The stone table in the courtyard had been moved to one side, clearing enough space for the two of them to spar.
Since this was a contest of sword arts, neither party would be drawing on the spiritual energy advantages that came with their cultivation realm. But Jiang Lu was confident that his understanding of the Huiyuan Sword Art was more than sufficient to school his senior brother.
He had always been quite sure of his own talent when it came to cultivation techniques and martial arts.
And looking at Senior Brother Gu's situation — he had only buckled down and seriously trained in sword arts for half a month at most. There wasn't a trace of any other technique in his sword style; it was utterly unadorned. Jiang Lu, on the other hand, had a deep understanding of the Huiyuan Sword Art and had read widely enough to weave the strengths of other sword styles into it. Correcting a beginner should be, as they say, a walk in the park.
Of course, Jiang Lu wasn't about to use his knowledge of other techniques to bully a beginner. The purpose of today's visit was to "correct," not to "spar." He needed only to demonstrate the purest expression of the Huiyuan Sword Art to show his senior brother exactly where he'd gone wrong.
With that thought in mind, Jiang Lu picked up a practice wooden sword and gave Gu Chengming a distant salute, his voice measured and calm. "Senior Brother — whenever you're ready."
Gu Chengming took up his own sword and returned the courtesy.
Jiang Lu made the first move. With the opening form "Slanted Shadows on Sparse Branches," his sword tip flicked out like a dragonfly skimming water, driving straight toward the open center of Gu Chengming's chest. This was the Huiyuan Sword Art's opening strike — quick, precise, and light — designed purely to probe.
Gu Chengming neither dodged nor retreated. He answered with the exact same form, "Slanted Shadows on Sparse Branches." The two wooden swords met in the air with a crisp crack.
Jiang Lu flicked his wrist and shifted instantly — turning a thrust into a slice, sliding down the length of Gu Chengming's sword toward his wrist. This was the standard follow-up variation, intended to force the opponent to pull back in self-defense and cede the initiative.
But Gu Chengming's sword did not retreat. His blade seemed to have been coated in glue — it pressed close against Jiang Lu's sword and sank with the slicing motion, tip tilting just slightly, and with a strike that arrived last yet landed first, flicked right back toward Jiang Lu's wrist.
Give back what you get, in kind.
Jiang Lu's eyebrow rose. Interesting, he thought privately. He turned his wrist, pulled back into a guard, stepped to the side, and drifted away like a wisp of catkin, putting distance between them.
"Senior Brother, your sword is too clingy," Jiang Lu said, offering his critique.
"The Huiyuan Sword Art prizes detachment — if a strike misses, you withdraw and reset. This kind of grappling style loses the true spirit of the art."
With that, he pressed forward again, his sword forms unfurling in a display of the Huiyuan Sword Art's finest techniques. His sword path was cool and swift; every strike touched and withdrew, weaving a net around Gu Chengming that was sparse yet airtight.
Gu Chengming, for his part, acted as though he hadn't heard a word. He kept right on using that same "clingy" style.
When Jiang Lu's sword thrust came in, Gu Chengming's sword rose to meet it — not to block, but to stick. When Jiang Lu's sword sliced in, Gu Chengming's sword followed the motion downward, winding around it like a vine.
At first, Jiang Lu handled it all with ease. He even deliberately slowed down and mirrored Gu Chengming's own forms, trying to demonstrate through example what "cool, detached clarity" was actually supposed to look like.
But the longer it went on, the more something felt wrong.
Gu Chengming's sword style was like a spider's web drawing tighter and tighter. Each of his strikes seemed easily countered by Jiang Lu, yet that thick, clinging sword intent kept seeping through, strand by strand, making Jiang Lu's movements slow just a fraction — stall just a hair.
That half-fraction of delay was barely noticeable at first. But as the exchanges mounted, those tiny disadvantages began to accumulate. Jiang Lu gradually found that his sword felt as though it had sunk into mud — each swing costing him just a little more effort than the last.
He was starting to feel the strain of fighting a battle his body couldn't quite keep up with.
What should have been a casual lesson had, by the thirtieth-odd exchange, turned into something Jiang Lu found genuinely alarming: at some point without him noticing, he had fallen completely on the back foot.
He'd been outplayed.
Only now did Jiang Lu realize: those seemingly clumsy, lovesick moves — every stick, every cling, every wrap — had been quietly, steadily stacking advantages. They had bled the sharpness from his attacks, disrupted the rhythm of his strikes, and compressed the space he had to maneuver. Individually each was nothing, but together they had built into a pressure that could no longer be ignored.
Jiang Lu gritted his teeth inwardly. This couldn't go on.
With a single mental shift, he changed his sword path entirely. Into the cool, detached cadence of the Huiyuan Sword Art, he suddenly wove a streak of sharp, lethal ferocity. This was a technique he had grasped from another advanced sword art of the sect — the Startled Swan Sword — and his sword speed surged, attempting to use sheer velocity to tear through Gu Chengming's clinging web.
By this point, neither man's sword style bore much resemblance to the Huiyuan Sword Art that Jiang Lu had set out to demonstrate.
Jiang Lu had expected that, once he revealed his true ability, he would at least claw back some of his lost ground.
But to his disbelief, that fierce, decisive strike only made Gu Chengming pause for an instant.
The very next moment, those relentless, clinging sword forms came back like a bone-deep infection — and this time, the clinging was sharper, more devious, and even harder to shake.
If a cool, detached style was at a natural disadvantage against a clinging one, that could perhaps be understood. But he had already changed his approach — so why could he still not stop the man from latching on?
Jiang Lu's heart seized with alarm. No matter how he shifted — fast or slow, hard or soft — the opponent always seemed to find exactly the right way to latch onto his sword, drag it down, and neutralize it, before resuming that endless, interminable entanglement.
Meanwhile, Gu Chengming had become completely absorbed in the exchange. His eyes were bright and his focus razor-sharp; each swing of the wooden sword resonated in some strange harmony with the favorability notifications from the Huiyuan Sword Art flickering across his panel.
Jiang Lu was being driven back step by step, fine beads of sweat breaking out at his temples, barely holding on.
The frustration was suffocating. In terms of raw strength and speed, he hadn't lost by much. If Gu Chengming had chosen to clash head-on, things would never have come to this sorry state.
But the man across from him simply refused to clash head-on. He just kept at it with those tireless clinging forms and evasions, grinding down your fighting spirit and your patience, leaving you full of power with nowhere to put it — so stifled you wanted to cough up blood.
No. This couldn't continue.
Jiang Lu knew that if he kept letting himself be outmaneuvered like this, defeat was inevitable.
Resolve flashed in his eyes. He made his decision in an instant. With a sharp shout, he seized the moment when Gu Chengming had swung and was caught between the exhaustion of the old force and the rise of the new — and poured every ounce of his strength and will into the tip of his sword. The wooden sword in his hand let out a strained, resonant hum, and with a single-minded, forward-charging conviction, drove straight for Gu Chengming's chest.
This one strike contained the insights of years of hard cultivation — the distilled sum of his experience on the sword path — the single most brilliant strike he could deliver at this moment.
Jiang Lu had come. Jiang Lu had given everything.
And yet — the instant his sword shot forward, the Gu Chengming across from him seemed to have anticipated it all along. That clinging, winding sword path shifted without warning.
He did not dodge. He did not parry. Instead, he extended his wooden sword forward as well, meeting Jiang Lu's kill-or-be-killed strike head-on.
The moment the two swords collided, Jiang Lu finally saw it clearly.
He saw what lay behind that seemingly unremarkable thrust of Gu Chengming's.
It was not raw strength. It was not technical brilliance.
It was something that had been building since the very first exchange — accumulated through countless sticks, clings, wraps, and retreats — an intangible yet crushingly heavy momentum.
That momentum was like rivers converging into the sea, like a hundred tributaries returning to a single source.
It contained every sword strike of Jiang Lu's that had been neutralized, every edge that had been worn down, every rhythm that had been broken. Each of Gu Chengming's retreats and each moment of clinging had been like adding a single drop of water to this gathering tide.
And now, the mighty torrent formed from those countless drops came crashing down all at once.
Jiang Lu felt as though the wooden sword in his hand had not struck another blade, but a towering mountain bearing down on him head-on — a surging, unstoppable wall of floodwater. That force was heavy, vast, and utterly unanswerable, filling him with a sense of smallness and helplessness that reached into the very depths of his soul.
The brilliant strike he had staked his pride on was, before this overwhelming tide, as fragile as a dry twig.
Clang!
A thunderous crash rang out. Jiang Lu felt his grip explode with pain, an irresistible force transmitting up through the blade — he could no longer hold on. The wooden sword flew from his hand, traced an arc through the air, and landed in the grass far away.
A cold sword tip came to rest at his throat, perfectly precise.
Gu Chengming's calm voice sounded through the courtyard.
"Junior Brother — you've lost."
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