Then Li Yun reached the thirteenth stone monument, and his footsteps stopped. The secret art recorded there caught his attention immediately.
It was called the Soulheart Sword Scripture, and its introduction alone made his eyes sharpen. The Soulheart Sword Scripture combined swordsmanship with Heart Force, which came from a deeper comprehension of the soul.
The image on the monument changed, and a white-robed swordsman appeared in the sky. Far below him lay an enormous battlefield where two armies made up of hundreds of thousands of cultivators were locked in combat. The swordsman looked down at them with a calm, compassionate expression, and then his voice echoed out.
"The path of the soul is far too profound. I have studied it all my life, yet I would not dare claim to understand even a tenth of its mysteries. Because the complete Soul Dao was beyond me, I created the path of Heart Force instead. Heart Force comes from the mind, the will, and the soul. When it is carried by the sword, it can slip past ordinary defenses and strike directly at a person’s spirit."
His gaze swept across the battlefield.
"The Soulheart Sword Scripture has nine forms. Unfortunately, even though I devoted my life to creating it, I finished only seven. I leave the last two to those who come after me."
He raised his sword.
"Soulheart Sword Scripture, First Form."
The blade moved with a soft whoosh. No visible Sword Qi appeared, and no great explosion shook the battlefield, yet hundreds of thousands of cultivators below suddenly froze.
Their faces went blank and the light left their eyes, and then all of their life force vanished at the same moment. Bodies fell across the battlefield like wheat before a scythe. The opposing army stared in terror, and many of them dropped to their knees at once.
The scene changed.
"Soulheart Sword Scripture, Second Form."
He made another strike.
"Soulheart Sword Scripture, Third Form."
Once again there was almost no visible effect, yet every enemy his sword targeted met the same fate. Their bodies stayed mostly intact, but their souls were simply snuffed out.
Li Yun watched intently, and when the demonstration finally ended, regret showed on his face.
"What a pity."
The Soulheart Sword Scripture was extraordinarily powerful, and more importantly, it suited him very well. He had always meant to strengthen his soul-related combat methods, and a sword technique that could strike directly at an opponent’s soul would greatly widen his options. Unfortunately, the inheritance in the Chronospace Vault contained only the first three forms.
The creator had supposedly finished seven, but Li Yun had no idea where the other four completed forms might be found. If all seven had been here, he would have chosen the Soulheart Sword Scripture on the spot. With only the first three, he hesitated.
Li Yun went on to examine the other stone monuments, one secret art after another. Several of them were extremely powerful, but none appealed to him as strongly as the Soulheart Sword Scripture.
He was just thinking about going back to the thirteenth monument and choosing it anyway when another inheritance finally caught his eye, and his eyes brightened.
This secret art was called the Myriad Sword Spirit Command Art, and after reading its introduction, Li Yun understood its nature right away. It could be thought of as an advanced evolution of the Sword Control Art.
The Sword Control Art relied mainly on Soul Power to control large numbers of swords. The Myriad Sword Spirit Command Art went a step further. Along with Soul Power, the cultivator had to infuse every sword he controlled with what the inheritance called Sword Spirit Will.
This did not mean a literal weapon spirit. It referred to the cultivator’s mindset, intent, willpower, and fighting awareness.
Li Yun quickly grasped the difference. The Sword Control Art let him command swords, while the Myriad Sword Spirit Command Art would let him make those swords feel like extensions of himself. Put into words, the distinction sounded small, but in a real fight it was enormous.
Using the Sword Control Art alone was like commanding an army in which every soldier knew his place in the formation and followed orders accurately. It was powerful, but each soldier was still a separate piece in the end. T
he Myriad Sword Spirit Command Art turned that same army into a perfectly unified war machine. Every sword would share the same intent, and every formation would carry Li Yun’s will, so thousands of separate blades could act as if they were parts of one enormous weapon.
If the Sword Control Art created an organized army, the Myriad Sword Spirit Command Art created an elite legion that had fought together for countless years under an undefeated commander.
The Sword Spirit Will was that commander. It gave the whole formation its direction, gave every sword a shared purpose, and turned scattered power into something truly unified.
Li Yun’s eyes grew brighter and brighter.
"This is the one."
He made the decision almost at once. The Soulheart Sword Scripture was tempting, but the inheritance here was incomplete. The Myriad Sword Spirit Command Art, on the other hand, directly strengthened one of his existing core abilities.
He already controlled six thousand precious swords. If he could turn those six thousand individually controlled weapons into one truly unified whole, his combat power would rise enormously. More importantly, he would not have to give up the Sword Control Art. This technique would raise it to a higher level instead.
Li Yun placed his palm on the stone monument, and it reacted immediately with a low buzz. Information surged straight into his mind. It included cultivation methods, soul manipulation patterns, and formation principles, along with ways to condense Sword Spirit Will and techniques for linking his consciousness with thousands of swords at once.
The enormous flood of knowledge poured into his consciousness.
Unlike the low-level secret techniques recorded on the Chronospace Jade Walls, the thirty-six middle-level inheritances were protected by powerful restrictions. The outer demonstrations let cultivators understand their general nature, but the true core of each inheritance was only revealed after someone officially made a choice.
Fifteen minutes passed before the stream of information finally stopped. Li Yun slowly took his hand away, and a smile appeared on his face. With the Myriad Sword Spirit Command Art, his ability to control swords was sure to go through another tremendous transformation.
Once he mastered it, his chances of beating the Old Fisherman on the second floor of the Everlasting Pagoda would rise considerably.
Just then, something in his storage began to vibrate. Li Yun raised an eyebrow and took out a small communication artifact. It was the Echo Transmission Stone that Feng Xuan had given him, and it was flashing rapidly.
Li Yun’s expression turned serious.
"A message from Brother Feng?"

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