For a long beat, my mind rose from fog like a lake at dawn, and curiosity pricked before my mouth moved. “Excuse me, are you… huh?!”
Before the last word left me, she was already in front of my nose, swift as a falling petal. A small, porcelain-pale hand pinched my cheek like a curious sparrow testing grain.
“This softness… what a feel. The face is cute, too. Talent—oh? A touch better than that Sage? Not bad.” Her words drifted like a breeze over reeds as her gaze measured me, and heat climbed my ears like dawn light on snow. Pinned by a beauty, who wouldn’t fluster? I didn’t dare meet those silver eyes, star-deep and night-still, for fear I’d stare and make a fool of myself again.
“Um…”
My nerves fluttered like moths, and I tried to ask again—only for her fingers to release my cheek and her other hand to snatch the Shattered Light Sword from mine, quick as lightning through cloud. I didn’t even see how she moved.
“I am Xinuo, the Sword Spirit of Shattered Light.”
“Sword Spirit? Then the Ancestor couldn’t have…”
I’d heard the tales, like campfire sparks on winter nights: the Ancestor’s strength came from a heaven-defying patron at his back.
“If by ‘Ancestor’ you mean that Sage, then yes,” she said, voice calm as a still pond. “I nurtured him when I was bored. Ending the war was a pleasant accident. To keep that hard-won ‘peace,’ I became the pillar of the Mizumi Clan.”
She skimmed over her origin like a swallow over water, then didn’t leave me a gap to reply. “Your name. And you came to this Sword Realm to wake me because you want to become a Sword Wielder, right?”
“I’m Yumigawa Sumeragi, current young master of the Mizumi Clan. And like you said, Xiao Nuo, I want to become a Sword Wielder.”
Under her gaze, a pressure like winter sky before snow, my tongue stumbled into the familiar ‘Xiao’ as if it were a talisman. I just hoped she wouldn’t mind.
“Xiao Nuo… fine. A name is a name.” She let it pass like a leaf on a stream. “What I want to know is—why do you want to become a Sword Wielder?”
The feeling came first, a hunger like wind yearning for open steppe. “I want to see the world outside. For that, I need strength as a Sword Wielder.”
“Just for that?” My answer tugged at her brows like a ripple on glass. “You’re the Mizumi Clan’s young master. There’s nothing you can’t have. Even the supreme artifacts peerless powerhouses claw for are a hand’s reach to you.”
“I know that,” I said, the truth steady as a stone. “Born in the Mizumi Clan, I don’t need to chase anything.”
“In that case, why leave such rich soil and walk into the wilds?” Her tone stayed level, a clear bell in mist. “The outside isn’t the picture you paint—most people gamble life and death for a sliver of power, or for gear and materials a shade better. Even heirs of so-called great factions can’t match a tenth of your conditions.”
“This…”
Her words were mountains, and they stood. By all logic, a son of the Mizumi Clan has no need to suffer; living out a peaceful, honey-sweet life on the Central Continent would be the easy road. But boredom rotted like still water, and youth should be a river in flood, not a quiet retirement in spring shade.
I drew a deep breath; my resolve set like iron cooling in moonlight. “Because I have a dream to chase. I refuse to be a rice weevil at home, safe and useless for a lifetime.”
“Oh? The fire’s there,” she said, gaze sharp as a blade’s edge. “But do you have resolve? Becoming a Sword Wielder isn’t easy. The training is harsh beyond imagining. You, a pampered young master since childhood—do you really have the will to pay everything for a dream?”
“…I do.”
Xinuo could raise the Ancestor; her ‘harsh’ wasn’t a summer drizzle. A Sword Wielder’s road was steeper than that of mages or Elf Users. On the Central Continent, with enough Divine Elixirs, you could pile an ordinary person with some training up to the Saint-tier. Beyond that, it’s insight and fate—a lightning that won’t be caught by hands alone.
“You hesitated a second,” she said, voice cool as shade. “Your resolve isn’t nailed down yet. Then this: I’ll release a ten-thousandth of Shattered Light’s power. If you endure that pressure for ten seconds, you pass. Want to try?”
She smiled, and the world blurred—beauty bloomed like frost-flowers under starlight, a temptation laid on velvet.
“…”
I’d tasted the Shattered Light Sword’s pressure not long ago. Even when it sidestepped me, I nearly blacked out; if I faced it head-on, wouldn’t that be courting death? Even if I treated Divine and Saint-tier elixirs like daily rice, my body wasn’t a mountain that could shoulder that sky.
“Relax,” she said, catching my silence like a drifting leaf. “This time the pressure targets only your consciousness, not your body.”
“For my consciousness only? What does that mean?” A thin thread of hope shivered like sunlight through cloud.
“Simple. I’m testing your will. The pressure won’t harm your body.”
“I see… then what happens if I can’t hold on?”
“Your consciousness will vanish.” She saw my face fall and waved it off, casual as wind. “Don’t look so doomed. For the Mizumi Clan’s sake, I won’t let you be in danger.” She paused, then added, the blade beneath silk. “But if you fail, you’ll lose the right to become a Sword Wielder forever.”
“…”
Silence washed over me like night tide. She’d keep me safe, yes; but failure would chain me for life. No. Thinking of failure before the trial even starts—what kind of will is that? Retreat never births dreams. Only walking into the storm does.
I swept my doubts away like dust from a blade. “I understand. Please let me take the test.”
“As you wish.”
No more words. She lifted Shattered Light, and in that heartbeat a pressure burst forth—less than before, yet still a storm-laden sky. It crashed down and wrapped me whole.
…
I want to die. That’s all that surfaced, raw as a wound. The pressure fell, and my consciousness shattered like glass under millstones; my skull felt cleaved, an ocean of needles under the skin. If I could, I’d rather die than endure this. I finally understood why failure meant the death of consciousness. It wasn’t ‘just’ that—this felt like it could grind the soul to ash.
If that happened, I’d be a perfect shell, a body without a lantern. This trial was a cliff-face, sheer and cold. But I can’t give up. For the dream. For the right to be a Sword Wielder. It’s only ten seconds. Grit your teeth and weather it.
The thought was sweet; reality was iron. For the first time in my life, ten seconds stretched like tar in winter. At three seconds, my mind frayed; the edge of collapse yawned like a crevasse. Only the nail of obsession hammered into my heart kept me from falling.
My vision smeared like rain on ink. My body drifted from my will, tilting toward the ground. No—five seconds left. How can I quit halfway up the mountain? Absolutely not. As my feet lost balance, my consciousness clawed back the reins for half a heartbeat. Half a heartbeat was enough.
Slowly, I noticed a rule written in pain: the more I thought of it, the faster my mind unraveled. I forced myself to ignore that carving-knife ache, to look elsewhere—names, faces, horizons. Inside, I kept chanting, a drumbeat in fog: The test ends soon. Hold on and win.
…
“His will is sturdier than expected,” Xinuo thought, eyes like quiet moonlight. “A little lord who’s never tasted real pain.”
She’d expected him to fail in the first three seconds. He clenched his jaw and dragged himself to seven. Three more and he’d clear her bar; what a spine of iron.
“Is the outside world that alluring to him? Or does he simply refuse to let go, chasing a dream?” She leaned toward the latter.
To survive the pressure of Shattered Light, his will would toughen another grade, like steel quenching in snow. It would shape his path ahead, and it would matter when he sought Sword Intent. Her trial wasn’t cruelty; it was craft.
“Didn’t think I’d wake and pick up a piece of jade,” she mused, a smile like dawn on frost. “Polish it a bit, and it’ll shine with its own light.”
Ten seconds dwindled to dusk. She was almost certain—Yumigawa Sumeragi would pass.
“I’m looking forward to your growth. If you surpass that Sage, all the better.”
A thousand years ago, she’d merely lent Shattered Light to Yugou Sage and tossed him a few casual pointers, her heart barely in it. Even so, his final heights had stepped past her expectations.
So if she trained Sumeragi in earnest, gifted with even brighter talent—what surprise would the future deliver?
In her well that never rippled, a small wave rose—quiet, and new.
…
I wasn’t sure my consciousness still existed; I only knew nine seconds had crawled by. Victory hung before me like the last star before dawn. Just a little more. Push.
At the edge of oblivion, the pressure thinned and vanished, a storm lifting off the sea.
For the first time, my body felt light as a feather on spring wind.
For the first time, being alive tasted sweet as sunlight on rain-washed stone.
