Using one's own Sword Casket to resonate with the mountain's blades and stir Ten Thousand Swords to Sing
This was a highly efficient sword-selection method devised by the Pure Yang forebears.
Jing Qian listened intently.
Among the countless echoes of sword-song, the closer a sword's vibration frequency matched that of the Qingping Sword Casket, the more perfectly it resonated with his essence.
And all this without using divine sense or spiritual arts.
Relying solely on his ears to discern the subtle differences between thousands of ringing tones… was a feat that required extraordinary cultivation and patience.
Had his foundation not been so deep, it would've been impossible to sustain.
Fortunately, he was now the only lower-three-grade disciple in Pure Yang Heaven.
The vast Hidden Sword Mountain was entirely his playground.
He could take his time searching every inch of it at leisure, no one to disturb him.
The Qingping Sword Casket in his hands pulsed with dense, refined energy.
The ringing it emitted was clear and elegant, its tone long and resonant—music to his ears.
But the countless other swords replying in turn…
That chaotic clamor was deafening.
Still, as the hours passed, he gradually adjusted to the method.
To refine his precision, he began narrowing the Sword Casket's resonant range, focusing only on a hundred-meter radius at a time.
This way, he could devote his full attention to every nearby sword's tone and vibration.
According to the ancient guide, he marked every sword whose resonance matched the Qingping Sword Casket by over ninety percent.
There weren't many.
After climbing from the mountain's base to its thousand-zhang peak over three long days, he had found only four swords that met the criteria.
By that time, his mind was spinning, his eardrums throbbing, and twin streams of nosebleed marked his exhaustion.
When he finally reached the summit, clutching four radiant blades in his arms, a strange relief washed over him
as if he'd survived a battle to the death.
Indeed, wrestling with these countless high-ranked treasures was no easier than fighting a pack of grand demons for three days straight.
But at last, victory was his!
...
Jing Qian gazed with satisfaction at the four swords in his hands.
Each was exquisite, its weight balanced, its texture divine, its form elegant beyond words.
After seeing tens of thousands of top-tier Spiritual Constructs, his eye for swords had improved severalfold.
From any angle, these four were the crème de la crème.
After all, his Qingping Sword Casket possessed deep roots—linked to multiple Heavenly Mandates, and even housing a second-grade celestial sword embryo within it.
Low-ranked weapons didn't even dare come close!
He was confident that these four were all second-grade complete Spiritual Constructs.
Any one of them would be enough to raise his combat power to an entirely new level.
So, he sat cross-legged atop the sacred mountain
amidst the sea of blades, at the very summit of ten thousand swords
, ready for the crucial act of subduing a Spiritual Construct.
...
From the four, he chose the sword that most pleased his heart, a radiant golden masterpiece.
Grasping it by the hilt, he reversed the blade and thrust it straight toward the center of his brow, aiming for his sea of consciousness.
If the sword accepted him, it would pass unimpeded into his inner world, merging with his cultivation and becoming his life-bound Spiritual Construct, his true companion blade.
Jing Qian steadied his heart.
He was ready.
The sword did not disappoint.
Like a fish returning to water, a dragon diving into the sea, it slipped smoothly into his consciousness, leaving only the hilt in his grasp.
A surge of exhilaration hit him.
But just as he pushed further, trying to embed the sword completely,
a powerful force within his sea of consciousness rose and blocked it cold.
At the critical moment, the power of the Sumeru Dao Stele flared to life again, halting the sword right at the threshold.
Jing Qian tried again, pulling the blade out, pushing it back in, a few rhythmic motions.
But no matter how he pressed, it refused to enter.
With a helpless sigh, he tossed aside his favorite golden treasure sword.
"Ah… Brother Stele!" he said inwardly.
"Always holding the line, refining my tastes, raising my standards… guarding my pure and noble self from being fooled by a flashy blade!"
Though it was his first failed attempt to integrate a Spiritual Construct, Jing Qian felt no regret.
Every time the Sumeru Dao Stele acted, it brought him nothing but benefit.
To have it personally vet his choice of sword, what more could he ask for?
He picked up the second sword, another carefully chosen treasure, and once again thrust it toward his brow.
Another round of insertion and extraction
still, the Sumeru Stele refused.
Blocked again.
Jing Qian frowned, beginning to doubt his own taste.
He tried the third sword with the same process, same result.
Nothing.
A strange premonition crept into his chest.
"Brother Stele…" he muttered internally, a bead of cold sweat sliding down his temple.
"Don't tell me… you're about to start being picky again…"
Only one sword remained, the final Spiritual Construct that matched him well enough.
If this one didn't work either… he was finished.
Jing Qian carefully picked up the last sword, raised it before his brow, and slowly pressed it toward his sea of consciousness.
Inwardly, he prayed:
"Brother Stele, please go easy on me this time. Don't toy with my mind…"
Naturally, the thing he feared most was exactly what happened next.
Before the sword was even three inches in, the Sumeru Dao Stele flared to life and shoved it back out
The strongest rejection yet.
Thus, the four second-grade Spiritual Swords that Jing Qian had painstakingly selected over three days were all rejected.
His path to subduing a Spiritual Construct had suddenly hit a massive wall.
He sat cross-legged atop the mountain, his mind spinning as he tried to come up with countermeasures.
The sword-selection guide Master Shangxi had given him offered no advice for this kind of situation.
He could only rely on himself.
Unfortunately, Hidden Sword Mountain sealed away all divine power.
Every Fate Pattern in his body was locked down.
Without the help of The Worldly Insight, his reasoning and analysis were both clearly dulled.
After wrestling with his thoughts for a long while, Jing Qian finally stood up and began to descend the mountain.
This time, he moved very slowly, scrutinizing each sword he passed.
No matter its grade or shape, whether it seemed suitable or not
He picked it up and stabbed it toward his forehead.
He'd chosen the stupidest but most thorough method possible:
The brute-force approach.
He would simply try every sword on the mountain, one by one.
As long as he was diligent
, as long as he worked like a tireless ox
, sooner or later, he'd find a blade that satisfied Brother Stele's impossible standards.
And so began Jing Qian's most absurd sword-hunting journey.
He abandoned all technique, all strategy
, transforming himself into a laborer, a grinder of stones, a brick-moving machine.
Hidden Sword Mountain was vast.
To pull out every Spiritual Sword buried within its cliffs and ridges was a workload ten times greater than the previous resonance-based method.
At first, he was still enthusiastic, examining each sword carefully, admiring its craftsmanship, testing its aura.
But as time went on, the scholar's focus gave way to a workman's numbness.
His movements became mechanical.
Soon, he no longer cared what the swords looked like
. He'd grab one, stab, pull out, toss it aside, and move on without even bothering to re-sheath it.
Even so, he combed the entire mountain without rest for ten days straight.
By the end, Jing Qian was utterly numb.
After his first sweep, he had counted 14,562 powerful Spiritual Swords, among which 865 were embryonic prototypes.
He tested every single one.
All of them were rejected by the Sumeru Dao Stele.
Not a single sword on the entire Hidden Sword Mountain
, not even one among tens of thousands
was deemed worthy by Brother Stele's impossible standards.
Jing Qian conducted a deep and heartfelt round of criticism and self-criticism.
Then, refusing to accept defeat, he plunged back into the mountain for a second round.
This time, he dug deeper, literally searching cracks, fissures, and every crevice in the cliffs.
Sure enough, he found sixteen more swords that he'd missed before.
But even those failed to pass the Stele's gatekeeping.
Frustrated but not broken, he launched a third, fourth, and even fifth round of investigation.
Across the hundreds of thousands of years of Pure Yang Heaven's history, no one had ever studied Hidden Sword Mountain more thoroughly than Jing Qian.
And yet, it was all completely useless.
After seven exhaustive searches, he'd found four additional swords, but none of them made it past Brother Stele's judgment.
Finally, Jing Qian snapped.
He was completely broken.
He'd entered a near-delirious state.
Now, whenever he saw a long, stick-like object, he felt the urge to pick it up and stab it at his forehead, just to "try his luck."
For the disciples of Pure Yang Heaven, each person only had one chance to climb Hidden Sword Mountain.
Failing to claim a sword meant losing an arm in their cultivation path
, a crippling loss.
Jing Qian had always been confident in his swordsmanship.
He refused to believe that he, of all people, could fail at choosing a sword.
There had to be a blade on this mountain meant for him.
He just hadn't found it yet.
He stopped in his tracks, exhaled slowly, and sat down on the rocky path.
Closing his eyes, he began to meditate.
He had searched long enough…
If even now he still couldn't find it,
then the sword he sought must be hidden in a way that defied convention.
Jing Qian stopped aimless searching.
Instead, he went over every detail from the past month, all seven exhaustive rounds of scouring the mountain
and replayed each memory in his mind, frame by frame.
This time, he tried to think from every possible angle,
searching for blind spots in both thought and perception.
He didn't know how long had passed before a glimmer of insight flickered in his mind.
He rose slowly to his feet and descended the stone steps.
These steps were the only path leading up and down the Treasure Mountain.
Each one had already been pried up by him countless times.
From beneath those very steps, he had already dug out seven fine swords, not a small harvest at all.
But this time, he did not keep prying at the stone.
Instead, he stopped halfway down the stairs.
Starting from the very bottom, he counted carefully
and his gaze finally settled on the 777th step.
He had once unearthed an impressive sword beneath that very step,
But now, his attention wasn't on what lay under it
It was on the step itself.
The stair stones were carved from some unknown spiritual material
each exactly four feet long, square-edged and perfectly even.
From top to bottom, thousands of them stretched upward,
indistinguishable from one another.
Swap them around, and no one could tell the difference.
But this 777th step had one peculiar feature: a small hole, about the thickness of a baby's arm,
was bored into one end of the slab.
It wasn't very noticeable, but it stood out enough
that Jing Qian had remembered it.
He walked up to the step, lifted it across his shoulder,
and carried it all the way down the mountain.
At the base of Hidden Sword Mountain,
just before the mountain's edge,
stood a wooden sign inscribed in ancient seal script:
"Pure Yang Heavenly Grotto, the Sacred Ground of Hidden Sword Mountain!"
The sign, however, leaned slightly to one side.
That, naturally, was Jing Qian's handiwork; he'd already taken it apart during his third round of searching.
The bamboo pole supporting it had even been mistaken for a sword at one point,
and he'd stabbed himself in the forehead with it several times,
"Just in case."
Now he went back to the scene.
He planted the stone slab upright on the ground,
the small hole facing upward.
Then he pulled the sign apart again,
yanked out the green bamboo pole,
and examined it closely.
The pole was vivid jade-green,
four feet long, divided into eight even segments
clearly not an ordinary stick.
Holding it in both hands,
he aligned the pole with the hole in the stone slab
and jammed it in with all his strength.
Click!
The bamboo joints fit perfectly into the hole,
like a precision-crafted lock snapping into place.
Together, they formed a single object
, a sword.
The "sword" was bizarre
a massive four-foot-long slab of stone for its blade,
rectangular and blunt-edged,
with the bamboo pole serving as its hilt.
The portion of bamboo embedded in the stone was about two and a half feet deep, the remaining foot and a half stuck out
a handle that fit naturally into Jing Qian's palms.
He couldn't help but grip it with both hands,
lifting the giant slab horizontally before him.
Then, without thinking, he swung it in one sweeping motion, executing the "Coiling Rock Draped Armor" form
from the Jing Family's Eight Trigrams Sword.
The stone sword roared in his grasp,
releasing a violent shockwave that shattered the air around him.
"Who could withstand my Stairway Sword!?"
With a grin, Jing Qian flipped the "sword" upside down,
tilted his neck,
and slammed his forehead straight into its edge.
This time, however, the sword still didn't enter his sea of consciousness.
But the failure was different from before.
It wasn't the Sumeru Dao Stele blocking it this time; it was the sword itself.
The massive blade radiated a powerful repulsive force,
actively refusing to enter him.
To the sword, Jing Qian's consciousness sea
was like a dragon's den or a tiger's maw
a deadly trap to avoid at all costs.
But that very reaction confirmed it; this was the sword he had been searching for.
The hidden one.
He pressed his forehead against the sword again,
hugging it tight,
and began channeling every ounce of spiritual energy he had
to forge a connection.
After a month of frustration,
all his pent-up irritation turned into raw determination.
His mind was as unyielding as iron.
Using his head like a hammer,
he smashed himself against the sword again and again.
Whether his skull was too hard or the sword too tough,
it didn't matter
. The force cracked open the Six-Path Reincarnation Eye at his brow,
and in that instant,
the divine eye scanned the sword completely,
its information flooding into his mind:
[Immortal Sword Prototype]
Grade: Lower First-Class
Description: With my body, shape the god within your heart.
Across countless worlds, forge the true sword.
"Holy hell!" Jing Qian gasped.
"I don't care who hid this thing
I'm taking it if it kills me!"
He clung to the slab like a madman,
head-butting and bleeding all over it.
The blood smeared across the stone surface, staining it crimson.
Then a golden thread emerged from the center of his brow,
flowing along the blood,
wrapping itself tightly around the Immortal Sword Prototype.
That golden thread was the Immortal Sword Embryo,
forged from his lifetime of cultivation
according to the Pure Yang Scripture of the Refined Immortal Sword.
Now, the embryo dissolved,
entwining the prototype completely.
The once-plain stone stair turned dark gold,
ancient runes glowing faintly across its surface.
Even the bamboo handle became laced with golden strands,
making it firmer, smoother,
and strangely perfect in his grip.
As the Immortal Sword Embryo bound itself to the Prototype,
the sword's resistance collapsed entirely.
With one final headbutt,
Jing Qian drove the colossal blade straight into his sea of consciousness.
At last,
the sword entered.
Without hesitation, he turned and walked out of Hidden Sword Mountain,
sat down inside Pure Yang Heaven's grotto,
and began secluded cultivation.
He had finally found a sword even Brother Stele approved of.
With that, his journey to the treasure mountain held no regrets.
He devoted himself wholly to refining the Immortal Sword Prototype.
And behind him
Hidden Sword Mountain trembled violently.
The entire treasure mountain seemed to awaken from a deep sleep.
Tens of thousands of swords rang out in unison, some in greeting, some in farewell.
...
Across the shattered lands of Xu Continent, only two living beings remained conversing.
The old white ox raised its heavy head and asked,
"Master, that new disciple, Chixiao, he's only been with us a few days.
Can he really handle it?"
"If not," the ox snorted, "let me go instead.
My Fate Star may be shattered, but I can still maintain the baseline of a Star-Seizer Realm cultivator.
Add in the blessings of my title, and I'm still stronger than that kid."
Shang Xi simply shook his head.
"Don't underestimate him.
If he can claim a second-grade Spiritual Construct Sword,
his talent and foundation will rival even that of my senior master's sister."
The old ox's eyes went wide in disbelief.
"Inside this prison of a world, there's still a disciple who can compare to True Miao?
I'll believe it when she reincarnates herself back from the dead."
Shang Xi smiled faintly.
"You'll see for yourself soon enough, old bull.
Stop worrying and keep watch.
I'll go on ahead once Chixiao returns,
have him take the lotus root and hide Grinding Sword Cliff somewhere safe."
"Don't worry, Master," the ox replied with a proud toss of its horns.
"Old Niu still has some standing in the Ju Continent.
I'll just burrow into some demon king's cave,
and the Celestial Dynasty won't bother me there."
Shang Xi nodded once and turned to leave.
Had the old ox possessed the Pure Yang Golden Eye,
It would have seen that on Shang Xi's back clung a little girl
run through the heart by a single sword,
blood quietly flowing from the wound.
Meanwhile
The Immortal Sword Prototype, once it entered Jing Qian's Purple Palace,
began thrashing violently within his sea of consciousness.
Freed from the suppression of Hidden Sword Mountain,
It was like an unbridled stallion
even bound by the Immortal Sword Embryo, it rampaged madly,
slamming into Jing Qian's spirit until blood poured from all seven orifices.
Among all his treasures,
This was the only one that surpassed the second-grade realm
a supreme immortal artifact whose rank was second only to the Sumeru Dao Stele itself.
To subdue such a being was no simple task.
Jing Qian summoned forth his Saintly Manifestation,
enveloping his body in divine light,
channeling his spiritual power to its utmost.
Against a Spiritual Construct of such overwhelming superiority,
only his Three-Life Eye and the lingering power of the Immortal Sword Embryo
could restrain it, if only barely.
The divine eye at his brow cracked open slightly,
draining his life force at a terrifying rate
as he fought to suppress the rampaging sword.
But he knew well this was not a lasting solution.
Such a supreme spirit could never be truly subdued
until it gave birth to its own Life Pattern.
Time passed quietly in meditation.
Sweat beaded and trickled down Jing Qian's brow.
He tried again and again to communicate with the sword,
to align their auras and hearts,
But every attempt failed.
At last, the Immortal Sword Prototype broke free
bursting out of his consciousness and reappearing
in the physical realm of Pure Yang Heaven.
The violent rupture of his sea of spirit
left him gravely wounded, a Flesh Bud of Life burst apart,
flooding his body with endless vitality
and healing his wounds in an instant.
But the wound within his heart was not so easily mended.
You dare run away after all I went through to claim you?
Unforgivable!
With the Saintly Manifestation still blazing around him,
His power surged.
He raised his hand,
and countless sword-lights flashed outward
each infused with a strange and wondrous divine force
all of them slashing toward the rebellious Immortal Sword Prototype.
He knew full well that such attacks were futile;
The gap in rank was too vast.
But he had no other choice.
He would rather burn everything he had than submit.
Yet
To his utter surprise,
the sword that had resisted so fiercely before…
Suddenly quieted.
It ceased to struggle.
Jing Qian's divine eye flickered.
In an instant, he saw the reason.
Every sword-light he unleashed had transmuted
Becoming Longevity Swords,
each one carrying away fragments of his own lifespan,
pouring them into the sword.
The Immortal Sword Prototype,
bathed in this offering of life,
slowly fell into slumber.
Only then did Jing Qian exhale in relief.
He stepped forward, grasped the sword once more,
and lifted it into his hands.
Now freed from the mountain's suppression,
The weapon finally revealed its true aura
Though still a stone stair in shape,
It radiated the grandeur of a heavy, formless sword
simple, perfect,
a masterpiece of pure, destructive might.
Physically, it was beyond anything Jing Qian had ever seen
harder, heavier, stronger than any blade he had wielded.
Were it not bound by the Immortal Sword Embryo,
His mortal limbs could never have lifted it.
He spun the massive weapon in his grip,
sweeping it through the air
a concrete-splitting sword flourish,
so heavy and magnificent that his heart thrilled.
Now this... this is a real man's sword.
Even without invoking divine power,
the sheer physical force of its swing
could pulverize any demon or ghost beneath the heavens.
This was the pressure of rank
, the crushing supremacy of a first-grade immortal artifact.
"No one can withstand… my Stairway Slash!"
The Three-Life Eye glimmered faintly,
Already calculating how to incorporate this massive sword
into his overall combat system.
But for now,
The most urgent task was to refine the sword completely.
Sitting cross-legged once more,
Jing Qian didn't hesitate to burn more of his life force.
With every strike of the Longevity Sword,
He poured another stream of lifespan
into the sleeping Immortal Sword Prototype,
refining it deeper and deeper into his essence.
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