Chương 307: Peak Sword Dao Concept

Long Feng stood before the crystal wall and copied what all others did; he placed his identity token against the wall. A faint aura scanned through his token and returned to the crystal wall, then a metallic voice echoed in Long Feng's mind.

"Outer Peak disciple Long Feng, zero Heaven runes. Allowed to enter any two Dao grounds for two hours each." Long Feng was startled to find a crystal speaking, but he soon calmed down. The Mainland was extremely strange. Nothing had to make sense. Besides, it was probably a formation which he couldn't sense at all. He retrieved his token and walked past the wall towards the metallic doors behind. As he approached them, he could finally see the doors clearly.

They were large and made entirely of a strange metal that seemed indestructible. At least, to the current Long Feng, he could kill himself and would still fail to shake these doors in the slightest. Several strange runes were inscribed boldly on each of the doors, each door having different runes. In the center of each door was a carving of something different. Rain, lightning, a mountain, an iceberg, a tornado, a forest, a metal blade, blazing flame…

there were twelve doors exactly, and each of them depicted different carvings on them. Long Feng stared at each carving with intrigue and tried to understand what they meant.

"Dao comprehension grounds…

'Dao', so rain signifies water, lightening signifies, well, lightening, mountain is earth, iceberg is ice, tornado is wind, forest means wood, metal is metal, blazing flame signifies fire. Each of them portrays a different Dao to be comprehended." Coincidentally, these were exactly the eight trigrams of water, lightning, earth, ice, wind, wood, metal and fire. Long Feng slowly shook his head. None of these eight trigrams Dao was his path.

"There's no light Dao and no Demon Dao…?" He frowned. The Demon Dao was an unorthodox path. Very few people ever embarked on this path as it signified darkness. And it never ended well. Rumors of demonic cultivators who were destroyed by heavenly tribulation or controlled by their Dao and lost themselves, becoming mindless killing machines abounded. The demon Dao was an extremely rare Dao. It was possible that our of a million cultivators, not even ten would choose that path. As for the light Dao…

it was an ethereal Dao that was very hard to sense, not to mention comprehend. Luckily, those weren't all. The other four metal doors depicted four different things; a sword, a spear, a saber and a hammer. This was good news to Long Feng. The sword carving must surely mean the sword Dao, right? It just so happened that he had hit a bottleneck in his sword Dao. This was an opportunity for him to advance his sword concept to the peak. Having made his choice, Long Feng walked towards the door that depicted the sword.

He stood before the door and his token glowed faintly. Some of the runes on the door seemed to activate and Long Feng was suddenly sucked directly into the door before he could react. Long Feng's sight darkened for a minute before he regained his sight. Even before he could see anything, a voice with a mysterious tone sounded in his head.

"The ancient sword legacy remnant is a mysterious inheritance from the ancient era, stumbled upon by the Supreme Heaven Lord, the founder of the Supreme Heaven Sect. Few ever comprehend anything from it. What you will comprehend depends on your ability." Long Feng's sight was restored the instant the voice finished speaking. Before he could ponder on the words of the voice, he found himself standing on a mountain peak.

The peak was incomprehensibly tall, piercing so high into the sky that Long Feng couldn't see the land below at all. All he could see was an endless see of cloud. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Not far from him on the peak was a cave. Long Feng couldn't comprehend what a cane was doing at such height, yet he didn't think too much about it. His attention was drawn to a single stone stele just before the cave entrance.

The stele contained some faintly blurred words. But Long Feng could still read the words clearly. A single glance at the stele left him dazed.

"What is the Sword?" That was it. Nothing else was on the stele. A single question that seemed almost like a joke. What else could the sword be? A weapon, the Sovereign of Myriad Weapons. Wasn't that it? Long Feng frowned and looked around, confirming that there was nothing else. Was this the sword Dao comprehension ground? It didn't seem like much. Perhaps the real deal was hidden within the cave? He slowly approached the cave, keeping his guards up for any sudden change.

He soon walked past the stone stele and stopped before the cave entrance. He tried to scan into the dark cave with his soul power but wasn't able to sense anything at all. After hesitating briefly, he walked into the cave. The next thing Long Feng knew, he was back outside on the tall peak right where he had first appeared. He blinked and looked around, startled, before turning back to the cane entrance.

"What just happened?" He murmured. He had clearly walked into the cave. How was he back outside? Thinking this was an illusion, he tried to enter the cave a few more times and always ended up back outside, leaving him feeling frustrated. After several tries, Long Feng paused with a deep frown, realizing that this was a waste of time. He had two hours here and over ten minutes had passed already without him doing anything.

"What's going on? Is this some sort of a joke?" How was this a Dao comprehension ground? This was clearly playing him around. He tried to calm down and began to think of what exactly was going on. Looking around again, his gaze paused on the stone stele, on the rather funny question again.

"What is the Sword?" He muttered.

"Do I need to answer that before I can proceed into the cave?" That made some sense to Long Feng, so he approached the stone stele instead and stood before it.

"What is the sword hm? The sword is the sovereign of Myriad Weapons!" He spoke loudly and waited for a minute. There was no changes. He tried to enter the cave again but ended up back at the beginning yet again. Long Feng stood before the stone stele again and wracked his brain to come up with an idea.

"Um, the sword is a peerless offensive weapon?" Still no reaction. Long Feng thought hard of different answers, everything he learnt from Old Man Solitude but nothing changed. He still wasn't able to enter the cave at all. After wasting nearly thirty minutes in this way, Long Feng was beginning to lose his patience. He stood before the stone stele and stared at it for a long time, thinking of what this question meant and how he was supposed to answer it.

"Everyone has different comprehension of the sword, different principles and sword hearts…" he muttered, remembering what Old Man Solitude had told him. If so, then he had been using old man Solitude's comprehension all this while. Everything he knew and did was exactly what he was taught by old man Solitude. Could that be where he was getting it wrong? He frowned and forcefully calmed his mind.

Then he focused his mind and soul on the stone stele completely, clearing his mind from all distractions and leaving a single thought filling his mind.

"What is the Sword." Time passed silently. Long Feng himself soon forgot everything, forgot where he was or what he was doing. He didn't even realize when he slowly sat down before the stone stele and stared at it with a blank expression on his face. Time lost it's meaning to him. Seconds? Minutes? He didn't know how long passed. All he knew was he had to figure out the answer to a single question.

"What is the Sword?" He murmured softly as he stared at the stele. In his mind, a longsword appeared, exactly the same as the Origin Spirit Sword. It's shape, everything was the same down to the last detail. He wielded this sword in his mind and began to swing it around.

"What is the Sword?" He asked himself calmly as he swung the sword in his mind.

"The sword is a weapon unlike any other. It is the ultimate form of all weapons, the sovereign of Myriad Weapons. It can be overbearing, it can be unstoppable, it can be fast, it can have peerless offense, it can be defensive, it can be brilliant. Yet beyond all these, it is subtle…calm. It requires an unbending will, a heart that has no flaw, no doubts, a Dao that doesn't have limits." The sword in his mind slowly faded away and he glanced up at the stone stele with a bright glimmer in his pupils.

"What is the Sword?" He asked himself loudly. Then he stood up and drew the Origin Spirit Sword out of it's sheath. Holding the sword, he began to swing it at the stone stele, leaving several sword marks on it right below the question. His swings were slow with extremely precise movements. Shockingly, his movements were exactly the same as in his mind with exactly no difference at all.

When he finished swinging his sword, he sheathed it back and stared at the marks on the stone stele with a faint smile; the marks he just left. A deep glance would reveal that the marks actually formed a few words.

'The sword is… Perfection' That was exactly what the sword marks Long Feng left on the stone stele formed together. This wasn't just a sentence. It was more than that. This contained all of Long Feng's sword understanding. It wasn't much, but it was perfect for him, his own path. This wasn't Old Man Solitude's comprehension. It was his teachings, but this was a different understanding. This was Long Feng's sword concept! The moment he sheathed his sword, Long Feng took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Several more minutes passed. After a long time, a wind began to blow around Long Feng, causing his robes to flap. An extremely piercing aura suddenly surged out of his body, spreading to cover the entire peak. Faint sword marks suddenly appeared on the ground as a large blurry sword manifested behind Long Feng for a short moment before it broke apart. The wind blew Long Feng's hair as the sword energy spreading from him got stronger until it broke through an invisible limit and surpassed rank eight concept level.

Rank nine sword concept! Long Feng had finally stepped into the peak of the sword concept stage, a single step away from comprehending his own Intent! The sharp sword energy around him slowly returned to his body and vanished. The peak regained it's previous calm as Long Feng slowly opened his eyes and smiled.

"Rank nine sword concept… I didn't think it was that easy. All I needed to do was to truly use old man Solitude's teachings to form my own comprehension. It was that easy yet also very hard." He glanced at the stone stele.

"Without this, I would have needed a long time to understand this, and even then, I wouldn't make such a perfect advancement." The ancient sword legacy remnant definitely lived up to it's reputation as one of the Dao comprehension grounds of the Supreme Heaven Sect. The cave was definitely where the real comprehension was hidden, yet the stone stele alone helped Long Feng to make a breakthrough in his sword understanding. The increase to his strength wasn't small and wasn't very huge yet.

The main thing was his cultivation, but his Dao was similarly important. At least now, he would perhaps be able to really face Huang Fang Hao in a fight and reach the three thousand points mark in the warrior tower.

"It's really no wonder that the disciples of the Sect are so terrifying. The other Dao comprehension grounds should at least have similar effects. With these sorts of advantages, it would really be weird if they don't get strong." Little did Long Feng know, the other grounds were much less effective than this. The ancient sword legacy remnant was unlike the other Dao grounds. It wasn't created by the sect founder; not even he understood it.

Very few people chose to enter it because over five thousand years, less than a hundred people had ever understood anything worthwhile from it. That was why it was called a remnant… it wasn't a complete inheritance.

"Perhaps I'll be able to comprehend my sword intent if I enter the cave…" Long Feng's eyes were filled with expectation as he stared past the stone stele to the cave entrance. Sword intent… that was a level that could threaten deities! Even if he could only begin to form his rudimentary intent, it would make him much stronger than he was now.