In the morning, they return to the Inner World, and eager to advance their sword cultivation, they throw themselves straight into impossible odds. Lan Xiaohui chooses five hundred opponents this time, with no time limit, and all of them are in the early stage of Foundation Establishment.
I detach my consciousness from my vessel to observe their battle, or, more specifically, their new martial arts methods.
I understand how Wu Yulan’s Eternal Moment Swordsmanship works, likely because it was developed in part thanks to my Inner World or, at the very least because I also know the Transient Sword method from which it was derived.
The core principle of the method revolves around the concept of the moment. Sword Qi is generated from one’s consciousness which is filled with sword intent, and there are many forms of this intent. Killing intent is one example. Ultimately, intent itself is a combination of conviction, confidence, and the desire to strike — to make one’s will manifest.
Normally, cultivators can generate sword Qi whenever and however they please, but through this swordsmanship method, Wu Yulan has relinquished that ability, or imposed limitations on it. In order for her to generate sword Qi, her intent needs to be incredibly clear and focused to be able to move her sword into action, and this burst of extreme sword Qi manifests in the concept of the eternal moment.
In order to perform techniques, cultivators will generate the energy and the sword Qi over a period of time, but Wu Yulan’s method rejects this notion and provides all the resources for her techniques in an instant.
Even though Wu Yulan’s method is now of the Supreme grade, she strikes with the power of an Immortal grade martial art.
However, this is not where the method’s relationship with the concept of a moment ends. In order for Wu Yulan to generate this extreme amount of sword Qi, it needs to happen in two stages. First, her overwhelming intent is like a declaration of fate, and it manifests in the world as a bright white line that reveals the path which her sword will follow. Next, the execution follows, and if her sword does not follow the pre-determined path, she will suffer incredible Qi deviation and internal damage.
Her method requires extraordinary spiritual perception to operate, as identifying these weak points and moments requires great foresight because one mistake in determining her target would leave her virtually defenseless against counterattacks.
Though, an observer — like myself — would be hard-pressed to see Wu Yulan’s method as a double-edged sword, for she leaps from moment to moment in such quick succession that she appears as a white shadow blurring across the ground.
Each time her sword strikes, half a dozen demonic beasts die, their body parts flung across my Inner World by the force of Wu Yulan’s sword. Her spiritual veins and Qi entrances are wide open while she performs this feat, absorbing vast amounts of air to replenish her Qi reserves, operating at full capacity with no downtime.
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The fact that Wu Yulan can operate her breathing method at full output and still possess the mental capacity to exert her intent and then generate extreme bursts of sword Qi and energy is precisely why she has not only cleared all the floors of the Pavilion of Introspection but why Lady Yue has an interest in her.
Wu Yulan is a natural genius.
Lan Xiaohui’s method is even more extreme at its core, despite being simple in execution.
Because of Lan Xiaohui’s Sword Domain, and the nature of my sword when shrouded in the principles of the Fractured Sword method, the warping of curvature in front of my vessel shortens the distance I need to travel to cut, producing lightning-fast attacks with extreme power comparable to Wu Yulan’s.
However, there are many methods in the world that can produce fast attacks with extreme power, and if it were not for Lan Xiaohui’s peculiar method of achieving this, I would not be impressed.
The core of Lan Xiaohui’s method revolves around the concept of liminality and its expression through her footwork technique: [Liminality Steps]. To describe Lan Xiaohui’s motion as speed, when she slashes her sword from in front of a pack of monsters, only to appear behind them a moment later, and then deliver another slash that creates fountains of blood, would ultimately be correct; but it would not be a complete description.
It is in those moments before she moves and after she completes her motion, that a great degree of uncertainty falls on Lan Xiaohui’s intrinsic physical properties. In the same way as when she dispersed my existence over a great area when under the influence of the Ancient Sword Graveyard’s enlightenment, so too can she make her own existence uncertain in this way.
This effect manifests most clearly in the way she moves, leaping forward as if under the influence of reduced gravity, yet as if pulled ahead at great speed by the effects of her Sword Domain. And it is clearer still in the way that she swings my vessel without experiencing any inertia, or at least very little of it; while at the same time striking hard enough to lift her off the ground. Even airborne, however, she is not defenseless, because her [Liminality Steps] allows her to move through a small region of space in any way she desires.
In a way, she is at the threshold of cause and effect, disconnected from the predictions of her future by the actions of her past.
I recognize that she uses this sword to describe her own existence as the Liminality Flower — an entity that is in between her past as Lan Xiaohui and her future as Zhu Xuelian. It is fitting, then, that the sword she will use to bring about this change and cross from the threshold of transience, is the Finality Moon — myself.
Their first attempt at this challenge ends before they can kill even half of the demonic beasts in the [Killing Field]. With so many powerful opponents, even profound martial arts will be unable to help them overcome this challenge. At this stage, it is obvious that even at the limit of their possibilities, success is out of their reach.
For a Foundation Establishment cultivator, killing five hundred demonic beasts of the third rank is simply not possible, regardless of strategy, tactics, or martial arts.
To succeed here, they would need to cultivate an inner core and try again when they raise their cultivation realm.
However, it quickly becomes apparent that they do not intend to succeed at this challenge but to sharpen their swords to the very extremes of limit and obtain the pinnacle of what they can achieve.
When I notice how much energy they are generating by engaging in this self-destructive behavior, I heavily approve of their methods.
Even without killing half of the demonic beasts, they make up for the majority of the cost of operating the entire Martial Hall division of my Inner World which is now projected the consume 2,000,000 Inner World Energy because of simulating 500 second rank demonic beasts, per week.
If they can kill 350 — no, only 300 demonic beasts — then they would likely generate a surplus of energy, instead of cutting into my stockpile.
This pleases me.