A Mortal's Journey to Immortality: Starting as a Sword-Forging Servant and Ascending to Immorta

Lei Yang was stunned for a long time after hearing those words in the courtyard.

He looked down at the heavy, thunder-patterned longsword in his hand, then looked up at Zhou Lingxuan, who was sitting on a broken wooden stool, looking thin and frail.

"You're going to help me forge a sword?"

Lei Yang frowned, his face full of doubt, and blurted out.

"Do you know the exact design of the Lei family's Thunder Pattern Sword? Have you seen the blueprints? Do you understand the formula and weight distribution?"

Zhou Lingxuan changed his posture, put his hands in his sleeves, and shook his head.

"Where am I supposed to find the blueprints of your Lei family?"

"Then how will you fight?"

Lei Yang gripped the sword hilt tightly, his tone tinged with absurdity.

"The Lei family sword technique must be paired with a Leiwen sword. This is a rule passed down from our ancestors. Without that solid strength, it is impossible to suppress the force of wind and thunder."

"I meant I would forge you a sword that would suit you, not a Thunder Pattern Sword."

Zhou Lingxuan spoke calmly, yet with an air of certainty.

"I know nothing about the style and details of the Thunder Pattern Sword. However, it might suit you."

Upon hearing this, Lei Yang subconsciously took half a step back.

"Don't joke around." The boy gritted his teeth. "You don't even know what a Thunder Pattern Sword looks like, what are you going to use to fight? Are you just trying to fool me with some random piece of ordinary iron?"

"Rules are made by the dead, are you expecting a living person to die from holding in their pee?"

Zhou Lingxuan retorted without hesitation.

"You just said it yourself, that sword is too heavy, and the center of gravity is biased towards the hilt. If you continue to practice with it haphazardly like this, you'll ruin your swordsmanship before you even master it."

Lei Yang fell silent.

He looked down at the dark purple patterns on the sword, his fingers gripping the hilt tightly.

five years.

This sword is his only connection to his grandfather and the Lei family.

During countless days and nights of being hunted, he relied on this heavy, thunder-patterned sword to crawl out of piles of corpses.

Now an old sweeper tells him that the sword is unusable and he needs a new one made.

Normally, he would have kicked the old man away long ago. But Zhou Lingxuan's words, which had seen through his problem with his strength, were still echoing in his mind.

After a brief moment of thought, Lei Yang looked into the old man's cloudy yet profound eyes.

He nodded as if possessed.

"Okay." Lei Yang uttered a single word. "What kind of cooperation do I need?"

Zhou Lingxuan stretched out a finger and held it upright in mid-air.

"First, get your body in good shape. In your current state of depleted energy and blood, even if I forged you the best sword in the world, you wouldn't be able to swing it."

Lei Yang nodded in agreement. For the past five years, he had been hiding and rarely had a proper meal, and his body had indeed reached its limit.

Zhou Lingxuan extended his second finger.

"Secondly, that lightning-patterned sword absolutely cannot be used anymore. Wrap it in a cloth and stuff it under the bed, or just throw it away. It's up to you."

"No way!" Lei Yang jumped up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. "This was left to me by my grandfather..."

"This is for you to live, not for you to use to your death."

Zhou Lingxuan interrupted him, his voice not loud, but every word struck Lei Yang's heart.

"You are too dependent on this sword. As long as you hold it, you will instinctively try to match its strange center of gravity."

Zhou Lingxuan pointed to Lei Yang's twisted right shoulder.

"You think you're practicing swordsmanship? Actually, it's that heavy sword that's practicing you. Your bones and meridians are all being twisted to adapt to a piece of deep-sea iron. This is called sword controlling the person, not the person controlling the sword."

Lei Yang stood frozen in place.

His chest heaved violently a few times, but he eventually sat back down slowly and placed the thunder-patterned longsword, which he treasured, at his feet.

"Third," Zhou Lingxuan held up his third finger, "Just find any sword, a wooden stick or a piece of iron will do. When you practice, forget all your Lei family's moves."

Lei Yang's eyes widened.

"Forgot? Then what am I supposed to practice?"

"Just blindly practice." Zhou Lingxuan uttered two words. "Go with the flow. Chop when you want to chop, stab when you want to stab. Don't worry about the power of wind and thunder, or the structure of beginning, development, climax, and conclusion."

Seeing Lei Yang's astonished expression, Zhou Lingxuan patted his knees and stood up.

"A blacksmith must first examine the raw material before he can forge iron. I'm letting you practice haphazardly so I can see the true nature of you."

Zhou Lingxuan added, "In this way, by watching you practice swordsmanship, perhaps I can find a sword that suits you!"

Lei Yang sat on the ground, his mind a jumbled mess.

Don't be bound by tricks, just let things take their natural course. This completely overturned his understanding of the past five years.

Seeing the old man's matter-of-fact demeanor, Lei Yang, though finding the request extremely strange, solemnly agreed.

"Okay, I'll do as you say."

As night deepened, the autumn wind swept across the courtyard with a chill.

Zhou Lingxuan's words, though calm, carried a resounding weight in the silent courtyard. The longsword with thunder patterns at Lei Yang's feet gleamed coldly in the moonlight, as if foreshadowing the end of an old era.

For the next few days, the abandoned hall was unusually quiet.

Lei Yang, unusually, obediently stopped his self-harming sword practice.

This was worse for him than being stabbed.

Every night, he would habitually walk into the yard, holding a dry branch that he had casually picked up from the back mountain.

Without that heavy, lightning-patterned sword, he suddenly didn't know how to exert his strength.

In the past, as long as he raised that heavy sword, the downward weight would carry his body. He only needed to follow that weight, forcefully twisting his waist and turning his shoulders, to unleash sword strikes that produced the sound of wind and thunder.

Now that the branches are light and swaying, when he slashes with his sword, he can't even sweep up a single leaf.

Lei Yang stood in the courtyard, sweating profusely, his movements so clumsy that he was even worse than a novice apprentice.

Several times he couldn't resist the urge to go back inside and take out the Thunder Pattern Sword, but when he thought of Zhou Lingxuan's words "the sword controls the person," he forced himself to hold back.

"Slash it out." Lei Yang gritted his teeth and swung the branch.

It's soft and fluffy.

"Chop again!"

It still had no power.

He discovered that he had forgotten even the most basic swing. His power generation habits over the past five years had all been forcibly distorted to match the extremely heavy lightning-patterned sword.

Now that the greatsword is gone, he's like a baby who's just learned to walk, unable to even stand steadily.

This painful process of destruction and rebuilding brought Lei Yang to the brink of collapse.

He even went to ask Zhou Lingxuan if he was really crippled.

Zhou Lingxuan was squatting by the fire pit burning waste materials at the time, without even raising his head.

"What do you mean 'useless'? You're only a human now. Before, you were just a sword stand." Zhou Lingxuan threw a piece of scrap iron into the fire pit. "Keep swinging that branch. Come find me again when you feel comfortable with it."

Lei Yang could only grit his teeth and go back to continue waving the tree branches.

Zhou Lingxuan observed all of this and nodded in approval.

He discovered that, without the pressure of the heavy sword, Lei Yang's twisted muscles and meridians began to slowly adjust themselves.

This kid's physical instincts are terrifyingly strong.

That evening, Zhou Lingxuan returned to the wooden house after burning a pit of waste materials.

He pulled two pills from a broken jar under the bed.

These are the discarded pills from Xue Yi's furnace a few days ago, which were refined into top-grade Marrow Cleansing Pills and Healing Pills using the Purple Jade Hammer. The medicinal effects are mild, and they are specifically used to repair hidden injuries and strengthen the body's foundation.

Zhou Lingxuan walked to the neighboring courtyard.

Lei Yang was sitting on the steps in a daze, still clutching the worn-out tree branch tightly in his hand.

"then."

Zhou Lingxuan casually tossed two pills over.

Lei Yang hurriedly caught it, and after smelling the strong, lingering medicinal fragrance, his expression changed.

"What is this?"

"I picked up some candy from the abandoned hall," Zhou Lingxuan made up casually. "Eat it, take a nap, and continue swinging your branches tomorrow."

Lei Yang looked at the two round, plump pills in his hand, some even faintly glowing with a rosy hue, and his eye twitched.

God the hell picked up some candy.

Even before the Lei family was wiped out, this quality was such that it was a top-grade pill that only the elders of the clan could enjoy.

Without asking any further questions, he tilted his head back and swallowed it.

As soon as the pill entered his stomach, a vast yet gentle life force exploded forth, rushing wildly along his parched meridians.

Lei Yang groaned in pain, curling up on the steps, his body covered in foul-smelling black sweat.

Zhou Lingxuan ignored him and turned back into the house.

To rebuild from the ashes, one must always endure some hardship.