Attempting Difficulty

Eyes closed, cross legged, a girl sat on a wooden foundation in the middle of a lake while a scroll was floating in front of her. A strand of information was constantly flowing between the scroll and her head. A scene of an immortal sword queen destroying a mountain with one mighty sword arc released through her palm played out in her mind over and over again. The 6th stance was less like a stance and more like an interconnected dance of the previous 5 stances. However, in the image playing in Zhou Xinqiu's head, the woman did no such dance. What was the meaning of this?

Exhale, Her eyes opened finally after 3 hours of comprehending the scroll. She stood up and put the scroll away. It was already night by the time she opened her eyes and Zhou Ye had already returned back to his manor but Zhou Xinqiu was not done training. She felt like she was on the verge of figuring out what the meaning of the image playing in her head meant.

"Fifth stance" the sword arc shockwave once again materialized and this time it was aimed at a huge ancient looking tree. On impact, the tree shook but there was still no visible dent or mark on it. "Hmm, I can't seem to figure out how to advance to the 6th stance. The 4th and 5th stances required one to stack the past stances on each other before placing the next comprehension inside however no matter how many times I try, I can't form the 6th stance." Zhou Xinqiu rubbed her chin and walked towards the tree and touched the place where her sword arc had hit the tree. "There must be something else I have to do to accomplish the 6th stance, something I am not seeing yet."

She sat down on the floor and went back to comprehending the scroll of the Nine Dance Sword Art. Another hour passed of watching that sword queen slice countless mountains in half until a sutra finally quietly formed. "Life begins by creating memories and as it grows, each new memory is created by taking account of the past memories to distinguish the right from the wrong. Interconnection of the complex memories of ones self is what truly makes up their life and who they are, not one single memory. At the end of one's life these memories melt together into a simple soul and this soul ascends the heavens."

Zhou Xinqiu replayed those words slowly in her mind over and over again until they were imprinted into her mind. "Could these words be trying to explain that the comprehension of the Nine Sword Dance Art is like one's life? In the first stages one has to learn the new techniques of the sword and in the intermediate stages one has to use each technique they learned and build upon them with their new comprehensions. In the advanced stages they don't have to add any specific thing, they have to connect all they have learned which creates the next stance." She stood up and stared at the ginormous tree behind her and leaped up into the air. "Lets give it a shot"

"1st stance , 2nd stance, 3rd stance, 4th stance, 5th stance" as she went through all the stances, a beautiful and elegant dance had seemed to have formed and at the end, a lotus radiating fierce sword qi appeared inside Zhou Xinqiu's palm.

"6th stance - lotus of the blade" The magnificent lotus flew towards the tree and as soon as it touched it, the lotus transformed into a powerful sword arc and rammed into the tree. Although it only went halfway into the tree before dissipating, that was a great improvement from the previous arc which didn't even leave a mark on the tree.

Afterwards, comprehending the 7th stance was pretty easy for Zhou Xinqiu because she followed her previous guess which turned out to be correct. The 7th stance was an even more elegant dance and resulted in a slightly bigger but much more powerful lotus. This time, when the lotus hit the tree, the arc that came from it was able to go 3/4 the way in.

Even so, the feeling of being on the verge of an epiphany had still not gone away and since the 8th stance could match up to someone at the 8th level body tempering stage. Naturally she was not willing to waste such a great moment to try to comprehend it. "The last part of the sutra said that at the end of one's life these memories melt together into a simple soul and this soul ascends the heavens, this must be the key to unlocking the final two stages of the art."

She quietly thought about the words time and time again. "In the previous parts, the memories of one's life was associated with the past stances of the technique, so it must mean that the previous stances, instead of being separated, must be combined into one simple form. This also should explain why that immortal sword queen didn't have to do any dance to destroy the mountain! Simplicity to complexity and back to simplicity, how interesting!"

"Unlike the past stances, I cannot simply keep the stances apart from each other. Maybe instead, I have to unleash them at the same time?" Zhou Xinqiu Inquired as she read the scroll one more time before putting it away and looking at the ancient cherry blossom tree in front of her again. She sat down in a meditation position and abruptly opened her eyes.

"Nine sword dance art!" A vortex appeared in-front of her palms as it greedily sucked in all the surrounding Qi before converting it into pure sword Qi. She leaped up into the air once more and she unleashed every single stance of the technique she had learned so far at the same time. Blood rushed to every part of her body and a sense of pain went throughout her body but following it was a feeling of complete pleasure. At the end, there was no lotus, no powerful arc, no radiating sword Qi, there was only her and an illusory sword which was the result of her previous act. She thrusted the sword forward and suddenly an earth shattering roar rang out and slashed the tree completely in half before it fell flat onto the ground.

"8th stance - Heaven breaking sword"