"A blade cuts what strength cannot. Precision is its path, patience its breath."
The rain had stopped the night before, but the ground behind the stall was still soft with mud.
Li Wei stood alone in the backyard, bare feet grounded in damp soil, a short single-edged sword held in his hand.
It wasn't elegant. The blade was chipped, the grip worn smooth, and a faint line of rust traced its spine. But it was real—cold, sharp, and ready.
He exhaled slowly and swung.
A simple, downward arc.
Too stiff.
He adjusted his feet, stepped forward, and tried again.
Still wrong.
He repeated the motion, again and again. Shoulder to hip. Elbow loose. Hilt firm.
After fifty swings, his arms ached.
After one hundred, his wrists burned.
But he kept going.
He didn't know swordplay.
Not truly.
The only sword knowledge he had came from fragments—half-remembered Earth documentaries, martial arts movies, choreographed action scenes, and faded diagrams from video games and books.
But he knew the feel of a blade in the hand.
And more than that, he knew how to cut.
Li Wei lowered the sword and closed his eyes.
He imagined the butcher's block in front of him. A slab of thigh muscle. Cartilage holding the femur. The path of least resistance. The clean separation of meat from bone.
Then he opened his eyes and swung—not like a swordsman, but like a butcher.
Crack.
The sword bit into a thick branch he'd planted in the dirt as a training post.
It didn't cut through cleanly, but it sank deeper than before. The motion was tighter, more natural.
He adjusted again and tried the same motion with a smaller branch.
Thud.
Cleaner.
Still not perfect, but enough.
He practiced for another hour.
Sweat clung to his collarbone. His breath grew heavy. The blade felt heavier than it had that morning.
But as the sun dipped low behind Mount Jing's silhouette, something shifted.
[Experience Panel]
Name: Li Wei
Age: 22
Cultivation: Martial Dao – Acquired Realm (Early Stage)
Skills:
• Longevity Technique – Proficiency: (39/100) – Beginner
• Butchering – Proficiency: (63/100) – Beginner
• Swordsmanship – Proficiency: (1/100) – Beginner
He stared at the panel, unmoving.
There it was.
A third skill.
No fanfare. No glowing message. Just one new line, like a seed pushing up through the dirt.
Li Wei felt no rush of excitement. Only a quiet resolve settling deeper into his bones.
He wiped the blade clean, placed it back in its wrappings, and returned inside.
That night, after practicing the Longevity Technique, he sat with his back against the stall wall and watched the stars appear through the haze.
Swordsmanship.
It was still nothing compared to the paths of immortal sects. Nothing compared to arts that summoned lightning or carved rivers.
But it was his.
The days passed slowly.
Morning butchering. Midday cultivation. Evening sword drills.
No one noticed. No one asked.
Li Wei spoke less and observed more. He watched how customers moved—how farmers bent their knees when lifting sacks, how guards shifted their weight when turning corners. Movements. Balance. Momentum.
He translated those into swings.
Swordsmanship – Proficiency: (9/100)
Butchering – Proficiency: (70/100)
Longevity Technique – Proficiency: (45/100)
By the third week, his swings were more refined. Still basic—just vertical cuts, diagonal slashes, a few forward thrusts. But they had rhythm. Flow. Intent.
He experimented with grip, footwork, body angle.
He tried imagining different materials: slicing meat, bone, cloth, air. He repeated movements until his fingers blistered and his calves cramped.
Sometimes the blade slipped.
Once, it nicked his wrist.
But each mistake taught him something new.
At the close of the first month, his Butchering skill hit a wall.
Butchering – Proficiency: (100/100) → (1/200) – Minor Success
A subtle warmth spread through his hands the next morning.
He felt it when trimming fat, when separating joints. His fingers no longer needed to test tension; they knew it. His swings became efficient, not just strong. The cleaver seemed to move on instinct.
That insight bled into his sword practice.
He realized the sword didn't need to cut hard—it needed to cut correctly.
Just like a cleaver didn't break bone; it broke at the joint.
By the time his Swordsmanship reached (20/100), he'd created a practice form of four strikes and one recovery step. Simple. Unrefined. But repeatable.
The first thing he learned in his second month of practice was that the sword did not forgive overcorrection.
Unlike the cleaver, whose weight and shape made it stable in a swing, the sword was more delicate. More responsive. It punished hesitation and overextension alike.
It rewarded calm.
He began focusing not on the motion of the blade, but on the rhythm of his own breath.
Swing.
Exhale.
Recover.
Inhale.
Move.
Each repetition burned it deeper into his body.
By the sixth week, Li Wei no longer trained with raw branches or sticks. Instead, he used bundled bamboo stalks bound with rope—closer in tension to real meat and sinew.
He practiced cutting these "targets" in specific ways:
Angled slices to mimic skin and muscle Fast thrusts through joints Controlled draw-cuts along curved surfaces
Each movement had a butcher's intent behind it.
He wasn't trying to make beautiful swordsmanship.
He was trying to make his own.
Swordsmanship – Proficiency: (41/100)
Butchering – Proficiency: (31/200) – Minor Success
Longevity Technique – Proficiency: (55/100)
On the 42nd day, something strange happened.
While adjusting his stance after a cut, Li Wei's weight shifted too far forward. He caught himself just before stumbling—but in that moment, a flicker of memory surged in his mind.
A dim room. A long mirror. A slender foil in a gloved hand.
Fencing.
He remembered watching two students on Earth duel in a school gym, rapid strikes barely visible to the eye. He'd never trained in it himself—but he'd observed. The posture. The forward lean. The way a real strike never wasted movement.
His next swing slowed, but tightened.
He adjusted his elbow—slightly lower.
He shifted his back foot—angled outward.
He thrust again.
Thwack.
The bundled stalk split cleanly.
Swordsmanship – Proficiency: (46/100)
He paused.
That had felt… closer. Not yet right. But closer.
That night, under the dim flicker of an oil lamp, Li Wei sketched lines in the dirt.
Not art. Not runes.
Just arcs—swings, cuts, foot angles. He started mapping where his blade passed during each form. He compared these to old butchering diagrams in his head: muscle direction, bone placement, tissue resistance.
The human body—and the body of beasts—had patterns. If his sword mirrored the lines of flesh and the joints between bone, then it didn't have to overpower.
It could flow.
He picked up the blade again.
And this time, he imagined each stroke not as a slash to kill, but as a cut to open.
To part sinew. To trace a line that led through—not against.
Swordsmanship – Proficiency: (51/100)
By the end of the second month, Li Wei had developed what could loosely be called a form.
It consisted of five strikes and two recovery steps, chained together in a smooth flow.
There was:
A downward diagonal cut, aimed like separating ribs from the spine A sharp step-in thrust, targeting soft gaps between shoulder and chest A backward half-turn into a sweeping horizontal strike A rising slash, reminiscent of lifting meat from a joint And a final, vertical cleave—a return to the butcher's block
Each strike had its rhythm, drawn from both the stall and his memories.
It wasn't fast.
It wasn't flashy.
But it was precise.
It felt like him.
On the 60th night, just after sunset, Li Wei stood in the backyard once more. Mist curled around his ankles. The moon was a silver sliver above the rooftops.
He held the sword low, edge down.
And moved.
One strike.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
The entire sequence flowed like breath—quiet, even, controlled.
At the end, he stood still.
Something inside him stilled with it.
And then the panel shifted.
Swordsmanship – Proficiency: (100/100) → (1/200) – Minor Success
New Technique Created: [Bone-Cleaving Form] – Proficiency: (1/100) – Beginner
His fingers trembled around the hilt.
He hadn't even meant to do it. Not formally. There was no grand ceremony, no moment of thunder or fire.
But something had changed.
He had created a sword technique.
Primitive. Low-tier. Basic.
But it was his.
He exhaled slowly and sheathed the sword.
The name had come to him naturally: Bone-Cleaving Form.
A tribute to the cleaver. A tribute to the work that had made it possible.
The following morning, the sword felt lighter in his hand.
It wasn't any different in weight. The steel hadn't changed. His muscles were still sore from the night before.
But something had settled.
The hesitation was gone.
Li Wei moved through the five-strike sequence slowly, each step echoing in the muddy backyard. As the mist curled and scattered under his blade, he could feel the rhythm that had taken shape across two months of silence.
No master. No manual.
Just sweat, memory, and motion.
After his morning cuts at the stall, he set aside a length of ox spine and stripped it clean. Once it dried, he lashed it to a thick wooden post outside, creating a crude but realistic training target.
A spine. Curved. Dense. Jointed.
Not unlike a ribcage. Not unlike a man's.
That evening, he stood before it and drew the blade again.
This time, he didn't practice.
He tested.
The first cut was a diagonal slash, meant to mirror the way he divided shoulder from haunch.
The blade struck the spine—crack—and carved through three vertebrae before catching.
Li Wei stepped back, corrected, and adjusted his angle.
Second strike: a forward thrust aimed at the softest gap.
He slipped between bone with clean precision.
The following movements connected with increasing sharpness. Not perfect, but smooth.
There were flaws. The final cleave required too much wind-up. The rising cut lacked speed. But the concept worked.
The form had shape.
Bone-Cleaving Form – Proficiency: (6/100) – Beginner
Swordsmanship – Proficiency: (14/200) – Minor Success
Butchering – Proficiency: (53/200) – Minor Success
Over the next week, he refined the recovery steps.
Instead of stepping back after the third swing, he pivoted into a tighter stance. Instead of a final overhead chop, he tested a turning slash to maintain momentum.
It felt less like brute strength. More like a flow.
He wasn't carving up livestock anymore.
He was learning to slice through threats.
And with every repetition, the sword felt more like an extension of his thought.
Then one evening, someone watched him.
He didn't notice it at first. The sun had dipped below the town walls, casting long shadows. He was mid-form, lost in breath and blade, when something in his periphery shifted.
A figure at the edge of the alley.
A man, dressed in a faded brown cloak, leaning against a wall as if resting.
But Li Wei's instincts—the ones honed from weeks of silent motion—sensed something else.
The man wasn't tired.
He was watching.
Li Wei finished the form as if unaware, sheathed the blade, and turned toward the back door of the stall.
He didn't look again.
And when he checked an hour later, the alley was empty.
The next morning, he sold meat like nothing had happened.
He said little. Made no mistakes. Greeted familiar customers.
And yet, something in his blood was humming.
He wasn't afraid.
But he had been seen.
That night, he practiced as usual. But every few minutes, he glanced toward the alleyway.
Nothing.
Still, he moved more carefully. He held back on full-speed strikes. Let the rhythm slow again.
Bone-Cleaving Form – Proficiency: (12/100) – Beginner
Two nights later, a note appeared in the crack of his stall door.
It wasn't a threat.
Just three characters written in simple brushstrokes:
"Sharp for your age."
No name. No seal.
Just ink.
Li Wei read it, burned it, and got back to work.
It was a reminder.
He had created something. And something always watches what is made.
The test came not with warning, but with blood.
It was the second day of autumn. A caravan from the eastern marshes had rolled into town, its oxen weary and carts crusted with road dust. The town square bustled with trade and tavern laughter, but Li Wei didn't pay it much mind.
He had just finished scraping the last of the marrow bones when he heard it—a thud, followed by a short, sharp cry outside the stall.
He stepped out to see an old woman on the ground, basket spilled. A red-faced man in rough travel leathers stood above her, yelling.
"Stupid hag! You bumped me!"
The woman tried to rise, but he shoved her back down with his foot.
People looked, murmured—but no one stepped in.
The man's eyes swept the street. He was alone, but clearly armed—sword at his belt, half-drawn. A small-time cultivator perhaps. Or just someone who thought himself strong.
Li Wei's hand curled near his apron string. He wasn't a hero.
But he remembered Old Wen giving leftover scraps to that same woman in the winter.
And he remembered the feel of the blade in his hand last night.
He walked forward.
"Sir," Li Wei said quietly, voice level. "You've made your point."
The man turned, saw a butcher in plain clothes, and grinned. "Oh? The meat boy wants to lecture me?"
He stepped closer, aggressive.
"You want to get flattened too?"
Li Wei didn't answer.
The moment the man stepped into range, Li Wei moved.
He didn't draw from the waist like a cultivator.
He didn't shout or make declarations.
He simply stepped left, pivoted his foot, and slashed the man's extended hand with a fast, shallow cut.
Hiss!
The sword bit flesh just deep enough to bleed but not maim.
The man howled and stumbled back.
"You bastard!"
He reached for his weapon—Li Wei didn't wait.
A diagonal slash followed by a short thrust forced the man into retreat. The blade came within a finger's width of his throat.
Li Wei stopped just short.
The air between them went cold.
The red-faced man looked into Li Wei's eyes.
And saw nothing there.
No rage. No excitement.
Just focus.
He backed away, clutching his hand.
"This ain't over."
Li Wei said nothing.
The man fled into the crowd.
The old woman bowed shakily. "T-thank you—"
Li Wei helped her pick up her basket, nodded, and returned to the stall.
He cleaned the blade.
He didn't feel heroic.
He felt… certain.
Bone-Cleaving Form – Proficiency: (22/100) – Beginner
Swordsmanship – Proficiency: (26/200) – Minor Success
Longevity Technique – Proficiency: (61/100) – Beginner
That night, he practiced again.
But something had changed.
The sequence felt alive now—not just theory, but field-tested.
He adjusted the final stroke—lowered the arc, cut short the follow-through. Better for close quarters.
The feedback loop between training and reality had begun.
And he knew this was only the start.
[Experience Panel]
Name: Li Wei
Age: 22
Cultivation: Martial Dao – Acquired Realm (Early Stage)
Skills:
• Longevity Technique – Proficiency: (61/100) – Beginner
• Butchering – Proficiency: (67/200) – Minor Success
• Swordsmanship – Proficiency: (26/200) – Minor Success
• Bone-Cleaving Form – Proficiency: (22/100) – Beginner