He had guessed before that this was a shortcut. Now it had finally been confirmed—it truly was.
Unfortunately, he could not immediately descend the mountain to slay demons. His cultivation was not high enough.
He had to enter the Venerable realm as soon as possible.
He came to the open space at the center of the courtyard, on the other side of the flowerbeds.
Drawing his sword from its sheath, he slowly swung it. True Essence circulated through his body along with the sword's movements, forming a strange cycle.
As Chu Zhiyuan wielded his sword, he split his focus in two.
On one side, he watched the sword movements, sensing the longsword's cuts and turns through the air, carefully feeling the currents brushing past its edge.
On the other, he attended to the flow of True Essence, feeling the connection between its speed of circulation and the sword movements.
He soon discovered the profundity of the Heavenly Sword Secret Scripture.
The speed of the sword movements was not directly proportional to the speed at which True Essence circulated.
It was not that faster sword movements made True Essence flow faster, nor that slower sword movements made it flow faster.
Nor was there some particular proper speed that would make True Essence flow more quickly.
What determined the circulation speed of True Essence was not the speed of the sword movements, but their posture and rhythm.
The more precise the sword movements, the faster True Essence circulated.
This precision did not mean making them exactly identical to the six sword forms recorded in the Heavenly Sword Secret Scripture. It meant finding sword movements suited to oneself.
For one sword form, the scripture required an upward diagonal thrust at forty-five degrees. Yet in actual practice, a forty-five-degree upward thrust was not the