After sending away the noisy book boy, Su Che finally found complete peace and quiet.
The experiences he had endured on the journey from Jiankang to Shanyin County had truly been exhausting.
Thanks to the medicinal power of the Daoist School's spiritual pills, his old injuries remained in a relatively stable state.
Moreover, after all the hardship and encounters along the way, his physical condition had gradually begun to improve.
If he were to make an analogy—
His body was a longsword on the verge of snapping, while the hardships of this journey were like a blazing furnace, enough to reduce that sword to iron slag. Yet the medicinal power of the Daoist School's spiritual pills was like a hammer.
With every trial and hardship, it silently forged his nearly shattered body ever stronger.
Just like reforging a broken sword.
Su Che had always loved reading. He had once told his friends that he had three great pleasures.
Admiring beauties, reading the Book of Han, and drinking Fenyang Wine.
While in Jiankang, he had also read several classics from this world and had once sighed over a certain passage.
The world was a vast Sea of Bitterness; only by crossing it could all living beings attain the Longevity Realm.
And if one wished to cross that Sea of Bitterness, one had to find within oneself the faculty capable of crossing it.
Heaven and earth were one great nature; the human body was one small heaven and earth.
Cultivation itself was a process of strengthening oneself.
Thus, regardless of the various branches of Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, demonic arts, monsters, or ghosts, the overwhelming majority used the physical body they were born with as the foundation of cultivation.
Su Che knew very clearly that his previous ordeal had, in essence, nearly severed his path of cultivation.
Even if damaged foundations could be repaired someday, they would be like a car barely made drivable after a major crash—never able to return to its former condition.
According to the plot, he ought to have been a genius the Duling Su Clan saw only once in a century, framed by others and left with ruined foundations. Then he ought to have had a fiancée from a prestigious family who abandoned him because of it.
The discarded son of the Su Family, an ultimate scumbag, the former genius died resentful and depressed. Then a man from another world transmigrated into him, happened by chance to receive a wisp of the remnant soul of an unparalleled expert, and rapidly rose to power.
I inherit your body and take on your Karmic Cause and Effect. In the end, he would defeat the great enemy hidden behind the curtain. As for the fiancée who had once forsaken him, her ending would differ depending on the website where the story was posted.
Unfortunately, none of that existed.
Yet in this world, sages of old had long since opened another path.
This was Sword Cultivation.
This world had always possessed the notion of sword heroes. But if one traced their roots carefully, they either belonged to the Martial Confucian Lineage or were highly accomplished Daoist School practitioners; a few had also, through strange twists of fate, cultivated Buddhist School or demon arts.
As for their defining traits, they probably acted chivalrously and upheld justice while carrying a treasured sword. Swords were used throughout every major system.
Or rather, sword heroes were a faction, an occupation—not a system capable of ascending to the highest vault of the Dao.
They merely used swords.
But many years ago, in a distant land, there was a young and gifted ruler of a nation. He married a pair of twin beauties as his queens, became a disciple of the Martial Confucian Lineage, and achieved a tale much praised by all.
Yet the world was unpredictable. A neighboring nation raised an army against him, and the marshal leading that army was none other than the senior brother he regarded as his own brother.
What followed came naturally enough. The young ruler's army was defeated and his nation destroyed; under the enemy's blades, his people were reduced to cattle, sheep, and fruit trees.
All his cultivation was shattered, and he wandered the streets in misery. Turned into a beggar, he clung to life beneath relentless pursuit.
His twin queens became playthings for the ruler of the neighboring nation, while that senior brother used his merits to take control of the neighboring state's affairs and was honored as Grand Preceptor.
Reviewing the entire situation, he was horrified to discover that the master he had respected most and his senior brother had been plotting against him from many years ago. The whole conspiracy had begun the very moment he became their disciple.
The cultivation technique he had learned had long contained flaws meticulously designed by them, while the peerless arts he had been so proud of had been deliberately taught to him, riddled from the beginning with countless losing moves.
How could he possibly avoid utter defeat?
How hateful that he awakened too late. Three of his five limbs had been severed; only his left arm and right leg remained usable.
With life brought to such a state, he should have been utterly disheartened, either dragging out a wretched existence and persuading himself to take all things lightly, or unable to bear such humiliation and ending it with a blade.
Yet that ruler was a heaven-sent genius. At last, he turned the impossible into possible. Amid the encirclement and pursuit of countless enemies, he continually tempered himself and carved out a new path with his crippled, ruined body.
This was Sword Cultivation.
A reforged sword surpassed even its former self.
He cared neither for good nor evil, because good and evil could no longer measure his hatred.
He asked not about Karmic Cause and Effect, because Karmic Cause and Effect could no longer bear the weight of his past.
This sword existed only to cut down people.
The people of the enemy nation—whether the old, the weak, women, children, famed ministers, or great generals—were all equal, all ghosts beneath his sword.
So passed thirteen years.
At last, not one household in ten remained in the enemy nation.
In the end, he challenged his master and senior brother, both on the verge of collapse, atop the enemy nation's imperial palace.
His senior brother laid bare his heart, recounting the pain of his past and the pursuit of the one he had once loved.
All his schemes had been for the sake of establishing an ideal nation where all living beings were equal. He spoke of how a grand and beautiful future had been reduced to nothing beneath that madman's sword.
His master pointed directly to the root of it all, explaining that everything was tied to an even greater conspiracy, one concerning the rise and fall of the Human Path and the prosperity and decline of the realm. If he returned from the wrong path now, perhaps there was still a chance to mend things.
He merely smiled.
His senior brother's flesh and blood were ground into powder, divided into thirteen portions, and fed to thirteen different dogs.
His master's head was hung high upon the city wall of his former nation, to console the people who had been enslaved beneath the neighboring nation's burning, killing, plundering, and looting.
One man, one sword, settling all gratitude and hatred, asking nothing of Karmic Cause and Effect.
From then on, the world possessed a system known as Sword Cultivation.
That ruler had not reached the end of this system, but those who came after carried the flame onward.
The path of Sword Cultivation began in the tiniest corner of a snail's horn and reached its zenith above the Eastern Sea. The East Sea Sword Palace was one of this world's four great sect-clans. Countless sword cultivators roamed the four seas and eight wildernesses, acting chivalrously and upholding justice, living with unrestrained joy.
Su Che laid the Sword Case across the table, his fingers lightly tracing the inscriptions upon it.
Without national enmity or family hatred, and with no wish to act chivalrously and uphold justice, there should still be a chance to cultivate it, right?
Sword Cultivation was one of the few systems that placed no requirements whatsoever on one's physical foundations at the beginning.
And in terms of killing power alone, it stood firmly at the head of all major systems.
This was precisely the path Su Che had chosen for himself.
Su Che lightly opened a hidden compartment inside the Sword Case, took out a bamboo slip, and rested it gently across his palm.
There was nothing else on the bamboo slip, only the four words "Heaven-Supporting Jun Sword."
It was the secret cultivation text Su Che had asked an elder to retrieve from the palace before he left Jiankang. By a stroke of fate, Great Liang had obtained a sword canon from the Eastern Sea.
This item had originally been acquired by chance by an imperial envoy Great Liang had dispatched to the Eastern Sea in search of rare treasures. Seeing that it appeared quite extraordinary, the envoy had tucked it away.
Afterward, it was sealed away in the treasury and left ignored.
That elder of the Su Family in the palace had risen from the Library Tower within the imperial inner court and cultivated a formidable set of arts. He had long set his sights on this item. After several rounds of deduction and verification, he determined that it had been written by a sword-dao master skilled in calligraphy.
The four words "Heaven-Supporting Jun Sword" upon the bamboo slip contained that master's pure Sword Intent. So long as later students followed its guidance, they could inherit this supreme art.
The item had been stored in the treasury all this time. When Su Che sought an introductory Sword Cultivation text, that elder considered the matter from every angle and decided this was the most suitable one. He then used his means to send it out.
Su Che let out a long breath, calming his heart and steadying his mind. His left hand gripped the bamboo slip while his right rested lightly atop the Sword Case.
His spiritual platform was clear and bright, and the spirit weapon within the Sword Case trembled with delight.
A stream of Sword Qi slowly flowed up his arm and entered his body, finally vanishing between his brows.
The four words Heaven-Supporting Jun Sword also seemed to solidify in the deepest recesses of Su Che's sea of consciousness.