After completing his breakthrough, Tang Xuan entered his Spiritual Sea of Consciousness with a thought. The Clear Sky Hammer and Godslayer Sword hovered within it, still as calm as ever despite having absorbed vast amounts of divine power. Tang Xuan slowly approached his two martial souls, wanting to examine them closely. But just as he reached them, a mysterious force suddenly appeared, enveloped him, and drew him into a strange space. When Tang Xuan opened his eyes, he saw endless darkness, with countless glimmers shining in the distance like densely scattered stars. This place felt hollow, utterly devoid of life. Yet for some reason, he found it faintly familiar.
He felt as though he were truly within this space, yet also like an observer excluded from it. Nothing here had anything to do with him, and his arrival had changed nothing. He stood in the void, but it felt no different from standing on solid ground. Just as he was about to explore, the darkness before him suddenly changed. A series of images began to appear.
The images began in a space identical to this one. An object of unknown substance floated there, drifting alone for an unknowable length of time. Time wore away at it, and it collided with other objects as it drifted. Its edges and corners gradually eroded, giving it a definite shape until it became a rectangle. The more Tang Xuan looked at it, the more he thought it bore a faint resemblance to a sword. Could this be a sword embryo? Let's call it that for now.
The sword embryo continued drifting through the space, traveling an unknown distance over an unknown span of time. Then, one day, thunder roared through that space, and light blazed in every direction. The sword embryo encountered a mass