Chapter 891: Time to Challenge again!

“I lost?” He stared blankly ahead. “I actually lost?”

His face grew uglier and uglier. He had once stood at a far higher cultivation level, yet after suppressing himself to Li Yun’s realm, he had been killed instantly by a single sword strike. The humiliation was enormous.

His fists clenched, and qi exploded around him. The aura pouring from his body made the cultivators nearby back away without thinking. He knew exactly what this defeat meant. Li Yun would become even more famous, and he would become the joke.

“Zhang Kuanglie really made a fool of himself this time,” someone said with a laugh. “I thought he was impressive, but apparently he can’t even beat someone at the 1st level of Spirit Manifestation Realm when they fight at the same level.”

Another cultivator shook his head. “That isn’t really fair. Zhang Kuanglie is definitely strong. Li Yun is just abnormal. If I saw it right, Li Yun used the Void Severing Sword Style, which is considered one of the hardest of the sixty low-level secret arts. Yet he mastered it in just a few months.”

Someone else spoke up suddenly. “And that movement technique was Horizon Fold Step.”

Several expressions changed.

“He mastered both of them?”

“In only a few months?”

“That kind of comprehension is absurd. Zhang Kuanglie really picked the wrong person to provoke.”

The mood changed quickly. Before this fight, many people had resented Zhang Kuanglie but had been too afraid of him to show it. Now that he had been humiliated so completely, people began to mock him openly.

With a whoosh, Li Yun was sent out of the Astral Battle Realm, and he looked straight at Zhang Kuanglie.

“You lost. Now keep your promise.”

Zhang Kuanglie’s face grew even darker. Before the fight, he had been sure he would win, and that confidence was why he had sworn the Soul Oath without hesitating. Now the oath bound him. He could no longer cause trouble for Li Yun, and whenever he ran into him in the future, he would have to avoid him.

“The mountains will still stand and the rivers will keep flowing,” he said, glaring at Li Yun. “We’ll see what happens down the road.”

He turned and left. Even without the oath, he no longer had the face to stay.

Li Yun then walked over to Feng Xuan.

“Brother Feng, I’m the one who dragged you into this,” he said, and there was real apology in his voice.

Feng Xuan had never been part of the conflict. He had suffered only because Zhang Kuanglie wanted to put pressure on Li Yun.

Feng Xuan laughed. “It’s fine. I lost a little dignity today, but Zhang Kuanglie lost far more. You’ve already taken revenge for me, so there’s nothing to apologize for.”

Then his expression turned more serious, and he put a hand on Li Yun’s shoulder.

“Cultivate properly. Your talent is extraordinary. Of everyone trapped here, you might really have a chance to leave Chronospace Island, so don’t waste it.”

Li Yun nodded. “I won’t.”

After saying goodbye to Feng Xuan, he went back to his residence.

…

Li Yun began cultivating the Myriad Sword Spirit Command Art right away, and he soon found that it was far harder than the Sword Control Art. Before, he had been able to control six thousand precious swords at once, but after switching to the Myriad Sword Spirit Command Art, he could manage only one thousand at first.

The reason was simple. The Sword Control Art relied mainly on Soul Power, while the Myriad Sword Spirit Command Art demanded more. Every sword had to carry a share of Li Yun’s intent and will. He was no longer just moving the swords. He had to make them work as extensions of his own consciousness.

The difficulty rose enormously, and so did the power.

Even with only one thousand swords under the Myriad Sword Spirit Command Art, his attack already had about half the power of his old six-thousand-sword formation. In other words, once he could control two thousand swords with the new technique, its power would roughly equal what six thousand swords had produced before.

If he eventually got back to six thousand swords, his overall strength would be about three times that of his old sword formation.

During the first month, Li Yun made slow progress and raised his limit by only around five hundred swords. Then something changed. He gradually came to understand the relationship between Soul Power, will, and the swords, and once that understanding took shape, his cultivation sped up dramatically.

After two months, he could control three thousand swords, and by the third month he was back at six thousand.

The number of swords was the same as before, but the power was completely different. The six thousand swords now moved with a single, unified intent. They no longer felt like thousands of separate weapons following individual commands. Instead, they were like one enormous sword divided into six thousand bodies.

Li Yun could feel the difference immediately. With his current formation, he could easily kill an ordinary cultivator at the perfection stage of the 6th level of Spirit Manifestation Realm, and he could even seriously injure an expert at the 7th level.

And the scary part was that all this was in the base form. If he were to use all three of his intents and his Sword Domain, even Li Yun didn’t know where his limits lay.

He slowly opened his eyes, and a sharp light shone in them.

“Now it’s time to challenge the Everlasting Pagoda again.”

Eight months had passed since he arrived on Chronospace Island, and in all that time he had challenged the Everlasting Pagoda only once.

He had never gone back because he knew the gap between himself and the Old Fisherman was too great, and entering again and again without any real improvement would only waste time.

Now things were different. The Myriad Sword Spirit Command Art had raised his strength dramatically, and for the first time since arriving on Chronospace Island, Li Yun truly believed he had a chance of defeating the Old Fisherman on the second floor.