It bears remembering that Aiden's cultivation in his past life had reached the rank of Immortal King. And what exactly was an Immortal King? Second only to an Immortal Venerable. And yet even an Immortal King's sword intent couldn't hold a candle to what radiated off this mountain.No one would believe it, if he tried to explain.Could this be the legendary Sword Progenitor's Mountain? Aiden murmured, his mind reeling. The history of the Sword Progenitor stretched back so far that even within the Immortal Realm itself, no one could trace its true origin.The Sword Progenitor, a figure wrapped entirely in legend, his true realm and power beyond anyone's full comprehension. Legend held that he had transcended the very path of immortality, becoming something unmatched by anyone who came after.But the Progenitor's greatest strength was never his raw cultivation level. It was his mastery of eight singular techniques: Sword Courage, Sword Soul, Sword Spirit, Sword Heart, Sword Manual, Swor

Aiden and Lucy stood at the base of the mountain, watching the group already two-thirds of the way up. A chill ran down both their spines. Once weapons like these came out, surrender was the only realistic option.By now, Redmane, deep into his Profound-realm strength, had stopped holding back entirely. He drew an alloy blade from behind his back and cleaved every falling sword clean in two. Hundreds of millions of years of decay meant even these immortal blades had lost most of their edge.Cassian pulled out a pair of crimson gauntlets and slipped them on. Clearly no ordinary gear, worn as they looked, they held firm against incoming longswords without a scratch.A faint red glow pulsed from the metal too, proof this was no modern manufacture. Almost certainly something unearthed from an ancient site, quite possibly tied to the old breath cultivators from the Age Before the Crowns."This young master of the Black Market is no ordinary fighter. Look at that fist work, equal parts raw

Even with Redmane's cultivation sitting solidly in the Profound realm, he was clearly losing ground here, proof enough that Cassian had been holding back the entire time and was only now unleashing his true strength.Cassian clenched his fist, veins bulging along his forearm, and drove it forward with a violent swing, the air itself screaming under the force, dust kicking up in a thick cloud."Mountain-Splitting Fist!"Redmane's pupils contracted as he parried with his blade, but the force behind that punch bent his alloy sword visibly on impact.THUD!Both of them were thrown backward by the collision. Cassian recovered quickly, barely shaken, but Redmane's knuckles split open against the hilt, blood dripping steadily onto the ground."No surprise, coming from someone on the Starfall Prodigy Ranking. But that can't be your full strength, can it?" Redmane's eyes turned serious. Only now did he truly grasp how terrifying these so-called prodigies really were.Cassian shook out his numb

Lucy's heart skipped a beat, a flicker of fear in her voice. "Aiden, are you okay? Why are you grinning like that? You're scaring me, you know I spook easily...""Ha, so that's how it works. This hide scroll really is the true Nameless Sword Manual, and the text itself" Aiden's gaze shifted, only to find the bound text had vanished entirely.This had been the Sword Progenitor's final test. Anyone who came here chasing only the written manual was doomed to walk away empty-handed, or worse, erased outright by the killing intent woven into the trial itself.That sphere of light hadn't just carried the sword manual's legacy. It held the Progenitor's own understanding of the blade, his personal insight into the path itself, something even more precious than the manual could ever be on its own.The inheritance also revealed that the white longsword, born from the fusion of six immortal blades, carried a name: the Boundless Divine Sword. Damaged as it was now, only reforging could restore it

While every faction argued over marching straight to Celestara to demand answers from House Wexford, somewhere far above a primeval rainforest, its distance from Mount Halcyon anyone's guess, something stirred.A flash of white light tore open the sky, and two figures tumbled free of it, along with a shattered sword and its embryo, crashing down into the undergrowth nearby.Cough!The instant he hit the ground, Aiden coughed up several mouthfuls of blood, flecked with tiny fragments of tissue, proof of real internal damage.He'd sent Cassian flying with a single punch earlier, sure, but the strike had cost him dearly too, and he'd already been running on fumes of spiritual energy by that point.If not for whatever strange power lived inside those crimson gauntlets, he likely would have been the one coughing blood and flying backward instead.Still, Aiden didn't waste a moment tending his own wounds. He settled cross-legged at once, one hand bracing Lucy's back, the other gripping the