“What is he doing?”

“Shhh be quiet, what if they hear you? You want to be sent to the lower regions or something?”

“I know… but what is he doing now?”

“I don’t know…”

The two people from the apothecary faction of the clan were looking at what was a new face in the Long Clan. He went by the name Zhang Dong or Long Dong and at this very moment, he was sticking his finger into a life-giving elixir.

They had never seen a method of examination like this. What healing experts would normally do was to scan the contents of the elixir bottle with their spiritual sense. This madman on the other hand went around sticking his digits into the high quality elixirs for some reason.

This wasn’t the first section of the clan that he had visited. There were many other clan members standing outside of the apothecary building talking with each other.

“He went through the entire library just poking the books with his finger and running around like a madman!”

“At least he wasn’t interested in the beast tamer faction… but he did pat down all the formation scrolls…”

“Oh, be quiet, he is walking out…”

Zhang Dong left the apothecary guild that was responsible for keeping all the medicine and pill formulae. Some of the elixirs were made by specific masters that had their own secrets but with a little poke, he was able to scan for the ingredients that they were made. When comparing it to his vast library of knowledge he was able to deduct the manufacturing method almost perfectly.

‘Formations, pills, blacksmithing… I think I got all the major ones, what is left is…’

With his current level, he was able to scan everything really fast, he had gone through the library to gather all the hiqh quality martial arts manuals. What was left now were a few monuments that implemented knowledge in a slightly different way.

After going through these pockets of great knowledge he was able to gather many heaven grade manuals. A handful of half-step immortal manuals were also kept hidden away at some places that he now had access to. This trip had really been very fruitful and he continued towards the next destination while munching on something.

“Wait… what is that man-eating… could that be?”

He ignored the chatting people while devouring a piece of fruit packed with divine energy. This was the same fruit that he had eaten previously, now on the other hand he was handed them all by the clan. Thanks to being the Golden Dragon’s ancestor's true descendant he would be naturally given everything that concerned holy power.

Regretfully almost every technique, formation, or secret art related to that ancestor had been lost to time. Mostly what he could find were some lesser copies that some other branch families tried to hold on to. But with the help of the manual from the crypt, he could somewhat upgrade these lesser techniques if he wished to.

“Bring me to the ancestral pillar!”

“Yes, my lord!”

Zhang Dong gave out an order to a person he was lent by the Azure Emperor. The man was the guide that explained every important part of this clan to him. Where he was going now was a secret place that only the members of the Azure Dragon line had access to.

He was already in the giant blue crystal tower that overlooked this floating city. Probably if the Golden Dragon ancestor survived past the wall, there would have been a golden tower next to it. Luckily the place they were heading to had some old knowledge that survived from the past war.

“So this is it, an interesting way to preserve their techniques…”

The area where he was was large and the ceiling was quite high. The most characteristic thing about this place were the many various pillars. Some were square, some were oval while others were just large boulders that didn’t even reach up into the ceiling.

At first, he wasn’t sure what to make of this place. After further examining, he noticed that there were various clan members meditating in front of these large pillars. Each and every one of these rocky structures was scratched up by something. When he got closer he realized that these were no simple scratches, no they were sword strikes.

Each pillar told a different story as it was carved up by various sword techniques and dances. This was a very archaic way of preserving swordsmanship through the ages. Instead of books, they would use hard stone slabs into which they would etch the knowledge with their weapons.

This was a somewhat difficult way of learning the proper sword stances but there was a certain perk of doing it like this. Each sword strike that caused a gash on the rock would carry some of the sword master’s sword intent.

Through looking at those sliced-up pillars the student needed to piece the art together and interpret it for themselves. This gave various effects and produced many versions of the skills.

“While it looks somewhat inconsistent it does preserve it better than old texts.”

He had the pleasure of watching an immortal manual crumble into dust before him. Thanks to this way of preserving knowledge the sword strikes managed to survive tens of thousands of years.

‘But this is a problem… I can’t absorb this into my library….’

Even though Zhang Dong gave one of the pillars a poke he wasn’t able to just analyze it. There weren’t any words here that he could copy and the sword intent was only part of the puzzle. He would somehow need to recreate the movement of the person that performed the sword technique to piece everything together.

While thinking about what to do he noticed a certain young man. He had seen him before as he was Long Shen the oldest brother and son of the Azure Emperor.

“I see that you are keeping up with your studies little Shen.”

“...Little?”

The young man was performing some kind of sword dance before the center pillar of this chamber. Around him were various other students and children of other various powerful elders that hailed from the Long Clan.

Zhang Dong appeared right next to him which caused the young man to fumble during the dance. The technique that he was performing utilized quite a bit of spiritual energy so ending it prematurely caused his sword to fly into the distance.

“You should be careful with that nephew, I’m not sure you should be damaging ancient clan pillars like that…”

The sword flew off and embedded itself in one of the other pillars and caused everyone to look this way.

“That was because you…”

Before continuing Long Shen realized who it was. Even though Zhang Dong wasn’t liked he could see that the young man had learned his lesson. At least that's what it looked like on the surface but he could tell that he was not someone that was liked.

“Please, I’m in the middle of my training, why are you here uncle?”

“Oh, I’m just looking around, what are you trying to perform, a dance?”

“The Heavenly Azure Swordsmanship is not a dance!”

He sounded offended when Zhang Dong called his technique a mere dance. Shen was quick to turn around and resume his training, it seemed that he would rather ignore him now than continue the interaction. Thanks to this Zhang Dong got a good idea of how to try his system's new AI feature.

‘Bob, can you compare this Shen fellows sword dance to the cuts on this large pillar… could you also perhaps produce a holographic image?’

‘Initiating holographic projection…’

While he was in the other world and cultivating his soul he had some time to play around with his new AI partner. His function to automatically use the crafting abode to upgrade skills was only one of them.

While Long Shen continued his dance Bob started scanning his movements along with the sword gashes in the large pillar. With the combined input the helper app was able to piece together the technique that he was performing.

‘Sword technique detected, incomplete…’

While the young man seemed competent and was already a nascent soul master, it seemed that he wasn’t able to fully paste together the sword dance that was in this pillar. This was only natural as most people wouldn’t even be able to properly make one good move out of these pillar scratches.

‘Can you put together the full technique for me?’

Bob went to work as he scanned the pillar for the right technique. As this continued Zhang Dong discovered that there were various other sword strikes and skills embedded in this one pillar, some of them were quite hard to see as they overlapped with other sword strikes.

“Why is he just standing there like that…”

“I don’t know…”

The other students that were there were curious about this new person that even Long Shen needed to abide by. For some time he remained stationary while just looking up at the pillar filled with knowledge.

They didn’t know that the person was pasting together a long-lost art and was doing it at an alarming pace.

‘That took a while… that’s a bit of movement but it's also a half-step immortal level technique… should I try it out?’

This was no book so reading this type of monolith wasn’t easy. After about an hour he was finally done and would probably be able to do the same with the other pillars at a faster pace.

“What is he doing now? He took out a sword? Is he going to perform a sword dance?”

One of the clan members asked while finding Zhang Dong’s stance very similar to the one that Long Shen had. When the Azure Emperor’s son saw what his uncle was doing he instantly stopped with his training. From his standpoint, there was no way of Zhang Dong being able to perform the correct set of movements only after glancing at the stone pillar for an hour. He was ready to mock his uncle after he failed but then he noticed something that he didn’t expect.

“T-those movements… is that really the same sword dance the young lord was studying?”

“It looks somewhat different and the movements are sharper…”

An aura of golden flames washed over Zhang Dong’s body as he performed a few movements of this new sword art. This was nothing simple as it was the first technique that he was trying to perform that actually went over the nascent soul limit.

Sweat formed on his brow and his hands felt heavy. The amount of spiritual energy that this trance like swordsmanship swallowed up was staggering but it could certainly not be denied. Even though he wasn’t performing any attacking strikes his movements caused the whole place to rumble.

“Oh god, did he achieve the sword heart?... is he moving past it… how is that possible?”

“A genius of the sword!”

Everyone cleared out of the way as the sword energies that continued to gather around Zhang Dong’s body would be able to slice any opponent that came near them apart in a matter of moments. This was truly the pinnacle of swordsmanship that could not be reached by buying skills alone.