Li Xiang felt as though a heavy hammer had cracked his skull open. Then a river of stars poured in from the highest heavens.
"Humm—!"
An invisible ripple spread from the crown of his head.
Clarity.
A depth of clarity he had never known, impossible to put into words, took over every one of Li Xiang's senses.
For one brief moment, he entered the legendary state of Omniscience.
The Five-Colored Divine Fire before him, fierce enough to set souls ablaze, was no longer mere heat and destruction. In Li Xiang's sight, the flames unraveled into countless dancing threads of fundamental law, each tracing how the Five Elements generated and overcame one another.
Metal's sharpness, Wood's growth, Water's changeability, Fire's violence, Earth's solidity.
The principles of Xingyi Five Elements Fist, which had once demanded long hours of painstaking study, lay open in his mind like a primer covered in detailed notes.
The paths of all Five Martial Forces, even the slightest hitch as blood qi flowed through his meridians, were caught, corrected, and refined by that terrifying power of calculation.
"So that's how it works..."
Deep in Li Xiang's eyes, there was no wild joy, only the cool reason of someone who had glimpsed the truth.
He saw the rough seams left by his earlier fusion of the Five-Element Martial Force. What had seemed seamless was, in fact, riddled with hidden dangers.
Ordinarily, those dangers might not have surfaced until he tried to break through to a higher realm. Now they lay bare.
With a flicker of intent, the great dragon of his spine rang out with a soaring dragon's cry.
Li Xiang guided the Dragon Force taking shape within him, shattered it without mercy, and forged it anew along the flawless path he had just deduced.
Altering its foundations should