Reborn as a Sword Spirit Chapter 1

Night had fallen. Darkness made the run-down little town seem even more desolate.
Inside a small inn, the innkeeper sat behind the counter with his chin propped on one hand. His head kept sinking as sleep overtook him. A single flickering candle provided the cramped room with a faint yellow glow.
Creak—
The inn’s door slowly opened.
The drowsy innkeeper snapped awake and looked toward the entrance. A figure in black walked toward him, face hidden beneath a black hood. A snow-white longbow hung across the stranger’s back, its string as vivid as blood. Whoever this was, they did not look easy to provoke.
“May I ask… are you here for a room, honored guest?”
Someone had entered his shabby inn in the middle of the night, and they did not look friendly. The innkeeper’s nerves tightened.
The stranger tossed a pouch of coins onto the counter and spoke in a low voice that could have belonged to either a man or a woman. “Give me a room.”
The innkeeper breathed a sigh of relief. So the guest had not come to cause trouble. He loosened his grip on the dagger he had already drawn beneath the counter, and a flattering smile instantly spread across his face.
“Of course! The room at the very end of the second-floor hall. Right this way, honored guest.”
The stranger gave a slight nod and headed upstairs.
The old wooden stairs creaked as though they might fall apart at any moment. To the innkeeper, however, that sound was wonderfully reassuring. It was far more pleasant than the creaking floorboards he had heard while the stranger approached him.
Thank goodness they weren’t here to start trouble. I almost couldn’t stop myself from using the knife.
As soon as the stranger entered the room, she locked the door. That still did not feel safe enough, so she traced several shapes toward it with her finger. White light flashed across the door, then vanished.
She closed the window and repeated the same motions. Once another flash of white light appeared and faded, she finally relaxed. With protective wards now covering both the door and the window, she dropped onto a stool, poured herself a cup of water, and gulped it down.
[Aren’t you being a little too careful? Do you really have to be this afraid of dying?]
The sudden voice sounded inside the stranger’s mind, but she showed no surprise. She pulled off her hood, revealing a pleasant young face.
Her skin was as pale as snow, and her features were delicate without being breathtaking. She was not the sort of beauty who could topple kingdoms, but she had the gentle charm of the girl next door. None of her features seemed especially exquisite alone, yet together they formed a face that became more pleasing the longer one looked at it.
Wen Xian set down her cup and casually wiped the water from her lips. “Better safe than sorry. In a world where the strong prey on the weak, it always pays to be careful.”
[That’s fair… Wait, no! When are you going to complete your mission? It’s been almost a month! Every day, you either fight spirit beasts or beat people up and rob them. Could you please do something useful?]
The voice in her mind suddenly began roaring.
Wen Xian picked at her ear, unconcerned. “Why are you in such a hurry? It’s not as though I refuse to do it. I’m simply too weak right now. I’m only at the fifth level of Energy Refining. What am I supposed to do—find the villain and offer her my life?”
[That may be true, but you should at least try to get closer to her. Blackwater Town is far, far away from the Demon Palace at the heart of the Demon Realm, where she lives. Are you planning to stay here forever?]
Wen Xian arched a delicate brow at the question. When she answered, her voice held a trace of gritted-teeth anger.
“Do you think I don’t want to leave? This miserable place has nothing. The nearest prosperous town is thousands of miles away. I don’t have a magic artifact, so I can’t fly. How am I supposed to get there—walk the whole way? And I can only remain human for six double-hours a day. The rest of the time, I turn into an edgeless sword. I can’t move or speak. Remind me, which worthless system is responsible for that?”
The system had no defense against her complaints. It fell silent for a long while. It had never imagined that such a ridiculous blunder could happen. Ever since then, it had acted meekly around Wen Xian and had been unable to hold its head up in front of her.
After some time, it finally forced out a timid reply.
[Th-that… may have been my mistake, but didn’t I compensate you? I gave you three cheat abilities. Why do you keep bringing it up?]
Wen Xian laughed in anger. She drank another mouthful of water, then slammed the cup onto the table so hard that the system trembled inside her mind.
She was not from this world. She had transmigrated here—or rather, after she died, the system had forcibly brought her soul into this cultivation world.
Unfortunately, the wretched system had never bonded with a person before. Its skills were poor, and a freak accident had placed her soul inside an edgeless sword. As a result…
She had become a sword spirit!
Her cultivation was too low to maintain a human body all day. For six double-hours every day, she changed back into an edgeless sword that could neither move nor speak.
Six double-hours. A full twelve hours!
At the time, she had wanted to tear the awful system into a thousand pieces. If it had not sincerely admitted its mistake and given her three overpowered abilities as compensation, she would never have let it off so easily.
But things had already happened. Even if Wen Xian dismantled it now, that would solve nothing. She stopped paying attention to the system, took a map from her storage pouch, and studied it carefully.
This cultivation world was called Windcloud Continent. The map divided it into four regions: the Demon Realm, the Mortal Realm, the Spirit Beast Realm, and the Cultivation Realm. The Mortal Realm covered the most territory, followed by the Cultivation Realm, the Demon Realm, and finally the Spirit Beast Realm.
Blackwater Town stood at the farthest border of the Mortal Realm, close to the Demon Realm. Demonic cultivators were everywhere. They committed every kind of evil and did whatever they pleased.
That was why the settlement was known as the Town of Sin. Murder, arson, robbery, and the rule of the strong were all part of daily life here. No one found such things strange anymore.
Earlier that day, Wen Xian had met a foolish demonic cultivator who took a liking to her beauty and tried to do this and that to her. The memory made her scoff.
The man had only reached the third level of Energy Refining, yet he had tried to force himself on someone at the fifth level. Wen Xian had no idea where he found the courage. He truly had not known the difference between life and death.
She had knocked him unconscious and searched him from head to toe. She took his storage pouch, stripped off his cloak, and even stole his underclothes. In the end, his baggy shorts were too ugly to interest her, so she kindly left him that final scrap of dignity. Once she had collected her spoils, she walked away without looking back.
Whatever had happened to him afterward was none of her concern.
Since arriving in this world, Wen Xian had done everything she could to become stronger. As a sword spirit, she could not cultivate like a human. She could only advance by eating sword-type magic artifacts. Blackwater Town was chaotic, but few true experts lived here, much less anyone who owned an expensive magic artifact.
She had reached the fifth level of Energy Refining only through good luck. A demonic cultivator carrying a low-grade sword artifact had crossed her path. After eating that artifact, she had barely managed to reach her current level. The sixth level, however, remained far beyond her reach.
She could not count on getting lucky every time.
Wen Xian sighed. She wanted to find the villain even more desperately than the system wanted her to. But this awful place was simply too remote. Without a magic artifact to carry her through the air, reaching even a slightly more prosperous town would take several months, perhaps half a year. Who knew how many dangers she would encounter along the road? She had only one life, and she could not gamble it away.
The system’s mission was absurd as well. In novels, transmigrated protagonists defeated villains and saved the world. This system demanded the opposite: Wen Xian had to redeem the villain and stop her from destroying the world.
Every time Wen Xian saw the villain’s one-thousand-percent corruption score, a chill ran through her.
How could anyone with a score above one thousand possibly be redeemed?
How much suffering had the villain endured to become this corrupted?
This was far harder than saving the world!
Wen Xian cursed the system a thousand times in her heart. In the end, she could only sigh helplessly and collapse facedown on the table, her head aching.
The system had repeatedly promised that completing the mission would let her return to her original world and begin a new life from nothing. Otherwise, she would never have accepted such a hellish task.
Her head hurt. When would she finally be able to begin the mission?
She still had an unfulfilled wish…
She had to return.
As the thought crossed her mind, light suddenly burst from her body. Wen Xian was already used to it. After one more long sigh, she changed back into an edgeless sword and fell to the floor.
Silence returned to the room, as though no one had ever stayed there.
The next morning, Wen Xian finally regained her human form and the freedom to move. She stretched lazily, removed the ward from the window, and pushed it open. Warm sunlight washed over her face. She closed her eyes in pleasure and took a deep breath of fresh air.
“No skyscrapers, no endless traffic. The air really is fresher without pollution.”
After that brief reflection, worry covered her face. She pressed a hand over it and spoke with the despair of someone who had lost all hope.
“Another day trapped in this miserable place. When will I ever get a flying magic artifact?”
[Host! Host!]
The system’s urgent voice suddenly rang inside her mind. It was so loud that her skull began to ache.
“What is it now? Do you have to start shouting inside my head first thing in the morning? You’re ruining my mood!”
Wen Xian’s good spirits vanished at once. Her mind filled with curses about her rotten luck, but the system did not care. It shouted with excitement.
[I sensed the villain! She’s at the Graveyard of Ten Thousand Swords, not far from here. With your fifth-level cultivation and the abilities I gave you, you can reach it in two incense sticks’ time!]
Wen Xian was puzzled. The villain was the mighty Demon Lord. Why had she come to such a remote and miserable place? What could she possibly do here?
Although Wen Xian wondered, she did not ask. During the past month, she had gradually realized how important the villain’s redemption was to the system. That was why it hounded her every day to complete the mission. Wen Xian did not understand what it hoped to gain, but she also needed to finish the mission to return to her former world.
They shared the same goal. She was curious about the system’s motives, but she did not believe it would tell her. They were business partners, not companions who trusted each other.
She understood that, and so did the system.
Even if she had to climb a mountain of blades and cross a sea of fire today, she would meet the villain and finally set the main story in motion.
Wen Xian placed one hand on the windowsill, sprang up, and flipped nimbly through the opening. The instant her feet landed, she drove the spiritual energy within her body and ran at full speed.
Following the route provided by the system, Wen Xian raced onward until she was little more than a blur. Although she never stopped, the spiritual energy inside her continued to flow without end. This was possible because of one of the three cheat abilities the system had granted her.
Super Recovery rapidly restored her stamina, spiritual energy, natural healing, and every other form of recovery. In this brutal cultivation world, it was an absurdly powerful ability.
Thanks to it, Wen Xian never needed to stop and replenish her spiritual energy. She could keep running without rest. She hurried toward the Graveyard of Ten Thousand Swords without wasting a single moment, and that was why she did not miss the spectacle that followed.
Two incense sticks later, Wen Xian arrived.
Swords stood embedded in the ground everywhere she looked. Some were whole, while others had broken in half. Every kind of sword formed a vast sea of blades that extended beyond sight. A few gigantic swords towered so high that Wen Xian had to crane her neck to see their tops.
She could not help sighing in admiration. “No wonder it’s called the Graveyard of Ten Thousand Swords. There’s nothing here but swords.”
As she looked across the sea of blades, an idea suddenly came to her.
“If I ate every sword here, would I become invincible?”
[Host, put that ridiculous idea away. This place is called a graveyard because it is where swords come to die. Every sword here has been discarded. No matter how powerful their former masters were or how glorious their pasts may have been, they are nothing but scrap metal now.]
Wen Xian sighed with regret. A strange sadness rose in her heart. Perhaps now that she was a sword herself, she felt a little kinship with these abandoned blades.
[Host, the villain is just ahead!]
The system’s words pulled Wen Xian from her melancholy. Completing the mission had to come first.
She followed its directions and continued forward. After walking for a while, she caught the thick scent of blood in the air. She covered her nose and fought down her nausea. Then she raised her head—and froze at the sight before her.
A woman in a dark-purple dress stood in midair. Corpses lay scattered beneath her. Swords had pierced some of them, leaving the bodies hanging upside down from the blades. Blood covered the ground, and more still dripped from the point of the purple sword in the woman’s hand.
Wen Xian had never seen anything like this. Since arriving in this world, she had not killed a single person. Even when she robbed others, she spared their lives. The belief that all lives were equal and that murder was a crime had long been rooted deep within her.
The bloody scene assaulted both her eyes and her nose. Her composure broke. She dropped to her knees and began to retch.
The woman suddenly descended from the air. Her head hung low, and her body shook violently as though she were enduring terrible pain. The hem of her dress began to flutter. One purple fox tail after another emerged behind her, and a pair of soft purple fox ears appeared atop her head.
Eight tails swayed behind the woman in a steady rhythm. She glanced at them, and fierce unwillingness flashed through her eyes.
Why…?
Why did she have only eight tails?
At that moment, she sensed an extremely faint thread of spiritual energy and heard the sound of someone retching. She whipped her head toward the source and saw Wen Xian.
Her deep-purple slit pupils suddenly contracted.
Someone saw me!
She saw my secret!
Kill this human. I cannot let her live!