This wildly delighted, warm reception left even Chen Heng momentarily startled, and he raised his brows slightly.
He Manzi casually tossed his ritual sword into his Sleeve Pouch and strode toward Chen Heng.
His eyes shone, and he looked ready to take Chen Heng by the arm for a long, hearty conversation.
"Senior Brother Chen, I noticed that you didn't use Sword Escape just now. Have you also reached the third Sword Dao realm?"
Upon drawing near, He Manzi bowed deeply and earnestly asked before all the cultivators:
"But I was clearly taking care to defend myself. How did you avoid my Kaiyang Fire and deliver that sword strike without a sound, slicing off the crown atop my head? I pride myself on spiritual perception no weaker than anyone else's. Why did I sense nothing?"
Seeing that He Manzi sincerely sought instruction and had let down all his guard,
Chen Heng returned his salute and answered:
"It was merely the Force of Concealing Form and Shadow, nothing particularly profound. Besides, I first seized the momentum with a Dao Art and gripped your attention. Only then could that strike succeed.
"When sword and qi mingle, the true form remains unseen, and so the form may remain hidden in the void..."
Within the Sword Dao,
there were three grades: law, art, and force.
The first through third realms wielded force; the fourth through sixth practiced art.
As for the seventh through ninth realms, they were the Spell-Operating Realm.
Art surpassed force.
And law surpassed art-
Law was the pivot of the Dao. Where neither this nor that found its counterpart was called the pivot of the Dao.
Its subtle essence was profound, minute and unmanifest, boundless and remote, wondrous beyond compare: the mother-root from which heaven and earth brought forth creation.
Those