From Noodle's translation in the ROCH Excerpts thread:
One day, Yang Guo was getting deeply engrossed in the sparring sessions and slashed the wooden sword with all his might. The divine condor called out and leapt to the side. Yang Guo could not withdraw the force of his sword in time and it struck a tree. The wooden sword broke but the tree was severed in two.
Yang Guo held the broken sword handle and thought, “This wooden sword is light and fragile but it was still able to cut a tree; this is all down to the internal energy in my hand. If in the future the tree breaks and the sword don’t then I won’t be too far off the divine skill of senior Dugu.”
Spring went and autumn came, months flowed by. He trained his sword arts in the sea’s waves night and day, whatever the weather. The sound produced from the wooden sword was getting louder and louder where eventually it was able to produce great hues of noise but after sounding for a few months, the sound from the wooden sword got lighter and lighter until no more noise came from it. Another few months passed and the sword produced sound again. This process of going from soft to loud and loud to soft repeated itself seven times. Eventually, he was able to produce whatever sound he desired, loud or soft. By the time he reached this stage, he counted his fingers and realised he had been by the sea for six years.
By this time, when Yang Guo trained in the sea’s waves with the wooden sword in his hand, the wind generated from his sword could repel the waves and even the divine condor with its frightening strength could last not more than three stances of the wooden sword. At this point, he realised what the Sword Demon Dugu Qiubai must have felt all those years ago, “With a sword art such as this, who on earth can stand up to it? No wonder senior Dugu felt lonely and buried his sword away in the deep valley.” He then thought, “If brother condor here didn’t witness how senior Dugu trained his sword skills, how would I have been able to obtain such a divine skill? I call him brother condor but in reality it is my kind master. When it comes to age, I don’t know how old it is, I’m afraid that I can even call it grandpa condor, granddad condor.”
During his training by the sea, Yang Guo would often ask the passengers on passing boats about a Divine Nun of the South Sea Island. He has asked thousands of sailors and passengers but there was nothing. He knew that seeing Xiao Long Nuu before the sixteen years was up was going to be a nigh on impossible task.
One dark, windy and rainy day, something stirred in Yang Guo’s heart, he placed the wooden sword in his waist and covered himself with his tattered gown. The man and condor made their way west and from then on, made their way back into central plains and roamed the lands south of the river Yangtze.