With the Blade

When the Grinding Stone scraped across the blade, Du Chengfeng once again felt the memory of the weapon in his hand.

The initial part was the familiar sensation of forging, but this was something Du Chengfeng was quite used to by now, and the pain and itch brought by the forging were almost negligible.

So, after passing through this uneventful phase, Du Chengfeng began to search for useful information within this memory.

At just a glance, Du Chengfeng discovered something familiar.

It was Wu Zhao’s big face.

Back when he went to another world, Yinman Wu Zhao used the locals’ expectations to obtain a powerful body similar to his own, and Du Chengfeng always remembered this incident—though he was quite unhappy with Wu Zhao’s face, which had started to resemble his own, after all, Wu Zhao had painstakingly acquired it himself, so it was hard for him to criticize.

But now, it seemed that Wu Zhao had finally met his comeuppance.

The transparent jar holding Wu Zhao’s head was placed in front of Du Chengfeng, and the big face rolling its eyes looked so comical.

"You have your day too, huh?"

Seeing a familiar face trapped in a jar, Du Chengfeng couldn’t help but laugh.

And after seeing the subsequent scene, Du Chengfeng roughly understood that Wu Zhao’s defeat was not merely a matter of losing a few moves. Clearly, he was entirely captured alive, not just his head, but even his heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys were separately cut out and soaked in jars, while his spinal bones were extracted and forged into this Longsword.

No wonder this sword felt so handy; turns out it was an old acquaintance.

"So it’s an Ascender’s sword... wait, are Ascenders this weak?"

It was only then that Du Chengfeng realized the reason why that strange man recognized him wasn’t unfounded—turns out this strange man was the Ascender he had been meticulously preparing for.

Are Ascenders really this weak? How could Wu Zhao lose like this? Du Chengfeng knew Wu Zhao’s skills well, especially after acquiring a new, powerful body. If they were to fight seriously, he would probably only end up in a draw with Wu Zhao.

But such a formidable Wu Zhao was actually defeated by that pathetically weak stranger, and his body was even made into a sword.

This doesn’t make sense, not at all.

But soon, Du Chengfeng suddenly felt that something seemed off.

"Why are these jars transparent?"

Du Chengfeng suddenly felt a bit puzzled.

Transparent jars, or rather, colorless transparent glass, were definitely not common things for most people in this world—first, there were no glass-making techniques at this age, and even colored glass resembling glassware was mostly colorful.

More so when made into transparent jars.

However, to Du Chengfeng, this was very familiar, which was why he almost overlooked the subtle discord at first glance.

Upon realizing this, as he began to observe his surroundings, that feeling of discord became increasingly apparent—his surroundings felt familiar to him, but that familiarity was the most abnormal part.

Those glass jars, those advanced steel surgical instruments, the whitewashed walls, and the precise dissection of Wu Zhao’s body...

"Weren’t these Ascenders supposed to be ancient people?"

Indeed, Du Chengfeng remembered clearly, whether according to the information left by Wu Zhao or the provocations left by the Ascenders, these Ascenders’ era should have been before Wu Zhao, that is, before the Yinmen—if that’s how it was supposed to be, it doesn’t make sense at all.

Those Yinmen still had a primitive appearance; just looking at the original state seen during the grinding of the Bronze Halberd, saying they just recently moved past primitive living wouldn’t be too much—precisely because of this, Du Chengfeng also had some strange fantasies about those "Ascenders," wondering if they still wore leaves as clothes, but with extremely powerful bodies, or if they truly possessed some kind of Secret Technique for Immortality, ascending directly...

However, the true memory of the Ascenders that appeared before Du Chengfeng was nothing like that.

How could these people, judged as "Ascenders" by Wu Zhao, be so...

Advanced?

Indeed, advanced, that was the term Du Chengfeng could only use for now.

If glass could be easily made, then surgical instruments crafted from refined steel were not something that could be done casually, and the rather "modern" architecture before him, along with the precise dissection of Wu Zhao’s body—these things required a massive knowledge base to exist.

Perhaps only the place where Du Chengfeng lived before coming to this world could have such a scenario.

"But they definitely couldn’t capture Wu Zhao."

Just thinking about it, Du Chengfeng came to a conclusion.

It wasn’t about being advanced or not; it was that Wu Zhao possessed a hunter’s cunning, together with his immense strength. As long as Wu Zhao wanted to hide his identity and kept a low profile, basically no one could catch him—of course, there was also the possibility that Wu Zhao was openly looking for fights, just like when he fought with him before, but with Wu Zhao’s intelligence, it didn’t look like he couldn’t escape.