Chapter 19

Translator: Exodus Tales

Editor: Exodus Tales

With a clang, Fang Zheng’s sword spiraled as it flew out and fell to the floor. He had fallen to the ground from this large impact and he tried his best to regain his breathing.

“Stand up, we’re continuing!”

Fang Zheng quickly rushed back from the ground after Shidon’s words, holding onto the sword again. The steel in his hand now felt like it was thousands of pounds, but even so, he gritted his teeth through it and eyed the Great Knight in his full armor.. Thinking about it for a moment, he quickly stepped forward and swung. This time, Shidon didn’t even look at him, only making a quick move before that gigantic sword in his opponent’s hand came to greet him.

Facing this big weapon, Fang Zheng held on tighter and charged forward anyway. 

The two swords clashed, and Fang Zheng tried his best to keep his grip, sliding the sword body diagonally and trying to redirect the strength of the blow. The sword, however, started making a grating sound as it twisted to the side. What followed was another clang, and Fang Zheng’s fingers could no longer hold onto the sword with so much strength pushed on it. It flew away once more, but at least Fang Zheng kept himself from falling this time.

“That’ll be all for today.”

Shidon raised his two-handed sword as he looked at him with praise.

“I have to say, your body is way too frail… But your will is good. I’ve seen some dumb ones before, already whining before barely a few practices as if I were killing them or something. You haven’t complained once, though, your future’s looking good!”

“Ha… Haah… Th… Thanks…”

Fang Zheng wiped the sweat on his forehead after being praised, barely breathing. He felt as if he couldn’t’ even stand at this point, his hands were numb, and he felt like he’d just been pulled out of some slime. He was exhausted.

On the second day, since he had become Shidon’s disciple, Fang Zheng understood what that look the old priest gave was. In truth, he had gotten pulled out before the sky was even lit, forced to run circles and circles before going into tough sword practice. It was different from what he’d imagined. Shidon didn’t teach him any special knight skills or anything, he just made him learn the foundational skills instead.

Slash, cut, block, stab, pick… Fang Zheng did everything he was told, over and over again on this boring tedium of foundational practice. According to him, the Royal Crusader’s arts he used were already really strong, but because Fang Zheng didn’t know enough about swords, he couldn’t unleash its full potential yet. 

Fang Zheng had the same thoughts as well. When he first started fighting with Shidon, there were a couple of moves he used that the opponent wasn’t familiar with, allowing him to take the advantage and be victorious. But it was just that one time, all the other times after that, he never beat him again, even if he only used normal ways of the weapon to fight Fang Zheng. The pressure was great.

“You sure are a weird one, kid.”

Shidon curled his lips as he looked Fang Zheng who was sweating profusely. 

“Usually, people who are great will have pretty decent bodies, but how are you so weak? Also, looking at the strength you control it’s not that bad, but how come when you have the sword you don’t know how to chop?”

Fang Zheng rolled his eyes at the comments. It was true, he had good willpower, after all, how would he be able to work those long hours at the office otherwise? As for this body… Did he think that he didn’t want to get stronger? His original body even had some abs, it was just that the damned cultist’s body… At the very least, this was still a functioning body…

As for the strength system of this world, Fang Zheng naturally knew about it, so he understood why Shidon would say that. In this continent, people used a strength called the power of Star Souls, but from his perspective, the Star Soul thing was no different from the “inner strength” in Wuxia novels. In truth, their level system was similar as well.

On this continent, there were 6 levels of the Star Soul power: Beginner, Intermediate, Elite, Master, Legend, and Godly.

The Beginners were like the weak type characters in Wuxia novels, with some of them knowing special fist moves like the Shaolin style or the Black Lion Heart Breaking style. But that was about it. They more or less only trained their constitution, with not many special changes. The normal soldiers of this world were pretty much at that level.

And the Intermediate ones were more like sect disciples of big sects, they had their inner strength trained already, and were quite a bit stronger than those people with just a couple of moves. They were able to use strength to fortify their bodies, using superhuman power, like jumping a few meters high or running 100 meters in 10.8 seconds. These people had already gotten to a fine point of control over their Star Soul power to increase their bodies’ stats. They were able to use things like the Golden Clock Protection or the Cloud Stepping moves, the things that didn’t seem really realistic.

The Elite level ones were even stronger based on this foundation. In reality, determining whether someone was Elite level or not depended on whether he could manifest his Star Soul power away from his body in the form of projectiles. This meant that they were already far above normal warriors. 

The Masters were even stronger than that. Not only did they have control over huge amounts of strength, but they were able to also use new abilities of their own to fight in battles. For example, Shidon the Great Knight was a Master level fighter, and at this level he was basically like the Sect Masters of the big sects in those novels. Not only did they have great strength, but they had their special skills as well.

As for the Legends, they were even scarier. At the least, Master levels were still in the world of Wuxia, the legend ones were basically above that, and all their constant power was just their normal state. They were just weaker than the actual gods, but they weren’t too far off. Their moves were no joke, with high levels of destruction capable of quaking the hundreds of meters around them. In truth, the Legend level fighters in this world were basically nuclear weapons of all the countries, and they wouldn’t make a move lightly. Their existences were a deterrent, and it was how this continent maintained peace.

If only it was so, however, that wasn’t enough. Normal people were greedy, and greed was something that made them blind. One could hold it back for a while, but not forever. There could be people looking for revenge, even people who wanted to destroy the world, plunging it into darkness. But none of this had happened, simply because there was something even higher than the Legends.

The Godly.

If the Legends were the peak of the common world, then the Godly were, like their name suggested, something above that. They were never normal people, and the people with this power were usually Gods or Demons’ incarnations or representatives. They had the power above the mortals, and sometimes, one could say, they could do whatever they wanted!

It was because of this that the continent was at peace. Even the Legends didn’t dare to cause too much trouble themselves. After all, justice and evil were eternal enemies on this continent. In truth, if someone were to try and destroy the world, they would first get backstabbed by the demon king or something like that, instead of getting stopped by the gods. A cultist organization needed money! What was the Demon King supposed to do if the world just got destroyed, he’d starve!

As such, Shidon calling Fang Zheng a weird one was due to the fact that he was around the Elite level, but his body had barely been trained at all. For example, it was like that character Ling Huchong learning the 6 Divine God Paths, but losing all his inner strength… And yet he was still shooting his powers all over the place. It wasn’t possible.

Fang Zheng felt that as well, his weakness was swordsmanship. Longswords were not something familiar to him, and he never even touched one in his old life. It’d been less than a month since he reincarnated and gotten his hands on one, and the system let him learn some sword skills and knowledge. But the experience was something you couldn’t just get handed to you. One needed to put in the hours.

Fortunately, though, he wasn’t too helpless.

“Alright, you go and rest. We’re done.”

Shidon was pretty satisfied with the kid. He felt that Fang Zheng’s sword skills didn’t match his experience, but it wasn’t that weird. The sword itself required instinct and intelligence, and anyone who wasn’t an idiot would be able to get some hang of it. After all, this guy had Divine Protection, it wasn’t that weird for something like this in comparison. 

As for how frail Fang Zheng’s body was, there weren’t too many questions to ask about it. He could see that this young man hadn’t been using a sword for more than two months, so the nobleman’s body he had wouldn’t be able to get that strong.

Wiping away some more sweat, Fang Zheng put down the sword and left the training grounds, passing by quite a number of the Holy Temple’s Warriors. They were snickering a bit when they saw how horrible Fang Zheng looked.

“Hey, Fang Zheng got messed up by Sir Shidon again? Can’t crawl back up?”

“Don’t say that, he’s up, see? Walking, too.”

“Hahaha, you sure have a good life, kid, I wanted Sir Shidon to be my tutor in the past, but he wasn’t interested in me. Too bad…”

Fang Zheng couldn’t help but roll his eyes at these guys.

“Since it’s such a pity maybe I should say something good about you to Sir Shidon?”

“Ugh… It’s fine… See, I’m not as young as I was, you need to respect your elders…”

“Hahaha…”

That bitter face made the other people laugh, and suddenly, the atmosphere was much lighter than before. 

Fang Zheng hadn’t stayed more than 10 days in the Holy Temple, but his relationship with the others here was rather good. Firstly, it was because of his Holy Guardian status that made these people have a biased niceness towards him. The other, was the fact that Fang Zheng was generous with his money, buying them all a round of drinks when he had time. As such, nobody disliked Fang Zheng at all, and his position in the people’s hearts kept going up.

But the Warriors of the Temple admitted that Fang Zheng worked hard and had a strong will. Sir Shidon was famous for his strictness, and many of them had seen how tough it was for the Squire Knights. It was as if they were being punished, and many were all on the ground and quitting after some days. This skinny young man, however, had been able to endure that for more than 10 days. For a warrior, this may be taken for granted, but this was a young and frail nobleman. It was respectable.

Talking with them a bit, Fang Zheng left the Holy Temple and went home. He’d found a smalll home to live in, and with the star prints he had along with the Holy Temple’s guarantee, it wasn’t too hard to do. Shidon had wanted him to live in the Temple, but Fang Zheng said no. There were some things that weren’t appropriate to be done in the Temple.

Like what he was about to do now.

After going back to his room, he sat on the chair and looked at his Dimensional Code. In his eyes, the sun had already gotten to the horizon line, and night was soon to come.

Fang Zheng extended his hand and flipped the Dimensional Code, looking as the pages flipped open. A mystical shadow floated from the pages, and from the look of it, it was a projection of Earth, only with countless satellites surrounding it. With the Earth as the core, they continued spiraling and spinning, and in Fang Zheng’s eyes, there were clear letters being formed.

[Dimensional Code] [Free World]

In his eyes, the Dimensional World option was grayed out, but the Free World wasn’t. Fang Zheng naturally understood the mechanics behind this.

The Free World and Dimensional World were different in the sense that when Fang Zheng went into the Free World, the main world’s time wouldn’t continue. In other words, it didn’t matter how long he spent in the other worlds, he would still come back at the same time as when he had left. In the Free World, though, Fang Zheng could spend as long as he wanted in there and leave whenever he wanted. Of course, he could also leave forcefully if his life was in danger…

In that sense, the Free World was much better than the Dimensional World. Unfortunately, the system didn’t give Fang Zheng any loopholes to exploit. While the Free World looked pretty good, it had its limits.

Firstly, in the Free World, Fang Zheng was unable to gain world points by doing missions, nor could he obtain equipment or skills. He could only get some stat increases in the Free World. Also, in the Free World, he wouldn’t be able to use any skills or equipment he obtained, nor could he activate the Soul Stones. It could be said that the Fang Zheng in the Free World was a normal person, with just some titles and stronger base stats.

But even so, the Free World was split into three types.

Heart, Skill, Body.

He had been hesitant all along. Which world should he go to improve himself? But after training with Shidon for so long, he understood perfectly well what he lacked. And so he made his decision.

Here.

Looking at the icon of transport in his eyes, Fang Zheng took a deep breath and clicked on the option. Soon, the balding light came before him again, swiping through each other and forming a huge pillar of enveloping light.

It was time to enter a new world!