The man on the stone couch had been dead for many years. His belt, made from Nether Flood Dragon sinew, had rotted through completely and broken into several pieces on the couch, yet his body had never decayed. Beneath his tattered Heavenly Silkworm Garment, it was covered in gashes smeared with old bloodstains as black as ink. It looked rather eerie.
Whether at Green Mountain, Central Province, Great Marsh, or elsewhere, the first step in cultivation was always to temper the body and refine qi. The higher one's cultivation realm, the stronger one's body became. The bodies of the Green Mountain Sect's Wuzhang Realm disciples, for instance, could be called harder than steel. But as the saying went, when a person died, their Dao vanished. Without any special treatment, this man's body had remained uncorrupted for over twenty years after his death. This was exceedingly rare. There was no telling just how high his cultivation realm had been before he died.
Without taking the Iron Sword off his back, Jing Jiu extended a finger and traced dozens of invisible lines around the cave abode, using the Heaven-Bearing Sword Technique to lay down a small sword formation. Because his cultivation realm was somewhat low, and because of his innate incompatibility with the Heaven-Bearing Sword, this sword formation was naturally nowhere near the one Liu Ci had laid down in the Skin-Shedding House on Yunmeng Mountain, but it was sturdy enough.
Once he had finished, he sat down on the meditation cushion and rested his hands quietly on his knees. His left hand loosened slightly, opening a tiny gap between his fingers. A pale golden ray of light spilled through the gap and tried to make its way out of the cave, only to be trapped by the sword formation.
This strand