Chapter 51: I Sever My Flesh with the Heavenly Blade

Boom!

Amidst the shifting of heaven and earth, Li Qi felt as though he had been transported to another realm.

Right before him, a blurred, human-shaped figure of light, holding a similarly blurred saber, slashed downward toward him.

At that very moment, Li Qi’s only sensation was: Heavy! Heavy! Heavy!

This saber stroke felt heavy to the absolute extreme, or rather, as heavy as the heavens and the earth themselves.

This blade was no longer merely a blade; it had merged with the firmament. As the universe rotated, its power was naturally infinite and impossible for anything to withstand.

Indeed, this heaviness was merely a spiritual sensation rather than a physical weight possessed by the blade itself.

In fact, based on Li Qi’s observation, the power and speed of this luminous human figure were an exact replica of his own.

Yet, despite this, the spiritual intent behind it was utterly terrifying.

The mighty saber intent completely suppressed his spiritual awareness. Although his thoughts were still able to turn and his mind had not frozen, facing this blade, he found himself utterly devoid of any thought to raise his own weapon.

There was a phrase known as being convinced both in mind and heart.

At this moment, Li Qi’s heart was forcibly "persuaded" by that overwhelming saber intent.

The Heavenly Saber!

This was the Heavenly Saber!

Even though it was merely one of the nine strokes, and possessed only about one-fifth of its completeness, in this bizarre realm, it still exerted an irresistible might.

Under this immense psychological pressure, Li Qi felt as though every single cell and every single thought within him was urging him to surrender his resistance and accept his doom peacefully.

If this had happened over three months ago, when Li Qi had just recovered the memories of his past life, he would have been completely incapable of offering the slightest resistance.

Yet, over these past three months, he had practiced the saber with fanatical intensity, repeatedly transcending his own limits. This was a process of tempering his saber technique, and equally a process of tempering his heart.

He transcended through obsession and cleansed himself with suffering, washing away his former weakness and timidity. Combined with his recent enlightenment during the demonic tribulation, where he slew the demons to affirm his true self—

He had transformed completely from the inside out, becoming entirely different from his former, weak self.

Even now, faced with this utterly irresistible blade, he did not lose the courage to struggle!

Yet often, if courage and conviction were all that mattered, what need would there be for strength?!

In this instant, despite exerting every ounce of his strength, Li Qi merely caused the saber in his hand to tremble slightly; he could not even swing it forward by a single centimeter.

However, being able to move and being completely incapable of moving were two entirely different concepts.

His physical body could be suppressed, and his mind and spirit could be suppressed, but there would always be things that could not be suppressed!

Immediately afterward, Li Qi was cleaved directly in two—this was a second-kill delivered with absolute, irresistible force!

Yet Li Qi did not perish; instead, his perspective shifted, and he actually saw himself. Only, that self remained completely motionless, while he himself had transformed into a blurred figure of light.

Bizarrely, although he was now a figure of light, he could clearly sense the existence of his own physical body. At this moment, this luminous figure wielding the one-fifth Heavenly Saber was none other than his own body, which Li Qi recognized with absolute familiarity.

Only, right now, he could not control his body; he could only passively experience the manifold changes occurring within it, from flesh and blood to spirit.

With the intent of the Heavenly Saber as its core, his spiritual power condensed into a single stream. As it circulated, it resembled the turning of the Great Dao. Utilizing infinitesimal details to manifest boundless grandeur, his spirit—which was incomparably weak compared to a sage—projected the boundless meteorological expanse of the heavens.

To this, Li Qi was utterly incapable of comprehension.

Yet, driven by this state of mind, his physical body also shattered certain shackles, erupting with even more terrifying explosive power.

Then, Li Qi watched as his opposing self—the one holding the saber—trembled slightly before being cleaved entirely in two by his own luminous form wielding the Heavenly Saber...

The next instant, he returned to reality.

In reality, his physical body remained completely unchanged, making it clear that the experience just now was not the physical world, no matter how intensely real everything had felt.

As Li Qi’s consciousness returned, his gaze remained hollow. If anyone with sufficiently acute spiritual perception were to look into his eyes at this moment, their own spirit would undoubtedly be scorched by the reflection of the saber hidden within that vacancy.

A full quarter of an hour passed before Li Qi finally recovered his wits. Speaking of comprehension, the gap between his current realm and that of the Heavenly Saber was simply too vast. Even though he had been personally cleaved by the blade and had personally swung it himself, he still understood not a single shred of it.

The gap here was akin to asking a primitive ancient human to comprehend the operational and structural principles of the most advanced modern supercomputer.

The will of heaven has been difficult to question since ancient times. His cultivation had only just begun; if he were capable of understanding the will of heaven, he would not possess merely his current aptitude, but would instead be a born sage.

If a legendary born sage were in his place, it might indeed be possible for them to attain enlightenment in a single try.

Li Qi, naturally, could not do so.

However, despite his lack of comprehension, Li Qi knew that from this single session of meditation, something had settled within his mental world—a fleeting glimpse of the profound mysteries of the Heavenly Saber.

Even though it was merely a fragmented shadow of light, it still constituted a form of accumulation. When sufficient accumulation was reached, upon the arrival of the right opportunity, it would naturally transform into his own strength.

In a sense, Li Chang'an’s comprehension of the remnant stance of the Heavenly Saber also relied on the accumulation of day after day, drawing upon the accumulation of most of his life to finally forge the wondrous intricacies of the Eighteen Tiger-Subduing Sabers.

Of course, Li Chang'an’s method of comprehension was far too inefficient, belonging to the category of blind men touching an elephant. Compared to Li Qi’s realm of direct, real-world immersion, it was separated by dimensions.

Li Qi estimated that after experiencing this a dozen more times, he would likely gain some practical harvest...

By this time, Li Qi had already learned the operational principles of the Martial Arts Scroll through the interface.

His experience just now was the result of the interface replicating the spiritual information contained within the stone fragment, and then utilizing the interface itself as the operating environment to execute that cluster of spiritual information.

This was also why Li Qi understood why Li Chang'an’s method of comprehension was so inefficient.

Spiritual information was something everyone possessed, but the spiritual information of ordinary people, once dispersed, was immediately scattered by various interferences in the natural world. Only the powerful—such as sages—had grasped the mysteries of the divine path, mastered the ability to compile and stabilize spiritual information, and even encode it within physical matter.

This was also the origin of this half-stance of the Heavenly Saber legacy.

The entire process was, in truth, identical to burning a disc, except that this type of recording did not alter the physical world.

Hence the legend that a sage's spiritual awareness remains undying through the ages.

The information compiled by sages was sufficiently stable; provided it did not encounter catastrophic impacts, it truly had little fear of the passage of time.

After all, even a modern USB drive, if made of special materials and properly preserved, could retain its internal data for several thousand years without issue.

When Li Chang'an used his mind and thoughts to sense it, he was, in a sense, using his own mental world as a carrier to read and operate the "compact disc" recorded by the sage.