Chapter 645: The Realm Of Transcendence
On his fifty-seventh draw, something changed in the air of the Void Palace. The usual eerie blue light seemed to hold its breath, as if reality itself was waiting.
Northern's fingers tingled where they touched Stainless's hilt.
That sensation he'd been chasing was closer now, hovering just at the edge of his understanding like a word on the tip of his tongue.
"Not yet. There's something more."
His fifty-eighth draw came smoother than water.
His fifty-ninth, quieter than thought.
Each attempt brought him closer to... something. Something fundamental.
Bairan stood motionless, his white hair perfectly still in the windless palace. His eyes betrayed a growing tension, like a man watching the horizon just before dawn breaks.
On the sixtieth draw, Northern felt it-a whisper of understanding that made his heart skip a beat. His hands trembled ever so slightly as he resheathed Stainless.
"One more time."
He closed his eyes, letting everything fall away. The sound of his breathing, the weight of his clothes, the very awareness of his own body-all of it dissolved until there was nothing left but his connection to Stainless.
In that perfect stillness, something clicked into place in his mind.
The threshold Bairan spoke of wasn't a place between movement and stillness. It was the point where movement and stillness became the same thing.
Northern's sixty-first draw transcended technique.
The blade didn't just cut through the air-it divided existence itself.
For a fraction of a second so small it could have lived between heartbeats, reality seemed to hold two contradictory states:
Stainless was simultaneously sheathed and drawn, moving and still, present and absent.
A single drop of water that had been floating in the Void Palace's strange atmosphere split. Not in half, but in such a way that the separation couldn't be seen-only the aftermath of two perfectly formed drops slowly drifting apart.
More importantly, Northern felt his void force ripple. Not because it had been penetrated or bypassed, but because for that infinite fraction of a second, the technique had existed in the same space as the void force itself-between reality and possibility.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Bairan's sharp intake of breath shattered it like glass. His composed face showed something Northern had never seen before: pure, unbridled astonishment.
"Master," he whispered, and for the first time, his voice trembled slightly. "That was..."
He trailed off, seemingly at a loss for words. His eyes kept darting between Northern's face and Stainless, as if trying to reconcile what he had just witnessed.
"In all my years," Bairan finally managed, "I have never seen anyone grasp the true nature of the Moonlit Whisper so quickly. But more than that..." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "You didn't just perform the technique. You... evolved it!"
Northern looked down at the odachi blade, still feeling the lingering echo of that perfect moment.
He knew he hadn't mastered the technique-far from it. But he had touched something profound, something that existed in the space between intention and action, between reality and void.
And somehow, he knew this was just the beginning.
"Again," he said quietly, his voice carrying the weight of someone who had glimpsed
something eternal.
The Void Palace settled into a rhythm of draws and sheaths, each one bringing Northern closer
to understanding the true nature of the Moonlit Whisper.
Northern took no breaks, continuing to draw his sword.
With each draw, Bairan's expression grew more complex, mixing pride with something that might have been concern.
Time stretched on, yet Northern's determination remained unshaken. Each draw that followed his momentary transcendence fell short of that perfect threshold he had touched.
The sixty-second draw was clean, precise-but ordinary.
The seventieth, powerful and swift-but still bound by the laws of physical movement.
By the eightieth, frustration began to creep into his movements, a nearly imperceptible tension in his shoulders that hadn't been there before.
"Why? I touched it. I know I touched it."
The hundredth draw came and went, each attempt precise but lacking that ethereal quality that had made reality itself pause.
Bairan watched silently, noting how his master's technically perfect draws seemed to chase that singular moment like a man trying to catch his own shadow.
Each attempt was flawless in execution, yet somehow further from that brief glimpse of transcendence.
"Master..." Bairan finally spoke, his voice gentle. "Perhaps we should-"
"No." Northern's response was quiet but absolute. His eyes remained fixed on Stainless, searching for something in its metallic surface. "I felt it. I know it's there."
The hundred and twentieth draw sang through the air, creating a perfect arc that would have impressed any swordsman in existence.
But Northern's slight frown deepened. It wasn't enough. It wasn't even close to what he had touched before.
Each subsequent draw became an exercise in growing frustration, hidden beneath a mask of perfect technique.
The movements remained immaculate, but that crystalline moment of understanding seemed to slip further away with every attempt.
By the hundred and fiftieth draw, sweat had begun to bead on Northern's forehead-not from physical exertion, but from the mental strain of trying to recapture something that existed between thoughts.
"It's like trying to grab smoke," he realized, his hands beginning to tremble slightly. "The harder I reach for it, the more it disperses."
Still, he continued.
Draw after draw, each one perfect, each one insufficient.
The Void Palace's eerie light seemed to mock him now, reflecting off Stainless's blade in ways that reminded him of that single, perfect moment he could no longer touch. Bairan's concern grew more evident with each passing attempt, but he remained silent.
He recognized the look in his master's eyes-the thing about the realm of transcendence was, when one thirsted for it, nothing in the world of swordsmanship would be able to satisfy such
a person.
It was the very hunger that had driven him to a point where he chased perfection of the sword rather than achievements with his skills.
Even when the old world granted him the moniker Sword King, and he gained humongous prestige because of it, he still was not satisfied.
There was something he wanted to touch more of. And though the world deemed him the strongest, he wasn't there.
The realm of the transcendent was a cruel one.
The two hundredth draw cut through the air with deadly precision, yet Northern's frustration finally manifested in a barely audible sigh.
The perfect moment he had touched remained stubbornly out of reach, like a dream that fades upon waking, leaving only the certainty that something profound had been briefly
understood.
And still, Northern's hand returned to Stainless's hilt, ready for another attempt.