Walking out into the dimly illuminated night, all I could smell was the intense smoke that arose from the crowd of beggars who had created a fire to keep warm. It was a chilly evening, barely about 40C today, and the wind was expected to pick up very soon. I curled my jacket around me even tighter and began walking back to my apartment, I didn't usually stay up this late but things had to be done. Darn my boss and his insistence on finishing the project today, at least I had gotten a good bonus out of it. The money should be enough for me to finally afford a new phone. My current one was at least 5 years old and barely even functional. As I took out of my pocket it took more than 5 secs for it to open, and even longer for the Face ID to recognize me. It finally opened as I reached the final cross walk to my apartment. It was late and not even a pedestrian could be heard so I didn't even check if the light was green before crossing. A few messages from my friends had been sent so I opened messages to check them out, then suddenly a bright light hit my face. 

Of course right when I wasn't paying a truck had to pull right around the corner, I don't how I didn't hear it, maybe it was the tiredness setting in. Well I guess I wasn't getting that new phone now was I? Time seemed to come a crawl as the truck inched closer, I knew I couldn't escape my immanent doom and all that was left to do was simply accept my own death. It was purely my own fault for not crossing at the right and not being aware of my surroundings so I couldn't place blame on the truck driver who's face showed about as much surprise as you would expect from some in their situation. This death thing was taking a lot longer than I would expect but maybe that was from my brain going into overdrive to try and survive. Death isn't something I was ever really afraid of, my parents had even died a few years back and I wasn't anywhere near close enough to any of my friends for them to truly affected. Their wasn't much to be worried about if I left, no debt to be payed off, no responsibility being left to others, not even people I had to take care of. Their really wasn't much to come to terms with as I waited these terribly long seconds to end my body to splatter across the ground as the 35 ton behemoth crushed it like a pestle to mortar.  

Finally after a treaded few seconds the sensation of death finally came, I closed my eyes having already come to terms with my death. Yet somehow I didn't feel the pay of having my body turned into nothing but a bag of flesh and finely ground bones. Instead I felt the sense of a cool breeze brushing past my body. I could sense what was happening around me even without having to open my eyes or having a sensation of having eyes. It was an otherworldly experience being able to witness yourself from another persons perspective and it took a minute for it to truly set in what I saw from the other side. I was a sword... an iron sword that had been stabbed into the corpse of someone who was now long dead. Nothing remained of them but their bones and the clothes they had been wearing before their untimely death. 

Hello [Alan], welcome to the world of Azrael. A world enriched by Qi and flooded with magical riches and unfathomable power to be had, but only the strong can come into contact with these. You have been reborn by lucky coincidence and are now an [Iron Sword]. The system welcomes you into it's program and will help you as you grow stronger and possibly rise to become the ruler of this world and many more. Welcome to the Immortal Sword System!

Now that was something I wouldn't say I was expecting but then again I also wasn't expecting to be reborn. Most reincarnation stores do give their main characters a Golden Finger but I didn't expect myself to get one. Being reborn is one thing but with a system too, and as a sword of all things. Not something you experience or read about everyday now is it. At least with a system I may have a chance of becoming human again, actually do I really want to be human? Being a sword was a different experience but different isn't always bad now is it. Lets consider the benefits here, I am more durable than every normal human, I am much more of threat than most humans, and have a far longer lifespan. I may not be able to move by myself but maybe the system has a way to allowing me to do that. 

As a sword that has a soul within it you can of course control Qi. With practice and sufficient Qi you can learn to move using just your Qi. The system will not help with this process as you must learn to control Qi by yourself before the system becomes a handicap. The system though can give you one skill at the start of your journey as starter gift. The skill [Qi Sense] has been given to you, this is the only skill that the system will ever give you so use it wisely.

With that very timely prompt I suddenly gained the ability to see/perceive a new energy all around it. It was like being able to feel the air around you, although this air was a myriad of colors. It was quite the spectacle, like glimpsing into space from outside Earth. It was mesmerizing how many different color it had and the amount of shapes that they formed. They mixed and swirled and collided creating new shapes and new colors with every collision, creating a spectacle much like watching the creation of the universe in 20000x times speed. These collision even affected the world around them, such as the green Qi clumps causing gusts of wind to blow, and dense enough blue Qi turning into tiny water particles.

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With enough analyzation I came to the conclusion that mute green Qi was probably Air, blue Qi was water, red Qi was fire, brown Qi was earth, the white Qi was probably light based off the other trends, making the black Qi darkness. There was other Qi like the purple one and an emerald green one, but I couldn't deduce what those ones were as they was barely any to begin with. They just ever so barely could even be seen and therefor didn't condense far enough to show any world altering effects. By the time I had finally zoned out every Qi color into their own element I had already become accustomed to its spectacle. It was time to figure out how I'm actually supposed to control these things. How I was gonna get about to doing that, I truly had no possible clue but the system said it could be done so I can at least try. 

I at first tried just willing them towards me but that didn't do anything, or so I thought. It had actually moved the Qi inside of me, I had never realized that I myself had Qi thanks to the spectacle that mesmerized me moments before. I was full of a greyish Qi which I would like to assume was metal Qi as I was literally an iron sword. This Qi had actually moved when I willed it towards me and had come closer to my center, it was quite interesting seeing it condense. Unlike the Qi outside my body it didn't cause any out reaching affects once condensed but instead simply stayed condensed. So I brought even more of it and condensed it even more, until all the metal Qi within me was shoved into a space about the size of a golf ball. It hadn't changed anything though, simply left my body devoid of metal Qi. It was absorbing it through the ground though, as I could see tiny specs of it rising up from the ground. 

Well I guess there was nothing for me to do but just wait for my body to fill back up. Actually maybe I should try condensing my metal Qi orb even more, wasn't cultivating always about condensing it then circulating it through your body. So I again pulled it towards my center and it condensed but not by much, it was as if the some force was counteracting me. So I instead tried spinning it, well more like pulling it in a circle, this caused a very interesting effect. Like a centrifuge it slowly separated the Qi. I hadn't even realized thanks to the metal Qi covering it, but there was other Qi floating with it. Mostly earth Qi which made sense as I was pulling the metal Qi out of the ground. I started spinning it faster until I couldn't anymore and had fairly pure metal Qi in my own terms. I then pushed the other Qi outwards while pulling the metal Qi in wards causing my golf ball sized Qi to become ping pong ball sized.

This time though it was purely made of metal Qi, something I was quite proud of as it became a far more gray color, before it was a much darker grey thanks to the other forms of Qi. It was a good first start but now I truly had nothing to do expect pull more Qi towards my center and continue spinning it to remove the impurities. So thats what I kept doing, until my metal Qi circle had become about the size of a golf ball again. Thats when something changed, I could feel my body begin absorbing some of it, using it to fill in the gaps caused by corrosion. I looked at it while it happened, had to really focus to realize what was happening. My body seemed to be taking strands of the metal Qi and then using it nourish the damaged part. I tried it to pull strands off by myself but it took much more effort to get single strands from it than I realized it. My control slowly became finer till I could and it made me realize maybe it wasn't a force stopping me but instead just my control not being good enough to condense it even further. So I once again started condensing and spinning, this time it in fact did become even purer.

It was quite fine slowly getting better at these things, I soon looked like a brand new iron sword thanks to my very pure metal Qi. Once my body was fully repaired the metal Qi ball just floated their, so I did what I had read from other novels and just started circulating it around my body. This slowly strengthened it from what I could see and my control slowly became finer. To the point that I didn't have to think about, all I did was create thinner and thinner strands of Qi as my body absorbed these far faster. The increased purity meant I wasn't really losing out on its potency so it wasn't much of a problem. Now all I had to do was figure out how I control the Qi outside my body and possibly move away from this dried corpse. As fun as it was cultivating I wanted to move on with my life.