"This tournament is really unfair. How are we supposed to compete against cultivators at the Soul Reformation Realm? Even the strict requirements of our sect allows us five years of time before breaking through to that realm. And we have barely cultivated in the sect for seven months! The gap is too huge!"
"The Formless Sword Sect has very strict recruitment requirements. In each generation, they only pick sixty disciples to practice their sect's core technique. And that girl said she's from team-1. It's not unnatural that she would be so much stronger than us."
"I'm still not convinced! I heard that the last disciple recruitment of their sect was held more than two years ago. A genius who has cultivated for that long versus an average disciple like me who has cultivated for half a year, how is that fair?!"
"Cry about it. Weep to the heavens."
"...."
This was the gist of the arguments raising up a racket inside the redesigned Healing Hall. The noise and complaints were more about volume than substance. But Xuhan listened with relish as tidbits of new knowledge about the vast world of cultivation entered his mind. Occasionally, he would poke a lively disciple into steering a conversation to a route of his interest. For example-
"Sister Miao, you seem to know quite a bit about the Formless Sword Sect. Do you know anything about the technique that girl was using?"
Sister Miao, who was usually overlooked in the team due to her lack of contribution, was finally able to show her true worth this evening. From vague rumors to established facts, her knowledge on many foreign sects continued to surprise the rest of the defense team.
"Brother Xuhan, didn't you hear me just now? The technique she used to wreak havoc on us is of course, the core technique of her sect. It's titled- The Formless Sword Technique, kind of obvious, you know?" Shen Miao looked annoyed that a question so stupid had come out all of a sudden. Han Xuhan scratched the back of his head with an awkward laugh.
"Ahaha, makes sense, makes sense. Aside from the title..."
Getting the hint, Shen Miao proceeded to explain what she knew from rumors.
"The Formless Sword Technique is very difficult to practice. In each generation, only a handful of elites manage to master its basics and reach a substantial level of power. In the Physique Transformation realm, these practitioners use their body to nurture a formless sword. I'm not very sure how it is done, but I've seen some detailed illustrations of their combat. In duels they perform a strange type of martial art where every stance they make creates an invisible sword attack. For example, one can punch the air and conjure the effect of a sword thrust that can hit an enemy within the reach of the formless sword! A kick can have the effect of a horizontal sword slash! And-"
"Wait, wait, wait... If the sword is formless, how can it have a specific reach?" Zhang Dahai asked loudly, attracting everyone's ire. Shen Miao looked a bit dumbfounded as she considered the question.
Indeed, how does a formless sword attack something that has form?
"Maybe they named it wrong," Han Xuhan suggested. "After all, Formless Sword sounds a lot cooler than Invisible Sword."
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"...Maybe. Anyway, as I was saying, their martial art stances can conjure sword strikes. But this isn’t limited to one sword strike per move! At the upper stages of the Physique Transformation realm, each punch can conjure dozens of swords striking in harmony! Imagine fighting someone who's proficient in that style of combat."
"Imagine? Hmph, I fought that girl myself! There's no need to imagine!" Zhang Dahai slapped himself in the chest pridefully.
"Yeah, we saw that. Don't act so cocky about being beaten up, Brother Dahai." Shen Miao snickered.
"I took one for the team, and you're mocking me!" Zhang Dahai was incensed by the lack of gratitude among his fellow disciples. In his grief, he turned to Xuhan.
"Brother Xuhan, tell them how heavily injured I was when I reached your house! I was one strike away from death!"
Han Xuhan nodded in agreement. "You were given a pretty good beating."
"The fuck do you mean by 'good' beating?!"
"I mean, the beating could've been better. She could have made sure you never reached my house. That way I wouldn’t have been robbed."
"It was just a metal boot! Those armors aren’t even rare! Everyone lying in this Healing Hall has a few!" Zhang Dahai roared in indignation. Truly, heavens were blind. He was the real victim, but they were making fun of him for suffering!
Han Xuhan was about to shift the conversation back to track, but what Zhang Dahai said tugged at his attention. Since losing the boot to Suyan Chongqing, his paranoia had been acting up again.
Did everyone in the Healing Hall really have the armors from the void zone between the floating islands?
The doubt wasn’t difficult to untangle. Han Xuhan was well acquainted with many disciples taking rest there. He even knew the Elders who ran the Pavilion due to his frequent visits to this place for cultivation-assisting resources.
After the heated conversation died down, Han Xuhan began to tour the hall. The massive building was divided into two segments, one for those who required privacy and the other for those with light injuries. Visitors in general weren’t allowed to enter the former willy-nilly, so he checked the beds in the second area.
"Brother Chen!"
"Sister Zhen!"
"Fellow cultivator Yang!"
His enthusiastic greetings were immediately followed by pointed inquiries about how they had been injured, and whether they had utilized their armor-parts well. Most of them understood why he was there to visit immediately, as they had all seen, or heard about Xuhan buying armor-parts from the disciples very publicly.
As it turned out, most of them hadn’t managed to use their armor-parts well. Unlike Xuhan, they didn't have a mysteriously knowledgeable teacher who could see through the craftsmanship and functions of the armors with ease. Many of them weren’t even aware that every armor collected from the void zone had built-in battle moves.
His curiosity growing, Han Xuhan also began to ask the disciples how many times they had traveled through the void zone. One by one, data began to pile up, and patterns began to emerge.
Among the thirty injured disciples he had Interviewed, twenty owned multiple armor parts, and most of them had traveled through the void zone to invade other sects at least six times. On average, this meant that there was a likelihood of coming into possession of an armor part once every three travels.
Strangely enough, he himself had entered and left the void zone more than ten times, but he had only ever managed to collect a poleyn. In this aspect, he was an anomaly among his fellow disciples.
Han Xuhan also recalled the time he had landed on Stardust Sect yesterday wearing armor-parts all over his body. During traveling through the void zone at that time, he had experienced a searing shock in his head, as if someone had connected a electric wire to his skull for a moment.
While the phenomenon by itself meant nothing substantial, Han Xuhan could not shake off the doubt that wearing so many armors might have caused it. If the armor-parts did really hide a secret related to the void zone, then it could be explained why a Soul Reformation Realm disciple from a famous Sect would be so interested in them.
So his second round of interviews began. He went from bed to bed asking whether any of them had experienced unusual sensations while traveling through the void zone. It was a tricky question to answer, because the usual sensation inside the passageway wasn’t exactly predictable or comprehensible either. The feeling of being drowned inside a vat of noodles, soup, and gum was common to everybody. But Han Xuhan did manage to find a few disciples who had experienced unique sensations.
These included temporary sensory overload after coming out of the void zone, extreme lethargy, and inexplicable cuts and bruises. One of them even showed him a large crack that had formed on his backplate when he crossed a void zone this morning. As Xuhan considered how these injuries could have come about, something occured to him, freezing his movements.
How powerful did an assault have to be to leave damage of such degree on the bodies of cultivators at the upper layers of the Physique Transformation Realm?
Coupling these incidents with his theory that the timespan inside the void zone was heavily dilated by unknown factors, Han Xuhan reached a terrifying conclusion.
Perhaps the time they were spending inside the void zone wasn’t just a harmless, unconscious journey through a passageway filled with treasures. There was a high likelihood that during every travel, their memories of what really was happening inside it was being erased. So the only traces left of the experience were long-lasting injuries on their body, soul and equipment!