Hearing this, Jiang Lin shook his head and said:
"Senior Loren, taking on a master does not necessarily mean walking the exact path they once traveled.
"By walking the path of a mortal rather than one granted by gods, you achieved legend through self-discipline. The willpower, insights, and cultivation methods you employed are precisely what I most need to learn.
"I wish to take you as my master to learn your sword path, your wisdom, and your understanding of the essence of power, not to perfectly repeat every step you took.
"If I were to take you as my master merely to replicate your experiences, that would be irresponsible to both you and myself."
He paused, then continued:
"Furthermore, although I am already an apostle of god, the god's assessment did not limit my future development.
"I can feel that this path still holds infinite possibilities. I want to reach my own limit within the framework of the gods."
Loren was silent for a moment, light shimmering in his purple eyes.
"The limit..."
He repeated the word in a low voice, then looked up at Jiang Lin.
"You have interesting ideas.
"Then, let me see your sword."
Loren's gaze was as calm as water, yet Jiang Lin felt a heavy pressure from it.
It was as if a swordsmith were examining an unrefined ore, considering whether it could withstand the hammer and fire to eventually become a peerless legendary sword.
"The sword..."
Jiang Lin took a deep breath and gripped the air with his right hand.
Light condensed in the air, cycling through eight colors, and a longsword with a platinum sheen and edges wreathed in pale blue coldness appeared in his palm.
At the hilt, eight-colored runes rotated slowly like living things, and ice crystal patterns were faintly visible on the blade. This was the new form of the 【Eight Extremities Holy Sword】 after he had integrated the power of the ice soul.
He did not rush to display his sword skills, instead standing still with the sword to let Loren observe it.
Loren's gaze fell upon the blade, and a flicker of faint surprise crossed the depths of his purple eyes.
"Is this a holy art? I don't recall encountering one like this before...
"Is this a holy art you inherited, or one the god specifically evolved for you?"
Jiang Lin was not surprised that the other party knew of such things.
"To answer you, Senior, this is a holy art evolved from the skills I have mastered."
Hearing this, Loren stepped forward slowly, stopping just a pace away from Jiang Lin, and extended his right index finger to lightly touch the blade.
"Hum!"
The sword trembled slightly. The eight-colored radiance and the ice-blue chill surged simultaneously, yet they did not resist Loren's touch, instead retracting their sharpness as if paying homage to a king, leaving only pure energy fluctuations.
Loren's fingertip traced slowly along the blade, from the tip to the hilt, as if feeling every inch of the sword's structure and every thread of energy flowing within.
Afterward, a hint of surprise appeared on his face:
"You have already mastered sword intent at such a young age??"
Jiang Lin nodded:
"I had some insights while practicing 【Basic Swordsmanship】 in the past, and I did indeed perceive the existence of 'sword intent'."
He remembered that it seemed to be during his previous mid-term exam when he pushed 【Basic Swordsmanship】 to the limit-broken level, and thus grasped this so-called 'sword intent'.
Loren nodded at his reply:
"Excellent. It seems your talent for swordsmanship is indeed remarkable, and you and I are quite destined to meet.
"However, your 'sword intent' is only at an initial stage. To truly unleash its value in actual combat, it requires further training.
"Your current 'sword intent' is like a piece of raw jade that has just been mined but remains unpolished, hence it lacks luster.
"You have possessed 'sword intent' for such a long time; have you not tried to polish it yourself?"
Jiang Lin shook his head, feeling somewhat awkward:
"No, I did not know how to polish 'sword intent'."
Loren found this strange:
"You mastered 'sword intent' on your own, yet you did not know how to polish it?"
Jiang Lin remained silent.
In truth, he not only had 'sword intent' but also 'fist intent' and 'archery intent', all gained after pushing his basic combat techniques to the limit-broken level.
Loren shook his head:
"Never mind. Now is not the time for this.
"Do you know why I said you and I are destined to meet, and why I appeared here at this time?"
Jiang Lin shook his head:
"I do not know."
But then he heard Loren say:
"The truth is, a large part of the reason I achieved what I have today is that I accidentally obtained the core of the frost giant tribe's treasure, the 'Eternal Ice Soul'—the same thing as the fragment within you.
"Combined with my innate talent for swordsmanship, it allowed me to reach my current level.
"Today, I felt a sense of intuition and came to the ruins of the former frost giant tribe, where I found the long-distance teleportation array leading here.
"Just as I arrived, I saw this long-dormant array start to flicker.
"So I teleported over and found you.
"I do not know if that prior intuition was my instinct telling me to meet you, or if the 'Eternal Ice Soul' fragment within you resonated with the 'Eternal Ice Soul' core within me.
"But meeting you here, and seeing your genuine talent for swordsmanship, confirms that we are indeed destined to meet."
Loren's gaze rested on Jiang Lin's resolute face.
"Since you have declared your ambition and we are truly destined, I will give you a chance."
He turned, his ice-blue robe dragging a cold trail across the altar:
"Follow me."
Before the words had faded, Loren had already stepped toward the center of the teleportation array.
Jiang Lin sheathed the Eight Extremities Holy Sword and followed quickly.
Little Black hesitated for a moment, then leaped onto Jiang Lin's shoulder, its amber eyes staring suspiciously at Loren's back.
It transmitted its voice to Jiang Lin:
"Kid, he doesn't seem to be a succubus.
"But why does he automatically radiate charm?"
"Could it be that he was cursed by some succubus?"
Loren stood at the heart of the hexagram array, his right hand raised, his slender fingers tracing lines in the air.
With just a few simple strokes, the thirty-six ice soul crystals surrounding them shone brightly all at once.
Deep blue light surged from the crystals like a waterfall, pouring into the array's patterns, and the entire altar was instantly enveloped in a glow of silver-white and ice-blue.
"Hum!!"
The teleportation array emitted a deep resonance, a hundred times more powerful than when Jiang Lin had activated it, as if an ancient beast had been thoroughly awakened.
The spatial vortex appeared again, but this time it was more stable and massive, with a diameter exceeding ten meters, and the scenery reflected within shifted from blurry to clear.
This was the same dark blue sky and aurora-lit ice field that Jiang Lin had seen earlier.
"Stand firm."
Loren's voice remained cold and clear.
Jiang Lin immediately began his breathing technique to steady his stance.
The next instant, a silver-white light erupted, swallowing them both completely.
The teleportation process was extremely brief. Jiang Lin felt his vision blur for a moment, his body seemingly pulled and compressed by some gentle yet irresistible force, before being instantly released.
When his vision returned, he was standing on another altar.
A wave of intense dizziness followed, but Jiang Lin quickly suppressed it.
He was becoming increasingly accustomed to the dizziness caused by these long-distance teleportation arrays.
A bone-chilling cold hit him in the face.
The temperature here was dozens of degrees lower than in the underground ice cave of the Everfrost Wasteland, and the air was filled with the pure aura unique to myriad-year profound ice.
With every breath, his lungs felt that piercing, icy cold. If not for the constant-temperature protective suit Jiang Lin wore working at full capacity, and the ice soul crystal spontaneously rotating in his dantian, he likely would have suffered frostbite instantly.
He looked up.
Before him lay an ice field so vast it was suffocating.
The sky was a perpetual dark blue, devoid of sun, moon, or stars; there were only countless brilliant auroras flowing and shifting across the dome, like colors painted by a god on a canvas of sky.
Those lights, ranging from pale green to deep purple, silver-white to deep blue, intertwined into a mesmerizing ocean of light.
The ice field was boundless, covered by snow several meters thick, but beneath the snow lay deep blue solid ice that had remained frozen for ten thousand years.
At the edge of his vision, twelve towering ice peaks rose from the ground like twelve giant swords piercing the sky. Their summits were hidden in the flowing auroras, radiating an ancient and majestic aura.
The central peak was the most magnificent, soaring into the clouds. Its surface was covered with countless naturally formed ice crystal prisms, refracting seven-colored light under the auroras. Viewed from afar, it looked like a divine palace carved from diamonds and sapphires.
That was Frostblade.
"This is the deepest part of the northern ice field, the former entrance to the Extreme Ice Abyss, and the ancestral land of the frost giant tribe from a thousand years ago."
Loren's voice sounded beside him, calmly introducing the place:
"It is also where I have lived in seclusion for these years."
He stepped off the altar.
The altar beneath their feet was larger and more ancient than the one in the ruins, with a diameter exceeding thirty meters. It was cast entirely from a nearly transparent blue ice crystal, its surface carved with ancient runes far more complex than frost-tongue runes.
Around the altar, twelve ten-meter-tall frost giant statues stood in a solemn circle. They leaned on their swords with bowed heads and lowered eyes, as if sleeping in eternal protection.
Jiang Lin followed Loren off the altar and stepped onto the snow.
The snow was extremely deep, and every step sank to his knees, but where Loren walked, a smooth ice surface automatically formed, as if the snow and ice were clearing a path for him.
Jiang Lin walked on the ice, feeling the hardness and cold beneath his feet.
"Has Senior lived here the whole time?"
"Most of the time."
Loren walked without looking back, his voice carried by the wind:
"The Extreme Ice Abyss is one of the regions on the continent with the purest and most concentrated ice elements, and it is the best place for me to cultivate my sword path. Besides..."
He paused:
"It is quiet enough here, and there are not too many unnecessary disturbances."
The two proceeded along a winding ice path.
The path was clearly man-made, with two rows of neat ice pillars on either side, their tops carved with simple sword motifs. The road led upward, straight to the waist of Frostblade.
After about half an hour of walking, an ice crystal building appeared, constructed against the mountain.
It was a three-story pavilion built entirely from blocks of deep blue ice crystal, cut and stacked without the use of any adhesive, relying solely on intricate mortise-and-tenon structures to remain rock-solid.
The eaves of the pavilion had a soaring curve, with strings of ice crystal wind chimes hanging from the corners, emitting crisp tinkling sounds in the polar wind, like heavenly music.
In front of the pavilion was a level ice platform, roughly half the size of a soccer field.
In the center of the platform was a sheathless longsword stuck into the ice.
The sword's style was extremely archaic. The blade was long and narrow, possessing a strange sheen between silver-white and ice-blue. The hilt lacked any ornamentation, and the blade was as thin as a cicada's wing, reflecting cold light under the auroras.
It stood silently in the center of the platform, and the ice surface around it radiated circles of fine frost patterns with the sword as the center.
Just by looking from afar, Jiang Lin could feel the tangible sharpness and chill radiating from the sword.
"That is 'Frostblade', the sword I used when I was young."
Loren followed Jiang Lin's gaze and said faintly:
"Later, I discarded my cultivation to start over, so it remained here.
"Enough, no more idle talk."
Loren turned to face Jiang Lin, the temperature in his purple eyes seeming lower than the surrounding environment:
"I said I would give you a chance, but whether you can truly become my disciple depends on your performance."
He raised his right hand, pressing his index and middle fingers together, and tapped lightly in the air.
"Hum—"
In the air, ice-blue light gathered, condensing into a thin book made entirely of ice crystals.
The pages opened automatically in mid-air, and dense characters and patterns made of light appeared on every page.
"This is a king-tier sword technique, 【Ice Flower Nine Styles】."
Loren's voice was calm and waveless:
"It was not created by me, but obtained from an ancient ruin.
"The core of this sword technique lies in 'controlling the sword with intent, and condensing flowers with the sword', merging the extreme cold of ice elements with the sharpness of the sword path. When cultivated to the pinnacle, one can freeze a thousand miles with a single sword stroke and sever the soul.
"However, the version I am giving you now is a truncated one. Its difficulty and power are roughly at the super-tier level, which is suitable for you to learn now."
He looked at Jiang Lin:
"I will give you three days.
"Within three days, you will contemplate and practice on this ice platform.
"If you are hungry, there are stored rations and fresh water on the first floor of the pavilion. If you are tired, you may go to the second floor to rest.
"After three days, I will come to examine your results."
Loren's gaze rested on Jiang Lin, his eyes seemingly weighing the potential of a piece of raw jade:
"I do not require you to master the 【Ice Flower Nine Styles】 to a high degree of proficiency.
"After all, aside from me, few possess such talent.
"So I do not demand that your talent surpass mine.
"But I want to see to what extent you can understand this sword technique within three days, and how much of its essence you can integrate into your own sword path.
"Remember, sword techniques are dead, but people are alive.
"If you only follow the book and do exactly as instructed, even if you practice the nine styles until you are perfectly proficient, you will be nothing more than an ordinary adventurer, not a swordsman."
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