"The Phantom of Sword River… how is this possible?"
The words tumbled out of someone's mouth before they could stop them, carried by a disbelief too large to stay silent.
"How can a Golden Core cultivator forge a connection with the Sword River? That realm of sword dao is not supposed to exist below the immortal threshold—"
"Could it be… his mortal sword heart has already ascended? That it has transformed — broken through into an immortal sword dao entirely on its own?"
The voices overlapped and tangled, spilling out across the courtyard in a cascade of stunned murmuring that no one seemed able to fully contain. The mockery that had filled this same space only moments ago had evaporated completely, burned away without a trace. In its place stood something rawer — awe, tightly wound around the edges of genuine fear. Eyes that had been cold and contemptuous now fixed on Lin Huang's figure with expressions stripped of all pretense, hard and serious and unable to look away.
