The three looked at each other, not knowing how to respond.

"You didn't offend Miss, did you? Of course, you can't be too soft either, or else Madam will scold you. Miss is stubborn, and when necessary, she'll have us servants play the bad guys, but you must handle the balance well. There's Miss Emily and Young Master Frost—we have to serve them both properly. I just don't trust you three. When you get over there, you can't just act on impulse, speak too bluntly, or handle things too harshly. It's a pity that on my end... I'm tied up with these... these mundane affairs and can't get away."

Peter Thompson rambled on, but as he struggled to catch his breath, his face gradually turned red and purple, showing signs of suffocation. John Thompson and David Thompson hurried over to pound his back and help him breathe, and after a while, he finally recovered.

Peter Thompson groaned as he sat up, eyes half-closed: "So, Miss should have been brought back, right? She's in the outer courtyard now, isn't she? In a bit, once I catch my breath, I'll take you three to go apologize. Of course, you can't be too soft, or else Madam..."

Before he could finish, he seemed to be suffocating again, and Matthew Thompson couldn't hold back any longer and blurted out, " Brother Peter, Miss didn't come."

"We as servants... What!? Miss didn't come!?" Peter Thompson jumped up in shock. "What happened? Judging by your dispirited faces, did you get into a fight with Miss? What about that talisman? Didn't it work?"

John Thompson looked helpless: "Brother Peter, I think there was a problem with the talisman. Miss was only immobilized for a moment before she broke free, as if nothing happened!"

"What!?" Peter Thompson's voice shot up an octave. "That talisman was given to me by Madam, how could there be a problem? Besides, even without the talisman, the three of you couldn't bring back a little girl who hasn't even mastered the Wind-Chasing Sword?"

John Thompson was mortified: "Brother Peter, not only couldn't we bring Miss back, we couldn't even last a single exchange. She broke through our protective skills, our energy scattered, and our organs cramped up."

Before he finished speaking, David Thompson couldn't hold it anymore and rushed to the bushes to vomit.

Peter Thompson stared in disbelief: "You three couldn't even last a single exchange? Looks like I'm not the only one who needs to run laps! What have you all been practicing lately?!"

"Brother Peter, you really can't blame us for this. Miss's swordsmanship is just too strange. It looked crooked and unformed, and the sword was blunt, not even sharpened, but when it hit us, it instantly broke our protective energy. It's really uncanny."

At this moment, David Thompson had just finished vomiting. Wiping his mouth, he said, "Brother Peter, based on my calculations, I think Miss may have mastered the legendary Dugu Nine Swords. There's a move in it that breaks energy..."

"If she could master the Dugu Nine Swords, she'd have been flying on air long ago! No, something's definitely off here. Let me catch my breath and think this through."

Chapter 006: The Foolish Mount

May 15, 2017, Clear

The third day in the new world. Because Emily Thompson injured her back from practicing the Immovable Overlord Body, she had to rest in bed. Henry Martinez, with nothing to do, began constructing the second formation inside the Sword World.

The Manipulation Array.

This is a formation that allows one to control objects from a distance. During the war between immortals and demons, Henry Martinez once assembled thirty-eight million Manipulation Arrays within the Sword World, used them to seize a demon war fortress from afar, and then hurled it away like a meteor from the heavens, directly annihilating a regular demon regiment.

Unfortunately, those thirty-eight million Manipulation Arrays have long since been wiped out, and Henry Martinez could only start from scratch, restoring them one by one. A single Manipulation Array is weak, and with Henry Martinez's current power nearly at zero, he could control no more than ten pounds, and not very quickly at that.

Still, with this formation, he could regain a bit of mobility.

Although he didn't care much about his own strength, being a plain, blunt sword was just too weak and inconvenient—even moving freely was difficult. Back then, as the divine sword from beyond the heavens, he could sweep across the land in an instant, even take human form and chat and laugh with people—something he could hardly do when he was still human. But now, he couldn't even stand up on his own.

The new world was so wonderful, but lying in bed with a foolish mount was just too boring, too much of a waste of life. So Henry Martinez once again absorbed a few ancestral demon-warding talismans that Emily Thompson had hidden under the bed, combined them with a bit of the girl's vital energy, and transformed them into pure spiritual power, carefully sketching the outline of the formation on the blank floor.

As a sword spirit who once ruled the world, drawing a basic Manipulation Array was child's play. In no time, a formation about a yard square was completed, energy circulating within it endlessly. Henry Martinez used this power to successfully make himself float.

At first, he wobbled a bit, but after a few breaths, the plain blunt sword was floating steadily. Though the speed was slow—hardly worthy of being called flight—it was, without a doubt, a form of mobility.

Henry Martinez floated around the room for a while, but was completely unsatisfied with such sluggishness, so he began to consider how to construct a second Manipulation Array. Emily Thompson's ancestral talismans were used up, and given her poverty, there was no hope for more anytime soon. The only thing he could rely on was her own cultivation.