From the two people inside, one was a disheveled-looking, leather armor-dressed man.

The only thing that stood up about and could be considered to confirm him as the instructor was the sheath strapped on his back. This sheath made of leather was of extremely fine work and even without taking into account that sheaths like this contained weapons of similar quality was a masterwork by itself.

As for the other person in the room, it was an outer circle disciple. He was male but except this fact, nothing else could serve as a description as the face was extremely plain, the hair was brown and short, while the outer disciple robe was only clean enough as to be considered as such.

Approaching right as he was noticed, Wu Guang greeted the instructor.

This greeting was meet by a simple wave as in dismissal and the now confirmed instructor simply asked without any ceremony or formality

"Are ya the one for the sparring?"

Wu Guang answered affirmatively and the instructor motioned for him to move towards the only thing inside the otherwise barren dojo, a small box near the back wall

"Go choose a training saber"

As Wu Guang did as instructed he heard the instructor speak again but as it was not directed to him, simply ignored it, albeit he did hear and note each of the words spoken. And he was right to do so, as the words included part of the truth of the saber.

Wu Guang had already understood some of this by himself while he was in the state of weapon understanding. Still, hearing them from someone else, served to confirm his own conclusions.

The words he overheard could be resumed into "To cut and to slash are two different things. Cutting, whatever form of cutting it is, is decisive, with a resolute spirit. Slashing is nothing more than touching the enemy. Even if you slash strongly, and even if the enemy dies instantly, it is slashing. When you cut, your spirit is resolved".

As for Wu Guang's own conclusions, they were pretty much the same. A slashing attack would be done with no real intention while a real cut or in truth any real attack would mean that the one holding the weapon is resolved to finish or at least reach some objective.

Quickly taking a saber from the box, Wu Guang turned around. He was surprised to find out that the disciple had left without him noticing. Still, it was nothing that he needed to care about and so after approaching and noting the signal to start the fight, Wu Guang cleared his mind and recalling the 'Sandstorm' manual techniques attacked first.

Surprisingly the instructor had a totally blunt saber in place of the masterwork one would expect from the sheath that he carried and so when he unsheathed in preparation to receive Wu Guang, the latter almost stopped. Thankfully he did not, after all, stopping during an attack would be idiotic, to say the least.

Noting the surprise on Wu Guang's face the instructor's expression started to sour but as he noticed that his opponent overcame the unexpected discovery and continued the attack, it actually blossomed into a smile. Well, at least this was what the instructor thought as actually no one, even Wu Guang could notice the smile hidden under the unkempt beard that hid almost all of the face below the nose.

An hour or so later, Wu Guang left the dojo on his own two feet. Or at least this was how he thought of it. Truth be told he was trembling and every step he made could turn into a fall. Right now if anyone asked him his impression of the spar, they would be answered by a hostile gaze that could actually kill.

No matter how Wu Guang attacked, even with all the punches, kicks, and jumps that should give him an advantage against a simple pure weapon school that the instructor had used, all of them were dodged. Which was even worse, the instructor had not moved at all from his initial spot. And still, he evaded every attack by leaning, bending, or turning his body.

As for the saber slashes and even a few serious attacks that Wu Guang did, all of them were blocked by the instructor's saber.

Speaking of the instructor's saber, it was not a training weapon as Wu Guang found after being hit for the first time, but as it was not sharpened and was made of pig iron, nobody could consider it a real weapon at all. Even so, every hit of this strange saber that not even a moronic amateur would buy was swift and landed right on the mark.

Thankfully the rune-cloth of the battle attire that Wu Guang had worn on a whim saved him from broken bones while the lack of edge protected him from any wounds. Still, even such protection and safety did not change the result, which was that Wu Guang was battered and bruised entirely, and not from head to toes... no, it could only be described as from the point of his hair to the tip of his toenails.

The only lucky thing was that the instructor evaded the face and so Wu Guang did not appear so bad, but still, walking was a pain.

He did have a few hours left before his next spar but in truth, Wu Guang did not know if he could sustain a similar experience again. In any case, the agenda was set up and he could not simply evade something he had decided on his own so Wu Guang resolved to recuperate and take part in the sword spar as well.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The latter was meant to be in one of the open-air training areas nearby so Wu Guang had a few hours to rest and at least recuperate to a point of being able to move without internally cursing. One would actually expect his thoughts to be full of anger or such, but in truth, Wu Guang was extremely happy to have received such a beating. And it was not because he was a masochist, which he was not.

The happiness came from the fact that he managed to glimpse far more than expected - to the point that after he carefully analyzed all the movements he had made during the spar, he fully understood his mistakes. 'Sandstorm' was a good school and Wu Guang's mastery was not bad, but still, it was a general school that required one to actually feel the fight to use, while Wu Guang because he had simply mastered it by understanding could not do so - and relied on the basic combinations explained in the manual, without really following the root, which was described in the simple phrase "Sand grains during a storm fly freely".

This spar against an experienced opponent or to call it simply this beating made him realize the mistake of simply learning the manual and not really trying to make it his own. But as he thought of the matter, Wu Guang understood from where the issue came. His real self of Bai Qi was born in a high-level realm and so did not train any manner of using a weapon without qi techniques at all. This was normal and in truth, only weapon maniacs did investigate weapon schools or went so far as to train in them while normal cultivators and especially ones like Bai Qi who excelled in qi control simply did not think of them like anything more than a stretching exercise.

A point to add to this was that during all of his life Bai Qi did not fight any close-quarters or weapon vs weapon fights as most of them were resolved by qi techniques or in extremely rare cases where he would rely on his treasured fan - then specialized weapon techniques created via the infusion of qi. Such manner of fighting was the only one known to him and served him well and so, he never felt the need to learn a dedicated manner of wielding the fan, after all, its techniques were powerful enough to occupy the place of the strongest cultivator on his plane.

All of the Qi techniques starting from the Earth realm would have different ranges and areas of effect, but still, almost all of them would entail distance. This was not because of anything more than the speed and ability to fly that any cultivator would have.

"Ranged attacks aside, until now I have not fought an opponent of my level or superior and so did not notice the fact that I actually don't know how to fight in close-quarters. Granted, I won in the tournament but to say the truth none of the opponents were a real danger to me and even Wei who's basic combat skills could create some to me was simply defending and so I did not have the opportunity to understand the flaw" This was Wu Guang's conclusion after carefully analyzing both his previous fights and this spar. "I need to find more opportunities of sparring with superior opponents in a non-qi manner. I don't feel really close to any of the melee weapons but even if I discard them further on the road, at least during my Yellow and initial Earth realm period such a manner of fighting will be the most useful. So training it will help me even if I discard it totally to return to my previous style when I can do so".

Actually, Wu Guang's mastery of the saber was on the advanced level of the common or mortal training but truth to be said this was just a term. The 0th mastery level which was also called mortal or common was simply based on the understanding which one reached with a weapon and not linked at all to the real strength of one. Following levels would indeed serve as a benchmark of sorts for the strength of a cultivator, but that was because each level would allow learning more advanced qi techniques. And so indeed make the cultivator more powerful.

But returning to the 0th level, the understanding was in simple terms just knowing what is the weapon and what it could do and as Wu Guang had just confirmed, did not help much during a real fight. Granted he could advance it almost instantly thanks to the state he had reached without any issue for any weapon he trained with, but again as he just confirmed, the fact of him knowing a weapon only helped him to understand and learn manuals and techniques quicker - without giving him a real edge in a fight.

Here one could try and debate that the instructor was far over Wu Guang's mastery and blame that as the reason for the result, but Wu Guang himself knew that this was wrong. After all, the instructor only used a simple saber school during the entire session. So except for the extremely high proficiency, he had with the saber and most probably the school he used, in truth, he was on a similar level of understanding as Wu Guang. And far more inferior in everything else as the instructor was a non-cultivator.