Eternal Swordmaster
Chapter 343 - 336 Trial of the Sword Five

Chapter 343: Chapter 336 Trial of the Sword Five

Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty... seventy... seventy-seven.

It just so happened that the data stopped at seventy-seven, a somewhat symmetrical figure.

Seventy-seven points!

This was four to five times Lin Xin’s previous attributes!

He could clearly feel abnormal changes occurring in some parts of his body.

An endless stream of strength wildly surged out, his muscles becoming tighter and more symmetrical, his bones more solid and harder.

His blood seemed to boil like boiling water, wildly flowing and squeezing through his veins.

Crack!

He suddenly clutched at his chest, as an intense piercing pain unexpectedly emerged out of nowhere.

"As expected, there’s a problem! The attributes are too imbalanced!"

He knew the reason in his heart.

"But I can still hold on. I estimate that if my attributes were to increase by another dozen or so points, my internal organs might not be able to handle the strain. It seems that the problem doesn’t lie with Defense, but with my physique, which can’t keep up."

He suddenly thought of the medical and biological knowledge from Earth.

The human body is constantly in a process of metabolism where new cells are created and old ones die off and are replaced. Humans are in a state of significant equilibrium.

In order to gain greater strength and speed for killing, for instance, the body will demand a greater consumption and burning of energy to provide more strength and speed to the host.

Whereas physique is responsible for repairing and generating new things, compensating for consumption. But now it seems that the repair process can’t keep up with the consumption.

"If this goes on for too long, it could shorten my lifespan," he chuckled, then put his concerns aside for the moment. Fortunately, he had preemptively reserved ten points of attributes.

Heart pain continued to pulsate, clearly unable to hold on much longer.

He decisively allotted his attributes to his physique.

Watching for a moment, the Free Attributes rapidly decreased, while his physique began to swiftly increase.

From the original twenty-one points, it increased to twenty-five points.

Sure enough, as his physique increased, the piercing pain in his heart significantly eased.

Lin Xin was delighted, knowing he had guessed correctly, and continued to enhance his physique.

Twenty-six, twenty-seven.

It just so happened to stop at twenty-seven, and the piercing pain in his heart completely disappeared. The discomfort in his internal organs also fully returned to normal.

"From twenty-seven to seventy-seven, it seems that if there is a gap of fifty points between the two types of attributes, it can cause serious bodily imbalance and pose a threat to life," Lin Xin silently noted this rule.

He had four remaining points of attributes, which after some thought, he evenly distributed to Defense and Evasion.

His Defense increased from the original seventeen points to nineteen points. His Evasion went from three points to five points.

With the attribute base he had at this point, the two-point increase to Defense felt very minimal.

He slowly closed his eyes to meditate, allowing his body to adapt to the newly enhanced attributes.

Unknowingly, a significant amount of time passed.

Thud, thud.

Suddenly, a series of knocking sounds came from outside the cave.

"Hmm?"

Lin Xin lifted his head to look towards the entrance of the cave.

The Array Plate had already blocked the entrance, and all he could see was a stone wall.

Listening carefully to the noises outside, it seemed there was no sound at all.

Lin Xin was about to continue meditating and adjusting his body when,

Thud, thud.

Once again, two muffled knocks sounded.

It was as if the cave was a house and someone outside was knocking on the door, wanting to come in.

Lin Xin narrowed his eyes, If the first two knocks could have been a falling stone hitting the cave, then this identical rhythm indicated a certain problem.

"A nighttime visit, may I inquire which Daoist friend this might be?" he called out calmly.

Outside the cave was dead silence, not even the sound of the wind.

Lin Xin frowned, got up, walked to the cave entrance, and drew his Red Flower Sword. He placed his hand on the stone wall.

The stone wall created by the Array Plate instantly dissipated.

There was nothing outside the cave.

He furrowed his brows and was about to turn back into the cave when,

He suddenly noticed a dark shadow behind him, closely standing right there.

The shadow was cast by the moonlight on the ground inside the cave, just in an area that the campfire couldn’t reach.

Hiss.

Lin Xin quickly spun around.

In an instant, his eyes blurred and he saw outside the cave, a large crowd of people in tattered clothes.

Each of these people had a numb expression, their bodies emitting a foul stench, some with limbs missing, and all of their hollow eyes were fixed upon Lin Xin.

"Lonely souls and wild ghosts? So many?" Lin Xin was startled.

Normally, these lonely souls and wild ghosts wouldn’t congregate together outdoors, but would roam in specified territories.

But now, so many have suddenly appeared, there’s obviously a problem.

He looked around outside the cave and found nothing else. There were just large groups of lost and wandering ghosts continually gathering toward this area.

Lifting his hand, Lin Xin drew a semi-transparent rune in mid-air with his finger. The rune vibrated lightly and instantly shot into the crowd of ghosts.

In the spot where the rune landed, a great mass of dark energy suddenly exploded.

It quickly engulfed a large area around it.

When the dark energy dispersed after a moment, all the lost souls and wandering ghosts had disappeared.

Lin Xin looked around again but found nothing.

But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. Ghosts wouldn’t converge around him for no reason, especially without any fear.

As a Demon Path Cultivator, the killing intent and bloodlust he emitted were enough to keep most spirits far away.

At least within the bounds of the yang membrane, apart from cultivators, nothing else should be a match for him.

And since most spirits lacked intelligence, acting purely on instinct, an instinct that should naturally strive to seek good fortune and avoid harm, it seemed incomprehensible that they would gather in the cave regardless of the danger. Clearly, there was an issue.

After extinguishing the crowd of ghosts, Lin Xin turned to re-enter the cave and added another Array Plate with a wave of his hand.

This time the Array Plate served to soundproof and block the senses of the soul.

No sooner had he thrown it out than the Spirit Jade embedded on it flashed with a glint of light, taking effect.

The walls of the cave flickered with a faint silvery glow, which lasted only a short while before it quickly vanished.

The outside sounds, smells, including the presence of those lonely ghosts, were instantly cut off by the Array Plate.

Lin Xin glanced at the campfire, quickly laid out a formation on the ground, and a bright flame burning with Mortal Fire kindled. To think that such a treasure as Spirit Jade would be used to fuel a campfire—if any other cultivators knew about it, they’d probably want to kill him for it.

"I intentionally shook off Yuan Dou Demon Sect and ventured out alone to test my sword skills. No one should know my whereabouts, so where did those ghosts come from?"

He thought deeply to himself.

And so he spent the night in a daze.

The next day, early in the morning, the Jade Fox woke up. Lin Xin gave her something to eat, then without any more words, compared her abilities to his own to probe the unique Taoist Intent of the Jade Fox.

He rested like this, meditated, practiced with the Jade Fox, repeating the process over and over.

In the blink of an eye, more than half a month had passed.

***********************

In the woods, there was a ’pfft’ as a puff of pink mist suddenly exploded.

A girl in a white dress ran through the forest, panting heavily with terror. She frequently looked back as though something horrifying was chasing her.

Shoo!

Suddenly, a red light leapt from the ground in front of her.

That beam of light penetrated the pink mist in a blink of an eye and aimed directly at the girl’s throat, buzzing as it halted just above.

With the red dissipating, the true form of the light was revealed to be a special sword blade faintly etched with hollow patterns.

The one holding the sword was a black-robed man with shoulder-length black hair.

"Aside from seduction and creating illusions, this Jade Fox Taoist Intent seems to have no other use. It’s somewhat simple and inferior," the black-robed man, Lin Xin who had been capturing this Jade Fox to understand her Taoist Intent, said.

He furrowed his brow and sheathed his sword. In just over half a month, he had quickly grasped the so-called secrets of the Jade Fox’s Taoist Intent.

Compared to the Flowing Clouds Blade Intent, the complexity and difficulty of the Jade Fox’s Taoist Intent was far inferior.

One reason might be that the Demon Race’s understanding of Taoist Intent was weaker than that of humans’. On the other hand, it seemed that his own unique ability to grasp Taoist Intent was also influencing him.

It was as if Taoist Intent was a sort of skill. Once he understood it once, he could then replicate it using Spiritual Energy or Demonic Qi to simulate the essence of that Taoist Intent, and due to his own cultivation level, the Jade Fox Taoist Intent he simulated was even stronger than the little fox’s.

Lin Xin swung his left arm, and likewise, a puff of pink mist appeared before him, within which a strong sense of seduction and components of illusion permeated.

This scene sent a chill down the spine of the small Jade Fox opposite him. She had never imagined someone could master in a mere half a month the Taoist Intent that had taken her decades to understand.

But the undeniable truth was right before her eyes. Whether she believed it or not, this man had indeed used a Jade Fox Taoist Intent identical to hers.

"I’m still a bit short on mastering the Flowing Clouds Blade Intent, and I can’t simulate it. It must be because it’s inherently incomplete. Normally, such Taoist Intent requires repeated use and deepening after its first deployment, along with a great deal of practice, to elevate it to a higher level. But I am different,"

He recalled the time when he had faced off against the Jade Fox King.

His consciousness clicked directly on a skill icon that had long formed in his skill slot, a red symbol marked with the words ’Jade Fox Taoist Intent.’

Clicking on the icon, the pink mist around him immediately receded.

This Taoist Intent seemed to be a sustainable skill. He could control the deployment and retraction through the icon.

In fact, he hadn’t fully mastered this Taoist Intent. Rather, his Attribute Ability had turned it into a muscle memory, which, after a successful first attempt, could be easily used and retracted once it was made into a skill manifestation.

"The Flowing Clouds Blade Intent hasn’t formed a skill, clearly because it’s fundamentally incomplete. But even an incomplete Taoist Intent is beneficial to me. I shouldn’t miss out,"

He looked at the frightened little Jade Fox girl opposite him.

"You are free to go," he said casually.

The little Jade Fox trembled, wide-eyed, seemingly in disbelief at what she heard, yet she remained stationary.

As if disbelieving Lin Xin would let her go so easily.

"If you don’t wish to leave, you can stay," Lin Xin added indifferently.

Only then did the little Jade Fox start to believe that he truly intended to release her.

She blinked several times, took a few steps backward, and seeing no reaction from Lin Xin, decisively turned and flew off into the distance.

She bolted crazily like a scared chicken, tumbling and scrambling even in midair, completely losing her graceful image.

Lin Xin stood still, sorting through his thoughts and savoring the difference between the Jade Fox Taoist Intent he had just executed and that of the Jade Fox King.

Fortunately, now that the Taoist Intent had become a skill, he wouldn’t need to go through any hassle to use it in the future.

However, what he couldn’t figure out was why, since the Jade Fox Taoist Intent could become a skill, his Red Flower Sword Intent had never become one?