Battle the Green-Clad (Part 1)

However—

"Tss!"

Faced with the overwhelming blade-light that could easily tear apart a high-level perfected martial artist, the Green-Clad Man showed no hesitation or panic.

He simply lifted the long staff in his hand, his wrist flicking several times at an almost imperceptible frequency, and the staff transformed into an impenetrable circular barrier of shadow.

"Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding—!!!"

A series of crisp clangs, so dense they nearly overlapped, rang out like rain pelting banana leaves. Sparks erupted wildly where the staff's shadow met the blade-light.

That seemingly all-encompassing blade-light crashed against the staff's barrier like waves against the hardest reef, each strike precisely blocked and deflected, unable to advance an inch.

The Green-Clad Man didn't even shift his footing.

What chilled Li Wen even more was that when Piercing Sun's immense impact was effortlessly neutralized by his opponent, leaving him in that delicate moment of transition between moves—old force spent, new force not yet born—

That ordinary long staff, like a venomous dragon lying in ambush, silently pierced through all the remaining blade-light.

No earth-shattering momentum, only a faint, razor-thin shadow of a thrust, the staff's tip aimed straight at Li Wen's heart.

The very air seemed to be easily pierced by this strike.

"Not good!" A sharp sense of crisis made Li Wen's scalp tingle. Pure survival instinct drove his body to react.

"Clang—!"

A dull, explosive sound, far heavier than before.

In the split second before the staff's tip struck Li Wen's heart, he twisted his body and sidestepped, barely managing to raise his saber vertically, using the thick blade-face to block the staff's tip across his chest.

The terrifying shockwave from the blade-face far surpassed any blow from his earlier fight with the Yellow-Clad Man.

This force was violent, precise, and condensed! It traveled through the blade into his arms, then slammed into his entire body.

"Pfft!" Li Wen felt as if both arms had been struck by a high-speed battering ram, instantly numb and senseless. His chest churned with surging blood, and a sweet, metallic taste rose in his throat.

His entire body, like a kite with a snapped string, was blasted off the ground by this overwhelming force.

"Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp~!" He stumbled backward seven or eight meters across the unyielding arena floor, dragging a long trail, barely managing to steady himself without falling.

But the tiger's-mouth of both hands holding the saber had split open, oozing blood. The tearing pain and numbness in his arm muscles nearly made him lose his grip on the hilt. His chest felt crushed by a heavy stone, suffocating and breathless.

A single strike! With the same virtual body level, the gap was like heaven and earth.

This was the overwhelming, undeniable advantage of a top-tier technique at "Minor Mastery" over "Entry Level"—a gap far beyond mere skill familiarity.

Each rise in technique realm brought a transformative change in understanding, wielding, and explosive efficiency of power.

With the same physical strength, a martial artist at Minor Mastery could unleash power, speed, and destructiveness far beyond what an Entry Level could achieve.

It was a deeper excavation and control of the body's potential.

"Haah... haah..." Li Wen panted heavily, each inhale and exhale bringing a sharp sting to his chest.

Sweat mixed with blood from his split tiger's-mouth stained the saber's hilt.

That single staff blow had shown him the vast chasm clearly.

"If I keep defending like this, I won't last more than a few moves before losing... I can't drag this out any longer."

Watching the Green-Clad Man approach with staff in hand, exuding an overwhelming, crushing aura, a glint of desperate madness and resolve flashed in Li Wen's eyes.

He realized that relying on the normal performance of his Entry Level Rainbow Light Blade Art would leave him utterly helpless.

Finally, it was time to use his trump card.

"Activate—[Absolute Focus]!"

The thought flashed through his mind.

In fact, as soon as he entered the virtual world, Li Wen had cautiously tried to sense it.

He found that in this near-real virtual space, he could still freely mobilize and activate his innate skill, [Absolute Focus].

This was his greatest confidence in facing the Green-Clad Man.

Faced with this rare, perfect opportunity to fight without restraint, without fear of backlash or harming his real body, how could he let it slip?

How could he give up this precious training experience just because the gap was huge?

Moreover, he had never truly activated [Absolute Focus] under the high-pressure, life-or-death intensity of actual combat.

In his usual training, he mostly used the 30% boost in comprehension that [Absolute Focus] provided.

He immersed himself in understanding the blade art and deeper insights into techniques, rarely—or never—having the chance to fully apply its ultra-fine control over physical strength.

This would be an unprecedented exploration, a true test of his combat limits.

With Absolute Focus at Level 3, facing a top-tier Minor Mastery opponent, how much more control could he gain over this "virtual" body's strength?

How much more combat power could he unleash beyond Entry Level? How much could he close this seemingly insurmountable gap?

As for whether activating the skill would be noticed from the outside... Li Wen sneered inwardly, utterly dismissive.

First, Level 3 [Absolute Focus] was inherently extremely subtle in activation. Its external manifestation was merely heightened concentration, a sharper, more focused gaze—perfectly normal in life-or-death combat.

Besides, the teachers and students outside were only watching the 2D projection on the central screen.

In this single-perspective, distant 2D image, who could possibly detect the subtle shift in a martial artist's gaze during high-speed movement and flickering frames?

That was nothing short of a fool's dream. The skill activated, and the switch in the spiritual world was fully thrown.

Boom—!

A vast, icy-clear spiritual force, as if capable of freezing and solidifying every impurity deep within the mind, instantly seized control of Li Wen's consciousness.

The speed of his brain's operation was pushed to an unimaginable level in an instant.

Thoughts became like an accelerated stream of particles. What once took a few tenths of a second to observe, judge, and decide was now compressed into microseconds.

The entire world seemed to slow down before his eyes.

The Green-Clad Man's step-by-step approach, the flow of power along the staff's body, the subtle currents stirred in the surrounding air... a torrent of information flooded in, instantly deconstructed and analyzed by the hyperactive core of his mind.

This was the qualitative change brought by the 30% comprehension boost from lv3 Absolute Focus.

It wasn't just about learning and understanding. On the razor's edge of battle, it transformed into the most precise situational awareness and predictive deduction.

But it didn't stop there.

A deeper sensation—a feeling of his physical control being forcibly "optimized"—surged like an electric current through every extremity of his "virtual" body.

It was the precise mobilization of every muscle fiber, the more refined command of every surging breath of blood and qi.