Character Deciphering meant deciphering swords.
Aside from Stored Swords, this was the swordsmanship Lü Sword Nine had focused on teaching Xu Taiping in his identity as Recluse Sansan.
The characters in those essays he had made Xu Taiping copy onto the cliff face encompassed nearly every sword technique in the world. Once he cultivated it to great completion, whenever a sword cultivator attacked Xu Taiping, their sword strikes would transform into individual characters in his eyes.
Thus, Character Deciphering meant deciphering swords.
And according to Xu Taiping's experience dismantling sword moves, to unravel the characters formed by a sword cultivator's techniques, he only needed to trace their strokes with a blade or sword, copying them out again.
It sounded very simple, but doing it was extraordinarily difficult.
For as long as the opponent was different, even the same sword move would produce vastly different handwriting.
The difference from the verses Xu Taiping had originally copied was greater still.
This meant that not only did Xu Taiping have to perceive his opponent's sword moves as individual characters without the slightest error the instant they struck,
he also had to reproduce these characters he had never copied before, stroke by stroke, without a single mistake.
Had there been only a few dozen characters, that would have been one thing.
But Su Chan's current sword strike was incomparably intricate and profound, comprising as many as three hundred characters.
The difficulty Xu Taiping faced in deciphering them was therefore easy to imagine.
Yet after only an instant's hesitation, the astonishment in Xu Taiping's eyes was covered by the golden flame spilling from his Left-Eye Lotus Pupil.
Then, as a surging pulse of qi and blood spread from his body, Xu Taiping suddenly unleashed a furious roar with Overlord Power.
After the Lotus Eye's Power