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 to

announcing themselves and knocking at the Isolation Barrier, but Shang never answered

possible for Shang to see the outside, which meant that Shang could have noticed these Clouds and could have interacted

But he never did.

became angry when

attack someone without their consent, and that extended to someone's belongings and

they got, they didn't attack

but he had still taken note of a

every Cloud that had arrived had tried to lure him away from Lucin so that they could

else would

just wanted to kill Shang and get his resources

of them were

of them were his

of them wanted to kill

truth,

by going through decades upon decades of nothing but intense

how could one see the world as anything but filled

such a long time,

to put this into perspective, Shang had been training like this for over

life, take 10% of it, and go through so much time while being

still be

longest time

couple of decades of isolation, but he had still

beasts, walked from one place to the other, talked to Jerald, and a couple of

time. He saw others from time to time, bought new resources, did some missions, talked to the

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

it

was doing nothing

There was no break.

no talking

There was no buying.

There was no managing.

was just Shang and his

or for

thoughts and

approaching

to die,

and personality had been close to disappearing from

like he was no longer inside his