The night was late, and the vibrant, chaotic energy of Sunken Treasure City had finally softened into a quiet, peaceful hum. The moon cast a silver path across the tranquil sea, and a gentle, salty breeze drifted over the rooftops. It was the night before they were to depart, to return to the Green Mountain Sect, and Jian Xuan sat in a meditative posture on the roof of their rented building, the world asleep below him.
But his mind was not at peace. It was a turbulent sea, churned by the simple, profound questions Li Yu had posed to him.
What did you want to do? What were things you did for happiness? What was the reason you were getting strong for?
For centuries, he had never thought to ask them of himself. His path had always been a straight, unbending line, a singular, relentless pursuit of power. The reason had always been self-evident: to become stronger. To ask 'why' was as absurd as asking a river why it flowed to the sea. It simply did.
He thought back, his mind drifting through the long, lonely centuries of his life. He remembered his youth, training under his reclusive master alongside his senior sister. He had not been from a great sect; his world had been a small, isolated mountain peak and the teachings of one powerful, eccentric man.
He had been a genius, a prodigy who absorbed every lesson with an effortless, intuitive grace. When he was finally old enough, his master had sent him out into the world to test his skills. He had traveled from clan to sect, challenging the most famous geniuses of his generation, and he had never been defeated. With every victory came the praise, the admiration, and the awe from the very sects and clans he had bested or cooperated with.
That feeling… that feeling of standing at the top, of being looked up to by all… that had made him happy. That was the reason. The admiration was the proof of his strength, the validation of his existence. He had lived his life cultivating to chase that feeling, and he had achieved it. He was a legend, a peerless swordsman.
But what then? He had reached the peak of his world, and he had stood there, alone, for a very long time. What did he want to do? He had never wanted to do anything but cultivate, to get to that next level, to become even more powerful.
Then came the defeat. The humiliation of being utterly crushed by a mysterious expert, of losing his most precious sword, of being captured like a common criminal. His entire world, his entire identity, which had been built on the unshakable foundation of his own invincibility, had been shattered.
He met Li Yu. A boy, a mystery, a being of unfathomable contradictions. He had watched, confused at first, as Li Yu walked a path of freedom, of living and enjoying life, of growing in quiet and peace—a path that seemed to value the journey as much as the destination.
And he had felt it—the cracks. The cracks in the unbreakable spiritual barrier that had blocked his progress for so long. They had appeared not only in the crucible of desperate battle—during the intense spars against Li Yu where he was pushed to his absolute limits for the first time in an age—but also, to his astonishment, in the quiet, peaceful moments in between. A meal in the City of Forges. A quiet moment of reflection in the wilderness. The simple act of watching the sunset over the sea.
His progress was coming from both extremes: the fires of intense combat and the tranquility of profound peace. It was a duality he did not understand, a duality personified by the young man he now followed.
He finally allowed himself to confront Li Yu's question head-on, with the same brutal honesty he would use to analyze a sword form. Why? Why did he want to be the strongest?
The answer, when he finally allowed it to surface, was embarrassingly simple. It was selfishness.
He was not one to protect the weak. He would stop injustice if he happened to see it, but he never truly cared about the people he saved. It was something he did in passing. The true reason he craved power was for the peace it would bring him. The peace of being untouchable. The peace of being so powerful that no one in the heavens or the earth could ever mess with him again. And the peace that came from the feeling of people admiring him, of looking up to him.
He had known this, deep down, for centuries. But he had always subconsciously rejected it. It felt like an unworthy reason, a selfish, egotistical motivation that was beneath a grandmaster swordsman like himself. He had thought his dao needed a nobler purpose—to protect, to serve, to uphold justice.
But those were not his truths. They were masks he had tried to wear, and the dissonance between his true, selfish desire and the noble purpose he thought he should have was the very conflict that had created his bottleneck.
He finally let go. He accepted it.
'This is my dao,' he thought, a profound, soul-shaking clarity washing over him. 'To stand at the top. To be the strongest. To be admired and looked up to by all. To be at peace because my power is absolute. This is my path. And it is enough.'
The moment he accepted this simple, selfish truth, the moment his heart, his will, and his dao finally aligned into a single, unbending line… the barrier broke.
It was not a gentle crack. It was a cataclysmic shattering. A dam that had held back 20 years of accumulated power and insight burst apart. An immense, terrifying aura surged from his body. The very air over Sunken Treasure City began to tremble and warp, the spiritual energy of the world rushing towards him in a visible vortex.
But just as quickly as it erupted, it was gone. Jian Xuan, with the peerless control of a master, instantly suppressed the surge, pulling the world-shaking power back into his own body before it could so much as rattle a single windowpane in the sleeping city below.
But the process had begun. He needed energy, a vast, terrifying amount of it. Without a moment's hesitation, he took out all the spirit stones he possessed—the immense fortune he had accumulated over centuries, supplemented by the generous supply Kui had given him. He piled them around him on the rooftop, a small mountain of glittering, condensed power.
His body became a vortex. A torrent of pure, liquid spiritual energy was ripped from the spirit stones, which instantly dimmed and crumbled into gray dust. The energy poured into him, nourishing his body, but more importantly, nourishing his soul. The brilliant, white, spherical soul within his sea of consciousness pulsed, absorbing the immense energy, growing brighter, denser, and more profound.
The process continued for a long, silent hour. The mountain of spirit stones was reduced to a pile of gray ash. Finally, the vortex of energy subsided. The breakthrough was complete.
He was now a 4th level Soul Formation expert, skipping over the 3rd level all together.
He stood up, his body feeling impossibly light, his soul clearer than it had ever been. The world seemed brighter, the sounds of the distant sea sharper, the very flow of the dao around him a tangible, visible thing. He felt great. This was a level of power he had never touched upon, a profound leap forward that solidified his standing as a true powerhouse on the continent.
He could also feel that his sword dao had undergone a profound transformation. His previous thoughts had not been a distraction; they had been a reaffirmation of his path. His desire to be the strongest, to be admired, to find peace in absolute power—this was the core of his dao. By accepting it, he had sharpened it to a degree he had never thought possible.
He felt better than ever, not from just the breakthrough, but from the unburdening of his own heart. He would still strive for the top, with an even greater fervor than before. But he would no longer reject himself. He, too, would enjoy his life, in his own way, as he strived for the top.
As the first, faint rays of dawn began to paint the eastern sky, Jian Xuan looked out over the sea, a new, genuine sense of peace settling over him. He had finally found his way again.