109 Practicing the Sword

Wen Cheng left Alex to learn the book by himself. Alex looked at the book and was still surprised by how big it was. However, he was also happy that he could read the language by himself now.

"Elusive Heavenly Sword. A technique that improves a cultivator's dodging ability and provides great offensive attacks. The elusive part is only useful against cultivators that fight in close combat, while the attacking part works on everyone. Attacks use wind, so cultivators with wood-aligned spiritual roots are preferred. But since the wind aspect only affects 2 of the 3 latter strikes, even those without spiritual roots can learn it."

Alex read the book's first page and was surprised. "Wow, that's a lot of information on the introductory page. It even talks about spiritual roots."

He used his system to read it and found that the description it came up with had barely any information. Aside from the name and the fact that it was a sword technique focused on dodging and attacking, the description gave no other information.

'Do other books give such information as well?' he couldn't check right now as he didn't have any books on him at the moment. He had already returned the Flickering Shadows book prior to arriving here.

He then proceeded to flip the page and was immediately surprised by what he saw. Instead of normal words like any other cultivation technique, this one had drawings telling one what to do.

The first set of 5 pictures showed one how to move with their feet. There was a bunch of text right below, explaining the movement in extent.

Alex put the book to the side and started to do what the picture in the image did. There was no Qi or other type of energy involved. It was just a simple way to move one's body.

Yet when Alex tried it, he found the movements he had just done to be wrong. 'That's not it.' He tried once more. 'That's not it, either.'

'How can I follow easily after watching master, but can't follow a book.' It was then that something came to his mind.

'Wait, do I need to finish the book before I start. Because that was exactly what I did with the other books. Just because I can read the books now, doesn't mean I have to change my learning style right?'

He immediately started using his spiritual sense to read all of the books. It was hard not to ignore the basic understanding from being able to understand the language, but he managed to do it at last.

Finally, after around 15 minutes, he finished reading the whole book.

'Alright, now it should be fine.' He thought and started using the movement technique. Surprisingly, he was still making mistakes at it.

'What's going on?' he couldn't understand what was happening. He still kept on practicing and at some point, started going into another trance.

During the trance, he couldn't think of anything or do anything. But the knowledge of what to do and how to do it kept flowing out of his brain. He practiced more and more, and four hours later, he had perfected it.

<Congratulations, You have learned 'Elusive Heavenly Sword'>

Finally, he woke up from his trance to see that he had learned the sword technique. He looked at the time and saw surprised that it was nearly 2 am.

'Did I fall asleep once more? That too while practicing?' he was starting to doubt if there was really something wrong with him. But just the fact that he had truly learned the sword technique kept him from believing it.

'Also why did it take me so long to learn the technique? Is it because the technique doesn't have anything to do with Qi and spiritual roots for the most part?' he wondered.

He practiced once more now that he had learned the technique and he managed to do every single footwork perfectly. Elusive Heavenly Sword had 3 different attacks.

None of the attacks had any name and were dependent on one's spiritual roots to use all of the 3 attacks.

The first strike was a simple sword strike that was used in close combat. As long as one had Qi, they could use this attack.

The second strike was one that was used from a little further away from the opponent. It required the cultivator to have a wood elemental spirit root for this attack to work.

With this strike, one could send out a small human-sized wind slice through the air that would fly towards the enemy.

The third and final strike was one that could be used from very far away and was the most devastating of all. It sent out a very fast wind slice through the air that had a very high penetrating power.

However, it required the person to only have wood elemental spirit root or dual elemental spirit root with wood being one of them. Anything more, and the cultivator could not use the technique to its full power.

Alex tried practicing the 3 attacks. The first attack was integrated with the footwork. At a certain segment of the footwork, he brought up his sword and poured Qi into it. As he brought it down, it glowed yellow and gave a loud sound as it cut through empty air.

He then tried the second strike. For this strike, he didn't require footwork. He simply started moving his Qi around his body. He brought it around his body to his palm, where the Qi entered the sword through the sword handle.

However, just before it entered, the Qi changed from Yang elemental to Qi with yang and wood elemental. The color, however, shifted to just green and the yellow from the yang didn't show.

He brought the sword up to the top and sliced it down. A massive slicing wind came forth from his blade and flew away to the wall in the room and disappeared with a boom.

The blade kept ringing in his hand as he looked forward in shock at the power of the strike.