After Ling Xiao left,
A story of a young swordsman, half-demon and half-hero, began to spread around Shajiabao.
With his own strength, he destroyed the Linglong Immortal Palace and killed Wang She, a core disciple of the Beast King Palace.
He rescued countless harmed women, restoring Shajiabao to its former tranquility.
In fact, not long after this incident, the Yuehua Sect sent people to take over the area, of course, they did so purely because Lady Moon had given Chang Yueying a heads-up.
After all, if the Beast King Palace vented its anger on Shajiabao, many people there would likely die.
It seemed that Lady Moon, despite appearing domineering and tough, had a very delicate mind.
…
Before returning to the Yuehua Sect, Ling Xiao visited the Divine Sword Sect, leaving behind a large number of ordinary and fine-grade treasures, gold and silver, as well as numerous miraculous elixirs, before heading back to the Yuehua Sect.
Upon returning to the sect, Ling Xiao met no one but retreated to his outer disciple cave dwelling, beginning to prepare for some matters.
First, using the rare treasures obtained from the Evil Beast Demon King’s lair, he refined all thirty-six of his Tiangang Swords into rare-grade flying swords.
He also refined the Snowfall Sword.
Thus, both his Ice Dragon Sword and Snowfall Sword became rare-grade treasures.
And all thirty-six Tiangang Swords became rare-grade flying swords.
In the entire Yuehua Sect, no one could surpass him.
Unfortunately, he had used up all the rare-grade treasures, otherwise, he would have given one to Dai Yuling.
However, he still had three fine-grade treasures, which he planned to give to Dai Yuling, Zhao Zhi, and Shangguan Lei.
Giving one to Dai Yuling was naturally out of friendship.
Giving to Zhao Zhi and Shangguan Lei was to win their loyalty.
Though both were already inner disciples, obtaining a fine-grade treasure was no easy feat.
Especially defensive treasures.
These were the hardest to come by among all treasures, yet they were the most useful.
Afterwards, Ling Xiao spent a day reviewing and absorbing the battle scenes from recent days.
He turned the experiences from those battles into his own.
Through this effort, he finally entered a state of enlightenment, and the comprehension of the last three qi swords took only an hour to complete.
This was mainly because he had been constantly fighting enemies recently, accumulating a wealth of experience.
As he had expected, after fully condensing the nine qi swords, he comprehended true techniques from the original incantation.
After all, it was a top-tier golden martial art, it couldn’t just be a simple qi sword attack, if it were, it wouldn’t even compare to lesser techniques.
Now he understood.
Comprehending this martial art required continuous practice, accumulating experience, and then revisiting the incantation for new insights.
Unfortunately, having just condensed the nine qi swords, he only comprehended one technique, which he created based on the incantation and his Mountain River Martial Soul.
He tested its power with his martial soul clone in the Mountain River World, and it was terrifying, this single technique was almost comparable to the power of the final move.
The key was that it was faster to execute and could be used without drawing a sword.
It seemed that as his cultivation improved and his mastery of various martial techniques grew, some techniques would gradually be phased out.
But this was natural, and he didn’t mind, since the day he began practicing martial arts, he had cultivated many techniques, and there would always be a time for elimination, but these techniques not only provided him with strong combat power at that stage, more importantly, they offered insights into the patterns and knowledge of martial arts cultivation.
This was a form of accumulation.
Without that prior cultivation, he wouldn’t have found today’s practice so effortless.
Besides, Ling Xiao’s sword soul clones had also improved, now able to condense ten sword soul clones.
Yes, sword soul clones, not sword shadow clones.
The counter-hunt in the Fulong Mountains had earned him many sword-related martial souls, so all his sword shadow clones had been condensed into sword soul clones.
He still had three sword soul clones left to condense, and once successful, he could smoothly practice the techniques of the higher-tier sword art.
In fact, this was a substitute for the previous technique.
It was of a higher grade, more powerful, and also a sword-based technique.
Additionally, his body now housed three Out-of-Body Realm martial souls: the Plague Demon King Martial Soul, the Fairy Dragon Martial Soul, and the Iron Cedar Martial Soul, all at the first level of the Out-of-Body Realm, but due to the low grade of his Mountain River Martial Soul, they couldn’t advance further for now.
Besides, he still held the “Evil Beast Demon King” captive, was nurturing an Ancient Golden Dragon, and had an iron shard filled with killing intent, no less imposing than the Ancient Golden Dragon’s aura.
As for other martial souls, he used some to strengthen the soul of the Ancient Golden Dragon, while others were devoured by the Mountain River Martial Soul.
The Mountain River Martial Soul’s grade was too low, so it had to be upgraded, otherwise, the other martial souls would be stuck at the first level of the Out-of-Body Realm.
Fortunately, after devouring so many martial souls, the Mountain River Martial Soul had reached the peak of the Transparent Body stage and could break through at any moment.
It was just a matter of time, as digesting those devoured martial souls would take a while.
He estimated that after this, the Mountain River Martial Soul would at least advance to the peak of the Complete Soul Virtual Body stage, and perhaps even to the Complete Soul Solid Body stage.
The gains from Shajiabao and the Fulong Mountains were simply too great.
After completing these tasks, Ling Xiao left his cave dwelling to deliver the three defensive rare-grade treasures to Dai Yuling and the others.
In two days, the Moon Advent Festival would arrive, and the Tower Climbing Ceremony would officially begin on the third day after.
The three days prior wouldn’t be idle, mainly involving a selection process, except for seeded participants, all disciples who hadn’t participated in the Tower Climbing Ceremony three times could join the qualification selection.
It was said that Lady Moon had adjusted the rules for the Tower Climbing Ceremony qualification this time.
Due to the successive appearances of the Plague Demon King, the Evil Beast Demon King, and the emergence of the Mountain River Martial Soul, sensing that great changes were coming to the Mysterious Realm.
The rule adjustment was to allow more disciples to qualify for the Tower Climbing Ceremony.
The previous conditions were too strict, with no more than twenty disciples qualifying to enter the Yuehua Treasure Tower.
Sometimes, only one or two made it.
But this time was different, the old rules were abandoned, and the number of slots for the Tower Climbing Ceremony was increased to fifty.
These fifty slots would be determined through competition.
In other words, no matter what, at least fifty disciples would enter the Yuehua Treasure Tower this time.
Compared to the number of Yuehua Sect disciples, this might seem small, but compared to previous numbers, it was a significant increase.
