He went up another three floors. Having already decided what sword techniques to choose, he scarcely hesitated.
Since ancient times, there had been many ways to classify the sword. One rather lofty classification, for instance, was sword gall, sword intent, sword heart, sword momentum, and sword soul!
There was also a more straightforward classification. When describing a swordsman's technique, for instance, one might praise his command of movement and stillness, his unfathomable interplay of feints and substance, his shifts between lightness and weight, his union of speed and slowness, or his balance of hardness and softness.
Speed and slowness, hardness and softness, lightness and weight, feints and substance, movement and stillness... when a swordsman grasped the essence of all these contradictory states of swordplay and blended them together, he was a master through and through.
The sword techniques Hou Niao had studied before were all direct and unsurpassed in their ferocity: fast, hard, heavy, substantial, and moving!
Now, to improve himself, he had to approach the sword from its other side: slow, soft, light, insubstantial, and still!
The fierce, direct approach of the first level was easy to learn: sword gall in hand, one pressed forward without hesitation. But these aspects of the second level were difficult indeed. They required long years of polishing, of learning how to bring out these opposite aspects of the sword in combat.
How could he control the battlefield and its tempo? How could he disrupt an opponent's attacks through changes of rhythm, rather than stupidly being slow, light, and soft and getting beaten into a pig's head?
He selected another dozen or so sword manuals on these subjects and put them into his bag. It was not that he was greedy, but that he might be unable to return for some time.
Carrying these