Novel Full Chapter 132: Truth and Intent
Chapter 132: Truth and Intent
Solomon maintained a bright smile while resting the Eden’s Penance against his shoulder. He listened to the instructor’s evaluation and found the logic entirely sound. The pavilion leader possessed a perfect understanding of human limits.
Most regular cultivators trained for one or two hours a day. Lazy guild members frequently skipped private sessions altogether to relax. An average adventurer aiming for higher ranks practiced for three or four hours. While extremely dedicated fighters pushed themselves to five or six hours daily.
Everyone spent their remaining time resting their muscles, sleeping, and completing standard quests like normal people.
Solomon had spent fifteen years trapped inside the Paladin’s world, where he controlled reality within that space through pure imagination.
Whenever Solomon reached the brink of total physical collapse, the Paladin simply willed his exhaustion away. The ancient warrior permitted a few short breaks every few hours to prevent him from losing his sanity completely.
However, he did provided imaginary food to sate a fake hunger, keeping the human mind firmly tethered to reality.
Consequently, Solomon ended up swinging a blade for twenty to twenty-two hours every single day. Converting those fifteen years of continuous torture into normal standards yielded terrifying numbers.
Matched against casual training, his experience equaled two hundred years of practice. Weighed against an average fighter, it amounted to ninety-five years. Placed next to the most hardcore cultivators, he still possessed eighty years of pure experience and combat refinement.
Pavilion Leader Jin completely failed to comprehend the situation. The senior instructor was looking at an eighteen-year-old boy while trying to calculate the strength of a two-hundred-year-old swordmaster.
"I guess I just have an incredibly good memory," Solomon replied cheerfully, adjusting his grip on his hilt. "I watch people swing their swords, and my body naturally figures out the rest."
Jin scoffed and returned his curved saber to its scabbard with a sharp clack of metal. The excuse sounded completely ridiculous. A person could memorize a thousand different painting techniques by watching an artist, yet they would still fail to paint a masterpiece without holding a brush for years.
[User12: bro is literally telling the teacher ’I just built different’.]
[1Fizzy: gaslighting the pavilion leader part two.]
[BloodKnight: A true warrior never reveals all of his secrets.]
[Chi_Master: YOU CANNOT JUST TELL HIM YOU HAVE A GOOD MEMORY AND EXPECT HIM TO BELIEVE THAT!]
"You are hiding a secret," Jin stated, crossing his arms over his deep blue robes. "I will uncover the truth eventually. Your current performance guarantees that Master Wu will personally oversee your development very soon."
Solomon tapped his boots against the cobblestones and looked down the dark corridor. "I am completely fine with that. Are we officially done with the interrogation? Because there is a different matter that we need to address. There are spies targeting students with the intent of killing them."
Jin adjusted the cuffs of his deep blue robes. "That has been handled. All the spies have been caught and imprisoned. I noticed you were missing, so I asked other students and guards. They said you left for lunch. Since we lack surveillance cameras like in your world, we rely on the streams of the LSA students. Accessing the stream is hard and highly expensive for us. Fortunately, since you were labeled as a VIP student by the LSA academy itself, I went to the monitoring room to check your stream. I saw you being carried away here."
Solomon raised a brow and pointed the tip of his greatsword at the ruined stone altar. "Are you telling me that you knew about this place?"
Jin stepped over a chunk of shattered bones. "This used to be a sect branch of one of the four evil sects. It was abandoned forty years ago after the righteous alliance wiped every one of them out. It seems they have started their activities again. They are even recruiting sect members of different sects and having them act as spies and infiltrate the factions."
Solomon rested the pristine steel against his collarbone and crossed his free arm over his chest. "What exactly do they plan by doing this? Why would they go after academy students who haven’t done anything to them?"
Jin stopped pacing and looked directly at the silver-haired boy. "According to the information we gathered after interrogating the captured spies, they possess a very specific goal. They were exclusively targeting the students with noble and royal bloodlines."
[1Fizzy: the royals are getting targeted!]
[Fatal_Beauty: that sounds like a major plot point.]
[BloodKnight: Evil factions always hunt for high-quality sacrifices.]
[User12: Isn’t Arthur a noble too? He is in danger then.]
Solomon leaned his weight onto his back foot. "Is there any reason behind it? What would they do with those specific students?"
Jin clasped his hands behind his back. "They are planning to revive the Heavenly Demon by sacrificing those students."
Solomon clamped his jaw shut and stared at the ruined temple floor. His mind immediately raced back to the final conversation he shared with the ancient knight inside the mental void.
The royals and nobles possessed a direct, biological connection to the gods. Diluted divine ichor literally flowed through their veins. He wondered if this local sect dispute connected to a much bigger picture involving the heavens. Using divine blood to fuel a demonic resurrection made sense since their blood carried divinity.
Jin gestured toward the servant staircase leading back to the novice dormitories. "Return to your assigned quarters immediately. The perimeter guards are on high alert, and any further excursions will result in an immediate disciplinary strike."
"We are taking the direct route back to the Sword Pavilion," Jin announced, stepping onto a sharp rock outcropping. "The main mountain stairs take hours to navigate. This vertical passage bypasses the lower checkpoints entirely. I used it to reach Tianfeng City quickly after discovering your absence."
Solomon hoisted Eden’s Penance onto his shoulder and approached the crevice. He peered up into the dark shaft. The shortcut consisted of sheer rock faces, crumbling footholds, and massive gaps over bottomless drops.
"You just jump up this thing?" Solomon asked, tapping his boots against the stone.
Jin offered a brief smile and channeled his internal energy. "A true martial artist moves seamlessly across any terrain. Try to keep up."