Chapter 883: Law of Space!

Li Yun tightened his grip on the Profound Origin Sword. A faint five-colored glow still surrounded it, since he was using only a small amount of Five Element Intent and nothing more. Then he vanished.

“Fast Sword.”

The golden-armored warrior’s pupils shrank at the sheer speed. This time, Li Yun had not simply launched Fast Sword from a distance. He had matched his own movement to the technique.

The enormous saber light came down and struck nothing but an afterimage, and the ocean exploded. Li Yun had already appeared beside the golden-armored warrior, with his sword closing in on the man’s neck.

The warrior reacted quickly and raised his saber sideways. Sparks burst out with a clang, but before he could counterattack, Li Yun’s sword was gone again. The second Fast Sword strike came from below, and the warrior blocked it desperately. Then came the third, the fourth, and the fifth.

Li Yun’s sword kept getting faster. Streaks of sword light surrounded the golden-armored warrior, and the ringing of metal sounded without pause above the ocean. The warrior had gone from attacking to defending. Each strike came from a different angle, aimed at his throat, his chest, his waist, his arms, or his head, and he could barely keep up.

Worse still, the Five Element Intent kept changing the nature of Li Yun’s attacks. One strike grew heavier through Earth, and another gained extreme sharpness through Metal.

The next bent strangely around the saber through Water, and another burst with sudden power through Fire. Wood linked the attacks together so that each one flowed naturally into the next. The warrior had to adapt constantly.

After dozens of exchanges, a flaw appeared, and Li Yun saw it immediately. Fast Sword suddenly stopped. The golden-armored warrior had grown used to the storm of rapid attacks, and their abrupt disappearance broke his rhythm.

Then Li Yun moved again, slowly this time.

“Slow Sword.”

The warrior’s expression changed. He tried to retreat, but it was too late. The strange sensation had returned. His thoughts seemed delayed, his reactions slowed down, and the saber in his hands suddenly felt heavier. Even the energy around him seemed to fall into Li Yun’s rhythm, while Five Element Intent circled around Slow Sword and steadied its influence.

The golden-armored warrior watched the blade approach. It looked slow enough that avoiding it should have taken no effort, yet his body simply could not respond in time. Every movement was one instant behind, and one instant was enough.

The Profound Origin Sword passed through his chest, and Five Element Intent erupted inside him.

Metal tore through his defenses, Fire exploded through his meridians, and Water carried the destructive force throughout his body. Wood made that spreading force keep multiplying through his interconnected channels, and Earth came down last with crushing weight.

The golden-armored warrior exploded into golden fragments and energy with a boom, and silence returned to the ocean.

Li Yun lowered his sword. Throughout the battle, he had used only Fast Sword and Slow Sword, supported by a small amount of Five Element Intent. That was all. Yet the first-floor guardian had failed to put him under any real pressure.

Ripples appeared in the air, and the golden-armored warrior reappeared. This time, the indifference in his eyes was gone, and astonishment had taken its place.

“You win.”

He studied Li Yun.

“To defeat me on your first attempt and pass the first floor right away… I did not expect someone like you to appear.”

Li Yun shook his head. “I was just lucky.”

He did not think the victory was especially extraordinary. The battle had, however, helped him understand why everyone said that lower cultivation was an advantage inside the Everlasting Pagoda.

The relative amplification stayed about the same regardless of realm, but the absolute difference changed enormously. If a baseline strength of one was amplified thirty times, the result was thirty, and the difference was twenty-nine.

If a baseline strength of ten received the same thirtyfold amplification, the result was three hundred, and the difference became two hundred and ninety. The multiplier had not changed, but the actual gap had grown far larger.

That was why Dao Resonance Realm challengers found the pagoda almost impossible, while Spirit Manifestation Realm cultivators at least had some chance.

Li Yun’s own situation was even stranger. His realm was lower than the pagoda’s normal Spirit Manifestation baseline. By ordinary logic, that should have put him at an even greater disadvantage. He simply had combat power that defied ordinary logic.

The golden-armored warrior raised a hand, and a golden doorway appeared.

“You have passed. Go through that gate to reach the second floor.”

Then he paused.

“You are talented, so I will give you one warning. The second floor is completely different from this one. You have some chance of winning, but if you lose, do not let that defeat discourage you. With your talent, perhaps one day you really will clear all three floors.”

Li Yun nodded. “Understood.”

He stepped through the golden gate, and his surroundings changed. Another calm ocean appeared, but this time a lone old man was sitting above the water. He wore a straw raincoat and a bamboo hat, and he held a fishing rod in his hands.

The rod looked completely ordinary and was only a few meters long. Its line, however, stretched hundreds of feet through the air before disappearing into the ocean.

“It has been a long time,” the old man said.

He did not even look at Li Yun, and his attention stayed on the water.

“At last, another young fellow has reached my second floor. These long years of waiting have been terribly boring.”

Li Yun’s expression turned serious.

“Senior, please teach me.”

The old fisherman’s cultivation was also only at the 1st level of Spirit Manifestation Realm. Even so, Li Yun understood instinctively that the gap between this old man and the first-floor guardian was enormous.

The old fisherman nodded.

“Very well. If you want guidance, then watch carefully.” He stood up. “Pay attention to this one move.”

He flicked the fishing rod, and the line burst out of the water with a splash. Although it was hundreds of feet long, the line moved with impossible flexibility as it lashed toward Li Yun.

Li Yun’s expression changed completely.

‘What kind of technique is this?’

He saw the fishing line, and he knew it was attacking him, yet his body did not respond. For an instant, he wondered whether some power had frozen him in place. Then he understood.

Nothing had restrained his body. The attack was simply too fast, and not merely fast in the usual sense. It reached him before his body could react in any meaningful way to what his eyes had already seen.

The fishing line swept across Li Yun’s waist and cut his body cleanly in half.

Ripples appeared elsewhere, and Li Yun’s body was reconstructed dozens of feet away. He still looked stunned by how strong the old man was.

Both opponents had cultivation at the 1st level of Spirit Manifestation Realm, yet the old fisherman’s strength was on an entirely different level. The attack Li Yun had just experienced had killing power comparable to the highest levels of the Spirit Manifestation Realm.

It could probably kill many cultivators at the perfection stage of the 8th level in one move, and its true threat had already reached the 9th level. Yet the realm the old man displayed was still the 1st level of Spirit Manifestation Realm, and Li Yun could not see how someone at that realm could produce such terrifying combat power.

Then the answer struck him.

“Space.” Li Yun’s eyes flashed. “The Law of Space.”

The attack still used the same general amplification principle as the first-floor guardian’s, but it also contained something far more dangerous, which was a trace of spatial law.

No matter how fast Fast Sword became, it still had to cross a distance. It had a starting point, a path, and an end point. Spatial power could ignore that process.

An attack could skip the distance between two places without traveling in the normal way. That was why Li Yun had seen the strike but had been unable to react. The fishing line had not simply moved faster than he could. It had crossed space.

The old fisherman smiled faintly.

“You worked it out quickly. Go and meditate. In a few years, you may be able to block one move. After a hundred years, you may have some hope of defeating me.”

He waved a hand casually, and Li Yun disappeared. The next moment, he found himself standing outside the Everlasting Pagoda.

Feng Xuan and the cultivators around him noticed at once.

“He’s out.”

“He lasted much longer than I expected.”

“It looks like he managed to survive several exchanges with the first-floor guardian.”

“That’s already impressive for a first attempt.”

“If he keeps cultivating for a few decades, or maybe a few centuries, he might actually become the thirty-seventh person to clear the first floor.”

None of them understood yet what had really happened inside. Li Yun had not merely survived the first floor. He had passed it on his very first attempt.