The Path of Law Analysis

After thinking it over, he realized that passing the first level of the Heavenly Bridge wasn't out of the question.

Even if his comprehension still fell a little short, he was sure he could pass after waiting a while longer.

The problem was, he still had some reservations about letting other people watch him fight.

Right now, he could go toe-to-toe with a virtual copy of his original self. But when he watched the recording afterward, he sometimes felt his split-second reactions and decisions had been incredibly stupid. If not for those flaws, he could beat his original self seven times out of ten.

"No, I'll have to wait a little longer before crossing the bridge. Then the only option is..." Li Dui's eyes lit up. "Xiao Le, look up Lian Luo's former residence in Chaos City."

"Searching now."

The Auxiliary Intelligence acted quickly.

"Master, Lian Luo's residence in Chaos City is Number 0290028981."

"Take me there," Li Dui said without hesitation.

"Yes. Plotting your route."

He left his residence without looking back and followed the navigation toward his destination.

Outside residence 020028981.

The words "Nine Universe School" were written on the wall of the residence.

Li Dui knew that any residence with such a sign on the wall was a public cultivation area with special significance. They were open to talented cultivators who wished to study and practice there, and no one was allowed to claim them for personal use.

He entered through the main gate and leaped onto the rooftop.

No other geniuses were there at the moment. The path of law analysis was difficult, and ordinary geniuses weren't very familiar with it.

Li Dui walked around the rooftop, which was a hundred meters long and wide.

It was covered in all sorts of random carvings, along with several lines of peculiar writing.

He paid no attention to the random carvings. He had come for those few lines of strange writing.

There were 108 characters in all.

Li Dui didn't recognize the characters, but he didn't need to. What mattered was the characters themselves. Each one represented a sword technique, and each technique expressed one of the most basic mysteries of the laws of space as Lian Luo understood them.

Li Dui didn't need to follow Lian Luo's path exactly. He just needed a template to show him how to analyze the laws. Otherwise, he wouldn't know where to start.

He sat down before the first character. Within seconds, Li Dui had entered the proper state. He was an old hand now. Not only could he enter quickly, but he wouldn't be kicked out just because his attention wandered for a moment.

To put Li Dui's comprehension speed into perspective, his original self had comprehended the Earth Origin Law at the age of 310. Thirty years later, he had crossed the threshold of the Law of Earth. At 350, he had comprehended a trace of the Origin Law of Space.

The Peak Genius Tournament had begun when he was 376. It had lasted about four years. Then, after a three-year journey to Chaos City, he had studied the Giant Axe Chaos Stele and cultivated in seclusion for another year.

That was a total of 74 years, or 888 months.

But Li Dui was confident that if he started from scratch, he could spend a month focused on wind and time, thunder and time, or light and time. Any one of those combinations would let him reach or even surpass his original self's level of law comprehension before his death.

Just one month. That was nearly a thousand times the comprehension speed.

Was that exaggerated? Yes and no.

The Human Race was vast. Some geniuses had talents beyond ordinary people's imagination.

Take Luo Feng's generation, for example.

After thirty years in Chaos City, Bolan had passed the sixth level of the Heavenly Bridge. Luo Feng had passed the fifth, and Rong Jun the fourth.

Bolan had only stopped at the sixth because he was too stubborn. If he had focused on space instead of stubbornly challenging time, he could have passed the seventh level.

Yet among the thousand geniuses in each Genius Battle, more than 99 percent couldn't pass the third level of the Heavenly Bridge within thirty years.

Bolan was merely a genius who appeared once every ten thousand eras. A genius of his caliber emerged in the Human Race once every hundred million years. Even so, there was no guarantee someone at that level could become a King-level Immortal. They might hit a bottleneck one day and remain stuck for countless eras.

The Human Race had been one of the universe's peak races for a very, very long time. As far as Li Dui could remember, there were only a little over a hundred thousand King-level Immortals alive.

He focused half his mind on the first character Lian Luo had left behind. With the other half, he followed the only layer of light on the Ring that he could sense, letting it flow continuously.

This wasn't the first time he had tried something like this. Before, he had studied the Ring while comprehending the secret technique his original self had bought for 900 points.

Doing this would slightly slow his law comprehension, but his progress in understanding the secret technique would skyrocket. It felt as if the Ring were a dictionary and the secret technique a passage of text. If the passage contained words he didn't recognize or understand, he could look them up in the dictionary. It would always have the answers, allowing him to understand the passage smoothly.

In truth, even if his comprehension speed were a thousand times his original self's, that would be impressive, but it might not be enough to make him unrivaled.

The Ring's true power lay in how smoothly it let him progress. He had no doubts to hold him back, and he could keep improving without interruption.

Li Dui immersed himself in his studies.

He adjusted his focus to Earth and space as his main fields, with the other eight as secondary. If he suddenly needed points someday, the most direct way to get them would be to pass the Heavenly Bridge. Besides, he had been in Chaos City for a year and a half now, and quite a few of the thousand people in his cohort had begun passing the first level. It was time for him to put it on his schedule too.

On the rooftops of countless residences in Chaos City, who knew how many cultivators were quietly training, searching for their own path to greater strength.

Rainy Mountain, Ten Thousand Languages Pavilion.

"Miss Luliduo, I'm that kid you saved at the city gate last time... Please accept my request, thanks."

A voice message played in the private room.

Luliduo sat barefoot and slouched without a care in the world in a wide chair, sipping a large drink through a straw.

Across from her sat a beautiful young woman with curly green hair and fine, sparse green markings on her pretty face.

The girl took a bite of fruit and laughed through a mouthful. "Hahaha. 'Miss Luliduo~~' Even in a stuffy place like Chaos City, you managed to run into someone this funny. Why don't you accept his request?"

Luliduo rolled her eyes. "You do remember I'm in Chaos City, right? If it weren't for you, Miss Qianshui, I wouldn't have gotten to spend half a day out today."

"Oh, Luli, you've been there almost two years, and I've barely seen you log in to the Virtual Universe. If I didn't drag you out for a change of scenery, you'd have studied yourself dizzy by now, wouldn't you?" The beautiful girl tilted her head and looked at Luliduo.

"Yeah, I guess." Luliduo took a sip of her drink, then continued, "Whatever. This time, as long as I can pass the seventh level of the Heavenly Bridge, I'll be happy. Better yet, I'll build up a few more points. That way, if I fall to the Doomsday Secret Realm in the future, I can climb back to the Heaven and Earth Secret Realm quickly."

"Who knows? Maybe one day you'll suddenly make a breakthrough. Then we can charge into the Primordial Secret Realm together." Qianshui clenched a fist and gave it a little pump.

"Yeah, right. How could that happen? I can't let myself dream that big," Luliduo said, shaking her head.

Qianshui wasn't convinced. "Why not? Look at Luo Feng. He started out in the Primordial Secret Realm, just like me. And look how little time has passed—he's already passed the Domain Lord Level Original Heavenly Mountain. After he became a World Lord, I wasn't even qualified to look up his records."

"Luo Feng..." Luliduo couldn't help but freeze for a moment. It was a legendary name. "Oh, right. That kid I just told you about is from the same race as Luo Feng."

Curiosity glinted in Qianshui's eyes. "Really? Then invite him over. What are you afraid of? So many people from the Heaven and Earth and Doomsday Secret Realms are chasing after the beautiful Luliduo, and you've never been afraid of them. Why be afraid of one kid?"

"Get out of here. All right, Miss, I'm going back to cultivation as soon as I finish this drink. Chaos City, girl. The next time I want to visit, I might already be a World Lord."

"Fine, fine. You're no fun."