose, unable to come back to his senses for a long while.

"I... I really got picked?"

Ma Hongjun, who had still been praying to be chosen just moments ago, now saw his own name clearly, yet his legs began to go weak despite himself.

He thought of that dried corpse covered in green hair, and of that Demon God dragging a great white-bone saber.

"Fatty, you hit the jackpot."

Oscar walked over and patted Ma Hongjun on the shoulder, his face carrying a hint of schadenfreude, along with a hint of envy.

Dai Mubai and Tang San also looked at him with complicated expressions.

Meanwhile, in a remote little tavern somewhere on the continent...

A scruffy man in a tattered black robe, reeking of alcohol, was sprawled across a table, snoring loudly.

When he heard the cries of shock outside...

The man slowly lifted his head.

Beneath his tangled hair, a pair of bloodshot eyes were revealed, yet they were sharp as a hawk's.

Tang Hao glanced at his own name on the Sky Screen.

He casually tossed away the cheap wine bottle in his hand, grabbed the massive iron hammer resting by the table, and the corner of his mouth curled into a wild smile.

"An interesting world."

Tang Hao rose to his feet, and the air of decadence around him vanished completely.

"Just in time. These old bones of mine are about to rust. Going up somewhere higher for a look doesn't sound bad."

Inside the great hall of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect...

Ning Fengzhi looked at the name on the Sky Screen and sucked in a breath of cold air.

Uncle Sword had been chosen!

Beside him, Sword Douluo Chen Xin had already closed his eyes.

His head of silver hair stirred without wind.

The sword intent around him was climbing wildly.

It was a longing for an unknown sword path, and an intense fighting spirit toward Yankang Imperial Preceptor, that "strongest beneath the gods."

"Fengzhi, this old man is going."

Chen Xin opened his eyes and left behind words that were calm, yet filled with resolve.

The next second, a dazzling pillar of light descended from the Sky Screen.

The pillar pierced through the dome of the great hall and directly enveloped the three people who had been chosen.

The stars shifted and the world turned.

The feeling of space tearing apart vanished in an instant.

The image on the Sky Screen lit up once more.

This time, the scene did not return to that danger-filled Crippled Old Village in the Great Ruins.

Instead, it appeared within an extremely bustling human city.

This was the capital of Yankang.

On a broad, level bluestone avenue, people came and went.

Accompanied by a faint ripple in space...

Sword Douluo Chen Xin, dressed in white, his white hair like snow, landed steadily in a corner of the street.

The moment he landed, his brows furrowed slightly.

The air here was too heavy.

Too heavy.

It did not have the light, ethereal soul power of Douluo Continent. In its place was a kind of worldly vital energy that was dense, viscous, and brimming with life.

Chen Xin took a deep breath.

He felt that the bottleneck where he had been stuck at rank ninety-six for years was actually showing the slightest sign of loosening under the cleansing rush of this vital energy.

"What a fine sacred ground for cultivation."

Chen Xin praised it inwardly.

He restrained his aura, gripped the Seven Kill Sword in his hand, and slowly walked forward along the street.

Shops lined both sides of the street in tight rows.

Restaurants, inns, blacksmiths, cloth stores.

At a glance, it looked no different from the cities of Douluo Continent.

But when Chen Xin carefully observed the pedestrians on the street, his heart still could not help giving two violent thumps.

Not far ahead, in front of a butcher's stall.

A bare-chested butcher with a face full of bristling beard was raising a Butcher Knife to chop spare ribs.

He did not use brute force to hack down. Instead, his wrist gave a light flick.

A faint layer of azure sword energy actually rose along the blade.

The sword energy slid into the gaps between the bones without making the slightest sound, and that rack of ribs was cut neatly into small pieces.

"Carving an ox with sword energy?"

Chen Xin stopped in his tracks, his eyes fixed tightly on the butcher.

That butcher was only an ordinary commoner, with only a little weak vital energy in his body.

But the technique in that slash contained a trace of extremely crude, yet undeniably real, true meaning of the sword path.

Chen Xin swallowed and continued walking forward.

At the entrance of a carpenter's shop on the street corner.

An apprentice was holding a plane, pushing it over wood.

With every push and pull, his breathing matched a unique rhythm.

Following his breath, wood shavings flew, and a thin layer of true qi attached itself to the plane blade. The surface of the wood instantly became smooth as a mirror.

On the second floor of a restaurant, a waiter was carrying several large plates of piping-hot dishes.

He did not take the stairs. Instead, the tip of his foot lightly tapped the railing on the second floor.

His body was like a nimble swallow, using some crude lightness skill footwork as he landed steadily in the main hall on the first floor, without spilling even a single drop of soup.

The vegetable-selling aunties.

The coolies carrying loads.

The street performers doing tricks.

Chen Xin walked on.

He discovered that every corner of this city seemed to be filled with traces of cultivation.

The commoners here.

They had actually, truly integrated those lofty divine abilities and cultivation methods into the daily business of eating, drinking, relieving themselves, firewood, rice, oil, and salt.

"The people's daily use is the Dao..."

Chen Xin thought back to the words he had heard in the tavern in Bianlong City.

At the time, he had only felt that they were grand but empty words.

But now, seeing this scene with his own eyes, he finally truly understood just how terrifying the power contained behind those words was.

An empire where all the people cultivated.

A nation that treated divine abilities as tools to change life.

The hand with which Chen Xin gripped the Seven Kill Sword was faintly sweating.

He raised his head and looked along the broad street toward the very center of the capital.

There stood a towering, magnificent building that rose into the clouds.

From the top of the building, a sharp sword intent that made Chen Xin's heart pound with alarm faintly radiated.

That sword intent shot straight into the clouds, as if it meant to pierce through the very heavens.

An old man on the street saw Chen Xin looking in that direction and cheerfully came over.

"Young brother, you're from out of town, aren't you?"

The old man pointed at that magnificent building, his tone brimming with pride.

"That is our Yankang Kingdom's Imperial Academy."

"Lord Imperial Preceptor happens to be lecturing on the sword at the Imperial Academy today."

"The Imperial Preceptor is lecturing on the sword?"

When he heard the old man say that, Chen Xin's still, undisturbed state of mind instantly surged with towering waves.

In his life, aside from protecting the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, his only obsession was the path of the sword.

On Douluo Continent, he was honored as Sword Dao Chen Xin.

With the Seven Kill Sword in hand, his attack power was number one under heaven. This was the pride he had earned through countless battles between life and death.

Yet in this strange nation where every citizen could cultivate, facing a peerless sword cultivator who dared claim to be "the strongest beneath the gods,"

Chen Xin's lofty pride, for the first time ever, actually gave rise to a trace of fear.

"Many thanks for showing me the way, brother."

Chen Xin cupped his hands and forcibly suppressed the turmoil in his heart.

He followed the crowded stream of people, walking step by step toward the gates of the Imperial Academy.

The closer he came to that magnificent building, the clearer that omnipresent sword intent in the air became.

This sword intent was not sharp.

It did not have that exposed edge, that murderous aura that seemed to want to pierce a person through.

It was like the sky overhead—vast, deep, encompassing all things, yet making one instinctively feel how small one was.

Chen Xin reached the entrance of the Imperial Academy.

To his surprise, a place comparable to Spirit Hall's highest academy on Douluo Continent did not even have a single guard at the door.

The two vermilion gates stood wide open.

Whether they were princes and nobles dressed in gorgeous brocade, or porters with towels draped over their shoulders, as long as they wanted to attend the lecture, they could step straight over the threshold and enter.

No one stopped them, and no one checked their identities.

Chen Xin blended into the crowd and stepped into the broad plaza of the Imperial Academy.

The plaza was packed with a dense sea of seated people, easily over ten thousand in number.

Everyone sat cross-legged in silence.

Even the street vendors who usually made a racket were now holding their breath and concentrating, not daring to so much as cough.

At the very front of the plaza stood a lecture platform three zhang high.

There were no ornate seats on the platform, nor any array formations to enhance the atmosphere.

There was only an ordinary prayer mat.

On the prayer mat sat a middle-aged scholar in a blue-green robe, legs crossed.

He was very thin and refined-looking, with slight streaks of gray at his temples.

He held a scroll in his hand and wore no sword at his waist. He looked just like an ordinary teacher from a private school.

But the instant Chen Xin's gaze fell upon this middle-aged scholar, he felt a thunderous boom explode inside his head.

The Seven Kill Sword martial soul within him, the one he took such pride in, actually began trembling violently beyond his control.

This trembling was not from excitement.

It came from the martial soul's instinctive shudder and submission.

"He is... the Yankang Imperial Preceptor."

Chen Xin swallowed, his mouth feeling dry.

He found an empty spot toward the back and, copying the people around him, sat down cross-legged.

On the lecture platform, the Yankang Imperial Preceptor set down the scroll in his hand.

His gaze slowly swept over the faces of the more than ten thousand people below.

His eyes were gentle, without the slightest air of condescension.

"Today, I will speak on the sword."

The Imperial Preceptor began.

His voice was not loud, yet it reached the ears of every person in the plaza with perfect clarity.

"A few years ago, I went to observe the sword techniques practiced by the younger generation of the Lijiang Sect."

At this point, the Imperial Preceptor gently shook his head, a trace of regret in his voice.

"Flashy and superficial. They've neglected the fundamentals."

"One move, Layered Wave, actually has a full thirty-six useless variations."

"It looks impenetrable, but in reality, it's riddled with flaws."

"If they met a true expert, that expert would need only a single tree branch to break their sword heart."

Those words traveled beyond the light screen to Douluo Continent.

Inside the great hall of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect.

Ning Fengzhi and Bone Douluo exchanged a glance, their eyes filled with shock.

They had witnessed the sword technique of the Lijiang Sect with their own eyes in the tavern.

That sword qi could easily cut through jade, and on Douluo Continent, it absolutely counted as a top-tier self-created soul skill.

Yet in the mouth of this Yankang Imperial Preceptor...

It had actually become a flashy street performance?

Inside the Sky Screen.

The plaza of the Imperial Academy was strangely silent.

The Yankang Imperial Preceptor extended one long, slender finger and casually traced a motion through the air.

"To cultivate the sword, you must first understand what a sword is."

"Many people think a sword is a weapon for killing, and that practicing the sword is for cleaving people in half."

The Imperial Preceptor smiled faintly, carrying a clarity that seemed to see through worldly affairs.

"If you stop at that step, then your swordsmanship in this life has reached its end."

Hearing this, Chen Xin, who sat cross-legged in the back row, suddenly stiffened.

Seven Kill Sword!

The name Seven Kill Sword came from the path of "killing."

He had practiced the sword his entire life, pursuing the ultimate in attack, the ultimate in slaughter.

He had always believed that a sword was meant to kill; once the sword was drawn, there was no regret, and every enemy before him would be cut down.

But now, this number one sword cultivator under heaven had poured a basin of cold water over his head.

"Lord Imperial Preceptor, then what exactly is a sword?"

A young student in the front row mustered his courage and asked loudly.

The Imperial Preceptor looked at that student, a trace of approval showing in his eyes.

"A sword is a ruler."

"A ruler used to measure heaven and earth, to measure all things."

As he spoke, the Imperial Preceptor slowly rose to his feet as well.

He did not draw a sword. He merely reached out beside the lecture platform and snapped a withered yellow branch from an old tree.

"When you buy cloth, you use a ruler to measure its length."

"When you farm the land, you use your steps to measure its width."

"The circulation of vital qi between heaven and earth, the rising and falling of the stars, the rushing of rivers."

"All of these things have their own rules and trajectories."

After saying this, the Imperial Preceptor gripped that withered branch and slowly thrust it forward like a sword.

This thrust was astonishingly slow.

Even a three-year-old child could clearly see the trajectory of his movement.

There was no sword light, no fierce wind.

There was not even the slightest ripple of vital qi.

Yet the moment this sword thrust was made...

Chen Xin's eyes abruptly went wide, and several blood vessels even burst in them from the strain.

In his eyes, what the Imperial Preceptor had thrust out was not a tree branch at all.

This sword avoided all resistance in the air.

This sword followed the direction in which the wind blew.

This sword seemed to cut the space before him into one incomparably precise little square after another.

"Did you understand?"

The Imperial Preceptor put away the branch and sat back down on the prayer mat.

"The fundamentals of swordsmanship were nothing more than thrusting, chopping, lifting, and parrying."

"Take these most basic movements and combine them with mathematics, with the laws of heaven and earth."

"When you thrust out with your sword,"

"you must not only be able to calculate the enemy's openings, but also the wind speed, the light and shadows, and even the direction of every strand of vital energy within ten zhang around you."

"When your sword can measure all things in the world,"

"then under heaven, there will no longer be anything that can block a single strike from you."

As the National Preceptor's words fell silent, a burst of heated discussion erupted across the Imperial Academy's plaza.

Many commoners and students lowered their heads, tracing with their fingers as if calculating something.

Yet Chen Xin, seated in the back row, now seemed to have turned into a lifeless statue.

Large beads of sweat rolled down his forehead and struck the bluestone slabs.

His aged face, weathered by the years, was filled with sudden understanding.

"Mathematics, space, laws..."

Chen Xin's lips trembled violently.

He closed his eyes, his mind frantically deducing the "Seven Kill Sword Technique" he had always been so proud of.

First soul skill, Long Sword Sharp Edge.

Second soul skill, Spirit Sword Protection.

Ninth soul skill, God and Demon Slash!