Because he had yet to find the "Starry Sky Meteoric Iron," Su Fan was utterly unable to break through his own shackles by a large margin and increase his strength.
Moreover, the fluctuations of spiritual energy around him had remained stuck at a bottleneck, making it impossible to advance even an inch further.
Su Fan had no choice but to seek another path, doing everything in his power to temper himself from every angle and not letting slip any possibility of becoming stronger.
For example, there were the two close-combat body-cultivation techniques, Nine Extremes Consecutive Slashes and Xingyi Quan.
After decades of ceaseless polishing and tempering through actual combat, these two techniques had long since shed their youthful roughness. Every move and stance contained the sharpness forged through a thousand trials.
Their power was worlds apart from when he had first learned them. With the slightest movement, they could tear through the air and shatter mountains.
As for those divine abilities and secret arts fused with Evil Spirit Origin Qi, he had taken advantage of the interval before the coming chaos, cultivating day and night and repeatedly deducing them.
Every one of them had made great strides. As they circulated, sinister radiance flickered faintly, and their power grew increasingly bizarre and overbearing.
Though he had not achieved an explosive, cross-level surge in strength, his overall combat power had already been thoroughly solidified and comprehensively enhanced.
Every inch of his muscles and bones, every wisp of spiritual energy, was more condensed and formidable than before.
On a summer afternoon, the scorching sunlight pierced through layer upon layer of ancient tree crowns, casting mottled, scattered shadows across the ground.
A gentle breeze brushed past, carrying a rare trace of tranquility, yet faintly revealing the oppressive stillness before the mountain rain.
On the