Bottleneck

"No matter how wonderful my visions of the future may be, my own strength had to at least reach the Saint Realm. Otherwise, once ten thousand years passed and I turned into a pile of dust, no matter how perfect the plan or how carefully I calculated, it would all be useless!"

Six years later, Monster Mountain Range

Fengyun, now a Level 4 Warrior, was fighting a Bloodthirsty Warpig whose left foreleg had been severed.

Though Fengyun was weaker than the Level Five Bloodthirsty Warpig, the difference was only one level. Moreover, its broken leg made up for part of that gap.

"Ha! Light Shadow Slash!"

As the battle reached its climax, Fengyun let out a roar. Light and shadow swirled around the knight sword in his hand as five or six white Battle Qi Slashes shot from its blade.

Seeing the Battle Qi Slashes targeting its vital points, the Bloodthirsty Warpig's pupils contracted. It gathered the energy within its body at the stump of its foreleg, hoping to withstand this wave of attacks head-on.

It did so because Fengyun had used this move before. Previously, after choosing to defend in every direction, it had discovered that among all those Battle Qi Slashes, only the one aimed at its broken leg was real. The rest were fakes.

As a result, Fengyun had used a single point to break through its defense, worsening the injury at its severed leg until blood poured nonstop. Then, seizing the opportunity, Fengyun had rushed in and, at the cost of a minor injury, destroyed its left eye!

Now that Fengyun had used this move again, how could it fall for the same trick twice?

At the same time, its remaining right eye stared fixedly at Fengyun. If Fengyun dared to follow behind the Battle Qi Slashes as he had before, then no matter the price, it would give him a vicious blow.

But this time, it was wrong again!

Among these illusory Battle Qi Slashes, there was indeed still only one real attack, while the rest were false strikes he had unleashed.

But this time, the real attack was the Battle Qi Slash aimed at the Bloodthirsty Warpig's right eye. Just as it was about to hit, the entire Battle Qi Slash suddenly blazed with an intensely dazzling white radiance.

That was right. This time, Fengyun had never intended to use the Battle Qi Slash as an energy attack. He merely intended to unleash a burst of intense light and temporarily blind the Bloodthirsty Warpig.

This consumed less battle qi, yet the effect was no worse. In fact, it was even safer.

If he attacked with a Battle Qi Slash, the Bloodthirsty Warpig might still have time to gather energy and block it. But being blinded by intense light happened in an instant. Its bloodshot eyes were wide open; it had no chance to close them.

Awoo—

Splat—

After a miserable cry, there came the sound of blood spraying as a sharp blade sliced across its throat.

Looking at the fallen Bloodthirsty Warpig, Fengyun muttered, "Ever since I broke through to become a Level 4 Warrior three years ago, aside from tempering myself in the Level Four hunting grounds..."

"I had also regularly left the safe zone of the hunting grounds to experience true Monster Trials, where no one protected me."

"Using this cultivation method of stealing Heaven's secrets, I kept myself tense at all times and sought rapid improvement. Yet now, I had only tempered my strength to the Level 4 Peak!"

"I was still just one small step away from breaking through to Level Five and becoming an Advanced Warrior!"

"And yet that one small step made for a world of difference. If that Bloodthirsty Warpig's foreleg had not been severed, making it inconvenient for it to move, I would probably have needed to go all out and suffer serious injuries to take it down!"

"Was it truly right for me to choose the path of specializing in Light Shadow Slash?"

After witnessing Black Mountain Instructor's exceptionally flexible Phantom Slash with his own eyes, Fengyun had decided to cast everything else aside and specialize in Light Shadow Slash. Even in magic, he had only cultivated the Healing Spell his mother had explained to him long ago, using it as a means of recovery.

The reason was simple. The longer he lived in this world, the more he realized that his talent truly was not very good.

When one's talent was genuinely lacking, rather than spreading one's time and energy across more methods, it was better to specialize in a single skill. That was his cultivation philosophy.

Black Mountain was proof that specializing in low-level Combat Skills did not amount to much once one's strength became high enough. At most, it only made one more proficient at controlling those Combat Skills.

But in Fengyun's view, that argument overlooked the greatest benefit of specializing in a single Combat Skill: exquisite control over the fundamentals, such as one's body and battle qi.

Before mastering the Mysteries of the Laws, warrior cultivation in the Coiling Dragon World was mainly divided into three levels. The third level was the Force Realm, also known as Drawing Upon Heaven and Earth.

Comprehending the Force Realm was equivalent to obtaining the key to entering the Saint Realm. Once one's cultivation reached the Level 9 Peak, one would naturally attain the Saint Realm.

The second level was Lifting the Heavy as if Light and Lifting the Light as if Heavy. One was the realm pursued by warriors who used heavy weapons, while the other was the realm pursued by warriors who used light weapons.

But fundamentally, there was no difference between them. They were the same realm, merely approached through different cultivation paths.

The first and most basic level was perfect mastery of one's fundamentals, requiring warriors to perfectly control such basic things as their own strength and battle qi!

Having cast everything aside to focus solely on Light Shadow Slash, he had already achieved perfect control over everything about himself back when he was at the Level 3 Peak.

Not only had he mastered every variation and application of Light Shadow Slash, but with the Light Attribute battle qi codex he had switched to, the "Radiant Codex," he had also developed Sun Slash and Illusionary Slash around Light Shadow Slash as the core.

He could even rely on his perfect control over strength and speed, along with the naturally swift speed of a Light Attribute warrior, to kill Fifth-Level Magical Beasts above his level without issue.

Against a Bloodthirsty Warpig with a broken leg, he could even kill it quickly with only minor injuries!

Yet after training bitterly for so long, despite already reaching the Level 4 Peak, he had never managed to make a breakthrough in either Lifting the Heavy as if Light or Lifting the Light as if Heavy!

If he remembered correctly, in the original story, Lin Lei, the protagonist, had mastered Lifting the Heavy as if Light after merely three years of trials in the Monster Mountain Range.

He had even entered the Force Realm and gained an initial grasp of Wind Momentum and Earth Momentum.

Yet even now, Fengyun remained at the first level, perfect mastery of the fundamentals. Even deliberately having a smith modify his knight sword—either reducing its weight to practice light-sword techniques or enlarging and weighting it to practice heavy-sword techniques—had been useless.

He had even affected his greatest advantage as a Light Attribute warrior—speed—by switching to the heavy sword. After leaving the hunting grounds specially constructed by the Church, he had several times fallen into the danger of being pursued by magical beasts!

Yet he had never abandoned the path of specializing in Combat Skills, nor had he given up on Light Shadow Slash!

Because Light Shadow Slash was different. Though it was likewise a low-level Combat Skill and had been directly modified from the low-level Combat Skill Phantom Slash—

As an attribute-based Combat Skill, Light Shadow Slash involved Mysteries of the Laws. If nothing else, it certainly contained at least the most basic Light Element Profound Mystery!