Chương 174: The Legacy of the Sword Saint

"Behind you!" his master's voice roared.

"Move! Now!" He spun around immediately and his sword was already cutting through the air in a defensive arc before he had even fully turned, but his blade, the same blade that had so easily severed reality itself just moments earlier, seemed to pass through nothing but a patch of shadow. There was a figure standing there, tall and wrapped in robes so pitch black that they seemed to be absorbing the light around them rather than just being a dark color.

Its face was hidden behind a mask that was made out of some bizarre black crystal material and just looking directly at it for too long hurt, like it existed across more dimensions than a normal human mind was capable of processing properly. Wu Kangming narrowed his eyes as he took in this new threat standing in front of him.

"So," he said, choosing his words carefully, "I'm guessing you're the master who enslaved them?" The Masked One tilted his head slightly to one side.

"You should have just accepted their offer when they made it," he said.

"Now I'm going to have to collect you myself, though I suppose it's fitting in a way since its been quite a while since I've had to get my own hands dirty." Wu Kangming shook his head and kept his guard stance up.

"You should have ambushed me properly while you had the chance instead of doing whatever this is." The Masked One laughed at that and the sound of it was deeply wrong somehow, like multiple people were laughing all at the exact same time.

"I have nothing to fear from a Qi Condensation cultivator, even one who happens to be a protagonist."

"Be very careful here," his master warned him urgently.

"He's at the peak of the Stellar Realm." The Masked One started gesturing at the empty air in front of him like he was reading some kind of invisible text that only he could see.

"Let's have a look here... which archetype are you exactly? The young master who lost everything and then found some mysterious inheritance somewhere? Or maybe the humble villager who has a special constitution that nobody else has?" He paused for a moment and his head tilted at an angle that didn't look natural at all.

"Ah, of course, I see it now. The crippled cultivator who found an ancient expert's legacy hidden away somewhere. How delightfully traditional of you." Wu Kangming's expression shifted as the Masked One made a dismissive little gesture with his hand.

"It doesn't matter in the end," the collector said.

"I'll just look through your soul myself and find out the truth of it." The Masked One made a pulling motion with both of his hands and Wu Kangming suddenly felt his entire body being dragged forward against his will, like he was caught in some kind of invisible current that was pulling at his actual soul.

"Master..." Wu Kangming started thinking but before the thought could even finish forming, he felt a familiar presence surge up through him from somewhere deep inside. His vision went blurry and when it cleared again, he found himself watching through his own eyes as his master took over control of his body.

"You impudent collector," Wu Kangming's voice came out of his mouth, but it wasn't really his voice that was speaking anymore, it carried a weight to it that felt like it came from eons and eons of time.

"You dare to lay your hands on my disciple's soul like this?" Before the Masked One could even react to what had just happened, Wu Kangming's sword moved through a pattern that shouldn't have been physically possible for any blade to move through. The blade left trails of silver light behind it that cut directly through space itself, forming a character in the air that meant both "sword" and "ending" at the exact same time somehow.

The attack caught the Masked One right in the shoulder and for the very first time the collector's perfect composure actually cracked open. Black energy sprayed out from the wound as he staggered backward and his mask cracked slightly.

"That's impossible!" the Masked One's cried out.

"A Civilisation Realm expert? Hidden inside a—" His mask twisted into something that might have been a snarl if a mask could snarl.

"Not an ancient legacy at all but the old grandpa in the ring trope! Of course it would be that. How did I miss something this obvious?" If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"You will not be leaving this place alive, collector," the Sword Spirit declared.

"Your corruption ends here and now." The sword in Wu Kangming's hand started changing shape and silver light began crawling along its entire length until the blade looked like it was made out of starlight rather than steel. The air around the sword warped and twisted as reality itself seemed to be struggling to contain whatever power was being channeled through such an otherwise mundane looking vessel.

"Eternal Edge Sword Dao," the Sword Saint whispered.

"First Form: Severance of Heaven and Earth." The Masked One reached quickly into his robes and crushed a crystal between his fingers that sparked with multicolored light when it broke. But before he could finish whatever technique he had been attempting to use, Wu Kangming's sword moved. The slash itself wasn't particularly dramatic when it happened. There was no screaming wind or thunderous impact or blinding flash of light to announce it.

The blade simply drew a single line through the space in front of it, a perfect arc that seemed to divide the entire world along its length. For just a moment nothing happened at all. Then reality itself began splitting open along that line. The ground cracked apart in a perfect geometric divide that stretched out as far as the eye could see in either direction. The air itself seemed to part down the middle, creating a vacuum that pulled at everything nearby it.

Trees and rocks and even the light itself all seemed to bend toward that absolute division that had just been cut into existence. But the Masked One was already gone by then, the last fragments of his crushed crystal fading away into nothing like wisps of smoke.

The attack that should have ended him instead carved out a canyon through the forest, a perfectly clean cut that would remain there for centuries afterward as a sign of the true power of the sword dao, and it would eventually become something of a pilgrimage site for sword cultivators all across the Eastern Continent. The sword spirit stumbled, or at least Wu Kangming felt something like stumbling happen inside himself, and control of his body returned to him as his master's presence started to fade away.

"Master? What's happening? Are you alright?"

"I... miscalculated," the Sword Saint's voice was already fading as he spoke.

"My soul... couldn't handle even a remnant of my true power, not even close. I'll need to rest... to recover..."

"Rest?" There was a note of panic in Wu Kangming's voice that he hadn't used in a very long time.

"For how long exactly?"

"A while," his master's voice was growing more distant with every word.

"Months, at the very least. Maybe... longer than that." Wu Kangming felt his heart clench up at hearing that. As confident as he had shown himself to be in front of the people he'd just fought, all of that confidence had stemmed entirely from knowing that his master was right there with him the whole time.

Without the sword spirit's guidance, he was just Wu Kangming again, the talentless outer disciple, the one whose cultivation had been crippled by a bully, the one who had been cast aside by his fiancé and his friends and his entire clan.

"Stop that train of thought right now," his master's voice came through again, weaker now but still stern with him.

"Don't you dare fall into that trap of self-doubt again. I chose you because I saw the potential that was in you. Everything that I taught you, it belongs to you now, you've earned every bit of it."

"But..."

"No buts about it." Despite how weak his voice had become the Sword Saint's tone still didn't leave any room for argument.

"Follow the training schedule that I designed for you. And for heaven's sake, let go of that demoness Wu Lihua already. Stop creating enemies for yourself out of nothing. You have... bigger things to worry about now then her." For once in his life Wu Kangming didn't argue back about Wu Lihua at all. How could he possibly argue when he could feel his master's presence growing weaker with every second that went by?

"I understand, Master. I'll follow what you've told me to do. Just please come back when you're able to."

"Hmph. Suddenly so obedient... right when I'm about to fall asleep for who knows how long..." The sword spirit's amusement came through clearly despite how weak his voice had gotten.

"Remember what I taught you... about the true nature of... the sword." His voice faded down to barely a whisper at this point.

"... and goodbye... little Ming."

"Goodbye... Master," Wu Kangming whispered back as he stood alone in the clearing that had been devastated by the fight, his plain sword feeling heavier in his hand then it had ever felt before in his life. He touched the ring on his finger but there was no response from it at all. His master's presence was technically still there somewhere inside it, but it was so weak now that it felt like it could flicker out at any moment without warning.

The mist was still curling around his feet the same as before, but he didn't have the heart in him anymore to practice sensing through it like he usually would. Instead, he sheathed his sword and started the long walk toward the secret realm that his master had left behind all those millennia ago, and every single step along the way felt heavier than the one before it. He had won the battle, but the victory felt hollow to him. His master was gone now, possibly for years to come.

The Masked One was still out there somewhere, wounded but very much still alive and presumably still after him. The loneliness that swept over him in that moment was almost physical in how intense it felt. For the first time since he had first received his master's guidance, Wu Kangming felt truly alone.