As a teacher, Su Wen feared nothing more than students having no questions. Since Li Yu was willing to ask on his own initiative, he was naturally happy to answer.
"That's a good habit you have-ask when you don't understand. Many adult students feel that asking questions is embarrassing, but it's actually what we most want to see. Every question we answer means one less chance of you making a mistake on an exam, and a better chance of graduating."
Su Wen spoke with feeling. Many students thought that understanding everything their teachers covered in class was enough to graduate. In reality, however, what teachers taught in class was only the most basic foundation. Much of their knowledge had to be thought through and integrated on their own, and that process would bring up one new question after another.
Resolving the questions that arose while thinking, then using that knowledge to build a framework of their own, was the proper way to learn.
Li Yu, however, did not find asking questions embarrassing at all. Back on Hanging Moon Peak, outer disciples like him had to privately offer a tuition gift before they could ask elders such as Wu Su questions. Now that he had this opportunity, he wished he could ask every question he had accumulated over his entire life.
Su Wen took the Taiqing Mystic Sect's Formless Sword Qi. At first, he paid it little mind, but after reading through it once, he let out a startled sound.
Then a divine gleam lit up in his eyes. He began drawing more processing power from his main body and read it a second time, from beginning to end, with greater care.
After reading it twice, Su Wen closed his eyes. His body suddenly split from one into two, two into three, three into six, and six into twelve.
A full twelve Su Wens appeared in the classroom, each with an illusory sword image floating above his head.
The sword images varied in color and shape. Just as Li Yu tried to get a clearer look, all twelve sword images suddenly vanished without a trace, along with Su Wen's figures.
Li Yu could not help glancing at the clock on the wall. Class was not over yet, so why had the teacher disappeared?
"Marvelous!"
Su Wen's voice abruptly rang out beside Li Yu's ear, startling him so badly that he shuddered all over and nearly lost cohesion in his divine sense and logged off.
At that moment, Li Yu saw Su Wen's figures reappear one after another in their original positions. The sword images above their heads also turned from illusory to solid, as though they had become twelve real swords.
As Su Wen formed a sword seal with his hands, the blades above his head rotated and arranged themselves into a sphere near the classroom ceiling.
Twelve swords were still too few, leaving many gaps in the sphere. But as the sword seal activated again, each sword began splitting repeatedly, filling every gap in the blink of an eye.
"Swords complete, formation unite!"
At Su Wen's command, the sword sphere began contracting toward a single point at its center. In an instant, it unfolded into a dazzling display of fireworks, sending multicolored radiance bursting out in every direction.
Seeing such a beautiful sight, Li Yu could not help applauding.
Su Wen's expression, however, darkened. He reached out to draw more processing power from his main body while activating the classroom's emergency protective restrictions.
In an instant, an invisible, transparent shield appeared out of thin air around Li Yu's seat, protecting his entire body.
One ray of the erupting colored radiance struck the transparent shield, making it suddenly cave inward.
In the end, the shield held. Yet that ray of colored radiance had already reached the tip of Li Yu's nose.
At this point, even someone as slow on the uptake as Li Yu knew something was wrong.
He looked toward Su Wen, only to see his teacher step outside the protective shield and split into one divine-sense avatar after another. They instantly appeared before the erupting rays of colored radiance and took the blows directly with their bodies.
After the colored radiance sank into each Su Wen's body, thoughtful expressions appeared on their faces, as though they were experiencing each ray in turn.
Then, under Li Yu's astonished gaze, those Su Wens were assimilated into the same colors as the radiance and collapsed where they stood.
The colored radiance that had originally erupted, however, seemed to be extinguished along with them.
Before long, Li Yu was the only person left in the classroom.
Su Wen had been wiped out by the swords he himself had conjured.
Just as Li Yu sat there at a loss, the classroom door suddenly opened, and an anxious-looking Meng Wanzhu flew inside. Seeing Li Yu within the protective shield, she breathed a sigh of relief and asked, "Why was emergency protection mode activated? This isn't a practical class, is it? Where's Teacher Su?"
Although the students descended into Ziyuan Palace as divine sense, any loss would still cause some damage to their minds. For her, as their counselor, that would be a dereliction of duty.
That was why, during potentially dangerous practical classes, protection mode would generally be activated in advance. If an accident occurred, they would rather let the experiment fail than allow a student's divine sense to be harmed.
But today's class in Li Yu's classroom had been an ordinary lecture. So after Su Wen forcibly activated protection mode, the feedback mechanism instantly alerted Meng Wanzhu, prompting her to rush over and see what had happened.
Just as Li Yu was wondering how to answer, a wisp of ethereal cloudlight lit up on the lectern, and Su Wen materialized in his dark suit and blue tie. "There was a small problem. I'll write you a report after class."
Hearing Su Wen's explanation, Meng Wanzhu nodded. "Then I won't interrupt your class any further."
"Teacher, what just happened?" Li Yu pointed at the ceiling. The dazzling colored radiance that had scattered in all directions had left a deep impression on him.
"This sword art of yours seems to be a new path to the Great Vehicle, and half of it consists of formations. After reading it, I ran some calculations and found that I could make it work using the Divine Sense Avatar technique, so I couldn't resist trying it. Who would have thought? I still underestimated a heavenly-tier cultivation method."
Su Wen made no attempt to conceal anything. As he spoke, the content of that day's lecture disappeared from the electronic screen behind him, replaced by the words "Taiqing Mystic Sect's Formless Sword Qi."
"Teacher, does that confirm it's a heavenly-tier cultivation method?" Li Yu raised his hand to ask.
The Taiqing Mystic Sect's Formless Sword Qi he had obtained from the Shaoqing Sword had twelve levels in total. Only at Foundation Establishment could one begin practicing it, and its highest level reached Nascent Soul. The outline did mention that forming a primordial spirit through this sword art required wielding the Taiqing Sword God and uniting man and sword.
As for Qin Jian's claim about reducing the primordial cosmos to motes of dust with a single sword strike, there was nothing of the sort in the sword art itself. Perhaps the predecessors of the Laoshan Sword Sect had said it to boast about their own sword art.
"The framework of a heavenly-tier cultivation method is different from other methods, especially this sword art. When I manifested twelve sword intents and tried to combine them into a Sword Formation, I actually couldn't control it." Su Wen snapped his fingers, and the process of his twelve selves manifesting sword intents appeared on the electronic screen behind him.
Seeing that Li Yu still looked completely bewildered, he continued, "The Thousand Mechanisms Evolution I practice is the most complex heavenly-tier cultivation method in the Galactic Federation. Everyone who can
master it possesses divine sense that ranks near the very top of their cultivation realm. Precisely because of that, comprehending methods below the heavenly tier is effortless for us. We can even grasp them thoroughly in the blink of an eye, extract their essence, and integrate it into our own framework."
"Although I can thoroughly comprehend this sword art too, there are many crucial operations that even I'm not completely confident I can control. That's why I wanted to test it through practice. I never expected it to explode outright when I combined the Sword Formation."
"That means this sword art is definitely a heavenly-tier cultivation method, because only the paths of heavenly-tier cultivation methods lie beyond the control of Thousand Mechanisms Evolution."
Before you continue