After waking this time, Li Guanqi was in no rush to enter secluded cultivation.
Right now, he had almost nothing left to cultivate in seclusion.
With his current strength and speed, he was fully capable of handling those three thunderstorm heavenly tribulations.
Yet after several decades in seclusion, waking up only to find himself still trapped here inevitably left him restless and irritable—he didn't even have any wine.
"Sigh... do I really have to wait a full century before I can get out?"
"Hey! Is anyone there?!"
Not even an echo answered; in all of heaven and earth, his was the only voice to be heard.
Li Guanqi frowned deeply. Rising into the air, he raised a hand, instantly condensing ten million spiritual swords of immortal primal energy.
The densely packed spiritual swords blotted out the sky. Li Guanqi's eyes turned fierce, and with a sweep of his hand, he slashed out a sword strike!
"Dao Fall Sword!"
Boom!
Ten million spiritual swords rained down in the wake of the sword light!
Raging power instantly engulfed an area ten thousand zhang across!
The entire earth turned into a sea of lightning as endless thunderous spiritual swords detonated with violent roars.
Deafening blasts reverberated without pause for several breaths.
Such a terrifying attack would have forced even King Xuan to perish in defeat.
Li Guanqi's strength had long undergone an earth-shattering transformation.
The power of the Ascension realm was overwhelmingly formidable.
Yet when the lightning dissipated, Li Guanqi's expression turned exceedingly grim.
The glowing emerald vein patterns on the ground remained just as before, without the slightest change...
Moreover, several decades had passed, and Li Guanqi hadn't noticed any sign of the spiritual glow dimming.
Li Guanqi furrowed his brows and murmured to himself, "Is there really no way out?"
After a long silence, Li Guanqi landed back on the ground and called out in a low, resonant voice, "Pengluo! Can you hear me?"
Silence. In all the world, only his own breathing remained clearly audible.
Pengluo, who had always stayed by his side, gave no response.
"Jiuxiao?"
"Sword Spirit! Shiwu!"
Li Guanqi's voice grew louder as he shouted again and again.
Yet the dead-silent void offered no sound in reply.
Li Guanqi's eyes dimmed, tinged with inevitable disappointment.
Then, on second thought, he shook his head with a bitter smile.
He hadn't realized how reliant on them he was in times like this.
Without Pengluo chattering incessantly in his ear, he really felt out of sorts...
Lying on the ground, Li Guanqi reached out to touch the hard earth, overwhelmed with mixed emotions.
"I really want some wine..."
The dead-silent void remained unchanged, offering not a whisper of a reply.
Looking up at the pitch-black firmament, Li Guanqi muttered, "Do I really have to stay here for nearly seventy more years?"
As he pondered, Li Guanqi suddenly sat bolt upright.
His gaze turned resolute, and he whispered, "Since I have the time, I might as well keep honing my sword dao.
"My sword still isn't fast enough, still isn't ruthless enough!
"Ever since I began cultivating, I've basically followed what the sword spirit taught me.
"In that case, I'll use this time to temper my sword dao, comprehend sword momentum, and create my own sword arts!
"The sword spirit stands too high, so every stance and technique she taught feels unattainably lofty."
Composing his emotions, Li Guanqi slowly rose to his feet and exhaled a breath of stale air.
The reason he voiced everything aloud was that he was afraid.
He was afraid of this desolate space, where there wasn't a single soul to speak to.
If he didn't speak either, this place would truly become a land of the dead.
By speaking, at least he could hear his own voice, proving that he still existed.
From that day forth, Li Guanqi practiced his sword without rest.
He executed every sword art he had ever learned.
He trained with desperate abandon; even when his palms were rubbed bloody and raw, his sword never stopped striking.
Gradually, Li Guanqi's sword grew faster and faster.
His strikes became increasingly effortless, answering his will like his own limbs.
Later, after an unknown amount of time had passed, Li Guanqi collapsed onto the ground in exhaustion, gasping for breath.
Recovering his senses, he murmured, "How long has it been?"
He had completely lost track of time.
Realizing this wouldn't do, Li Guanqi raised a hand and condensed a half-person-tall hourglass out of primal energy.
Once the hourglass ran out, one month would have passed; he condensed twelve of them in total.
When the primal energy in the first ran dry, the second would begin, repeating cyclically.
"Heh, I'm pretty clever after all."
After that, Li Guanqi plunged back into cultivation.
He had realized that perhaps the only way to fight off loneliness was total immersion in cultivation.
Only then would time pass a little faster.
Li Guanqi calmed his mind and began practicing the sword once more.
Only this time, he practiced the most fundamental sword techniques.
Cleaving, hacking, lifting, thrusting, upward slashing, intercepting, tapping, sweeping, parrying, snapping, and twisting.
These were all the most fundamental sword stances.
Yet he honed each and every one to the absolute extreme!
Whether in speed, power, precision, or timing.
Day in and day out, without sleep or rest, Li Guanqi practiced his sword with ferocious dedication, oblivious to the passage of time.
For every single move and stance, he swung his sword hundreds of thousands of times.
His willpower continually pushed past his own limits; whenever he felt he couldn't hold on and wanted to rest a moment, a voice seemed to echo in his mind, telling him to hold out just a little longer.
Whenever he wanted to give up, he told himself in his heart to hold on just a little longer.
When he returned to full awareness, he found that the hourglasses beside him had long since run empty.
Li Guanqi frowned slightly. By his current reckoning, he should have stayed here for nearly forty years.
To be exact, it should only be thirty-two years.
Without a second thought, Li Guanqi raised a hand. Primal energy surged violently, condensing into an enormous hourglass a full ten zhang tall.
The time it would take for this hourglass to run out was precisely... sixty-eight years!
In addition, he condensed sixty-eight hourglasses taller than a man, each representing one year.
After arranging these hourglasses, Li Guanqi finally nodded in satisfaction.
He then sat cross-legged on the ground as manuals of sword arts and cultivation methods surfaced one after another in his mind.
By a rough count, there were over a thousand!
These were all spoils from enemies he had slain over the years. From Heaven, Earth, Xuan, to Huang, every rank was represented.
There were even quite a few manuals and sword arts left behind by the Immortal Realm cultivators he had killed.
Previously, because of the sword spirit's presence, he had rarely cultivated any other systematic techniques or sword arts.
Even the Heaven Shattering Sword Art had only three forms.
Li Guanqi began reviewing them from the lowest, Huang rank techniques.
Yet after browsing through merely two of them, he cast them aside...
"Pah, this garbage qualifies as a cultivation method?"
Next, he looked through some Xuan rank ones, his lips twitching.
"A bit better than that pile of dog shit just now, but it's still shit."
Helpless, Li Guanqi ultimately turned his attention to the Heaven rank cultivation methods and sword arts.
There was no helping it. His sword dao attainment was already exceptionally high; studying anything below Heaven rank was utterly meaningless.
Heaven rank methods, however, were different. Every single one contained the unique insights of its creator.
Furthermore, their circulation pathways and attack maneuvers were remarkably profound.
Li Guanqi immersed himself in them, comprehending and meditating on one after another.
And here, Li Guanqi's monstrous, almost freakish comprehension was fully on display.
It took Li Guanqi barely three days to comprehend and cultivate a Heaven rank sword technique, and another three days to achieve total mastery of it.
Chapter 1471