Chapter 7: The Arrival of the Jealous Sword Spirit

“Silence!”

Dean Yu Qinglan’s voice, though not loud, seemed to detonate directly in everyone’s ears.

An invisible wave of pressure swept across the training ground, causing even the Blazing Winged Lion to instinctively retract its fiery wings.

The Dean, clad in a star-patterned robe, simply stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his silver hair stirring without a breeze, and faint runes of law swirling around him.

The formidable aura of a powerful mage instantly rendered all the students as silent as cicadas in winter.

Dean Yu Qinglan nodded in satisfaction. As the head of the academy, he naturally empathized with the students’ fervent excitement, recalling how his own heart had taken days to settle after he had first summoned a legendary-tier familiar.

However, as the Dean, his duty now took precedence.

With a gentle flick of his silver sleeve, Dean Yu Qinglan conjured a soft curtain of starlight that enveloped the entire field, instantly calming the restless magical elements.

He then walked slowly towards Chixiao, his fingertip lightly tapping the boy’s shoulder, and a badge intricately woven from flames and whirlwinds materialized out of thin air.

“The seventieth epic-tier familiar in Star Dome Academy’s century-long history, a feat truly worthy of inscription in ‘Aethelred’s History of Magic’.”

Before his words fully faded, the Blazing Winged Lion abruptly lowered its body, its beastly eyes warily sweeping over the student formation.

Following its gaze, Yu Qinglan caught sight of Su Liyue and Mu Wanqing whispering to each other.

‘To be able to make even this Blazing Winged Lion feel apprehensive, could it be Su Liyue, the all-attribute genius?’

Ye Xingchen, a transcendent Saint, naturally noticed the Dean’s gaze, yet he merely observed in silence. After all, ‘true knowledge is not for those who claim to know, nor is ignorance for those who claim not to know.’

“However—” The Dean suddenly raised his magic staff, and a towering statue of the academy’s first dean, sculpted from ice crystals, surged from the ground.

“Three hundred years ago, when Archmage Selena swept across the continent with her slime familiar—”

The ice statue abruptly turned its head and glared, startling him into a hasty correction:

“What I meant to say was, mages are the true core of combat!”

Following this, a rapid-fire, impassioned speech ensued.

The Dean’s gaze then settled upon Ye Xingchen and Su Liyue in the arena. These two were, after all, exceptionally unique individuals within the academy, both rare prodigies seen only once every few centuries.

Yet, one possessed no inherent attribute, while the other commanded all attributes. He truly wondered what kind of familiars they would manage to summon.

With a wave of his hand, the Dean signaled for the summoning ceremony to continue.

“Next up, student Ye Xingchen!”

As Ye Xingchen’s name was called by the instructor, a ripple went through the crowd.

The entire arena instantly erupted into an uproar!

It was widely known that the probability of an attribute-less individual successfully summoning a familiar was akin to teaching a fire dragon to waltz.

Nevertheless, Ye Xingchen advanced unhurriedly.

As a transcendent Saint, he had long since utilized spatial traversal to personally investigate the demonic beasts of this world.

Even the most ordinary spirit cranes from his previous cultivation realm were tenfold more elegant than these creatures.

Compared to the spirit beasts he had encountered in his previous life, these were utterly unremarkable.

Even their so-called legendary familiars, Ye Xingchen mused, were merely oversized Labradors—eating much and excreting even more.

Beyond turning him into a ‘poop-scooper,’ he held absolutely no interest in them.

After all, if he truly desired a familiar, it was merely a matter of spatial magic; he could summon as many as he wished, of any type or attribute, with effortless ease.

‘If I actually summon some creature…’

He mumbled to himself, his gaze fixed on the swirling magic circle.

‘Am I going to have to use spatial folding techniques to scoop its poop every single day?’

The thought of potentially having to draft a ‘Dragonkind No-Spitting-Fire-Indiscriminately Dormitory Pact’ instantly made him feel that the hamster from the alternate dimension was far more appealing.

As the magic array flared with intense light, Ye Xingchen’s fingertips subtly twitched.

A spatial distortion, perceptible only to transcendent beings, quietly formed, inserting a ‘fully occupied’ spatial roadblock into the summoning channel.

‘That ought to do it,’ he thought.

Even though Ye Xingchen typically concealed his aura, he could distinctly sense the demonic beasts within the summoning channel, all frantically vying to squeeze through.

Each one was of legendary tier or even higher, suggesting that these creatures were considerably more sensitive to the presence of a powerful being than the mages.

Then, as several massive eyes appeared, the legendary-tier demonic beasts instantly quieted, as if they had seen ghosts.

Ye Xingchen probed with his divine sense, understanding the origin of these few beasts. In this world, they were likely considered ‘limited-tier’ existences, at the very least regional overlords.

Perhaps in the eyes of these mages, such creatures represented the absolute pinnacle of this world’s demonic beasts. Yet, to Ye Xingchen, these few were even more ‘Labrador-like’ than an actual Labrador.

Oh, right, his previous five-clawed golden dragon was named Labrador.

Too indolent to be bothered, Ye Xingchen then simply waved his hand, expelling all those demonic beasts beyond the confines of the spatial summoning array.

Seeing that no familiar had appeared for Ye Xingchen after such a prolonged period, the instructors assumed it was highly unlikely one would, given his attribute-less nature.

Ye Xingchen himself was just about to turn and exit the stage.

“Crack!” A sharp sound rent the air.

The spatial barrier he had casually erected shattered like thin ice, and a clear, resonant sword cry pierced the sky, causing the iridescent magic array to tremble violently.

The magic staffs of all seven instructors simultaneously erupted with warning sparks, and even Dean Yu Qinglan abruptly rose to his feet.

“What… what is this?!”

Ye Xingchen’s pupils constricted sharply.

The silver light that cleaved through space was none other than his natal sword spirit, which he had nurtured for nearly a millennium in his previous life! The familiar cloud patterns on its hilt now gleamed with a faint cyan glow.

“Seven?”

He subconsciously uttered the rather embarrassing name.

The longsword chimed joyfully at the sound, and the bronze bells adorning its tassel jingled melodiously.

Back then, he had found male weapon spirits lacking in aesthetic appeal, so he had deliberately fashioned a female sword spirit modeled after the appearance of the Jade Pond Saintess.

The sound of these bells, at least, was quite pleasant…

In the profound silence that enveloped the entire arena, the longsword intimately circled him three times before settling steadily into his palm.

As the blade mirrored his astonished face, a line of small characters suddenly materialized on the sword guard: [Master, cross-realm delivery fees are quite exorbitant.]

Ye Xingchen grasped the sword hilt with a wry smile, feeling the long-absent spiritual resonance.

Well, this was certainly something; he genuinely wouldn’t have to be a Labrador’s pooper-scooper anymore…

But how was he supposed to explain this jealous female sword spirit to the academy?

At this moment, Ye Xingchen was filled with regret, profound regret.

Back then, when forging Seven’s spirit in the Sword Forging Pavilion, why had he, by some strange twist of fate, replicated the face of the Jade Pond Saintess? Now, it seemed, retribution had arrived, swift and undeniable.

“Master~” Seven materialized the exquisite visage of the Jade Pond Saintess, a form presumably visible only to him, as she tilted her head and tugged at his sleeve.

“The energy elements here taste absolutely horrid…”

Her expression of utter disdain was precisely identical to that of the Jade Pond Saintess when she used to scorn his fondness for sour dates.

The most astonishing part was that this sword spirit, having spent a period with the Jade Pond Saintess, had also inherited the original owner’s temper and petty quirks.

He vividly recalled one instance in the cultivation world when the Jade Pond Saintess had chased him with her sword for three entire streets, all because he had complimented the beautiful hairpin of a female cultivator from the Joyful Union Sect.

‘Was it truly wrong for a single man like him to merely glance? Didn’t they say a love for beauty was inherent in all? Who could have known the Jade Pond Saintess would harbor such immense fury?’

And now, Seven was using her blade to gently rub against the back of a junior student’s chair, a student who had been secretly peeking at Ye Xingchen. That jealous demeanor was truly something to behold.

“The tree of foolishness bears foolish fruit, and beneath that tree, it’s still just you and me.”

(TL Note: A playful, self-deprecating Chinese slang phrase, ‘lèng bī shù shàng yòu jié le lèng bī guǒ, lèng bī shù xià hái shì nǐ hé wǒ,’ implying a cycle of absurd situations involving oneself.)

Ye Xingchen sighed, pressing a hand to his forehead.

The karmic seeds sown by the Jade Pond Saintess all those years ago had now, who would have thought, borne even more preposterous fruit in this alternate world.

Dean Yu Qinglan was utterly unsettled at this moment, his voice even betraying a sense of profound bewilderment:

“A… a weapon as a familiar? What attribute is that supposed to be?!”

Even across the entirety of the magical realm, he had never heard of, nor witnessed, anything so utterly bizarre. Had he not seen it with his own eyes, he would never have believed it possible.