The Sword Spirit said again, “Then let me start from the beginning. A long, long time ago…”

“Enough, you don’t need to say any more! I believe you, okay?” The girl was so annoyed that her head was pounding, and she had to back down a little. “But since this is about repaying a favor, shouldn’t you at least hear my wish first?”

The Sword Spirit agreed to the girl’s request: “What do you want?”

“What I want most is for you to dissolve the master-servant contract, but… could you conjure up a million spirit stones for me instead?” The impoverished girl made a very practical choice without hesitation.

“I don’t have that many spirit stones,” The Sword Spirit answered honestly.

“How many do you have?”

The Sword Spirit glanced at the empty sword world and said, “Nothing at all.”

“…Then, if I want a sudden surge in power, a dramatic leap in cultivation, you can’t do that either, right?”

The Sword Spirit immediately felt that the earlier assessment of this mount’s intelligence needed to be lowered a bit: “Cultivation has always been a personal matter. Blindly relying on external help is truly foolish.”

“Then just honestly dissolve the contract!”

“In fact, that’s not possible either. Forming the contract already exhausted my energy. If you want to dissolve it, you’ll need to collect five pieces of Vortex Gold, two bottles of All-Spirit Blood, and a Grand Oath…”

“…Never even heard of those.”

“No problem, I can introduce them to you one by one.”

“No need! If this won’t work and that won’t work, what exactly can you do?!”

The Sword Spirit admitted this was a good question, because after losing everything in the sword world, the Celestial Sword from beyond the heavens was now just an indestructible, blunt, blank sword. As for what it could do…

“Would you like to hear some anecdotes from the Immortal-Demon War of the Nine Provinces? The really interesting kind.”

“Not interested!”

“What about the emotional entanglements of your ancestors, William Thompson and Brian Sullivan?”

“I’ve never even heard of William Thompson or Brian Sullivan!”

“I can tell you about their lives.”

“Not interested!”

“…If you don’t want this or that, all I can do is guide your cultivation.”

Naturally, the girl didn’t believe it: “You, of all people?”

“Well, it’s true I’m not exactly a great master of cultivation. Aside from swordsmanship, I’m not proficient in much else. But at the very least, I can see that you’re wasting your precious bloodline right now.”

As The Sword Spirit spoke, it used the power of the master-servant contract to closely observe its contracted mount, Emily Thompson.

Undoubtedly a descendant of an old acquaintance, the Nine-Dragon Sword Heart of William Thompson, after countless generations of dilution, was still clearly condensed within the girl’s body. On the other hand, the lifelong cultivation achievement of Brian Sullivan—the Immovable Overlord Body—was also perfectly present in the girl’s bloodline.

However, these two supreme bloodlines were actually completely incompatible. The Immovable Overlord Body and the Nine-Dragon Sword Heart were basically mutually exclusive. For someone with this bloodline, cultivating swordsmanship would yield half the results with twice the effort, and using swordsmanship to enter the path and step into the immortal realm would be several times harder than for ordinary people. Normally, after perfecting body refinement and filling their true qi, a cultivator could attempt to ride the wind and break through the human limit to become a Wind-Rising Realm cultivator. If the process went smoothly, it could be done in one go; if not… one could be stuck for a long time.

And Emily Thompson’s situation was clearly the latter. The two top-tier bloodlines conflicted with each other, so being stuck at this bottleneck for five or six years was not surprising. Moreover, her swordsmanship progress would become increasingly sluggish, even regressing at times—for example, when practicing the Wind-Chasing Sword to the extreme, she would lose control.

“……”

At some point, The Sword Spirit noticed the girl was already gaping in shock, and her thoughts were transmitted to The Sword Spirit’s ears through the contract channel.

“Everything—he got everything right!?”

When Emily Thompson was ten, she completed the basic body refinement courses and proudly graduated as the top inner disciple of the The Thompson Family. But in the four years since, her cultivation had barely advanced. Her peers in the family all rode the wind and broke through, but she alone was stuck at the wind barrier for four years, and her swordsmanship progress worsened day by day. Those four years were truly difficult—not only was she expelled from the inner sect, but her status in the outer sect also gradually declined…

She had thought her talent was just too poor and that she was fated to miss the immortal path. But now, it seemed there was another reason?

The Sword Spirit said, “Purely in terms of talent, you’re not outstanding, but you shouldn’t be blocked by the wind barrier. The main issue is your cultivation method.”

“I-is that so…” the girl said hesitantly, but she was starting to believe a little.

Although her current situation was down and out, both her parents had been among the most outstanding people in the world. Her cultivation talent shouldn’t have been so poor, nor her progress so slow and difficult! It was a pity her mother died too early, and her father was… the way he was… so she didn’t even know who she could rely on now.

After that, the girl’s thoughts became a jumbled mess, and only after a long time did a clear but slightly hesitant voice emerge.

“Then, in your opinion, what should I do now? For the record, I don’t completely trust you—I just want to hear your opinion.”

The Sword Spirit pondered for a moment and said, “In my view, your talent for swordsmanship is quite average. You’d be better off focusing on the Immovable Overlord Body, maximizing your bloodline advantage. At the very least, you could break through the barrier and ride the wind, stepping into the immortal realm.”

“Bloodline advantage?”