Ling Zhao had spent fourteen years in the sect. His spiritual root was rusted, and his cultivation ranked dead last in the entire sect. All his fellow disciples were waiting to see when he'd be kicked down the mountain.
Instead, it was his senior brother who came for him. That night, Jiang Wujiao tricked him into going behind the treasure pavilion, then turned around and accused him of stealing the Azure Jade Talisman. Ling Zhao's cultivation was crippled, he was expelled from the inner sect, and he was banished to the Sword Mound.
The Sword Mound stood at the sect's far northwestern corner. One hundred and seventy-three broken swords were embedded in its stone walls, abandoned for three hundred years. The keeper, a mute old man known as Uncle Ya, couldn't speak. The first rule of the sect: do not draw a sword, and do not listen to one.
On Ling Zhao's third night there, as he wiped down the seventh sword, he suddenly heard someone speak beside his ear.
"You smell of rust. Just like me."
The sword said its master had been defeated by a senior brother three hundred years ago and cast out by the sect. The sword had rotted here for three hundred years, but though it had broken, its sword intent had not faded. It had been waiting all this time for someone who could hear it.
That's when Ling Zhao understood: these one hundred and seventy-three swords were the fiercest swords the sect itself had thrown away. Each one contained a lost sword intent: Severing Water, No Return, Heart Illuminator, and Immortal Slayer.
And the three years spent guarding the mound were a chance for anyone with nothing left but their life to claim three hundred years' worth of swords for free.
Three years later, on the day he returned to the inner sect, Jiang Wujiao was still demonstrating his recorded sword intent on the martial stage. Ling Zhao merely lifted a hand.
