Chapter 562: Version Update! Surge in Strength

Endless, formless Spiritual Power surged forth, washing over every corner of his sea of consciousness.

Under the saturation of this pure spiritual energy, the boundaries of his sea of consciousness—its once-ethereal barrier—

silently extended into the vaster nothingness, becoming even more immense.

The raging torrent of Spiritual Power did not stop at the edges of his sea of consciousness.

It gathered into a mighty river, surging with clear purpose toward the center—toward the majestic Primordial Spirit visage seated there in a meditative posture.

The visage was like a bottomless vortex, greedily devouring the immense Spiritual Power.

As a massive amount of Spiritual Power poured in, the Primordial Spirit visage began a visible transformation.

Its form grew more solid, and the silver brilliance flowing across its surface became deeper and more dazzling.

The most crucial change, however, was happening within the visage itself.

The influx of Spiritual Power was being refined and purified.

Wisps of incomparably pure Wish Power, glowing with a faint golden halo, seeped out from the surface of the Primordial Spirit visage and flowed across it.

Then, they merged back into the depths of the visage, forming a perfect cycle.

With each cycle, the very essence of the Primordial Spirit visage grew purer, and the power it contained became more immense and divine.

This process was not instantaneous.

The expansion of his sea of consciousness, the tempering of his Primordial Spirit, and the conversion of Wish Power—these three elements intertwined, forming a precise and magnificent spiritual undertaking.

Li Wen kept his eyes tightly shut, his entire consciousness immersed in the process, guiding this power and sensing every subtle change.

He could clearly perceive his Primordial Spirit growing—a rhythm that signaled a leap in his very essence of life.

Time seemed to lose all meaning. In the special dimension of his sea of consciousness, only the resonance of spirit and Law echoed eternally.

Seven days!

For seven whole days, the storm that had swept through his sea of consciousness raged before it finally, slowly, subsided.

When the last wisp of Spiritual Power was perfectly converted, a profound tranquility returned to his sea of consciousness.

Li Wen looked toward the center, where the towering Primordial Spirit visage had completed its transformation.

It had grown to a staggering height of 15,000.

The massive visage sat quietly in meditation, its entire body flowing with condensed silver brilliance, while its core held a more powerful, restrained halo of pale gold Wish Power.

An unprecedented sense of power and control washed over him.

‘Tier One Middle Stage Star Lord… and not far from the late stage, either,’ Li Wen realized.

The leap in his Primordial Spirit Realm brought more than just an increase in the range and precision of his spiritual sense.

It was a comprehensive enhancement of his control over his own power.

In the quiet room, Li Wen’s eyes, shut for seven days, suddenly snapped open.

SWOOSH!

A flash of light, so condensed it seemed solid, glinted in his eyes and vanished.

It seemed to slice through the air in the quiet room, causing a faint hiss before disappearing completely.

All that remained was a pair of eyes deeper than the stars.

Almost simultaneously, his status panel quietly refreshed:

[Class: Scholar LV21 (92,056,847 / 104,857,600)]

His gaze swept over the experience bar, and a flicker of regret touched the corner of his lips. ‘A pity. Still short by more than ten million experience points.’

This trace of regret was not born of frustration, but from a pure yearning for a higher realm.

‘If I could level up one more time, my Primordial Spirit would reach Tier Two Star Lord, and I’d be guaranteed a spot in the top ten of the finals.’

He knew all too well how vast the chasm was between each tier of the Star Lord Level.

Take Blood Slaughter Barton, the supreme genius who had earned the title “Slaughter Centurion” from a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.

He was virtually unrivaled among Tier One Star Lords, but if he were to face an ordinary Tier Two Star Lord, even a victory would be a pyrrhic one, achieved only through immense difficulty.

This wasn’t because Barton was weak; it was because at the Star Lord realm, each tier represented a qualitative transformation in one’s level of life, a sublimation of the very essence of power.

Punching above one’s weight within the same tier was possible, but fighting across tiers? That was nearly impossible!

Even in the Virtual Cosmos, where Star Lords couldn’t use their ultimate real-world weapons like “Wish Power Avatars,”

being just one tier higher allowed one to crush a Low Tier opponent with their more profound Primordial Spirit foundation as naturally as breathing.

This was the root of Li Wen’s faint regret.

However, the regret vanished in an instant.

‘Leveling up my Scholar class was an unexpected bonus to begin with.’ Li Wen’s mind quickly cleared.

His initial goal had been merely to get both his Martial Daoist and Scholar classes to level 20, trigger a system version update, and unlock the higher level 30 cap.

Now, he had exceeded that goal; his Scholar class had unexpectedly hit level 21, resulting in a significant boost to his Primordial Spirit.

This was already a tremendous help.

“There are still almost five months until the finals…” Li Wen stood up. A series of crisp cracks echoed from his bones, and his long-dormant qi and blood began to surge.

‘These five months are enough for me to push my physical body to the Star Lord Level as well!’

A powerful confidence surged in his chest.

How could a Tier One Star Lord who majored in the Time Law be measured by ordinary standards?

The previous assertion about the difficulty of fighting across tiers had never applied to masters of the two supreme Laws: Time and Space.

By then, with a formidable Tier One Star Lord Level physical body serving as the perfect vessel for the Time Law,

and a powerful Primordial Spirit that had reached the peak of the Tier One Middle Stage,

he, Li Wen, had absolute confidence that he could carve out a path to the heavens on the final stage of the Cosmic Peak Genius Tournament.

‘Just leveling up took over a month. It’s time to get moving. Thankfully, the time in the Time Tower can be accumulated.’

Having completed his class leveling, Li Wen finally pushed open the tightly sealed doors of the quiet room.

Light from the outside poured in, carrying a long-missed, vibrant air.

He first activated the communication Star Pivot on his wrist.

Just as he expected, message notifications were blinking nonstop.

Most were concerned inquiries from Isabel, which had shifted from initial confusion to later worry.

Fortunately, before leveling up, he had given the Star Pivot permission to auto-reply, informing everyone that he was in seclusion and thus avoiding unnecessary trouble.

With a light tap of his finger, Li Wen quickly replied to Isabel, Ares, and his other Source Net companions, letting them know he was safe.

After handling the communications, Li Wen didn’t delay for a moment.

His figure flashed, and he left Villa 11 in Sector B, speeding toward the Source Net branch’s iconic landmark—the Time Tower.

He intended to convert his accumulated month of time into a cornerstone for rapid advancement on the path of the Time Law.

After stepping into the Time Tower, Li Wen focused his mind. ‘Begin training. Time flow rate—200 times!’

BZZZT!

An invisible spatiotemporal force field instantly enveloped him, completely isolating him from the outside world’s flow of time.

The space inside the tower was serene and profound, as if it existed independently from the rest of the universe.

Settling into a meditative posture, Li Wen didn’t rush to dive into the sea of Laws.

With a single thought, he activated Absolute Focus.

A 210% boost to his comprehension was instantly applied.

If comprehending the Time Law before was like groping his way through a dense, foggy forest,

requiring immense mental effort to part the mist just to glimpse the vague outlines of the Law’s patterns,

then now, that dense fog seemed to have been mostly blown away by an invisible, clear wind.

The patterns of the Law, once obscure and indecipherable, were now clearly visible to him.

The speed and depth at which he could understand, deconstruct, and reassemble this information about the Law had taken a qualitative leap.

Key points that used to require repeated deductions and immense mental energy just to grasp a fleeting spark of insight,

were now things he could grasp intuitively. Many long-standing bottlenecks in his understanding,

now felt like they were resolving themselves naturally, giving him a sense of sudden, complete clarity.

‘What a powerful boost!’ Li Wen rejoiced inwardly.

The 210% comprehension boost from being a LV21 Scholar had built him a shortcut to the core of the Time Law.

This fundamental improvement in his comprehension was even more valuable than the growth of his Primordial Spirit Realm.

His confidence was more abundant than ever before.

Li Wen no longer hesitated. His Primordial Spirit visage erupted with dazzling radiance in his sea of consciousness as he fully activated the Time Law Dao Seed.

His consciousness plunged completely into the ocean of the Time Law, a fathomless sea woven from countless, ever-shifting silver threads.

Under the dual effects of the 210% comprehension boost and the 200x time flow rate,

he was like a sponge that could never be saturated, greedily absorbing the essence of the true meaning of time.

He repeatedly deduced deeper applications of the “Time Lag” Secret Technique.

He tried to integrate a trace of the concept of “Stagnation” into it, pursuing the ultimate control of an instantaneous freeze.

He simulated his battle with Barton, facing that soul-freezing, malevolent blade light countless times in his mind, contemplating how to use more subtle time accelerations or distortions to neutralize or even counter it.

He studied the stabilizing spatiotemporal power inherent in the Time Tower itself, trying to distill from it the link between the Laws that maintained stable time flow and spatial integrity…

Time flowed silently within this accelerated domain.

Every minute and every second that passed in the outside world meant that inside the tower, Li Wen had experienced hundreds or even thousands of deductions, insights, and attempts.

The aura around him grew more profound, and his mastery of the Time Law advanced at a speed far surpassing his previous pace, striding steadfastly toward that crucial threshold—the Star Lord Level.