CKtalon

  Zhou Wen only tried his best to maintain the situation. He didn’t wish for the vine sword intent to turn the tables. He only wanted to stall for time so that he could see the profundity between intangibility and corporeality.

  However, sword intent was something ethereal to begin with. It could only be sensed, not seen or touched.

  Even inside Zhou Wen’s body, he could only sense the sword intent changing his body, but he still couldn’t see it.

  Zhou Wen thought about what it was.

  After some thought, Zhou Wen thought of what the sword intent was similar to.

  The thing Zhou Wen thought of was deities that humans worshiped. However, on careful thought, deities and sword intents could be considered one and the same thing. They were fantasies derived from human thoughts.

  Sword intent was actually a form of thought, and deities were also products of human thought. The difference was that sword intent was one’s understanding of the world, while deities were the entrustment of the unknown and fears.

  Humans are sentimental creatures. The existence of an intangible object like a deity does sometimes affect the actions and abilities of humans, Zhou Wen thought to himself.

  He had heard a story in the past that mentioned a student. Although he studied hard, his results weren’t that good, especially during exams. He failed to be on form every time.

  There was once when he went to a nearby temple with his classmates to pray. He didn’t have any plans and thought that he could pray to the deity in passing. In the end, not only did he get an auspicious divination lot, but he also heard a divine voice that the other students didn’t hear. It said that he would definitely be able to learn well and even be admitted into a good university.

  However, when he asked the other students, they claimed to not have heard anything.

  After returning, not only did the student work harder, but his results also improved significantly. His test results also increased drastically, and he even got into a famous university.

  Later on, when they were having a class reunion, they chatted about this matter. Only then did he realize that it was a setup by his few classmates. The drawing of divination lots was rigged in advance, and the divine voice was a played recording. The other students had all heard it.

  The reason they did this was that they found this student very hardworking. He just lacked confidence; therefore, they thought of using this method to boost his confidence and dig into his potential. The outcome was indeed very good.

  However, what the sword intent had done so far exceeded the influence of pure thought.

  Zhou Wen constantly observed and pondered, but no matter how he looked at it, it was difficult to observe the true core.

  The corporeal sword aura constantly clashed with the sword intent that imperceptibly affected Zhou Wen’s body. All Zhou Wen could see was his body being destroyed by the sword aura, preventing him from truly capturing the existence of the sword intent.

  Suddenly, Zhou Wen discovered a problem.

  Previously, he had only observed the clash between the two and couldn’t find the true crux of the matter. However, when Zhou Wen focused his gaze on the changes after his body was wrecked, he immediately discovered something different.

  The sword aura’s destructive power was extremely potent. It wrecked the body of flesh and blood, disintegrating it into its individual, extremely tiny elements. They were split and split until they were completely invisible as though they had vanished.

  Zhou Wen knew that they hadn’t vanished. It was only because they were too tiny that he couldn’t see or sense them.

  However, during this process, a very small portion of the matter wasn’t diced to the point of invisibility.

  The other flesh and blood were split apart again and again. Finally, nothing could be seen. However, there were wisps of something that resembled smoke or fog that scattered out and vanished at an extremely fast speed.

  Although it only existed for a brief period, Zhou Wen was certain that the wisp of smoke wasn’t split by the sword aura. It had vanished by itself.

  He carefully observed and realized that after every cell was destroyed, there would be wisps of smoke dissipating, instead of being reduced to smaller parts.

  ?more Zhou Wen sensed it, the more he found the smoke magical.

  In the smoke, Zhou Wen felt the existence of the sword intent and the sword aura. However, it only existed for an extremely short period of time like a fleeting meteor.

  ?The more Zhou Wen observed the more he found the smoke magical.

  However, the smoke only appeared when it was destroyed by the sword aura. It didn’t always exist. Zhou Wen didn’t discover the smoke when he destroyed some of his flesh by himself.

  This is interesting. Zhou Wen wanted to see if he could capture the smoke.

  The smoke could be touched when it appeared, but even if one enveloped it with sword aura, the smoke would still vanish into thin air. It made capturing it difficult.

  He met with failure despite many attempts.

  ?Zhou Wen made repeated attempts and failed.

  Zhou Wen gradually realized that it wasn’t that he couldn’t capture it, but the smoke didn’t exist at all.

  ?Zhou Wen felt that he could give it a try. The crux seemed to be the clash between sword aura and sword intent.

  As sword intent didn’t have a corporeal body, it couldn’t engage in a direct collision—his body was the medium.

  Zhou Wen switched methods and kept trying after repeated attempts, hoping to truly figure out what the smoke that was a superposition of corporeality and intangibility was.

  This clearly wasn’t an easy task. Zhou Wen had yet to figure out how the smoke was formed, and his body was about to collapse.

  Although Zhou Wen had been helping the vine sword maintain its sword intent, he ultimately couldn’t withstand the invasiveness of the sword aura. His body was already on the brink of death.

  Sword Pill was covered in cracks and could shatter at any moment.

  ?Zhou Wen thought to himself. He would pull out the vine sword again later and experience it again.

  Sword Pill finally couldn’t withstand the pressure and exploded.

  As Sword Pill was about to completely transform into sword intent, Zhou Wen immediately saw a large amount of smoke spread out from his body like fireworks.

  At the instant he died, Zhou Wen suddenly had an inexplicable realization.