Seeing the experience points still available to him, Li Yun did not hesitate for a moment and chose to raise both his Spirit Soul and his comprehension.
[200,000 EXP has been consumed to upgrade Spirit Soul.]
[100,000 EXP has been consumed to upgrade Comprehension.]
Boom!
The instant both upgrades finished, an invisible transformation swept through Li Yun’s entire being. His Spirit Soul broke past its previous limit and advanced into the Black Spirit Soul state, while his comprehension went through an even more astonishing change and jumped straight to the ninth tier.
The improvement looked simple on the surface, but its effect was enormous. Li Yun immediately felt as though a veil had been lifted from his mind. His thoughts became exceptionally clear, and ideas that had once demanded long stretches of meditation now made sense to him almost at once.
Countless vague insights buried deep in his consciousness began linking together on their own, so principles he had only half understood suddenly became clear, and connections between seemingly unrelated concepts appeared before him one after another.
Before he could properly examine any of it, his consciousness slipped into that familiar state of enlightenment once more. The room around him faded from his perception, sound disappeared, and time itself seemed to lose its meaning until only the countless laws and principles between heaven and earth remained.
This time, Li Yun did not split his focus among cultivation techniques, martial skills, or other abilities. He concentrated entirely on his Intents. Over the course of his cultivation he had comprehended several extraordinarily powerful ones, and each represented a different path that could keep evolving.
Naturally, he began with the one he understood most deeply, which was his Slaughter Sword Intent. It currently stood at seventy percent source mastery at the Xiantian Stage, and the moment he focused on it, his consciousness seemed to sink into an endless crimson world.
Mountains of corpses stretched to the horizon, and rivers of blood flowed beneath a dark red sky. Broken weapons covered the battlefield, while an incomparably dense killing aura soaked into everything.
In the past, Li Yun had understood slaughter mainly through the act of killing, but his ninth-tier comprehension now let him see something deeper. Slaughter was not simply about taking a life. At its core, it meant severing and ending, and it was the absolute rejection of whatever stood before the sword.
A true Slaughter Sword Intent did not need rage or hatred, because the purest slaughter could be calm, emotionless, and absolute. Once the sword was drawn, something had to end.
The more Li Yun grasped this principle, the more the crimson world around him condensed. The boundless blood mist slowly drew inward toward a single sword standing upright in the middle of the battlefield. It did not look especially grand and carried no magnificent decorations, yet the moment it appeared, everything else seemed insignificant.
His Slaughter Sword Intent began to climb, rising to seventy-one percent, then seventy-three, and then seventy-five as his understanding kept deepening. Finally, when his comprehension crossed another invisible boundary, the crimson sword let out a faint hum.
Boom!
His Slaughter Sword Intent had reached eighty percent source mastery at the Xiantian Stage.
His consciousness did not stop there, and the crimson battlefield vanished almost immediately. An endless white world took its place, and a solitary sword floated silently within the emptiness. No matter how much time passed, the sword never changed, and no matter how heaven and earth transformed, it endured.
This was his Immortal Sword Intent, which had previously reached sixty percent source mastery at the Xiantian Stage. Its nature was entirely different from slaughter, since slaughter represented ending while immortality represented continuation. As his understanding deepened, however, Li Yun realized the two were not necessarily opposites.
For a sword to become truly immortal, its edge could never decay, its will could never fade, and its path could never be extinguished.
Even if its wielder died, even if civilizations disappeared, and even if heaven and earth themselves someday collapsed, the essence of that sword could still remain. That was what immortality meant. It was not merely endless life but eternal existence.
The pale sword floating before him slowly grew brighter, its outline sharpened, and its aura became more and more ancient. His Immortal Sword Intent climbed to sixty-two percent, then sixty-five, and then sixty-eight before another invisible barrier shattered, and it settled at seventy percent source mastery at the Xiantian Stage.
The scene changed again, and this time Li Yun found himself surrounded by absolute darkness. There was no battlefield and no eternal white void, only destruction. Stars collapsed and worlds shattered, mountains disappeared and oceans boiled away, and even space itself fractured and returned to nothingness.
This was his Destruction Sword Intent, which he had previously comprehended to forty percent source mastery at the Xiantian Stage. His earlier understanding had centered on destruction as the collapse of all things, but now his perception went deeper.
Destruction was not merely overwhelming power, and true destruction did not always need a massive explosion. A sword could destroy something by severing its structure. One perfectly placed point of destruction could bring down an entire mountain, and one critical flaw broken at the right moment could make a massive formation crumble.
The real essence of destruction was not scale but the annihilation of foundation, because once the foundation was gone, everything built on it would collapse on its own.
As this realization settled in, the darkness around him grew even deeper. The worlds before him no longer exploded violently. Instead, they simply ceased to exist, their laws breaking apart and their foundations vanishing until everything returned quietly to nothingness.
His Destruction Sword Intent rose to forty-three percent, then forty-six, and then forty-eight before the breakthrough finally came, and it reached fifty percent source mastery at the Xiantian Stage.
His consciousness moved once more, and this time an enormous black vortex appeared before him. It devoured everything around it. Spiritual energy, light, sound, and matter were all swallowed, and even the fragments of laws drifting nearby were slowly pulled inside.
This was his Devouring Intent. It had only recently entered the Xiantian Stage and currently sat at thirty percent source mastery, so his understanding of it was still fairly shallow compared with his sword intents. Under ninth-tier comprehension, however, that gap began closing quickly.
Li Yun studied the black vortex carefully. He had once thought of devouring as simple consumption, a matter of absorbing something, taking its energy, and making that power his own. Now he realized this was only one side of it.

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