Inside the three cavernous Outer-Sect Sword Vaults at the base of Peak #1 on Supreme Edge World, the air smelled like old machine oil and six thousand years of dust.
Pei Xuan walked through the towering stone archway with Old Wei, Abacus Su, Ye Guhan, and Sword Ancestor Ling. On both sides of the cavern, stacked in crooked piles fifty feet high like firewood, lay millions upon millions of Rank 4, Rank 5, and Rank 6 iron and bronze flying swords.
“Why on earth did your sect keep ten million low-grade flying swords locked in a dark cave?” Pei Xuan asked, picking up a tarnished four-foot bronze broadsword and tapping the blade with his fingernail (tink). The internal flight array inside the sword was still seventy percent intact, though the edge was chipped. “Across the border, poor Qi Gathering and Foundation Establishment cultivators have to save up for fifty years just to buy one flying blade, and mortal villagers have to walk on foot.”
Sword Ancestor Ling coughed in embarrassment, tugging at the collar of his yellow Debtor vest. “Well, Lord Mayor... under our old sect rules, whenever an outer disciple died or retired, or whenever we raided a small mortal kingdom that couldn’t pay its starlight rent, we confiscated all their flying swords and threw them in here! Why? Because First Elder Jian said that if too many poor cultivators or mortals owned flying tools, flying on a sword wouldn’t look ‘exclusive and noble’ anymore!”
