Crippled Joe's heart trembled slightly.
Could it be that the Imperial Preceptor of Everpeace and the Everpeace Empire are truly so audacious, that they would dare set foot in a place as eerie and terrifying as the Great Ruins, even seeking to swallow it whole?
But Grandpa Mark wasn’t wrong about one thing: Everpeace is indeed a sect masquerading as a nation!
Everpeace was founded on martial power, governed by martial strength. Its officials are ranked in nine grades and eighteen tiers, from the Imperial Preceptor and Crown Prince’s Tutor at the top, down to junior officers and scholars at the lowest rank. All are martial cultivators—some are even leaders of other sects and clans.
As for the country’s soldiers, every one is a martial artist, skilled in battle and war. They can conquer cities abroad and suppress rebellions at home—a force to be truly feared.
When a sect disguises itself as a country, rules its territory by national law, unifies its resources, subdues other sects, and brings all martial artists and cultivators under its control—just imagine how powerful, how terrifying that nation becomes.
In recent years, Everpeace has expanded relentlessly, its territory growing ever larger, annexing sects like River Lee and swallowing up smaller nations.
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What blocks this nation is the darkness and strangeness of the Great Ruins. Every night, uncanny phenomena occur: enter the darkness and you die. That’s why Everpeace dares not invade the Ruins.
But the dangers of the Great Ruins don’t end there. Ferocious beasts roam everywhere, bizarre incidents happen all the time, and misfortune lurks at every turn. For the Imperial Preceptor and Everpeace to bring their armies to the Ruins is no simple feat.
But the Ruins’ dangers can’t scare off the Imperial Preceptor. Crippled Joe knew the man well—after all, it was that man who severed his leg.
There’s nothing in this world that can frighten him, nothing that can stop him!
He will enter the Great Ruins—no doubt about it!
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The village soon returned to its usual calm. The water left by the collapse of the River Lee formation quickly soaked into the earth, and by the next day, the sun had baked the ground dry and hard.
This time, Quinn acquired a sword pack—the one that belonged to River Lee disciple Qianqiu. It was six feet long, not very large, made from young crocodile hide, with a waist strap and two shoulder straps to wear across the back.
When yuanqi flows into the sword pack, the crocodile’s mouth opens, and a sword sheath and hilt are spat out.
A martial artist refines their qi into threads; when those threads coil around the sword hilt, they can draw the sword and control it with their energy.
After the first sword is drawn, another hilt emerges from the sheath—draw the second, and a third appears. That’s why it’s called a sword pack.
River Lee Sect is a sword sect of the Southern Frontier, and its swords are truly distinctive. Hidden inside the sword pack is a mother sword, fused with the crocodile hide and impossible to draw.
All the swords drawn from the Sword Pack were child swords. Quinn tried it out and found that he could extract a total of twenty-eight child swords. Adding the seven he broke earlier with his butcher knife, that made thirty-five in all.
As for how the River Lee Sect managed to fit thirty-five swords into such a small Sword Pack, he had no idea what kind of trick was used inside.
Twenty-eight swords weren’t heavy for Quinn. He already carried plenty of iron ingots, wore iron shoes, and even had iron weights hidden on his chest and waist. Altogether, he bore over a hundred jin, so the Sword Pack’s weight was about the same.
Quinn decided to use the Sword Pack as his new training load, saving him from lugging around iron shoes and other weights. It made moving around much easier. However, when it came to controlling swords with qi, he was nowhere near proficient—the River Lee Sword Art was subtle, vicious, and sharp, and his own sword control simply wasn’t up to that level.
"If only I could learn the River Lee Sword Art, that would be perfect."
Quinn sighed inwardly. The River Lee Sword Art was truly exquisite, especially the technique for controlling multiple swords at once—it was simply masterful. In the village, Grandpa Mark, Butcher, Crippled Joe, Apothecary, and Grandpa Blind weren’t skilled in sword arts. The Mute Smith did have a box that looked like sword pellets, and Granny Sue also had similar silver pellets. If those were sword pellets, then they should be experts too.
But when Quinn asked Granny Sue, she refused to teach him. The Mute Smith also waved his hands, seeming reluctant. Quietly, the Mute Smith signed to him: 'Don’t learn now. There’ll be even better sword arts waiting for you. If you learn now, you’ll miss out. People won’t teach you later.'
Quinn didn’t know who these 'people' were, so he could only let it go.
He still hadn’t fully mastered the subtleties of circulating yuanqi. For example, with Grandpa Mark’s fist technique, he hadn’t yet achieved the state where his yuanqi flowed perfectly throughout his body during attacks.
If he could circulate yuanqi throughout his body, it would maximize every aspect of his physical attributes—strength, agility, speed, reflexes—all reaching their peak!