Picking Up Attributes In Martial World

Chapter 169: Trial of Swords

Ye Jun was back in the White Void, completely at peace even though something insane lurked in the corner of his mind. He still felt the world around him as he rode that creature, feeling the wind passing by, feeling the creature’s feelings.

’It didn’t really teach me anything,’ Ye Jun thought. ’What even was that?’

He tried to think of anything the Trial could have taught him, but came up with nothing. Most of the things he thought of were things he already knew, like Wind was already free and that he shouldn’t try to control it.

’Taming is also quite similar, so that’s why it put them together?’

There were many questions, but no answer. And no time to find those answers either.

As Ye Jun focused on his physical body, he was surprised to see rolling thunderstorm clouds above him. In the next second, a yellow-colored lightning descended upon him, thick as a boulder and faster than even lightning itself.

"Aghh!!"

His body became charred instantly, as the heat and current began to destroy his Physique from the inside out. His skin began to peel off, Yang Circulation working at its limits to heal him, as the pills he consumed earlier gave his body more vitality.

But the lightning was of Heavenly Tribulation, so its target wasn’t his Physique but the newly forming Soul. It penetrated all the barriers that separated the two Planes, going beyond infinity and struck his Soul with such an intensity that even the Metaphysical Plane around him began to shake.

He almost crumbled away on the ground in pain, but he persisted and retained his posture even if his body was burning from every single part.

Then, he increased his control over his Soul, over his Will that surrounded the Soul, protecting it. He made sure the Soul didn’t crumble away in the vastness of the Spiritual Realm.

That was when he noticed something. The more his Soul endured the Tribulation, the stronger it became. It began to radiate a dense presence in the Spiritual Realm.

There were also Heavenly Insights mixed in with the Tribulation. They increased his understanding of the Mysterious Techniques, made him aware of the secrets of Heaven and Earth, and even increased his Affinity with the world.

’Is this the Yellow Tribulation?’ he thought, still fully focusing on the Soul even as his physique was getting destroyed. ’Interesting.’

After what felt like an eternity, the harrowing pain finally ended. His Soul was stronger than ever before as a result, but he knew this wasn’t the end.

’There is still the Sword Affinity and Memory Trial,’ Ye Jun thought, feeling dread settling in his heart. ’I am already half dead in just this. What will happen if more Yellow Tribulation comes?’

Although he felt a bit afraid, he had no plans of backing away after coming this far. Not like he had any other option. Only lucky ones survived Ascension without success, and he knew his Fate Resonance would make sure he died.

The damned Passive Skill always threw him and connected him with things that would either kill him or reward him greatly. Like these trials.

They weren’t supposed to be this deadly considering his Affinity percentage with them, yet they were, and he was now facing Yellow Tribulation.

’Heh. I’m sure there’s something more dangerous than Yellow Tribulation out there,’ he thought in amusement, trying to distract himself from the terrible pain.

Of course, he didn’t say anything further, as he didn’t want to set up a red flag for himself.

As the world began to shimmer around him, he took a deep breath and thought, ’Alright. Last trial, so it should be Swords.’

The world finished forming, and Ye Jun found himself standing on a stone staircase that climbed into nothing.

Below him, the steps fell away into a darkness so dark that even Pseudo Soul Sense refused to reach into it. Above him, the staircase rose without a visible end, each step the size of a small courtyard, polished smooth by something he didn’t want to think about.

Far up, almost lost to distance, hung the shape of an ancient gate. It had been split clean in half by a single cut.

The cut was so precise that the two halves still floated where they had been, separated only by the breath of empty space between them.

’...A sword did that?’ Ye Jun blinked in surprise.

His hand drifted to the hilt of his Black Ember sword.

That was when he saw them.

On every stair stood a swordsman.

Different races, different ages, different builds. Some wore the robes of ancient sects he had never heard of. Some wore battered armor crusted with dried blood. One of them was even a skeleton holding a curved blade. Another was something with too many arms, each holding a different sword.

They neither moved nor reacted to his presence. They simply stood, frozen in a moment that had been preserved for who knew how long.

’Sword Intent remnants,’ Ye Jun thought, his throat dry. ’Real ones.’

He took a step up.

The swordsman on the next stair moved.

It was only a single strike, diagonal and falling. The blade did not look fast, and yet Ye Jun’s mind registered the cut before his eyes saw it complete. Stone Step Footwork triggered without conscious thought, and he barely shifted his shoulder out of the line in time.

A handspan of his outer robe parted cleanly. The cut continued past him and split the air behind him, and that piece of air didn’t close back. It stayed parted, a thin black line hung in space where the strike had passed.

’It cuts space.’

His heart was hammering. He had read about Sword Intent like this and had not believed such cultivators still existed, not in this world at least, and here was an echo of one standing on a single stair. And there were thousands of them above him.

He took a slow breath and stepped up.

The next swordsman struck.

This one was sound, or rather the absence of it. The entire stairwell went silent for half a heartbeat as the strike passed, and his ears bled when the world came back. But he was alive. He had read the angle from the swordsman’s shoulder before the strike arrived.

He stepped up again.

The third strike reversed force. He swung to block on pure reflex, and the impact sent him backward instead of stopping the blade. He went down two stairs before he caught himself.

’I can’t out-swordsman these things. I’ll be dead in twenty steps.’

He stopped trying to.

Each strike, he simply tried to understand, to read the swordsman’s intent in the instant before the blade moved. The shoulder. The breath. The shape of the conviction behind the strike. He moved not to dodge the sword but to dodge the idea of the sword.

It worked for a while.

By the hundredth stair, his arms were shaking. By the two hundredth, he was bleeding from his eyes from looking at one strike too closely, an old man with a bamboo sword whose cut had been so simple, so absolute, that comprehension itself had wounded him. He had crawled past that one on his hands and knees.

By the three hundredth, the strikes stopped.

He climbed onto a new stair, sword raised, body braced. The swordsman there, a tall woman with twin blades crossed at her chest, didn’t move.

She looked at him silently.

For the first time, one of them looked at him. Her eyes read him like a master craftsman read a flaw in a piece of jade. Then she turned her head away.

Ye Jun’s Black Ember sword cracked, a thin line ran down the flat of the blade.

’...What?’

He stepped to the next stair. The swordsman there also looked at him, studied him, and dismissed him.

The crack on Ye Jun’s sword widened.

None of them attacked. They didn’t have to. Each one looked at him and found him wanting, and the weight of that judgment pressed against his Sword Dao itself, and the Sword Dao buckled.

Because he didn’t really have one.

He used swords and he used them well. He had collected sword techniques the way he collected everything else, learned the forms, refined them. Fallen Star Sword Art. He had been proud of it, in a quiet way.

But he had never devoted himself to the Sword.

He had not chosen it the way these remnants had chosen it. The sword was a tool to him, the same as his fists or his Qi. And these old ghosts knew it.

He sank to one knee on the stair, breath coming hard.

’They’re going to break me.’

He climbed anyway, on his knees for a while, then on his feet again. And as he climbed, he watched them.

A demonic cultivator whose Sword Intent had been pure malice. A calm scholar whose blade had cut from absolute stillness. A slaughter-mad king. A peaceful monk. A tyrant. A woman who had wept while she cut.

Different paths. All of them.

None of them the same.

’There’s no correct sword path,’ Ye Jun thought, breathing through the pressure. ’Just conviction. Each of them was a sword because they chose to be.’

The thought helped him... steadied him. He let them judge. He didn’t argue with what they saw and just kept going.

At the top of the staircase, there was no swordsman.

There was only a sword.

It stood embedded in a slab of black stone at the foot of the split gate, the blade so old that its shape had become abstract. It pulsed faintly, as if breathing.

Ye Jun walked up to it and put his hand on the hilt.

His vision shattered instantly.

He lived a thousand lives in the space of a heartbeat. A young swordsman in a courtyard, scolded by an old master. A desert wanderer with a notched blade, hunting an enemy across decades. A woman in love whose lover had died on her sword. A tyrant carving an empire. He failed. He failed five thousand times. He won, sometimes, and the winning hurt worse than the failing.

Then it all stopped.

He stood in darkness, alone, with the sword still in his hand. A question... no, not a voice, a question, addressed to his Soul directly.

Why do you wield the sword?

Ye Jun stood there for a long moment.

He could feel the wrong answers waiting at the edge of his mind. Justice. Glory. Protection. Any of them would have killed him instantly.

’Why do I wield it?’

He stopped looking for the right answer and looked inward instead. Past the trials. Past the Pavilion. Past every reason he had told himself.

What was underneath all of it?

A soft smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he answered with absolute certainty, "Because nothing, not Heaven, not Fate, not the Dao itself, gets to decide my life."

The answer left him before he could weigh it. It was true. He knew it was true the moment he said it. It wasn’t righteous. It wasn’t pretty. It was just his.

The ancient sword in his hand shattered.

Light poured out of it, light that had been folded inside it, the accumulated Sword Intent of every life he had just witnessed. It uncoiled from the broken hilt in long streams and reached for him.

It entered his Soul.

Ye Jun staggered forward from the sudden changes. His Soul, in the Spiritual Realm, lit up like a struck blade. For one brief moment, the Soul itself wasn’t a Soul. It was an edge, drawn and ready like a sword.

Then it settled.

The thousands of swordsmen behind him bowed their heads, all at once, in silence. His Ember sword, still on his back, had healed.

Inside him, something new had taken root. A small ember of Sword Intent, embryonic, not yet a true Dao, but real. And beneath that, deeper, a quieter seed had settled into his Soul itself.

Ye Jun looked up at the split gate above him.

’I have a Sword now. A real one.’

The world dissolved.