After reading through the hilt, Alex still was capable enough to read through most of the blade of the sword.
He started reading, focusing only on the words of the blade as well as understanding the meaning behind it. He couldn't just look at the words and try to understand them later by remembering everything.
Because the Intent tended to imprint itself onto one's mind, Alex would have to doubly fight back against the intent if he tried to learn it later.
As such, even if it was a bit harder, he had to learn everything at once.
Alex wasn't just fighting back the Intent on the blade either. He was using it as a whetting stone for his own Intent to get it to become sharper and stronger than it already was.
If he could handle it all to a certain extent, his Intent would improve by leaps and bounds. And if his Intent improved a lot, so would his usage of Dao.
Beads of sweat dropped from his body while his back was entirely drenched. He stood there with his jaw clenched as he struggled to read the words on the sword.
No one was around, as per his instruction, but if they were, they would currently see an Alex with veins popping all over his face and neck.
This felt way more straining than back when he had learned the Hell Emperor's Divine Battle Array or when he had tried to recall this book from memory.
Having to directly combat the Intent of a god, albeit a false one for this long was just as hard, if not harder than what one would expect.
Alex moved down the sword, an inch at a time, as he slowly read everything while understanding it all.
By the time he was on the last few lines that were carved onto the black sword, Alex had all but understood the technique that was in there completely.
The technique written in the sword was called Spiritual Providence. It was a technique that was divided into 3 different stages, all of which could be learned at any time without having to worry about one's cultivation base.
The only requirement for the technique was that one had a robust spiritual sea and a great talent to make use of the spiritual energy in that spiritual sea.
Spiritual Providence as a technique was used using weapons.
The first stage, which Alex hadn't even learned yet, required one layer of their spiritual sense on top of their weapon to use as an additional attack with every swing of their sword.
Until now, Alex had only been learning how to shape the spiritual weapon. To complete the first stage, he had to now layer that illusory weapon on top of his real weapon.
He had been surprised to find that what he had learned until now and had taught so many of his friends, wasn't even half of the first stage of three stages.
The attacks made using these techniques bypassed the physical body and attacked the spirit itself in most cases. None of the attacks were necessarily damaging, but they were capable of temporarily stopping the connection between the spirit and the body at the point of impact such that anything below that point was all but paralyzed.
Alex had seen this happen himself when he used the spiritual sword alone. Now, he could use both the spiritual sword and his normal sword at once, and have the same effect on his enemies, if not better.
The second stage of Spiritual Providence simply taught one how to layer their spiritual energy on the attacks themselves that flew out of their weapons.
In Alex's case, any sword slashes or swings that did not involve the sword itself physically attacking his enemies could also have a spiritual element to the attacks.
It was a simple change from the first to the second stage, but the application of the technique improved so much that the two stages deserved to be separate.
The third stage, which Alex was close to finishing, was quite weird. It did not seem to follow a pattern with the first or second stage, and instead simply taught how to create a barrier using the spiritual energy that was already on the sword to block spiritual attacks that was directed at him.
Alex thought it was weird, but he didn't have the luxury to wonder why. He was still facing the final remaining bit of Intent from the sword that was still attacking his mind.
Godslayer was still awake and was looking outside through Alex's eyes. He had not only stayed awake because it was impossible to sleep in a situation where the spiritual sea he remained it could crumble at any moment from the Intent of the weapon's god.
He was also staying awake because he was worried about Alex.
Worry was not an emotion he would have ever thought he would feel for other people. He had worried a lot of times in the past, but it had always been for himself.
Never had he seen the human he was controlling get hurt and get worried that he might be in pain. That sort of thought never even crossed his mind as he used hundreds if not thousands of people's bodies to launch attacks on unsuspecting gods.
However, for the first time, he was worried about Alex, albeit just a little bit.
'Why am I worried?' Godslayer wondered. Had something changed? What had happened to his cold self that wanted nothing more than destruction before? Had he changed this much in just half a century?
He knew about the properties of the Death and Darkness aura. They were bad to a human, but they weren't good to objects either.
Anything with too much death aura or darkness aura was usually considered a bad thing. Darkness in particular was known to ruin humans and artifacts by corrupting them and changing their mindset to be laxer on themselves and strip away any ethics and morality that kept them restrained.
Godslayer basically bathed in Darkness aura every day for thousands and thousands of years when he was in his prime. However, after being imprisoned for so long, his Darkness aura had all but vanished.
When Alex absorbed it all back when he had first tried to take over his body, that was the first time he had been without it. That was perhaps the first time ever since he had been created that he had been able to think clearly.
Now that he had spent a few years without much darkness aura to corrupt him, he was starting to learn and grow. For the first time in his life, he was starting to not obsess about killing gods.
He hadn't learned it on his own of course. Alex had to teach him to not obsess over gods like he always did.
There was still part of him that wanted to go kill gods as soon as he heard their names, but there was now enough of him that could restrain him.
He did not want to admit it to Alex, but thanks to him, he was growing again after so many millennia. As such, he was also starting to form a bond with him and was thus worried about him when he saw the state of his spiritual sea.
Alex felt like he could keep going, but he was at the last of his mental capacity to still create as much Intent as he was to fight back the sword's Intent.
His mind didn't register any of the warnings his body gave as he got closer to the end. Perhaps because the finish line was so close, Alex started getting desperate and somehow it became even harder to fight the Intent.
Still, he didn't give up. He continued fighting the Intent until the very last word of Spiritual Providence.
The moment he read the last word, he immediately used what mental capacity he had to grab all of the swords at once with his Qi and put it into his storage ring so that no one else could read it.
After he was done, he stopped trying so hard, and as his body relaxed, the fatigue and pain that had gathered in such a small period of time all came back to him at once.
The moment he felt everything, his eyes went white and his body collapsed to the ground. He had fallen unconscious.
Everything seemed dark to Godslayer as Alex himself wasn't seeing anything right now. He worried for a moment that Alex had been hurt. However, when he saw the Spiritual sea grow tranquil again, he understood that the fight against the Weapon God's Intent was finally over.
What little damage the spiritual sea had taken was starting to heal, telling Godslayer that there was nothing to worry about at all.
Godslayer returned to the side of the silver mountain that hung in the air and went back to his long sleep.
Alex woke up on the ground sometime early in the morning. He woke up and looked around to find out that nobody had come for him in the entire time he had remained on the ground.
He had ordered everyone to stay back, and it seemed that they had done it even after Alex was unconscious. He didn't know whether to praise their obedience or insult it.
He shook his head and cleaned himself of any dirt before looking at the surroundings properly. The Black Stele, the staple of the Tiger sect, was gone from the crater it had formed, and it was with him now.
Now that he was done with what he wanted from this sect, it was time to let them be and do his own thing.
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