After the incident with the Purple Blood Soft Sword, Linley did not touch it again.
He wound the soft sword around his waist and wrapped another layer of thick cloth around its blade. Unless he truly needed it, he would not draw it.
The heavy sword Edgeless, however, was in his hands every day.
Life in the mountains grew quiet again.
Haeru's injuries healed quickly.
For the first few days, it could only lie beneath a tree and rest. Every day, Bebe would run over to taunt it, and Haeru would rise with a low growl and chase after him, dragging its not yet fully healed body along.
After a dozen or so times, Haeru could already catch up with Bebe in the woods.
Some time later, Bebe began using trees and rock faces to change direction, while Haeru simply smashed through the trunks blocking its path. The two figures, one black and one gray, constantly crossed paths in the mountain forests, neither willing to admit it was a step slower.
Linley did not stop them.
He only checked their claws and legs separately when the two beasts returned.
Haeru never shied away, either.
This proud magical beast at the peak of level nine gradually accepted the Master-Servant Contract, as well as its two other companions in the group. It still disliked Bebe, but when Bebe charged into dangerous territory, it would now block off one escape route in advance.
After Bebe noticed, his curses grew even fiercer.
Haeru merely turned its head aside, as though it had done nothing at all.
Linley never stopped training.
He used Edgeless to cleave rocks.
Without battle qi, relying solely on his physical strength.
One stroke fell, and the rock split.
With battle qi added, the rock would burst apart from the middle.
Then he reduced his strength and swung again.
He could not use too much force.
Too much, and the sword's edge would shatter the rock prematurely.
He could not use too little force.
Too little, and he would be unable to unleash it fully at the instant of contact.
Linley constantly adjusted the sequence in which he exerted force through his wrists, waist, and legs.
Edgeless fell again and again.
The cracks in the rocks grew ever denser, yet not a single rock was truly smashed apart.
Doehring stood beside him and watched, never pointing out each mistake for him.
"A heavy sword isn't about putting all your strength onto the blade," Doehring occasionally said. "You must let the sword bear your strength, and let your strength follow the sword as it falls."
Linley nodded and kept swinging.
By day, he practiced the sword.
At night, he cultivated Dragonblood Battle Qi and mageforce.
When he encountered magical beasts, he tested the results of his training in battle.
Seventh-level magical beasts could only help Linley familiarize himself with variations in his sword moves. Eighth-level magical beasts could force him to Dragonform. As for level nine magical beasts, Linley still would not provoke them lightly unless Haeru and Bebe both joined the fight.
He no longer used the Eightfold Gravity Spell alongside his fists and feet to forcibly suppress his opponents.
That battle had already served its purpose.
In every battle that followed, Linley tried to use only his warrior strength and heavy sword.
He wanted to know just how far he could go with his sword alone.
Deep in a valley, an eighth-level Scarlet-Armored Magical Bear swung its enormous paw.
Linley did not retreat.
Edgeless stood upright before him.
The bear's paw slammed down.
Linley's arms sank as the blade blocked the enormous paw.
The ground shook violently, and loose stones bounced up beside his feet.
The Scarlet-Armored Magical Bear growled and pressed harder, driving Linley's legs into the soil.
The next instant, Linley turned his wrists.
Rather than meeting the bear's paw head-on, Edgeless followed its tremendous force and guided it aside.
The Scarlet-Armored Magical Bear immediately lost its balance.
Linley stepped forward.
The sword's edge swept along the edge of the bear's paw, and the blade unleashed an abrupt burst of power at the instant of contact.
Boom!
The Scarlet-Armored Magical Bear's forearm was knocked aside, and its massive body staggered backward.
Linley spun, sweeping his heavy sword up from below.
Edgeless struck the magical bear's lower jaw.
The Scarlet-Armored Magical Bear was knocked off the ground and slammed heavily into the mountain wall behind it.
Linley did not pursue it.
He stood where he was, looking at Edgeless in his hands.
In that last strike, he had neither drawn on the power of the earth nor used a gravity spell.
The Scarlet-Armored Magical Bear was stronger and heavier than he was. In a head-on collision, he could not possibly have held the advantage.
Yet at the instant the sword's edge made contact, he had concentrated all his strength into a single point and used his opponent's force to counterattack.
There had been no unnecessary vibrations.
No wasted strength.
It was as though Edgeless's weight had vanished.
Yet it was also as though the weight of the entire valley had descended in that one strike.
Doehring looked at Linley and smiled.
"Only now have you truly mastered Wielding Heavy Weapons as Though They Were Light."
Linley lowered his head and looked at the blade.
He said nothing, only tightening his grip on the hilt again.
Over the past year, he had swung his sword no fewer than a hundred thousand times.
Not one of those strikes had been as clean as the one just now.
Yet every strike had brought him closer to this moment.
Linley walked over to the Scarlet-Armored Magical Bear.
The magical bear was not dead. Its lower jawbone had merely cracked, and it lay on the ground, panting softly. Linley did not deliver a finishing blow. He turned and left the valley.
"Boss, you're not killing it?" Bebe leaped down from a tree.
"It can't fight anymore," Linley said.
Haeru gave a low growl.
Bebe translated, "Haeru says you don't like beating magical beasts to death as much as you used to."
Linley glanced at Haeru. "If I don't have to kill them, I won't."
Haeru flicked its tail and did not argue.
Another three months passed.
Linley sat cross-legged inside the cave.
Dragonblood Battle Qi circulated continuously through his meridians before flowing into his dantian. His battle qi was much more condensed than a year ago, and his once somewhat empty dantian was now filled with a layer of deep azure battle qi.
That layer of battle qi kept revolving.
Once.
Twice.
Ten times.
Linley's body suddenly shuddered.
The battle qi in his dantian abruptly contracted, then burst outward.
Deep azure battle qi surged through his entire body. His bones, muscles, and blood all gave off deep, rumbling vibrations. Stirred by this power, his Dragonblood Warrior bloodline caused fine, densely packed azure-black dragon scales to emerge on his skin.
He had not Dragonformed.
He was simply sitting there, yet his aura was already noticeably stronger than before.
Mid-eighth level.
Linley opened his eyes.
The invisible pressure of his aura forced tiny cracks into the cave's stone walls.
He stood and reached for Edgeless.
The muscles in his arms naturally tightened. Deep azure battle qi flowed through the hilt, and the heavy sword gave a low hum.
"Mid-eighth-level warrior." Sensing Linley's aura, Doehring nodded. "The stronger the Dragonblood Warrior bloodline becomes, the harder subsequent breakthroughs will be. Reaching the middle stage from the early stage in a year is already quite good."
"It's still not enough," Linley said.
Doehring raised an eyebrow. "Are you planning to keep staying here?"
Linley did not answer.
He walked out of the cave and gazed into the distance.
The Mountain Range of Magical Beasts remained vast, its unbroken peaks stretching to the limits of his vision. The magical beasts, rocks, streams, and wind here had accompanied him for a long time.
But his training could not remain in the mountains forever.
He needed to return to the human world.
He needed to learn how Wharton was doing, catch up on news from the outside world, and seek battles and trials better suited to him.
"We're getting ready to leave the mountains," Linley said.
Bebe immediately jumped down from a branch. "We're finally leaving?"
Haeru also stood and shook out its black fur. It had fully recovered, and its bearing was steadier than when it had first signed the contract.
Linley nodded.
"We leave first thing tomorrow morning."
"Where to?" Bebe asked.
"We'll leave the Mountain Range of Magical Beasts first, then find somewhere to ask for news."
Linley did not immediately name their next destination. They had spent too long training hard in the mountains, and he knew nothing of the changes in the outside world over the past year.
After leaving the mountains, the most important thing was not to find people to fight, but to first learn the situation on the continent.
He returned to the cave and strapped Edgeless to his back.
The Purple Blood Soft Sword was still wound around his waist, now secured by two more sword straps than before. Linley checked the hilt, then moved his hand away.
Doehring saw this.
"Still worried about it?"
"I'll be careful," Linley said.
"Until you understand that baleful aura, don't take the initiative to probe it."
"I'll remember."
Linley took several sets of clean clothes, some Magic Crystal Cores, and dry rations from his interspatial ring. He left the stone material he no longer needed in the cave, taking only a palm-sized gray stone.
It was the stone he had used most often for sword practice over the past year.
Its surface was covered in sword marks, yet it had never broken apart.
Linley put it into his interspatial ring.
Bebe glanced at the stone and curled his lip. "Boss, you're even taking a rock?"
"As a reminder."
"Will you come back someday?"
Linley looked outside the cave.
"Yes."
He did not say when.
Early the next morning, Linley, Bebe, Haeru, and Doehring headed south along the edge of the mountain range.
Linley did not look back again. Only after traveling several dozen li did he stop.
He turned to gaze at the mountains behind him.
The mountain range that had plunged him into life-and-death crises several times had, without his realizing it, become part of his training.
Bebe stood on his shoulder.
Haeru followed quietly behind him.
Doehring stood beside Linley, looking up at the gradually brightening sky in the distance.
"Let's go," Linley said.
He turned and walked toward the human world beyond the Mountain Range of Magical Beasts.
This period of arduous training was over.