Shared Flying Swords

Hu Mang, who had been startled by the "advanced lightning-element Dao arts," was soon dropped off at the expressway exit. The expressway was one of the few areas in blessed-land cities where high-altitude flight was permitted.

Flying Law Artifacts of all kinds often traveled back and forth along the expressway, most of them flying boats and flying shuttles. Flying swords were rarely seen. There was no helping it: one careless moment on one of those things, and both rider and sword could perish. They also stabbed people something fierce, so many blessed-land cities restricted them from using expressways.

Still, he had heard that the "speed restrictions on flying swords" would soon be lifted. He had no idea whether it was true.

Hu Mang glanced at his Spirit Messenger and saw no message from his mother. Most likely, she had gone to the market to buy vegetables.

And knowing his mother, once she entered that single-track mode, she would most likely forget to pick up her boy.

As for that convenient father of his, whose voice he had heard but whose face he had never seen, Hu Mang figured he probably couldn't come out.

"I've been away for less than five years, and this blessed land has really changed."

Hu Mang muttered to himself.

Before he had left Heavenly Gate, the last echoes of the "great infrastructure era" had still lingered here. But even those last echoes had wrought changes on the scale of remaking heaven and earth upon this blessed-land city—or rather, this new sacred land that had only broken through the "trillion-spirit threshold" two years ago.

The blue sky was shrouded in "golden clouds of Spiritual Qi," with dragon and tiger Dao patterns roaming through them from time to time.

Parts of the earth veins had "turned to jade marrow," and golden rivers of light formed from Spiritual Qi could be seen in the city's core.

The manifestations of one new sect after another-oh, right, "new sect" was no longer fashionable; they should be called "Spirit Vein enterprises" now-roared and bellowed. The larger an enterprise's industrial group, the taller its emblem stood.

The expressway bus route he had just traveled on was one thread in a transportation network stretching in every direction. Spirit materials, ores, pill ingredients, and spirit-mechanism creations flowed through it day and night, and trade never ceased, providing the foundation for the circulation of a trillion-scale spirit value.

Hu Mang took out his industrial-grade detector and scanned again.

64

Thunderclap Tier, huh.

Hu Mang carefully sensed his surroundings. Sure enough, amid the ebb and flow of Spiritual Qi in all directions, he caught a faint trace of a deep, weighty thunderous Dao resonance.

Of course, it might not have all been the workings of heaven and earth. The expressway behind him might simply have been too noisy.

The high-grade Spiritual Qi here, however, was firmly absorbed and sealed in by the city-wide grand formation, then transmitted to the major sect districts, commercial districts, and even residential districts. There was practically no chance of picking up any scraps.

In Heavenly Gate's official words: the laws were strict, Spiritual Qi belonged to the public, and the old-era practices of secretly diverting its flow, scavenging it in the wild, and covertly stealing earth Qi had been stamped out completely. Since the beginning of the new era, the new Heavenly Gate had been orderly and full of inexhaustible life.

On many levels, they were quite right.

"But how do I get back?"

Hu Mang weighed taking a "private flying shuttle" against continuing on a "city public flood dragon," then decisively chose the "subway"-the underground iron dragon vein.

When he had left, Line 1 had yet to open. By the time he returned, he had heard there were eleven lines.

He was quite interested in this artificial dragon vein, which altered the flow of spiritual power through an area, turned every station where it stopped into a "spiritual power node" that gathered people, wealth, and Spiritual Qi, and caused three to five Spirit Veins to develop along its route.

But after only a couple of steps, he abandoned the idea.

A "public facility" had caught his attention.

It was a row of sword-case-like things mounted by the roadside, with spirit light flickering faintly around them.

A sign beside them clearly explained what they were for.

"Shared flying swords. Flying swords... can be shared?"

Hu Mang's eyes bulged, and he was stunned.

"According to ancient accounts, flying swords were companions bound to ancient cultivators by life itself. Sharing... that's going way too far, way too far."

Half skeptical, Hu Mang walked up to a case and reached in. The next moment, he drew out a flying sword blazing with light.

The sword was about seven feet long, its blade tempered with pale cyan spirit patterns. Its edge was blunt and its Sha power sealed, leaving it only the ability to ride the wind and float in the air.

"It really is a flying sword!"

Sensing the spirit light on the blade, Hu Mang was even more surprised.

Flying swords were different from ordinary Law Artifacts. Not every sword-shaped Law Artifact could be called a flying sword.

Only one that possessed "spirituality" of its own could be called a flying sword.

Ordinary Law Artifacts came in low, middle, and high grades, and could only develop spirituality after sufficient time spent nurturing and refining them. Before the cultivation industrial age began, this ancient method generally took over a decade, or even several decades.

Only when its spirituality reached perfection and a spark of spirit light blossomed could mortal iron become divine essence and ascend to a Spirit Artifact.

But flying swords were Spirit Artifacts from birth!

That meant Heavenly Gate had already mastered a method of mass-producing flying swords.

And for a behemoth like Heavenly Gate, anything that could be mass-produced was bound to become as common as dirt.

Hu Mang kept the nearly stagnant spiritual power inside him under control and laboriously drew out a wisp of Spiritual Qi, sending it into the blade.

The first thing he sensed was something like a "lock."

"Ancient flying swords needed Blood-Drip Recognition. This kind seems to need unlocking?"

And in his perception, there seemed to be several words on the "lock"-

"Blunt edge," "low-speed cruise," "altitude and airspace restriction," "route guidance (works with online maps)," "Spirit Messenger unlock."

Hu Mang looked at the guard. Sure enough, as he drew the sword, spirit light flickered around it, faintly echoing the "guidance spirit circuits" laid in the ground. A QR code then popped up automatically.

After fumbling through the scan, he discovered he also had to register as a member and pay a deposit of 100 spirit coins. Only after completing the registration did the name of the shared flying sword's manufacturer appear: Azure Edge Spirit Enterprise.

Although it was only a low-grade Spirit Artifact, it was just right for someone as badly injured as Hu Mang.

If the flying sword's grade had been even a little higher, he basically wouldn't have been able to control it at his current level, equivalent to the fifth or sixth layer of Qi refinement.

As it turned out, the shared flying sword truly lived up to its status as a sharing-grade Spirit Artifact. Men, women, old and young could all use it, and it flew quite steadily, without any of the aggressively sharp Sha Qi of "ancient-method flying swords." The spirit light formed an oval egg around him, and it was damnably springy, too.

As for the speed, watching the flying shuttles and flying ships continually "overtake" him left Hu Mang speechless for a moment.

In fact, it was so slow that he grew bored out of his mind and even had time to check his phone. Sure enough, he found a message from his mother.

"My sweet boy, where are you now? I'll come pick you up!" -Lady Hu

After reporting his location to his mother, Hu Mang steered the sword light around and headed straight onto Riverheart Isle Road.

As soon as he arrived, the place became familiar.

The reason was simple: back when he went to cultivate at the Southern Capital Academy, he had traveled this road often.

But soon, Hu Mang frowned again and switched out of "sword-riding mode." He frowned as he landed, a flash of pain crossing his face.

Drawing on his past experience, he soon caught traces of Sha Qi, mixed with a peculiar hint of Yao Qi.

At the bend at the end of the street, a demon resembling both an ox and a horse was charging about.

The ox demon was far stockier than an ordinary Demon Beast, with broad, raised shoulders and a thick back. Coarse, dense, tough dark-brown hair covered its body, and its hide was rough and hard as old leather. Layers of knotted muscle bulged and strained, its brute strength radiating freely outward.

More striking still, its bovine eyes were pitch-black and emitted a heart-stopping red glow.

"Someone's raising cattle in the city?"

"A Foundation Establishment Realm demon? But why does something feel off?"

Pedestrians in the street broke into hysterical screams. Lights flashed wildly everywhere. Hu Mang saw a female cultivator take some kind of talisman from her bag and activate it, only to run headfirst into a wall. He also saw several male cultivators try to intercept the ox demon, only to be sent flying by its horns with ease. Then he saw a flash of golden light as a Golden Core cultivator directly broke through the city's high-altitude flight restriction and disappeared into the sky.

A Foundation Establishment Realm demon had scared off a Golden Core cultivator?!

The ox demon hadn't frightened Hu Mang, but this sight clearly left an overseas country bumpkin like him stunned for a moment.

"An artificial demon has entered Riverheart Isle Street. Cultivators in the vicinity, please evacuate as quickly as possible. Evacuate as quickly as possible..."

By the time he came to his senses, the only sounds were the Demon Suppression Bureau's loudspeaker on this street and the ox demon's heavy breathing, laden with Sha Qi.

Hu Mang narrowed his eyes, squeezing folds from his eyelids all the way to the bridge of his nose. On a beauty's face they would have been called cat whiskers, but on his they should have been called scar lines.

His right foot shot out even faster than those folds, turning into a whipping shadow, its tip daubed with a streak of bloody light.

With a crisp smack, he kicked the thick-skinned ox demon opposite him, snapping its neck back and drawing a piercing scream of agony.

Hu Mang's face went pale at the same time, more than half the Law Power he could squeeze out of his body drained away in an instant.

But ferocity suppressed the turbid Qi. Rather than retreat, Hu Mang pressed forward, lowering his head and bending his legs. His body contracted and surged in, his head coming to rest directly beneath the ox demon's neck. The breath attack that came naturally to Foundation Establishment Realm demons immediately lost its target.

From the ox demon's perspective, the fellow before it suddenly vanished from sight. Before it could spread its divine sense, both right hooves abruptly turned, and two small pits appeared in the formerly solid concrete road.

Hu Mang released his Law Seals, his fierce gaze shifting from the exposed hollows behind the ox demon's knees to its waist. His expression changed, and his heel went from a stamp to a thrust as he drove beneath it like a great spear. His gaze moved from its knees to its belly, and with a sudden iron mountain lean, he slammed half his body viciously into the soft part of its abdomen, smashing both himself and the ox to the ground.

Hu Mang felt his Qi and Blood surge chaotically through his body, his face flushing red and paling several times. But he immediately rolled over and got back on top, his wolfhound-like gaze sweeping across the thick blood vessels in the demon's neck. Forcing down the itch deep in his heart, he drove his iron elbow hard against its thick ox neck while his other hand gripped its throat in a death lock.

The ox demon struggled several times, its tremendous strength gradually subsiding. With a low roar, it swiftly took human form. To his surprise, it was a lean male cultivator, with a pair of black-framed glasses still perched on his pale face.