Face-to-face with Him Is an Honor

Ambition.

Attempting a challenge.

The gap was too great.

Lying low and accumulating strength.

Training with everything he had.

Challenging him again.

Damn it, the gap's even bigger now—so big he can't even see the other guy's taillights. No, I'll work a little harder...

All right, hard work is useless. I'm giving up and accepting my fate...

For Shang Zhaoya.

After his various psychological stages had been heavily condensed, they more or less looked like this.

After all, it was the profound despair of knowing that no matter how hard he tried, he could never even remotely catch up to Xi Shenlian.

And when a situation became desperate enough, the choice that ultimately remained was often nothing more than giving up and going limp.

Shang Zhaoya was exactly like that now.

Though it might not sound very nice.

When faced with a gap that could never be closed, giving up was indeed the most comfortable and practical choice.

Once upon a time, he had also been a proud prodigy—a genuine prodigy, one in a billion.

Looking back across Earth's history.

A person with talent approaching his level probably appeared only once every several tens of thousands of years.

It was precisely because he was so outstanding.

That Shang Zhaoya had been able to contend with Xiarad Coles head-on. For quite a long time, he could even be said to have held his own, trading blows evenly with the other party.

Only after the other party developed his Conceptual Type Supernatural Ability to an extraordinarily profound level could he use the ability's traits and advantages to completely suppress Shang Zhaoya, leaving him at an utter disadvantage.

However.

Even after reaching such a level of excellence, when facing Xi Shenlian, who came from the same hometown, he could still only feel