"Commandant, I'm sorry. That Li Laiheng was simply too cunning. He slipped away without a sound, and I failed to keep an eye on him..."
Hou Niao patted his shoulder. "You'd just lost your flying sword. It's normal for your mind to be unsettled. Perhaps I acted too quickly and didn't give you time to recover?"
Li Shipeng looked excited. "Commandant, you killed three men in thirty breaths. Which of those so-called stars of this or that could manage that? I admit I was so engrossed at first that I didn't even notice that bastard greasing his soles and slipping away."
"Your Purple Mansion is empty?"
Li Shipeng was not dejected. "Empty, but it doesn't matter. I'll just spend another few years, or a few decades, refining a new one."
Hou Niao's words carried a deeper meaning. "When the old man at the frontier lost his horse, who could say it wasn't a blessing? If you really can refine another, learning the Body Sword Technique might not be out of the question."
Li Shipeng could not hide his excitement. His earlier use of the Soul-Entrusting Mechanism-Binding Guide had been out of helplessness, but the second time, when he stopped the Zhou Sect Daoist, he had done it deliberately. He had suddenly remembered why the Commandant had said he could not practice the Body Sword Technique: his flying sword had already developed a sword spirit. What if he completely abandoned his previous flying sword and refined a new one?
The importance of a flying sword to a sword cultivator went without saying. Historical experience told him that fewer than thirty percent of sword cultivators who lost their flying swords in battle could take them up again. It was far more difficult than refining one from the remains of the original sword,