If Li Yuan's initial exchange with Hoffman had merely made these Flying Martialists and Top-Tier Source Martialists' eyes light up, without truly shocking them—
Then when they saw Li Yuan wield the spear's True Intent of Star River Convergence and effortlessly defeat Hoffman—
Everyone in this higher-level viewing space, including dozens of Flying Martialists, was astonished, even shaken.
The higher one climbed in skill, the harder it became to advance.
Yin Man, Hamon, Hoffman, Jin Huguo, Kunale, and the rest could all be called Blue Star's top geniuses. Under normal circumstances, Blue Star only produced ten to twenty such geniuses each year.
For most of them, it took only a little over a year to go from newly entering the Fourth Stage to Mind-Micro-Perception.
But what about from Mind-Micro-Perception to the Early Fifth Stage?
Even with their higher physical fitness and mental strength generally exceeding Level 20, most still needed more than a year.
From the Early Fifth Stage to breaking into the Fifth Stage Intermediate Rank? The pace would become even slower.
After all, Early Fifth Stage skill was already enough to make one a Top-Tier Source Martialist.
Then came the Late Fifth Stage, Fifth-Stage Perfection... Every step forward after that saw the difficulty rise by geometric orders.
Under normal circumstances, if these top Blue Star geniuses could reach Fifth-Stage Perfection within the next ten years—before turning thirty—and meet the baseline requirement for becoming a Flying Martialist, that would already count as tremendous success.
Many would even remain trapped at Late Fifth Stage skill.
Skill advancement had never been something one could inevitably achieve just by spending enough time.
Many so-called martial arts geniuses would reach a certain limit and then fall into a bottleneck they could hardly break through, because such bottlenecks were usually the limits of their