Naked Sword Art

Xun Wei’s breathing slowed as the [ Soul Devourer ] method deepened.

The remnant souls drawn from the city continued to spiral toward her like moths to a flame. One by one they dissolved into her circulation, feeding the strange power now awakening within her.

Her cultivation surged.

Core Realm... 2nd stage... 3rd stage... 4th...

The breakthroughs came one after another, so quickly that the spiritual pressure surrounding the pagoda spread outward in steady pulses. Each surge rolled across the rooftops of the nearby buildings like distant thunder.

Above the pagoda, Xun Wei’s aura continued to climb.

Fifth stage... sixth...

Her breathing slowed, yet the power within her body only grew more violent.

When she first stepped into the Core Realm, her Soul Sea had condensed and solidified, transforming from a turbulent ocean of spiritual energy into something far more stable. It had resembled a frozen sea—vast, calm, and dense with power—slowly rotating within her dantian.

But now that frozen sea had reached its limit.

Cracks began to form across its surface.

At first they were small, thin lines spreading quietly through the ice-like expanse. Then they widened, branching across the entire Soul Sea as the pressure within it grew impossible to contain.

A deep tremor ran through her body.

Then the frozen surface shattered.

The Soul Sea did not collapse. Instead, it burst outward, expanding violently as if breaking free from invisible restraints. Spiritual energy surged through her meridians like a roaring tide, refining every corner of her body as the sea of soul power deepened and grew far more profound than before.

Outside the pagoda, the air trembled again.

Inside, Xun Wei’s figure began to glow.

At first the light was faint, barely noticeable. But as the transformation of her Soul Sea completed, that glow intensified until a pure white radiance spread from her body, illuminating the entire chamber.

Her aura rose once more, and then it stabilized.

Profound Realm.

But it didn’t stop.

The city itself seemed to groan as the lingering souls of the dead were pulled toward her like a tide reversing direction. Each one dissolved into her expanding soul sea.

Her cultivation climbed.

1st stage, 3rd stage, 6th stage, 9th stage.

Then, stillness.

Xun Wei’s brows furrowed slightly.

It felt like a bottleneck, yet something about it was different. Unlike the ones she had faced before, this one prevented even the slightest progress. No matter how she circulated her energy, nothing moved forward.

It was as if she had run straight into a wall.

Her Soul Qi wasn’t lacking. The energy inside her was vast, overflowing even. If this were ordinary cultivation, she should have already crossed into the next realm. But what was so special about the Divine realm that made it impossible to cross by simply cultivating.

What she didn’t know was that breaking into the Divine Realm required more than power. It required understanding of the very essence of the method itself.

Xun Wei’s consciousness sank inward, descending into the depths of her soul sea in hopes to find the answer. What she discovered instead was the restless souls trapped within her own.

The countless souls she had devoured, they were full of vitality and actively trying to break away.

They floated within her inner world like drifting lanterns—dim, restless, tethered to the surface of her soul sea but not yet part of it.

’Surely, this isn’t how it should be,’ she thought.

But as far as the method explained, there was nothing else to it.

Xun Wei studied them carefully. The word devouring echoed in her mind. The way she saw it, she was merely putting the food in her mouth, the souls she captured have yet to be devoured.

Understanding dawned.

Without hesitation, Xun Wei acted.

Her will descended upon the countless souls drifting within her Soul Sea, seizing them like a net cast across a storming ocean.

And then it began. A torrent of sensations crashed into her mind the moment she attempted to refine them.

Emotions that weren’t hers surged through her mind. Memories from lives she had never lived unfolded one after another—faces she did not recognize, laughter that was not hers, hatred, grief, desperation. Countless fragments of lives collided within her consciousness, each one carrying the weight of a different existence.

Trying to forcefully refine the souls felt as though thousands of lifetimes were pressing against her at once. Dreams left unfinished, regrets carried to the grave, rage that had never found release.

Even with her rare [ Soul Tempering ] body, the process was far from easy. Each soul resisted like a wild beast fighting for survival. Refining even one demanded the full force of her concentration and will.

She wanted to devour them, she didn’t care about their lives, but it seemed as if she couldn’t have one without the other. But the sheer volume of them all threatened to drown her beneath a tide of experiences.

It felt as if she was killing them all all over again, but with a deeper understanding of their life, carrying out the action was far harder than she could have imagined.

Still, Xun Wei pressed on. These were Song Clansmen after all. Though they might’ve been innocent, she adamantly believed that the innocent still carried the weight of the guilty. But the more she understood them, the harder it got to follow through.

"Please... spare me..."

The faint voices of the souls echoed within her Soul Sea as their vitality began to fade. But what about her clan, and the countless lives that were lost.

Then another thought surfaced in her mind.

’What does it truly mean to have an enemy?’

Sometimes, defeating one requires you to completely understand them—their likes and interests, their aspirations and motivations, the path that led them to stand before you as an opponent. Yet the deeper that understanding grows, the more fragile hatred becomes. Hatred thrives in ignorance, but knowledge erodes it piece by piece.

But Xun Wei hated the clan, not anyone in particular.

As those memories flowed through her mind, she saw herself killing them. How terrified they were, and what a monster she seemed to be. She felt it all.

In the attempt to refine every soul she had captured, Xun Wei was hit and overwhelmed by their memories.

She saw their childhoods, their ambitions, the quiet moments of happiness they once cherished. Some had trained diligently for the sake of their clan. Some had feared failure. Some had simply followed orders without ever questioning them.

Some even were the sweetest people who just happen to never have anything good happen to them.

The more she understood them, the harder it became to cling to pure hatred. They didn’t deserve this. But there was no turning back now, they were already dead. So these emotions were meaningless.

She didn’t want to understand them, or feel pity, or sympathy anymore. She simply wanted to devour, but her soul wouldn’t accept that.

Just as Xun Wei’s resolve began to slip, her mother’s soul came into view, only her soul didn’t fight back. She willingly gave herself up to her.

’Mom, why did you—’

Xun Wei only had one question on her mind, she wanted to know why her mother had thrown herself into Xun Wei’s sword.

But the truth was, she already knew the answer to that question, because she could feel everything her mother was feeling.

There was no way her mother could’ve lived with herself if she had killed her own child. She truly believed this was the only path left for her.

She looked at Xun Wei dearly.

"You are strong," she said softly. "So very strong. Your father saw that in you long ago." A faint smile touched her lips. "I am nothing now. Just a wandering soul. So don’t be afraid. If this way... I can still be of some use to you, then that is enough."

Those words struck Xun Wei hard.

"Mom—"

But she stopped her again, reaching out gently, as if comforting her daughter one last time.

"Live well," she said.

Xun Wei, watched as her mother’s soul faded into a drop of soul essence. That single drop carried her mother’s entire life.

Xun Wei closed her eyes.

When her will finally descended, it did not carry the same ruthless force she had used against the others. Instead, it wrapped around her mother’s soul carefully, almost gently, as it began to refine it.

Memories poured into her mind. Xun Wei accepted it all.

Tears slid silently down Xun Wei’s face as the last of those memories faded into pure essence.

Yet within that sorrow, a deeper realization began to take shape.

"I understand now," she said to herself.

All the souls she wanted to devour carried the weight of their own lives. Their memories, their emotions, their regrets—none of it vanished simply because she hated them.

Hatred was shallow.

The moment that truth settled within her heart, her Soul Sea trembled violently. Simultaneously, they all began to refine themselves into single droplets of soul essence.

Xun Wei opened her eyes slowly as a faint chill spread through her chest.

In the next moment, the soul essences dissolved into her Soul Sea like rain falling into an endless ocean. And Xun Wei accepted them all.

Eventually, however, something within her began to shift. The more she devoured, the more desensitized she became. Human lives were truly only valuable to themselves, but as a whole they were no different than the grass she walked on or the food she ate.

The fragment of morality she once clung to quietly loosened its hold. In its place lingered a darker clarity, subtle but undeniable. The distinction between friend and enemy began to blur within her perception. To her, both could be cherished... but in the end, they would merely be food.

This was the true comprehension hidden within the [ Soul Devourer ] method.

Finally, Xun Wei Soul Sea trembled violently.

The refined essence of the souls merged completely into the vast ocean within her dantian. Waves of spiritual energy surged outward, growing deeper and more profound with each soul she devoured.

The bottleneck before her cultivation shuddered. Cracks spread across its invisible surface as the accumulated power continued to rise. Then finally, with a thunderous roar that echoed through her entire being, it shattered.

Her aura erupted outward like a storm unleashed, and the pagoda trembled under the pressure of her breakthrough.

Divine Realm.

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