"I… I was getting a headache because I was trying to remember the words on the stele?" Alex couldn't believe such a thing was even possible. "What do you mean the owner doesn't want me to read it?"
"Sometimes when someone is particularly passionate about a technique and very good at it, if they were to write the technique down on something, they leave behind their intent."
"Sometimes this just happens, while other times it is intentional. However, it's usually only intentional if that someone is of a very high cultivation base." The artifact spirit started speaking.
The spirit was full of the black goo as Alex hadn't visited here in a white, but it still spoke clearly.
Also, since Alex's mental strength was now far better than what it was years ago when he met the spirit, he didn't have to worry about being easily tempted. Not when the spirit was this weak.
"There are such intents too?" Alex asked.
"Everything has intent. You can't do something without intent, not when it comes to cultivation and everything that surrounds it."
"Swing a sword, you need intent. Create a fire, you need intent. Even breaking through itself, you cannot do without the intent to break through. So, while it may not look like it, I promise you, everything has intent." The sword spirit was surprisingly chatty this particular day and talked quite a bit.
Alex watched the sea below start to calm down and asked, "so does that mean I cannot copy the information from my mind?"
"I don't know what you read, but the owner clearly didn't want just anyone to read it, so—" the artifact spirit stopped. "Hm… that's weird," it thought.
"What's weird?" Alex asked.
"I saw the damage just the memory of what you tried to remember did to you. If that was the case then why are you not dead when you have indeed already read the technique?" the spirit asked.
Alex thought for a moment. "What exactly constitutes as reading actually?" he asked.
"I don't know. Just reading?" the sword spirit asked.
Alex thought to himself. 'I never really did read it though, did I? I just looked through it and my mind learned it on its own.'
"What if I wanted to learn the technique, but I didn't understand what it said, would that still hurt me?" Alex asked.
"Hmm, since you did intend to learn it, it should hurt you, but since you didn't know how to read, the majority of the damage should be mitigated," the sword spirit said. "Is that what happened?"
Alex nodded. At the same time, his brows furrowed with concern. "If I were to write it down and give it to someone that can read it, will it hurt them?" he asked the spirit.
"If you're writing it, then it depends on your intent," the sword spirit said.
"So if I want just anyone to read it, I can do it?" he asked.
"Yeah, there's no problem with that. You are already fighting with someone else's intent to keep it from coming out anyway," the sword spirit said.
"I see, thank you for explaining," Alex bowed a little towards the spirit.
"That's nothing, just find me a god wannabe to kill from time to time to satiate my hunger," the spirit said.
"Uhh… I don't think anyone is dumb enough to want to be a god here," Alex said.
"Well, then let me control your body once in a while. I promise I won't use it recklessly. I'm stuck on this body you know. If you die, I die."
"Besides, you can get rid of my control whenever you want," the spirit said.
'Yeah, no,' Alex thought.
"I'll think about it," Alex said. He wasn't going to straight-up deny it, not after it helped so much right now.
He stayed behind in his mind for a bit and collected all the flying silver threads in the sky. The sword spirit had already returned to the side, doing its own thing.
Once Alex was done, he returned back outside and finally felt a calm mind that wasn't plagued with headaches.
'I should go about it slowly,' he thought.
Over the next couple of days, Alex slowly copied the words from the stele in his mind onto the page of his book. In doing so, he had to suffer from multiple migraines over the course of multiple days.
Every time it got too hard, Alex would stop and rest his mind. He would cultivate as long as it took for his mind to return to normal after fighting the behemoth of an intent that belonged to the words on the stele.
3 days later, Alex finally fully wrote everything he could remember from the stele.
Excitedly, Alex left his place and went over to his mother.
He quickly went inside and gave her all of the different books. "Since you should know the language now, you should read and learn these books. I don't know if this cultivation technique will help you or not, but you can try that too," Alex informed her.
"Okay," Helen said and took the books. At the same time, she handed back the translation book to Alex. "You should read this too."
"Okay, I will once I return," Alex said and kept the book.
He waited as his mother started reading through the books and looking at them. Meanwhile, he talked with Pearl to learn if he had any chance of breaking through any time soon.
"Alex, did you give me the wrong book?" Helen asked all of a sudden.
"Wrong book? Which one?" Alex turned to look at the books. Surprisingly, his mother had the book he wrote from the stele in her hand.
"No, that is the right book. Can you not read it?"
He wondered if perhaps the technique's owner's intent was messing up with her somehow.
"I can, but… the book isn't complete at all," she said.
"Not complete?" Alex asked.
"Look, it ends in the middle of the sentence," she said.
"That can't be." Alex took the book and read through it to remember the words on the stele. Through some headaches, he remember everything he had written was accurate.
"There's nothing wrong with the book, does it really end abruptly?" he asked.
"Yes," Helen said. "Where did you read this?"
"It's the black stele from back in the Tiger sect. Remember the one I told you not to use your spiritual sense on no matter what?" Alex said.
"Oh, that?" Helen thought as she looked at the book. "You wrote all of it?"
"Yes," Alex said. "If the technique is incomplete that would mean the technique on the stele is incomplete."
"Well, it ends abruptly. Are you sure there were more words on it?" she asked.
"Where else would the words—" Alex froze. Suddenly, he realized something he should have thought of a long time ago.
"How could I not have thought about it before?" he slapped his own forehead.
"What's wrong? What did you not think of?" Helen asked.
"That black stele, it's the cause of the crater in the Tiger sect, which I assume came along with the meteor shower," Alex said. "If it came down with such force then certainly it must have embedded itself onto the ground."
"Stupid! I should have checked below the ground too," he thought.
In Alex's defense, the stele was in fact one of the most terrifying things to use his spiritual sense around. Every time he did, the intent of the owner of the stele would come to attack him.
So, even if he had thought of there being something underneath the whole thing, he still likely wouldn't have dared to try it all.
"That bit should still help you create some technique, you should learn it," Alex told his mother. "I'll go and learn the language now."
Alex left his mother to learn the techniques and returned back to his place and brought out the book to read it.
However, before he could do it, a thought came to his mind.
"Wait, if there is more to the black stele than just this, and if knowing what I'm reading will be devastating enough to kill me when I do read it, isn't it better for me to not learn the language?" he thought.
Alex had waited many years to learn this language. However, now that he had finally had the opportunity to, he found out that it was in fact better to not learn it at all.
