The one that left and the one that returned.

A spell of silence descended over the area as everyone's gazes were focused on the kneeling Yin Long. The gaping wound in his throat was already gone, only the blood that stained his robes a mark of what sort of grisly wound he had just suffered. But after getting a short moment to collect her thoughts, Hongzai apparently came to a conclusion as to how she should act from now on.

"And now, now we know the extent. And thanks to that we can alter your training schedule. Tell me, Yin Long, have you ever heard of Slash-and-Burn?"

There was a subdued gleam in Hongzai's eyes as she looked at Yin Long. A monster, that was what the boy in front of her was. To think of him as a human would be the death of you, he was a monster who went against logic. Right now he may not be more than an infant, but what exactly would the adult version of this monster look like?

Yin Long lightly shook his head, it sounded like a technique but it clearly wasn't one mentioned in any of the records he had read over the years. Hongzai nodded her head as if she wasn't surprised by the answer, Yin Long hadn't seemed like the type to study that sort of thing.

"If you want to use its tackier name then you can call it Phoenix Farming, it's a type of farming method. Plants, especially woody ones, in an area are cut and left to dry, especially if a particularly rainy season is about to come. The resulting mass is burned, and the nutrient-rich ash scatters itself across the land and increases its fertility while also eliminating pests and weeds. The field will need a time of rest after a few years, but the process can be repeated at that time. It is destruction, but it promotes growth, stimulates potential. You get what I'm getting at, don't you?"

An agricultural method, to say that it was outside of Yin Long's expectations would be a bit of an understatement. But after a second of thought, he couldn't call it out of the realm of possibility. After all, didn't he regularly take in skills and techniques of other weapon types and add them onto his own? As for what Hongzai was getting at, he understood it all too well, not even wincing as she spoke up again.

"Prepare yourself, Yin Long. I am going to break you, again and again, until you think that you can't break no more."

---

"Wrong! You let your thoughts dictate your movements, just let your body move the moment you feel something entering your domain!"

A sword pierced through Yin Long's chest as Hongzai's voice echoed in his ears. The blade cut apart his ribs and lacerated his heart, reaping his life and shattering four of the newly formed swords he had managed to gather.

"You're focusing too much on the flow of energy, you also need to pay attention to the intent behind it. Not all weaknesses are just that, sometimes they're feints used to trick you. Think, focus, discern the difference between a true weakness and a feint!"

A sword swatted Yin Long's blade aside, drawing a line across his throat at the same time. His head was separated from his shoulders, a stream of blood hastily shooting up to drag it back down as five swords broke inside his soulsea. His head had left his body, but the only thing Yin Long could think about at that moment was how disorienting and painful the spinning of the world had been as his head flew through the air.

"Good, you managed to pinpoint the weakness! But you focused too much on finding it so the power behind your attack was lacking. Finding a weak spot means nothing if you can't take advantage of it because you're too weak."

A sword broke directly through Yin Long's blade and descended upon his skull, cleaving his head in half and forcing him to the ground. The world in front of his eyes split in half down the middle, as if space itself had slid apart. Whole yet fractured, unified but divided, Yin Long had never seen anything quite like it.

"Wrong! Other Swordsmen may be limited to Pain after stepping on their path, but you are not! You have Yin, the collection of evil and negativity! Know pain and your enemies will know pain, know fury and your enemies will feel nothing but wrath, understand sorrow and your opponents will weep as you meet them! Your world is wide, far wider than any other swordsman, use it!"

Fight, learn, die, those were the three steps that Yin Long's days devolved into. Most days he got away with just sparring for 13 hours on end, Hongzai at best leaving some deeper cuts or the like on him, nothing too grievous. But every seven days, when his soul had gotten the chance to restore the energy it lost whenever a sword broke, that was when things would really start.

Hongzai gave him the energy to make a handful of swords and then started the sparring, but this time there was no mercy. Every attack aimed to kill, prodded at his weaknesses until it could stab at his heart. And kill they did. Blood loss, organ failure, drowning, decapitation, bisection, Yin Long didn't even bother counting all the different ways he died in. All he counted was the number of things he learned, the small improvements he made each time.

"That was too slow. When it comes to enemies that are faster than you, trying to keep track of them is a waste of time. More often than not, people like that will leave small signs of where they're going to end up, take advantage of that to end them. Taking my lightning as an example, I can't actually move at the speed of lightning so a few errant sparks and arcs will reach my destination before I do. Notice those and you'll know exactly where I'll be, take advantage of that information."

But Hongzai wasn't the only person forced to take part in what had become Yin Long's Slash-And-Burn. Xiao Yin Yu was also suitable as a teacher, her strength was closer to Yin Long's so there were a few points where she was more suited to teach him. But she tried to have more mercy than Hongzai, she couldn't exactly kill the man she had chosen to follow. But what a shame it was then.

"Don't show mercy like that. Finish the job, show the importance, engrave it on my bones."

Yin Long threw her mercy right out the window, impaling himself on the blade that she rested on his abdomen. The blade ran right through him as he got right into Yin Yu's face, their noses practically touching as his hardened eyes met her gaze. Yin Yu mentally complained that gazing that strongly at her from so close was cheating, but seeing that insane and determined gaze she knew that she didn't have the freedom of choice.

Her lightning gushed into Yin Long through the blade, rushing to his heart and pushing it into overdrive. Its thumping increased drastically, pushing his blood out at speeds his body couldn't handle. And in the end, his heart started beating so fast that it actually repulsed the blood that got close to it. His blood stopped circulating and thus his organs failed to receive the necessary oxygen, shutting down one by one as his life ended once more.

Again and again, he broke, again and again, he was cut down and burned. To ash he became, and from ash he rose, an eternally sharp blade that couldn't be held down. But while a great portion of the day was taken up by his bloody sparring, that wasn't the only thing he and Xiao Yin Yu focused on.

"Have you made any progress with the body cultivation technique? Found any suitable avenues that may work?"

13 hours of sparring and 9 hours of free time that he could spend on everything else. And what Yin Long decided to focus on above everything else was his body cultivation, the arms and legs that controlled the blade, what Hongzai had called the very foundation of the sword.

"I have an idea, but I'm not yet at the stage where I can put it into motion yet, I'll need to test a few things first before I can see how it'll work."

Yin Long had already tried it, and as he feared, he couldn't just cultivate using the normal path of the body cultivation technique. His body refused to store the gathered energy, it seeped out like water through a strainer. He had explained his circumstances to Hongzai and Yin Yu when they questioned why there was no progress so they knew that there was nothing to do but wait for Yin Long to discover a path on his own. He had come up with a few ideas, but the one he had right now felt like the one with the greatest chance of success.

"It takes the basis of the Twisting World technique and merges it with the Swordsoul Guardians technique and a similar technique I saw a hammer-wielder use in the past. The Swordsoul Guardians use rapid and continuous wave-like movements to whittle away the enemies strength and take it for themselves, you can technically consider it both an offensive and a defensive technique, but as it relies on your opponent I won't call it an offensive technique. An axe-wielder I fought in the past when I was part of the Heron's Ascension Dojo, De Yiu I think he was called, actually used a similar technique. He focused on keeping his hammer moving at all times, gathering momentum and force without allowing a single ounce of it to spill. The more his hammer moved the stronger his attacks got, chasing after the highest extreme of offensive power."

Yin Long never forget a battle, none of the things he had learned slipped his mind. His fight against De Yiu was nothing more than an insignificant interlude in his life, but that didn't mean that he forgot it. He gathered it up in himself so that it became part of all his experience, a drop of water to help the bucket overflow.

"Now what if I could replicate that in my body cultivation? I can insert tiny swords into my joints, and I can use those swords to mimic those techniques. If I can wire my brain to have my joints constantly make minute movements then I can theoretically cultivate my body every second of the day. And I can use the Swordsoul Guardians version to cultivate during combat, I may even be able to make a breakthrough mid-battle and catch the enemy off-guard."

There was a minute gap present in every joint, otherwise, there wouldn't be any way for them to move as freely as they did. That would be where he placed his swords, weapons so tiny they almost couldn't be seen with the naked eye. It sounded like a strange technique, but Yin Yu didn't let a particular fact about it slip her notice.

"It sounds a bit...wild, I guess is the best word, but what are your plans for solving the underlying issue with your body?"

His body refused to store the energy he gathered, how would the insertion of swords change that? If the swords gathered the power then it wouldn't be him cultivating, it would at best just be him preparing several energy deposits he could take from in his time of need. But Yin Long had already thought about that aspect too, coming up with an idea that was just as strange as it was to mimic normal cultivation with his soul.

"That may be the simpler part, honestly. I am a sword, and my swords are me. The swords I insert into my joints will be able to hold the power I gather, even if my body cannot. Then, I will fill them until they can hold no more, until the gathered energy spills out of them and floods the joint. At that point, I'm guessing that one of two things will happen. The spilling energy will either make my joint explode, or it will flow out of the joint and cover the bones around it, eventually connecting with the closest joint, and the sword in it."

Eruption or coating, one was a catastrophic failure and the other would be the prelude to success. But just coating his bones and flesh in an overflow of energy wouldn't be enough, there was a good chance that it would just dissipate even if it connected with another one of the swords. And to fix that part, Yin Long only needed to look at his current training.

"As for how to make that energy actually merge with my body, we can use a style similar to this Slash-And-Burn. Do you know what happens if you place a metal rod into your body, breaking your bones and inserting the rod into the crack? The bones will heal around and onto the rod, altering the structure of your body as they take in the new object. That's what we'll do. If the energy spills out and floods my bones and flesh then we'll break it at that time, rend the flesh and shatter the bones. Like the metal rod, the energy will be kept in place as my body repairs itself and, hopefully at least, naturally become a part of it."

It was quite similar to bone grafting, but rather than take a bone from his body he used the overflowing energy. Of course, while he didn't say it aloud, he knew that there were several things that could go wrong, the chief one being that his body refused to accept the energy and rejected it after the grafting was complete. Yin Yu also thought of this, grimacing slightly due to the method he had chosen.

"You're a grim person, do you know that?"

Grim, or perhaps obsessed, those were the words Yin Yu felt were best suited to Yin Long's type of training. How many people would be willing to die repeatedly just for the chance at minor improvements to their technique? Granted, Yin Long's repeated sparring and fights had also helped him push forward with his cultivation until he reached the 7th Immortal Door, but three sub-realms in one of the earlier cultivation realms weren't such a big deal that repeated deaths were worth it. But people had different thoughts, different ways of looking at their actions.

"I can see why people think that. But what can you do? You desire what you desire, and my desire to bring my sword to the peak beats out my desire to not suffer pain. Will you help me?"

To bring his sword to the peak, the freedom to move about unhindered and spar with whoever he wanted, learn from whoever he wanted. Those desires burned within Yin Long at all times, pushed him forward and upwards. One day, even entire universes would have to bend and become his blade, simply because he desired it. Yin Yu grimaced once more, a bit bitterly this time as she shook her head.

"You already know the answer to that question, so why bother asking it?"

It really was a waste of a question, she had already gone so far as to use her own hands to kill him multiple times. There was no longer any going back for her, nor did she want there to be any path back for her. She had made her choice and accepted it, no matter the consequences it brought or what path it pushed her down.

"Thank you, Yin Yu, truly. I am lucky to have been blessed with good companions."

Yin Long lowered his head with a thin smile as he expressed his gratitude. If Lan Yun asked him to help her train by constantly breaking her body, would he be able to comply? He honestly wasn't sure, and he hoped that he wouldn't have to find out. So he lowered his head, because he knew that he asked something extremely cruel from a dear friend.

"I won't do it for free, however. There will come a day where I will tell you something, something between just you and me. When that day comes, you will need to listen to the end without saying anything, you must allow me to say it all without stopping me."

Yin Yu made up her mind as she spoke, looking at Yin Long's lowered head. Silence would never bring her anywhere, there would come a day where things would have to be put into words. And even if the answer she got may not be satisfactory, she wanted to at least give voice to it all, she didn't want to be interrupted just to spare her feelings should the worst come to pass.

"I'm pretty sure I come out on top in this exchange, but we're friends so I'm sure you won't pester me about a difference in worth."

Yin Long had raised his head again by the time he answered, nodding casually. Listening was something he could do with absolute ease, it couldn't even really be called a cost. And so, with Yin Yu's help, he started to experiment with the idea he had come up with.

But life would always march on without end, things were born and things died, eventually, everything would have to come to an end. And that day eventually came even for this horribly painful yet enjoyable training that Yin Long was engaging in. He wandered into Hongzai's cavern not long after they finished the sparring matches for that day, the woman greeting him while she sat next to the hotspring, dipping her feet into the bubbling water.

"It's quite rare for you to search me out during your free time. I take it you've come to tell me something you consider fairly important?"

She thought that Yin Long would seek her out multiple times every day, but he had actually come to her rather rarely whenever he had free time. He focused mostly on figuring out things on his own, figuring out ways he could maximize their usefulness within his own style. She turned around after she spoke, the two locking eyes as he nodded his head.

"Yes. Two more weeks, that's the remaining time we have. After that, it is time that I and Yin Yu return. I would like to stay here much longer since there is still a lot for me to learn, but there are things I must still do. And it seems like Yin Yu is refusing to leave until I do, so I have to at the very least do a little right by her and not waste all her time here, she has her own goals to reach after all."

He had been with Hongzai for a bit over half a year at this point, but he still felt like he had a world of things to learn from her. But he and Yin Yu still had things to do, Yin Long still had to meet up with his sister after all. So it was time they returned to the Province Championship, at least for now.

Hongzai was silent for a second after Yin Long announced their upcoming departure. The presence of this monster had already become something she was used to, it became another little piece of her world and daily life. But she knew better than anyone else that all things eventually came to an end, this was simply the end of their first meeting.

"...Understood, two weeks it is. We'll ramp up the training a bit then, let's see exactly what sort of realm you can reach."

She didn't say it out loud, but Yin Long was her first disciple, and she was actually the first proper swordmaster he had ever had. Bai Xiang had never really taught him any sword techniques or the like, it was just general knowledge and sensory honing. The Meiyu that taught him Buddha Dances in the Rain also focused mostly on that single technique, and even that didn't last very long since he passed away so quickly, he barely got to show him the basics.

So Hongzai was his first true swordmaster, and the things he had learned from her changed him on a fundamental level, gave him a true rebirth. A man had fled from the Province Championship to protect Yin Yu, but the thing that would return to it was something else entirely, something that perhaps no one would be ready for.