Righteous Sword Sect. Core disciple training ground.

A strikingly handsome young man with a jet black long hair was drenched in sweat, which glistened under the beaming rising sun. He was facing his master, also known as Patriarch Wei of the sect, with a pure iron sword in one hand and attached to his body was a qi restricting talisman.

"Lin Fan, what's wrong? Tired already?" Patriarch Wei heartily laughed as he easily directed the iron sword away with his palm.

"No...I still can! Take this move Master!" Lin Fan lowered his body and adopted a horse stance. Next, he gripped the iron sword with both hands and swung it outwards. When Patriarch Wei was about to intercept the sword, it suddenly changed its trajectory and managed to hit the Patriarch's shoulder, causing a look of surprise to surface.

"Hahaha...Well done! Looks like I did not choose wrongly. The strength training is completed." Patriarch Wei praised as he smiled at Lin Fan's apologetic look.

"Now, time for qi..." Before the Patriarch could finish his sentence, he was interrupted by one of the six High Elders, High Elder Wu.

"Patriarch, Dark Forest Village requested for help. Two Sacred Profound Lions were seen heading towards the village. What are your orders?" High Elder Wu respectfully bowed.

"Two? This is going to be troublesome. Bring along two Core Formation High Elders and Lin Fan, follow the High Elders so that you can gain more experience from the fight. Usage of light gate is permitted. Make haste." Patriarch Wei decisively gave out the orders without the slightest shred of hesitation.

"Yes Patriarch." High Elder Wu and Core Disciple Lin Fan obeyed in unison. 'As expected of my master. Using the light gate to travel...It's going to put a burden on the sect's treasury.' Lin Fan thought as he followed High Elder Wu.

After gathering the High Elders, the squad arrived at the light gate. The light gate allowed people to perform instantaneous travel from one place to another, the more the number of people and the further the distance, the more the number of spirit stones cost.

"Are you sure the Patriarch allowed us to use the light gate?" High Elder Fang asked cautiously. He was a cautious man and always placed the interests of the sect above everything else.

"It's going to be costly." High Elder Qin added. He was a man of few words and only voiced out if it was a serious matter, other than that, he was so quiet that he gave people the impression that he was a mute.

"Bloody costly indeed. It's the Patriarch orders. Let's go." Saying that, High Elder Wu took out 1 million spirit stones from his cosmic ring and offered them to the light gate.

While watching the spirit stones disappeared just like that, complicated expressions could be seen on their faces.

Once a portal was formed in the light gate, the squad hastily stepped into it, traversing space and time through the void that costed 1 million spirit stones.

***

Dark Forest Village.

As it landed inside village, the Shadow lion noticed a bunch of two-legged creatures with a terrified expressions on their faces, which where pointing at itself with a long and sharp pointy object.

Roar!

The real product swiftly landed on the ground and immediately pounced towards the 'counterfeit' lion while ignoring the people around it. It was truly incensed at its own incapability to catch the 'counterfeit' lion. It meant that the real lion could not even compare to a fake one. How infuriating was that!

Upon seeing that the lion was still diligently coming after itself, the Shadow lion sprinted towards the bunch of two-legged creatures and when it was about to come into contact with the spears, it did a mighty leap over them.

Boom!

As the void forcefully distorted and churned, a portal opened out of nowhere and out came a squad of cultivators, flying above the platoon of soldiers.

"High Elder Qin, deal with the black one. Lin Fan go assist him. High Elder Fang, come with me to take care of the second one." High Elder Wu quickly delegated the roles with a grim expression.

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Without saying a word, the three of them nodded and headed towards their opponent.

Woosh.

With the help of High Elder Qin, Lin Fan propelled towards the black-colored lion and when he was within striking distance, he forcefully swung his iron sword at it. To his surprise, his sword was met with no resistance at all and completely went through the black lion's body.

"Hmm? Lin Fan, use your qi instead, I will restrict its movements!" High Elder Qin quickly activated [Thousand Sword Fortress], which is a Profound tier martial skill, trapping the black lion and Lin Fan inside a dome made of a thousand sword wills.

[Thousand Sword Fortress] is made up of 3 layers, namely inner, middle and outer. As one tried to force their way from the inner layer to the outer layer, more and more sword wills will pierce their body and soul, resulting in grievous wounds or even death.

Lin Fan removed the qi resisting talisman from his body and a gush of wild qi surged outwards. Lin Fan took in a deep breath and channeled his qi into the iron sword, causing the sword and user to merge and became one entity, known as [Human Sword Unity].

As man and sword merged, the sword control became unparalleled and its maneuver exceeded logic. Likewise, it was able to pierce through the body and soul.

Shiingggg!

As the sword flew towards the black lion, it screeched and formed air ripples along the way. The black lion felt an immense sense of danger and quickly dodged to the side, barely escaping from being pierced by the sword.

The sword abruptly changed its direction and once again headed towards the black lion, causing the black lion to be scared out of its wits.

Although the intelligence of the black lion was still somewhat pathetic, its danger instincts were heightened to the peak the entire time, causing a vague thought to be formed in its mind. 'What did I even do to deserve this.'

It quickly dashed away from the screeching sword, unknowingly running towards the sea of invisible swords.

The screeching sound stopped. Curious, it quickly took a peek behind itself and discovered that the sword had disappeared and in its place was a two-legged creature staring at itself.

Suddenly, it felt a towering force pressing down on itself and with every step it took, more and more sharp pains pierced its soul.

Unable to retreat or advance, it could stay at its position, enduring the pain. However, its body was getting fainter and fainter, and unable to support the transformation, the Shadow lion body dissipated and what replaced it was the original black sphere.

Before it changed back to the sphere, it saw the two-legged creature cupping his hands.

Lin Fan stared at the transformation, contemplating. During the short battle with the black lion, he did not felt any evilness or impurities from the black lion and what's even weirder was that its body was like a mist, unaffected by physical impacts.

One must know that reaching a non-corporeal form was another dream of cultivators, able to phase through objects and immune to all physical attacks. There were only two ways known to mankind that could possibly come close to achieving the non-corporeal form.

First was to strengthen one's soul by tempering it, for example, one could use their will power to control their emotions when being provoked or resist the temptation from a seductress. However, this would leave traces of impurities in their soul.

The second method was to train in [Devourer of Million Souls] which was considered a taboo and only the powerful devil sects contained the evil skill. This would taint the soul with impurities and caused the user to exclude an evil aura.

The black lion belonged to neither category. At the last moment before it transformed, Lin Fan noticed its unwillingness to die just like that, like a newborn crying out its unwillingness.

"High Elder Qin. Forgive Lin Fan for making this bold request but I think that we should let it go and bring back to the sect for the Patriarch to make the judgement." Lin Fan respectfully cupped his hands towards the High Elder.

High Elder Qin gave a gentle nod and with a wave of his arm, the sword wills disappeared from existence and the sphere stopped fading away. High Elder Qin took out an imprisonment jade, which was used to trap mortals or anyone at the qi refining stage, to seal away the black sphere and he gradually floated down and spectated the other fight.

High Elder Qin did not question Lin Fan as he trusted Lin Fan's character and judgement. Otherwise, how could the Patriarch choose Lin Fan as his core disciple.

"Thank you High Elder Qin." Lin Fan thanked.

"Mmmm"

***

"It's time to end it. Heaven piercing sword!" High Elder Fang did a quick hand sign which caused several sleek and sharp swords to pierce towards the Sacred Profound Lion's body, causing some bloody gashes to appear at its vulnerable places while other swords were deflected due to its body toughness.

Roar! Enraged, it looked towards High Elder Fang and let out an anguish roar imbued with qi.

"Origin Piercing Sword!" High Elder Wu confidently executed his skills.

A miniature sword flew secretly towards the Lion's reproductive organ, in this case, its pee pee.

One must not judged its power by its size, this was incredibly true. With a spurt of blood from the Lion's penis, it let out a painful roar and in the next moment it died due to embarrassment and blood loss.

"..." Everyone. All the males shuddered a little just by watching the scene, some even secretly wrote down the name 'High Elder Wu of Righteous Sword Sect' under their 'No matter what must not offend' list for their decendents.

"Hahaha! No need to thank me." High Elder Wu laughed sheepishly. After seeing the awkward silence, High Elder Wu gave a slight cough and shamelessly kept the body of the Lion in his cosmic ring, thinking of how much it would sell so that the sect would regain back its 1 million spirit stones.

"Let's go." After gathering the corpse, the squad flew into the distance, with High Elder Qin carrying Lin Fan as he could not fly yet due to his low cultivation level.

Watching the squad disappear into the distance, the villagers offered their thanks and gratitudes while some sighed in relief.