"Why did every strike with a thirty-six-hundred-pound heavy sword have to be so heavy?"
Linley lowered his head to look at Edgeless.
A heavy sword was heavy to begin with.
To make it faster, he needed greater strength and more battle qi. To make it more powerful, he likewise had to pour all his strength into the sword. For nearly a year, Linley had trained this way.
But since Doehring had asked, that meant there was something he had yet to see.
Linley thought for a moment, then said, "If I don't keep applying force, Edgeless will slow down."
"Then keep practicing." Doehring stroked his white beard without saying whether he was right or wrong. "Tell me when you find a new answer."
Linley nodded and raised Edgeless again.
Whoosh!
The heavy sword swept sideways, and a tree ahead, so thick it would take two people to encircle it, shook violently. Before the blade even touched the trunk, the wind it stirred up tore away large patches of bark.
Linley immediately drew back his sword.
That strike had still been heavy.
Over the following days, the three continued north.
Linley traveled only a few miles each day. He practiced with the heavy sword in the early morning, cultivated wind and earth magic in the afternoon, and meditated after nightfall. Doehring completely suppressed his divine aura and spent most of his time simply watching from the side.
Only when Linley made an obvious mistake did he offer guidance.
"Your left shoulder is too high."
"The blade hasn't turned yet, but you've already wasted battle qi."
"Your footing is too rigid. The sword being heavy doesn't mean you have to turn into a rock too."
Just one sentence each time.
As for how to correct it, Doehring never said.
Linley could only try again and again.
On the third day, Doehring used earth magic to raise twenty stone pillars in a clearing. Each was only as thick as an arm, with less than two meters between them.
"Pass through them," Doehring said. "You mustn't break any pillars."
Linley glanced at Edgeless in his hand. "With this?"
"Why else would I put up these pillars?"
Linley asked no more questions and charged in with his sword.
Edgeless was too long, and too heavy. Linley had barely turned when the blade grazed a pillar on his right.
Crack!
The pillar snapped outright.
Linley stopped and started over.
On his second attempt, he deliberately held back his strength, but his speed dropped. He had passed only five pillars when Bebe pounced from overhead, swiping a claw at the back of his head.
Linley twisted aside to dodge, and Edgeless's hilt broke another pillar.
Bebe landed atop a pillar ahead and swished his tail. "Boss, this won't do. If I'd really been an enemy, I'd have bitten your neck just now."
"Again," Linley said.
After a dozen attempts in succession, more than half the pillars in the clearing had broken.
Doehring restored them with another wave of his hand.
Without resting, Linley charged back in with his sword.
One day, two days, five days.
Edgeless gradually became more nimble in Linley's hands. At first, he had to force the blade to change direction through strength. Later, he began following Edgeless's own weight as he turned and drew it back, then using the force of one strike to lead into the next.
Fewer and fewer pillars broke.
Bebe's attacks grew faster and faster too.
Sometimes he pounced from the canopy, sometimes he darted along the ground, and more often he made no sound at all. Linley had to block Bebe's claws with Edgeless while avoiding the pillars.
Another seven days passed.
Bebe pounced from behind Linley.
Linley did not look back. With a turn of his wrist, Edgeless, which had been pointing toward the ground, followed the rotation of his body and swept lightly behind him.
Clang!
Claws collided with the blade.
Bebe used the force to leap away, landing on a pillar more than ten meters off. Linley followed the impact to turn his body and passed between two pillars.
Not one of the twenty pillars had broken.
"Now you're getting somewhere," Doehring said with a smile.
But Linley shook his head. "It's still not enough."
Edgeless had indeed been more nimble than before, but he had still applied force in advance when the blade collided with Bebe's claws. Had Bebe been a real enemy rather than a sparring partner, he would already have judged the direction of Linley's attack from the force transmitted through the sword.
Nimbleness was not all he wanted.
He also wanted greater speed and suddenness.
Linley stepped back among the pillars.
His legs were already trembling slightly from the continuous training, and several bloody cracks had opened in the palm gripping his sword. Yet his movements never stopped.
During morning training at six years old, he had likewise remained standing until the end.
Physical exhaustion could not provide the answer. Only by continuing to swing his sword could he keep exposing his mistakes.
Half a month later, the three reached a mountain stream.
Water fell from above, struck the rocks, then surged onward through a narrow channel. The current itself did not look fierce, but as it continually built up between two boulders, it could sweep along rocks weighing hundreds of pounds when it burst through the gap.
Linley stood on the bank and watched for a long time.
"Building up..."
He drew Edgeless and slowly slashed down, imitating the flow of the water.
This strike still failed.
To make the blade seem light, Linley deliberately reduced his strength, only to lower both its speed and its power. Edgeless struck a boulder and left only a shallow mark.
Linley was not disappointed.
He raised his sword again.
The strength did not disappear; it built up.
Just like the water in the mountain stream. As it flowed, it did not strike the banks at every moment. Only when it burst through the narrow gap between the rocks did its accumulated force erupt completely.
Linley swung his sword again and again.
On the hundredth strike, the blade was still heavy.
On the three-hundredth strike, his sword movements began to grow light, but the descending blade lacked sufficient force.
On the seven-hundredth strike, Edgeless drifted lightly through the air. As it neared the boulder, the battle qi within Linley suddenly slipped out of control and erupted too soon. The blade veered sharply left, smashing through a small tree beside him.
Linley stopped and regulated his breathing again.
Doehring sat in the distance without offering any reminders.
Even Bebe was unusually quiet, lying on a branch as he watched Linley.
The sky gradually darkened.
Linley raised his sword again.
This time, he did not think about how to make Edgeless light, nor about how to unleash his power at the end. He simply relaxed his arms and let the blade descend along its most natural path.
Edgeless slowly swept through the air.
At the instant the blade touched the boulder, Linley exerted force through his wrists, waist, and legs simultaneously. The Dragonblood Battle Qi accumulated in his meridians also surged into the blade.
Boom!
Edgeless merely touched the boulder lightly.
Yet a series of cracking sounds came from inside the boulder, which weighed tens of thousands of pounds. Then it split apart down the middle, sending countless fragments flying in every direction.
Linley held his finishing stance, his eyes growing brighter and brighter.
Almost no strength had been wasted during that swing. Only at the instant it touched the boulder had all his power erupted at once.
"It isn't about making the heavy sword lose its weight," Linley murmured. "It's about not letting its weight burden the entire swing. The only time it truly needs to be heavy is that final instant."
Doehring stood, a smile appearing on his face. "Try again."
Linley walked toward another boulder.
Edgeless descended lightly once more.
Boom!
The second boulder exploded outright.
Over the next three days, Linley did not rush to find magical beasts to test it on. He continued practicing downward slashes, chops, rising cuts, and thrusts, incorporating this method of exerting force into every basic movement.
The heavy sword grew ever lighter and more nimble in his hands.
But that was only on the surface.
Once the blade touched its target, the accumulated force would erupt completely in a single instant, like floodwaters bursting through a dam.
Linley named this move "Rushing Thunder."
Before the thunder sounded, the lightning had already struck.
At noon on the fourth day, the three stopped to rest in a patch of woodland.
Bebe hunted down a gold-striped leopard. Linley removed its Magic Crystal Core, then cut off a hind leg and set it over the fire. The meat was only half-roasted when rhythmic tremors came through the ground.
"Something big is coming." Bebe raised his head and twitched his nose. "A fire aura. It should be a Velocidragon."
In the distance, trees fell one after another.
A Velocidragon two stories tall and nearly twenty meters long emerged from the woods. Fiery-red scales covered its entire body, and its thick limbs made the ground tremble with every step. A casual swing of its tail, nearly half its body length, shattered a nearby boulder.
The Velocidragon first glanced at the roasting meat, then looked at Linley.
One human, one black Shadowmouse, and an old man from whom it could sense no power.
It clearly thought nothing of the three.
Roar!
Flames spewed from the Velocidragon's mouth, rapidly curling the surrounding leaves.
Doehring stood and retreated several dozen meters.
Bebe was about to pounce when Linley reached out to stop him.
"I'll do it."
Bebe glanced at Edgeless in Linley's hand and immediately jumped into a nearby tree. "Boss, can you kill it in one strike?"
"I don't know," Linley said calmly. "I'll know after I try."
Carrying Edgeless, he walked toward the Velocidragon step by step.
The Velocidragon was enraged by this human's actions. With a low growl, its enormous body lunged forward, but its tail swept toward him first.
Whoosh!
The dragon's tail tore through the air with speed utterly at odds with its massive size.
Edgeless sprang up in Linley's hands.
Clang!
The heavy sword blocked the dragon's tail. Rather than meeting that force head-on, Linley borrowed its momentum and pushed off the ground with both feet, leaping diagonally in front of the Velocidragon's head.
The Velocidragon opened its enormous, bloody maw, snapping its sharp teeth toward Linley.
Linley gripped his sword with both hands.
Edgeless seemed utterly weightless as it drifted lightly down toward the top of the Velocidragon's head.
The Velocidragon did not dodge.
Its greatest confidence lay in its scales and skull. Such a feeble strike from a human could not possibly hurt it.
The blade touched the fiery-red scales.
Rushing Thunder!
The strength in Linley's waist, legs, and arms, along with his Dragonblood Battle Qi, erupted completely at the same instant.
Boom!
The Velocidragon's hardest bone, its skull, abruptly shattered. Its eyes instantly lost their luster. Its enormous body continued forward several meters on momentum before crashing to the ground.
Dust billowed in every direction.
Linley flipped over and landed, not a drop of blood staining Edgeless in his hands.
Bebe jumped down from the tree and circled the Velocidragon. "It really was one strike. Boss, this move takes much less effort than before."
Linley looked at Edgeless in his hands, and a smile appeared on his face as well.
"It's only the application of strength and battle qi," Doehring said as he approached from the distance. "You haven't drawn upon heaven and earth, nor have you touched upon the Laws. But at your current level, making a thirty-six-hundred-pound heavy sword as light as nothing, then unleashing all your strength on contact, already counts as truly entering Wielding Heavy Weapons as Though They Were Light."
"Wielding Heavy Weapons as Though They Were Light," Linley repeated softly.
This was precisely the second realm of the heavy sword recorded in the Baruch Clan's books.
Doehring glanced at him and continued, "Don't celebrate too soon. You've only just crossed the threshold. You can kill a Level Seven Velocidragon in one strike, but against a Level Nine Magical Beast, this burst of power might not break through its defenses."
"I understand."
Linley did not stop training because of his breakthrough.
That evening, as usual, he completed a thousand repetitions of basic sword moves before sitting down to meditate.
Deep in the woods, a pair of golden eyes silently watched it all.
It looked at the Velocidragon lying on the ground, then at Linley meditating cross-legged. Finally, its gaze lingered on Bebe for a moment.
The night wind swept through the treetops.
The golden eyes silently vanished.
Bebe suddenly opened his eyes and turned toward that dark stretch of woods.
There was nothing there.
Only a wisp of wind that defied reason remained, slowly dissipating from the direction against the wind.