The Heart-Only Sword Cultivator Reveals His Potential

On the way back to the dormitory.

Halfway there, Xiao Chenyu suddenly stopped and said, "During the match just now... thank you for going easy on me."

He was not someone who failed to appreciate kindness.

Qi Dao had stopped short during their match, and he had always remembered it. It was just that there had been too many people around earlier, and he had been embarrassed to thank him.

Qi Dao casually said, "There's no need to thank me. Just remember that I'm the first-year boss from now on, and do whatever I say."

Xiao Chenyu's face reddened as he gritted his teeth. "Fine. You'll be my boss from now on. But if I beat you someday, you'll have to give up the boss's position to me."

"Your challenge is welcome anytime, but..."

Qi Dao rested one hand on the hilt of the sword at his waist and smiled with absolute certainty. "I'll keep winning!"

Xiao Chenyu stared at Qi Dao's confident, resolute gaze and his nonchalant expression, momentarily stunned.

"This guy..."

"He's kind of cool!"

He pushed open the door and entered the dormitory.

Inside, pair after pair of eyes turned toward him in unison.

Those sitting on their beds chatting and those occupied with other things all stopped what they were doing.

"Boss!"

No one knew who had shouted it first, but then...

"Boss!"

The entire dormitory erupted in deafening shouts.

At the same time, in the neighboring dormitory.

"What are those first-years screaming about? It's so damn noisy!"

"Sounds like they're calling someone boss!"

"They just started school, and they've already picked a boss?"

"Who's their boss?"

"I heard the city lord's younger son, Young Master Xiao Chenyu, enrolled today."

"So the first-years' boss is Young Master Xiao Chenyu?"

"It should be him. I heard he has innate rank-three soul power, and a wolf martial soul, which is a powerful offensive martial soul."

Meanwhile, in the first-year dormitory.

Qi Dao established a rule.

No loud shouting or fooling around in the dormitory. If they wanted to play, they could do it outside.

None of the others objected to the rule Qi Dao had set.

Although the sword strike Qi Dao had used when challenging Xiao Chenyu had not seriously injured him, it had left a powerful visual impression on everyone else.

Especially the formidable aura Qi Dao had revealed afterward. It had not only intimidated all the first-years at the time, but even now, they remained filled with awe toward him.

After Qi Dao laid down the rule, the dormitory became much quieter. Only then did Qi Dao return to his bed in satisfaction and begin cultivating.

On Douluo Continent, cultivation took the form of meditation. At its core, it involved guiding soul power through the body to form a cyclical circuit, absorbing the energy of heaven and earth to strengthen oneself.

However, for ordinary soul masters, the routes and paths their soul power followed during meditation were complicated and convoluted. This made it take longer to form a complete cycle, naturally resulting in low efficiency.

It was like two paths with the same starting point and destination: one was a straight line, while the other twisted and turned. Naturally, the curved path took longer to reach the end.

In comparison, the Mysterious Heaven Technique from the original work had a systematic route for circulating soul power. Soul power traveled through precise meridians, so its cultivation efficiency naturally far surpassed that of ordinary people.

Qi Dao possessed only innate half-rank soul power, making his cultivation speed exceptionally slow. Even when he placed Peerless before him while cultivating, his speed improved only slightly, and the effect remained limited.

After two and a half months, his soul power was still stuck at half a rank.

Qi Dao estimated that at this rate, it would take him at least another month or two to break through to rank one.

Trying to become a god at this cultivation speed was simply a joke.

Thus, there were now two paths before him.

The first was extremely conservative: cultivate steadily and honestly.

Qi Dao could clearly sense that he was different from everyone else, especially when it came to his talent for the sword.

For example, his father had awakened an Iron Sword martial soul more than twenty years ago, yet he had never developed the slightest connection with his Iron Sword martial soul.

Therefore, Qi Dao believed that as his connection with Peerless deepened, perhaps even reaching the so-called realm of unity between man and sword, his cultivation speed would naturally improve.

However, he could not guarantee that this would allow him to become a god. After all, Ji Juechen had likewise reached the realm of unity between man and sword in the original work, yet still stopped at the level of a Titled Douluo.

If he had crossed into Douluo Continent and still couldn't become a god, wouldn't Qi Dao's transmigration have been for nothing?

Of course, he still had a second path.

That was to improve the meditation method and turn it into the cultivation technique best suited to himself. His cultivation speed would naturally increase as well.

The risk was a little greater, but so were the returns. As the saying went, fortune favored the bold!

However, Qi Dao had yet to begin trying.

It wasn't because he feared death. He simply knew that his understanding was still far from sufficient to improve the meditation method.

If he forcibly tried to improve it, he would most likely end up like Feng Xiaotian when he created his own soul skill—ruining himself in the process.

But Qi Dao was not discouraged.

He possessed an advantage that ordinary soul masters lacked: others could only look inward after absorbing their first soul ring, while he already had that ability.

He guessed it was a benefit of having lived two lives, or perhaps an advantage brought about by the sudden enlightenment he had experienced on the day he awakened his martial soul.

The benefit of being able to look inward ahead of time was that he could sense the paths along which soul power traveled within his body.

What Qi Dao needed to do was observe the routes his soul power took through his meridians, identify the branches where it flowed between different meridians, and then remove the unnecessary parts.

Unfortunately, looking inward consumed a great deal of mental energy. After only a few minutes, Qi Dao would feel mentally exhausted, so he did it only once a day.

In order to strengthen his mental power and extend the time he could look inward, Qi Dao came up with a method based on novels he had read in the past.

During meditation, he would try to construct the form of "Peerless" in his mind, then visualize it.

In Qi Dao's view, a martial soul was an extension of one's spirit and soul. The process of visualizing one's martial soul might well strengthen the spirit from within.

It sounded utterly unreliable—abstract, idealistic, and completely unscientific!

But then Qi Dao thought again: he was in a fantasy world. What was the point of talking about science?

There was no harm in giving it a try.

Qi Dao had spent two months constructing it, and to his surprise, it had actually worked!

At first, the Peerless he constructed was incredibly blurry. He could barely make out that it was a sword, and it was unstable as well.

But as time passed, the Peerless Sword in his mind became increasingly clear and stable.

Until today!

In a place unnoticed by everyone else in the dormitory, Qi Dao's aura suddenly became a little sharper.

The Peerless he had constructed in his mind had completely taken shape. Even the cracks on the blade were identical, and a faint glimmer radiated from its body.

The instant Qi Dao visualized it, a stabbing pain surged into his mind, as though he had suddenly been pricked by a needle.

Yet the pain made his mind even clearer. The mental power that had been depleted by looking inward was like parched earth suddenly nourished by a trickle of water.

Visualization had this benefit too?

Qi Dao became even more energized. Enduring the needle-like pain, he continued visualizing Peerless, as though he had entered another state.

And while he visualized it, the speed at which his soul power circulated inside his body miraculously increased.

By the time he opened his eyes again, it was already midnight!

An irrepressible smile appeared on his face. At this rate, he would break through to level one after at most another ten days or half a month of cultivation.

This cultivation speed might still not compare to that of genius soul masters with innate full soul power.

But compared with soul masters born with innate soul power at level five or six, it was more than enough.