Sword God in a World of Magic

Time continued to pass.

The Bolts were no longer distracted by Shang since Lucin had created an Isolation Barrier around him, but Lucin himself had noticed that he was sighing far more often than usual.

He just felt bad for Shang.

It was one thing to go through so much pain to become stronger, but it was something else to continuously go through so much pain for decades upon decades.

This wasn't an individual instance of painful training anymore. Being under so much pain for so long had essentially transformed Shang's entire life.

Yes, Shang was already quite old, but spending decades in pain was still something significant.

Every decade of pain was equivalent to about one year of pain for a mortal.

How horrible would it be to be under such pain for one year?

Just one day was already terrifying.

As Lucin continued watching Shang, he got the thought that Shang was actually impressively sane for someone that was living like this.

Under normal circumstances, one would imagine a quivering mass of terror, paranoia, fear, and irrational hatred.

Sure, Shang had these aspects, but they weren't so strong that they overtook his entire personality.

Nevertheless, Lucin could still feel that Shang had huge issues deep inside.

His body was like a machine that was piloted by ten crazy people with different issues and illnesses, but by averaging them out, the machine was still piloted in a somewhat normal way.

Frankly, it was a miracle.

Decades passed.

Eventually, Shang used up all the Furnace Pills he had, which took him a total of 100 years.

At this moment, Shang was around 860 years old.

If he were a mortal, he would be nearly 80 years old.

Shang had genuinely reached the last years of his life.

Over the past century, a couple of Clouds had arrived in front of the Isolation Barrier.

all wanted to talk

knocking at the Isolation Barrier, but Shang never

outside, which meant that Shang could have noticed these Clouds and could have

But he never did.

the Clouds even became angry when Shang kept ignoring

to attack someone without their consent, and that extended

matter how angry they got,

had not seen all of them, but he had still taken note of a couple

his mind, every Cloud that had arrived had tried to lure him away from

would they

to kill Shang and get his

them were his

of them were his

of them wanted to

wasn't the truth, but that

state of danger and by going through decades upon decades of nothing but intense pain,

but pain and darkness, how could one see the world as anything but

such a

this into perspective, Shang had been training like this for over 10% of his

need to look at one's own life, take 10% of it, and go through so much time while being tortured like

still

was the longest time Shang had

isolation, but he had still

walked from one place to the other, talked to Jerald, and

left his training room from time to time. He saw

to run a town while training, which meant that he regularly

it

was doing nothing

There was no break.

was no talking to

There was no buying.

There was no managing.

was just Shang and

or

Shang had developed thoughts and feelings he had never been able

like he was approaching death, but not

exactly feel like he was about to die, but like he was about

was like Shang's mind and personality had been close to disappearing from

that happened, Shang felt like he was no