Who let him join the Sword Sect?!

Chapter 1066 - 511: The Faded Lu Tianming and the Lu Yuzhou Beast

In Zhang Ze’s speculation.Back then, those Dongqi cultivators who followed Xiao Jing into this place were very likely plotted against by Xiao Jing and affected by that black qi.

After being completely corrupted by the black qi, they were then turned by Xiao Jing, through some means, into these puppet-like things they are now.

After that, under his control, they aided a tyrant’s abuse, guarding the Holy Land and Baiyujing.

And what Zhang Ze thought he needed to do was, just like a Magical Girl, awaken the justice in these seniors’ hearts with love and friendship.

Aside from the last Magical Girl bit, everything else in this guess felt very reasonable to Zhang Ze.

But Wei Zhuang, as the man who had fought Lu Tianming for almost his entire life, could be said to know Lu Tianming better than anyone.

If he said this was fake, then he definitely had his reasons.

"What do you mean by that?" Zhang Ze straightened up and asked.

Wei Zhuang thought for a moment and then explained.

"That sword that chopped me felt wrong—light and floaty, with form but no intent, just a clumsy imitation of Tianming.

"That’s her original creation, the Great Brightness Heaven-opening Sword. Even if she’d fallen a realm, it couldn’t possibly become that weak when she used it."

"And that state she was in, I keep feeling like I’ve seen it somewhere before..."

As Wei Zhuang spoke, he placed his hand on the ice lotus, directly facing ’Lu Tianming’s’ face.

No one knew what spell he used, but without any warning, the Lu Tianming sealed in the ice began to change.

Lu Tianming’s body started to turn semi-transparent, the pure holy light fading away, replaced in Zhang Ze’s vision by semi-transparent gold and starlight.

Lu Tianming’s second phase regressed back to Colorful Robe’s first phase.

And moments later, the Colorful Robe Lu Tianming shed all color entirely.

As the colors vanished, inside ’Lu Tianming’, little vortex-like array hubs lit up, linking together into nine artificial meridians.

When the false exterior completely fell away, ’Lu Tianming’ revealed her true form.

A genderless Sword Spirit, composed purely of an energy body and a small portion of array core.

"Holy crap..." Zhang Ze’s jaw dropped.

He hadn’t expected that a Sword Spirit, already out of vogue, could still have such a strong presence.

As a unique technology of the Dongqi royal family, Sword Spirits had almost been lost after that great war back then, leaving only a bit inherited by the Sword Sect.

And now this technology had been passed into the hands of the Thousand Mechanism Pavilion, and they’d played a whole bunch of new tricks with it.

The cultivators of the Thousand Mechanism Pavilion drew inspiration from Fuji and Lily’s Thousand Mechanism Array Talismans.

Instead of pursuing Sword Spirits’ quality and individual power, they treated them as parts that could be swapped and combined.

They worked from the angle of mass production, using a modular Integration-stacking method to increase the strength of the Sword Spirits.

And then deployed them all around the Thousand Mechanism Pavilion, either to assist with research or to patrol and provide security.

But no matter how they improved them, this new-era Sword Spirit, lacking the most critical core tech, still had an upper limit far below that of Dongqi days.

According to Giant Turtle Zhulu, during Xiao Jing’s rule, Sword Spirit technology advanced by leaps and bounds.

No one knew how he’d done it, but at that time, the strongest Sword Spirit had almost reached the threshold of a Tribulation Crossing Cultivator.

And now it seemed that during the period he’d been hiding in the Holy Land, he’d cooked up some new stuff again.

He’d raised the upper limit of Sword Spirits once more; in both quantity and quality, they far surpassed the old days.

These Colorful Robed Divine Envoys guarding the Holy Land were very likely all Sword Spirits loaded with the habits, spells, and even partial personalities of those cultivators from back then.

Zhang Ze and Wei Zhuang looked at each other, and the cave fell silent for a while.

Mainly because Wei Zhuang had just gone with his intuition and tried something on a whim, never expecting it would actually turn out like this.

He was pretty surprised by the result too.

Staring at the ’Lu Tianming’ that had revealed its true form, Zhang Ze fell silent for a long time, then asked, "So... what now?"

Wei Zhuang looked a bit awkward.

"I don’t know. The truth behind Sword Spirits is a core secret of the Dongqi royal family. I know very little, and there are a lot of parts that are different from back then.

"But..."

Wei Zhuang stood up and walked to the back of this Sword Spirit. He pointed at the vortex-like core at the center of its back and taught Zhang Ze a particularly tongue-twisting spell.

"This part shouldn’t have changed. Use this spell to touch here and try rebooting it."

Zhang Ze, "..."

Although solutions in this world always end up looking suspiciously similar, the question of how to reboot was still a problem.

Zhang Ze reached out, copying Wei Zhuang’s earlier motion, placing his hand on the ice surface and trying to use Spiritual Qi to pierce through the ice and touch that core.

But as soon as his Spiritual Qi went in about a third of the way, Chen Mumu’s lazy warning message rang in his ears.

"Don’t touch that~ It’ll explode. Ten, nine, eight..."

Zhang Ze hurriedly pulled his Spiritual Qi back, and the countdown abruptly stopped at the same time.

Letting out a sigh, Zhang Ze looked at Wei Zhuang. "Pavilion Master Mumu set a Restriction in this ice lotus. With my level, I can’t bypass it. I can’t touch that core."

Hearing this, Wei Zhuang frowned slightly. "A Restriction... I’m not very good with those either, but I can give it a try."

But after giving it a try, Pavilion Master Mumu’s countdown sounded again, and this time it started from seven.

Wei Zhuang quickly withdrew his hand. "I can’t do it either."

Zhang Ze was puzzled. "But didn’t you just dispel this Sword Spirit’s disguise?"

Wei Zhuang, "You don’t need Spiritual Qi to remove a disguise. This Sword Spirit works by scan code."

Zhang Ze, "? Scan what?"

"Scan code."

Seeing that Zhang Ze didn’t get it, Wei Zhuang spread his palm.

Zhang Ze saw, at the very center of his great-uncle’s palm was a twisted, coiling, ever-shifting dark pattern.

"Back then, I served for a period of time as the Dragon Guard commander of Baiyujing.