Sword highlighted some things it was feeling during the different attacks, and Shang understood what the Wind Blade Seeds were doing after listening to Sword's results.
When Shang was training, Sword also always gave feedback. Just like when Shang had been at the Soldier Stage, Sword was telling him when a strike felt good or bad.
Shang also felt if attacks were good or bad, but he couldn't be completely accurate.
As the weapon, Sword essentially was a participant, but it could also see the attack from a different angle than Shang.
This made Sword's feedback invaluable.
While Shang had to focus on performing his attacks perfectly, Sword didn't need to do anything and could simply watch everything with all of its focus.
Sword gave the following feedback.
When the same attack was performed, there were always only two different sounds present.
Either the ugly and good one or the good and beautiful one.
There were no combinations of ugly and beautiful.
There were never all three sounds present during one attack, no matter how often it was repeated.
When the ugly and good sounds appeared, Sword always felt that the attacks with the good sounds were better.
When the good and beautiful sounds appeared, Sword always felt that the attacks with the beautiful sounds were better.
Now came the interesting part.
When the attacks with the ugly and good sounds produced an attack with a good sound, it felt not better nor worse than when the attacks with the good and beautiful sounds produced a beautiful sound.
The same was true the other way around. When the attacks with ugly and good sounds produced an ugly sound, it felt just as bad as when the attacks with good and beautiful sounds produced a good sound.
"This means that great performance increases the level of the sound by one," Shang said.
"Correct," Sword answered. "However, the absence of all three sounds appearing at once and the ugly and beautiful sound never appearing during the same set of attacks means that there is an additional component, and that component is not influenced by how well you perform the attack."
Shang nodded. "There must be something that I can't control that impacts the result of the attack."
"But what could that be?" Shang asked.
"I don't know," Sword answered, "but it has to do something with you. I don't do anything during all of your attacks, and I specifically stopped myself from doing anything while we were testing."
Shang furrowed his brows.
As a living weapon, Sword could help with a couple of attacks, but Shang didn't think that whatever Sword was doing had any impact on the performance of the attack.
After all, it was just a weapon, and Shang was the one swinging it.
"We need more testing," Sword said.
Shang nodded.
After that, Shang performed one attack until he got the better sound, switched to another attack until he got the better sound, and switched back again.
He couldn't always perform the attacks perfectly, but he wanted the time between the two attacks he was comparing to be as short as possible. That was why he was always switching as soon as he got the good one.
If Shang managed to create the good sound, switch, and then immediately produce the beautiful sound, Shang could compare them very well.
There must be some kind of difference.
However, this proved to be far more difficult than he had anticipated.
Even after several hours, Shang couldn't come to a conclusion, and at that point, even the sound the Wind Blade Seed produced became quieter and quieter.
Eventually, the sound completely vanished.
Shang immediately consumed the next seed.
In truth, his plan had actually been to train his Great Sword State first since he wouldn't be running out of sparring partners anytime soon, but he wanted to understand the Wind Blade Seed first.
By now, Shang also realized that there was no variation inside the different levels of sound.
The good sound always sounded the same.
The bad one always sounded the same.
The beautiful one always sounded the same.
No matter how horrible Shang performed the attack, the ugly sound always sounded just as ugly.
The attack was either perfect or not perfect.
Shang continued training just like this for two entire days.
Yet, they still couldn't find the difference.
Sadly, after two days of continuously swinging his sword, Shang had to take a break.
The outer side of his right lower arm felt fatigued.
Shang only took a deep breath and closed his right eye.
He hated waiting like this.
But there was nothing he could do.
Eventually, one would run out of stamina.
He could still perform one of the attacks since that attack wasn't as strenuous on that part of the body as the other one, but without the second attack, Shang wouldn't be able to-
"Wait a second," Shang suddenly said as he opened his eye.
Then, he looked at his right arm with furrowed brows.
'Not as strenuous?' Shang thought with skepticism.
'Both of them use my triceps to stretch the arm, which puts strain on my tendon, and my tendon is also the thing that's feeling fatigued.'
'Yet, how is it possible that one of the two attacks doesn't feel as strenuous as the other one?'
'I need to test that right now.'
Instead of waiting for his body to recover, Shang continued doing the same thing, but this time, he was paying special attention to his tendon.
Shang continued swinging his sword as he paid close attention to what happened to his tendon during the attacks.
After a while, the effects of the Wind Blade Seed vanished again, but that was no longer relevant.
The performance of the attacks didn't matter right now.
Shang continued swinging his sword for another day, his body getting injured more and more.
Without the sound of the Wind Blade Seed, Shang entered a special state.
His entire mind was only focused on the place where his tendon was.
He saw it moving one way.
He saw it moving the other way.
He saw it moving one way.
And so on.
Left.
Right.
Left.
Right.
Shang didn't notice it, but his arm was sending incredibly powerful pain signals toward his brain.
His arm was essentially screaming that it was about to be destroyed due to overuse.
Yet, Shang's sensitivity to pain had been ground down to such a degree that he didn't even notice it.
The muscles in his arms were cramping as he continued swinging his sword, but Shang only kept focusing on that spot.
All his senses were completely focused on it.
PSSSHH!
Shang's right eye shone as he suddenly felt pain.
Something had happened inside of his arm that was so painful that even he took note of it.
And Shang saw what it was very clearly.
'It's actually not my tendon that's hurting,' Shang thought as he looked at a specific part below the tendon.
At that location, one of the Mana pathways in his body had ruptured and was leaking out Mana.
'It's the Mana pathways!' Shang thought.
Shang ignored the pain and performed the good attack again. At the same time, he was following how exactly his Mana moved throughout his arm.
While performing that attack, Shang's Mana was going to his sword in a uniform manner, putting the same amount of strain on every Mana pathway.
Then, Shang performed the other attack, and he saw how a larger chunk of his Mana traveled through the ruptured Mana pathway.
However, that also made sense. That attack required more power from that spot than the other one, which meant it needed more Mana.
'If the Mana pathway were wider, had a lower angle, or were tougher, this wouldn't be an issue.'
Then, Shang realized it.
Now, he knew what the uncontrollable component of the Wind Blade Seed's judgment was.
'Unfitting Mana pathways!'
'The pathways my Path has created are not perfect!'
