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

half a month later.

The late autumn night wind blew into the abandoned hall through the cracks in the valley, swirling up the withered yellow leaves that filled the courtyard and rustling against the half-collapsed earthen wall.

Lei Yang stood in the center of the courtyard, holding the rusty iron sword he had dug out of the scrap heap.

He didn't adopt any of the starting stances of the Lei family swordsmanship; he simply stood there with his feet apart, casually.

Suddenly, he took a step forward and slashed out diagonally with the iron sword in his hand.

Halfway through the slash, he suddenly flipped his wrist, abruptly changing the direction of the sword and turning it into a horizontal sweep.

Immediately afterwards, he shifted his feet, his whole body spinning half a circle due to inertia, and swung the iron sword backward with a backhand motion.

The movements were completely haphazard and chaotic.

There is absolutely no logic between the previous move and the next move; it's just a matter of striking wherever the thought takes you.

Zhou Lingxuan squatted by the earthen wall, holding a chipped, rough porcelain teacup, and slowly drank hot water.

Lei Yang practiced for about half an hour before stopping to catch his breath.

He planted the iron sword on the ground, raised his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and turned to look at the old man squatting by the earthen wall.

"Old man, what kind of crap am I practicing?"

Lei Yang's tone was filled with self-doubt, and his brows were furrowed.

"I don't even know where I'm going to strike next. If I were to actually fight someone, I probably wouldn't even know how I died."

Zhou Lingxuan swallowed the hot water in his mouth, placed the teacup at his feet, and put his hands into his sleeves.

"That's right, you don't know."

Zhou Lingxuan patted the dust off his trouser legs.

"What you were doing before was just reciting from a book, blindly following the rigid rules your grandfather taught you. Now you're truly using a sword."

Lei Yang looked at the iron sword in his hand, his face full of conflict.

"But this is too chaotic. The Lei family sword technique emphasizes the momentum of wind and thunder, with one move building upon another, becoming more and more powerful as it progresses. I'm just swinging around like this now, and I can't even gather any momentum. It's all weak and feeble, like I'm trying to swat away flies."

"What are you doing gathering that force?"

Zhou Lingxuan asked a question in return.

"What you're holding is a piece of scrap metal, not that incredibly heavy deep-sea iron weapon. Don't you feel awkward using a piece of scrap metal to hit people?"

Lei Yang opened his mouth, but couldn't say anything.

Over the past two weeks, he has gone from being extremely resistant at the beginning to gradually getting used to this kind of haphazard practice.

Although he still occasionally exhibits the Lei family swordsmanship's habit of shifting his shoulders and twisting his waist when wielding his sword, this is no longer a deliberate act, but rather a natural bodily reaction.

He found himself no longer being dragged along by the heavy sword.

In the past, when he practiced swordsmanship, the sword would lead him, and he would have to twist his body desperately to match the sword's center of gravity.

Now, the sword is just a piece of iron in his hand; he can go left or right as he pleases.

Zhou Lingxuan ignored him and stared at Lei Yang's back and shoulders.

The old blacksmith had an extremely keen eye; after a hundred years of forging iron, he was acutely aware of the direction of force and the deformation of materials.

He discovered something very strange.

Every time Lei Yang swung his sword, the muscles in his back underwent extremely subtle contractions and reorganizations.

The joints of the bones will also make a very slight popping sound, and then quickly recover in less than half a breath.

The adjustment was minimal.

Lei Yang himself was completely unaware.

He just felt that the more he practiced, the more comfortable he became, and his body felt lighter and lighter. The stiffness he used to feel from forcing himself to exert force was gradually disappearing.

Zhou Lingxuan was secretly alarmed.

The kid's muscle structure is reorganizing itself. With each exertion, his body is eliminating excess impurities and concentrating the power where it is most needed.

This is something that cannot be controlled by subjective consciousness.

It's purely a physical instinct.

Like a piece of pig iron thrown into a furnace, it doesn't need a blacksmith to hammer it; it can remove the impurities on its own and slowly turn into a piece of refined steel.

Is this what is meant by bloodline inheritance?

Zhou Lingxuan was making plans in his mind.

Is it because the Lei family was wealthy and had a strong foundation, or is it because this kid was forced to develop a mutation after five years on the run, on the verge of life and death?

Whatever the reason, this body is simply a born monster.

Lei Yang rested for a moment, then picked up his iron sword again and began to wield it in the courtyard.

This time, his movements were a bit faster than before. Although they were still haphazard, the sound of the sword cutting through the air was noticeably sharper than before.

Zhou Lingxuan withdrew his gaze, leaned against the earthen wall, and felt the chill of the late autumn night.

The abandoned hall has been unusually quiet lately.

It's been half a month since Qin Zhaoyun and Elder Qin left. The sect hasn't even sent a new manager, seemingly having completely forgotten about this garbage-filled valley.

Without outside interference or the messy infighting within the inner sect, Zhou Lingxuan was happy to have some peace and quiet.

He had a very fulfilling, even pleasant, life for the past two weeks.

During the day, he would take a shovel to the bottom of the valley to burn waste. Using the heat of the earth fire and the residual spiritual energy in the waste, he would use the Heaven-Forging Hammer in his sea of ​​consciousness to frantically pound his physical body.

At night, taking advantage of the quiet of the night, he secretly went to the outer perimeter of the Sword Tomb on the back mountain.

He didn't venture deep inside; instead, he stood on the edge, using the faint sword intent emanating from those broken swords to temper the true energy within his body.

When he had free time, he would set up a stove in the yard and hammer a few ordinary iron swords, just to stretch his muscles.

They just drifted along like that, without any life-or-death battles or earth-shattering adventures.

However, the true energy within his body grew stronger and stronger.

Just last night, he sat on the edge of the bed and naturally opened two acupoints.

Qi Refining Stage 3.

Everything was so stable it was almost unbelievable.

Zhou Lingxuan felt the abundant true energy in his dantian and sighed contentedly.

This slow pace of cultivation, where you don't have to fight to the death and just watch yourself steadily grow stronger every day, is what cultivation should be like.

While the cultivators outside were fighting tooth and nail for a single Breakthrough Pill, he was burning trash and forging iron in the abandoned hall, and his cultivation level was rising rapidly.

If this gets out, it'll probably infuriate those self-proclaimed geniuses of the Heavenly Sword Pavilion's inner disciples.

However, as his cultivation level increased, new troubles followed.

As Zhou Lingxuan watched Lei Yang tirelessly wielding his sword in the courtyard, his thoughts turned to himself.

He currently possesses a body full of Qi Refining Stage 3 True Qi, but he doesn't even have a proper way to circulate it.

It was only thanks to the Heaven-Forging Hammer's forceful suppression within his sea of ​​consciousness that the true energy remained obediently in his dantian, instead of running rampant through his meridians.

I need to get my hands on this technique.

Zhou Lingxuan touched the sparse stubble on his chin and quickly went through all the feasible options in his mind.

Should we go to the inner gate's scripture pavilion?

The thought had barely crossed his mind when he immediately nipped it in the bud.

Places like the Sutra Repository require verification of identity and testing of cultivation level upon entry.

How can I explain to the elders guarding the pavilion that I was an old servant in the outer sect who was about to die a month and a half ago, but suddenly became a cultivator at the third level of Qi Refining?

He said he dreamt in the middle of the night that the founder of the Heavenly Sword Pavilion appeared and imparted his skills to him?

The people in the Enforcement Hall wouldn't listen to such nonsense; they'd probably just tie him to a pillar and use soul-searching magic to turn his brain upside down.

Why don't you go to the market outside the gate and find a copy?

Zhou Lingxuan frowned and shook his head repeatedly.

Nine out of ten of the martial arts manuals sold by independent practitioners at the market are incomplete, and the remaining one is completely fabricated.

My old bones have finally been given a second chance at life thanks to the Heaven-Forging Hammer. If I were to practice that cheap stuff from a street stall, I might just break my meridians and go into a qi deviation on the spot.

The official channels are blocked, and the unorthodox methods are too dangerous.

Zhou Lingxuan sighed, feeling a bit of a headache.

Why don't you go and try to get closer to Xue Yi, that girl who's always causing trouble?

She's a formal disciple of the Pill Hall, so she definitely has basic cultivation techniques. It shouldn't be difficult to find an excuse to trade her a book using my blacksmithing skills.

But this girl has no sense of propriety when it comes to her words, and she's also impulsive and careless in her actions.

If I accidentally let it slip and Elder Chen from the Weapon Hall finds out that I've started cultivating, it will definitely cause a lot of trouble.

Elder Chen had been eyeing him for forging famous swords, but if he had known that he had mastered Qi cultivation, he would have kept him like a lab rat.

Zhou Lingxuan rejected all of these options.

He needs a method that doesn't rely on conventional techniques but allows his internal energy to circulate smoothly.

Ideally, one should be like Lei Yang, relying on physical instincts to find a way out on their own.

But he wasn't a born monster like Lei Yang; he was just an old man who had been forging iron for a hundred years.

Just as he was staring at the withered leaves on the ground, pondering how to resolve the hidden dangers in his cultivation technique.

The night sky, which had been somewhat gloomy, suddenly lit up without warning.

Followed by.

"Boom!"

An extremely thick bolt of lightning tore through the clouds and exploded with a deafening roar above the ruined hall.

The deafening thunder startled Zhou Lingxuan so much that his hand trembled, and the teacup he had just picked up tipped over, spilling hot water all over the floor.