High Martial: I Grind Professions

Chapter 400: Chapter 240: One Year Later

The air was instantly ionized, leaving a scorching scar in its wake.

Rampant Demon Power coalesced on his claws, which glinted with a cold light as they shot straight for Li Wen’s head.

This strike contained the full power of a peak Great Demon King and was imbued with the extreme lightning speed he was so proud of.

He was confident it could instantly kill any King Realm expert, that even an invincible King would be unable to block its edge.

He had to kill him in one blow, seize the treasure, and wash away the shame of letting his opponent escape last time.

Faced with this pounce, as fast as a thunderbolt and incomparably savage, Li Wen’s expression remained as tranquil as an ancient well.

In his perception, the Thunder Wing King’s movements, which would have seemed impossibly fast to an outside observer, now appeared like an image slowed down countless times.

The trajectory of the lightning Law, the nodes where Demon Power erupted, the subtle angle of the claws tearing through the air, even the mixture of greed and cruelty in his foe’s eyes...

Every minute detail was projected with perfect clarity into his sea of consciousness.

In his eyes, his opponent’s vaunted speed was riddled with flaws.

In the thousandth of a second before the Thunder Wing King’s claws could touch the tips of his hair, Li Wen moved.

He didn’t draw his blade.

He simply raised his right hand and extended his index finger.

The movement seemed slow, yet it arrived first despite starting later, precisely blocking the path of the claw wreathed in destructive lightning.

Upon his fingertip, a deep, silver-gray point of light suddenly bloomed, seeming to devour all light around it.

It was a highly condensed point of Cosmic True Gang, infused with the boundless power of his Primordial Spirit.

Primordial Spirit power infused into True Gang!

”Condense,” Li Wen uttered, his voice a single, detached syllable.

As the syllable fell, an invisible will, one that seemed capable of commanding all thunder, erupted outward with his fingertip’s silver-gray light at its core.

In that instant, a shocking scene unfolded!

Within a radius of several hundred zhang, the sky full of chaotic, rampaging lightning strikes suddenly froze, as if answering a supreme summons.

Immediately after, countless bolts of purple and silver lightning, both thick and thin, were violently drawn and tamed as if by an invisible giant hand, converging madly toward Li Wen’s fingertip.

Ten Thousand Bolts of Lightning Pay Homage!

The gathered lightning power didn’t attack directly. Instead, it was perfectly commanded, compressed, and shaped by the silver-gray True Gang at his fingertip, which was fused with the Space Law and the mighty power of his Primordial Spirit.

In just one ten-thousandth of a second.

An immense phantom finger materialized out of thin air!

The finger was composed entirely of lightning condensed to the extreme. Silver-gray Space Law runes flowed across its surface, destructive sparks danced at its tip, and it was over a hundred zhang long.

The pressure it emanated was no longer just that of simple lightning-based destruction, but also carried a supreme majesty that could seal space and pass judgment over life and death.

It was like the divine finger of punishment, sent down by an ancient Thunder God!

The savage grin on the Thunder Wing King’s face froze instantly, replaced by boundless terror and despair.

He was the closest, and he felt it the most keenly.

The finger had yet to descend, but a terrifying pressure capable of freezing his soul and crushing space had already locked him firmly in place.

His prized lightning speed was now like a fly caught in a vast swamp.

No matter how frantically he flapped his wings or unleashed his Demon Power, he felt like an insect pinned in amber, finding it impossible to move even a single inch.

”No!! This is impossible!!” he shrieked in a mournful, desperate roar.

His golden, vertical pupils reflected the colossal lightning finger that blotted out the sky and radiated a world-ending aura, his eyes filled with disbelief.

One year! Just one year!

’How could the human who fled from my pursuit in such a sorry state possess such terrifying power?!’

’This power... this is clearly at the Venerable level!’

His only answer was Li Wen’s placid gaze and the giant finger slowly pressing down.

”Suppress!”

There was no earth-shattering explosion, only a dull hum as space was compressed to its limit and matter was instantly annihilated.

The great lightning finger, like a god pressing down a seal of divine punishment, tapped lightly upon the Thunder Wing King’s body with an irresistible will.

Time seemed to freeze in that moment.

The shield of rampant Demon Power around the Thunder Wing King shattered as silently as a soap bubble.

His formidable peak Great Demon King’s body, tempered by lightning, couldn’t even put up the slightest resistance the moment it touched the tip of the giant finger.

It disintegrated inch by inch, like a sand sculpture weathered by the wind.

Amidst the blinding lightning and the silver-gray power of spatial annihilation, it was reduced to the finest particles and dissipated completely from the world.

Only a pair of enormous wings, covered in fine scales and still crackling with residual lightning, and a faintly glowing storage artifact remained.

Due to their unique materials and not being part of his life core, they survived the annihilation force at the edge of the giant finger and fell from the sky.

The colossal lightning finger slowly faded, and the core of the raging lightning region seemed to experience a brief moment of calm.

Then, an even greater torrent of lightning once again filled the space, as if that world-shaking strike had never happened.

Li Wen slowly withdrew his finger, the light at its tip fading away.

He gestured through the air at the falling wings and storage artifact.

A gentle spatial force enveloped them, instantly pulling them before him, and he stored them in the spatial bracelet on his wrist.

After doing all this, Li Wen hovered quietly amid the raging lightning.

His gaze swept over the spot where the Thunder Wing King had vanished. There was nothing left, not even a trace of demonic energy residue.

His desperate flight a year ago, teetering on the brink of life and death, felt like only yesterday.

One year later, at the same location, facing an even stronger opponent, all it took was a single finger to turn him to dust.

A complex light flickered in Li Wen’s eyes—a mix of emotion and resolve that finally settled into a profound calm.

”One year...” he whispered, his voice drowned out by the rolling thunder.

The core of this lightning world had witnessed his transformation from struggling to survive to looking down upon a powerful foe.

This was another solid step forward on his journey to protect the Human Race.

He didn’t linger. With a turn, his figure once again merged into the endless lightning.

He continued to use this perfect environment to polish his Thunder Shocking Blade Intent, which had just reached the threshold of the Venerable level.

As for this minor interlude, it was like a mere speck of dust brushed aside on his path of cultivation.

...

「Galactic Calendar, Year 246, April 9th.」

Deep within the lightning region of the Star Domain.

Time flew by. In this strange Star Domain ruled by eternal lightning, Li Wen had been in secluded cultivation for over a year.

He slowly opened his eyes. Within their profound depths, countless bolts of lightning seemed to flash for a moment before returning to a reserved calm.

In his sea of consciousness, his Spiritual Power, which had been nearly depleted from prolonged use of [Absolute Focus], was now replenished and surging like an abyss after deep meditation.

With a thought, a translucent personal panel appeared before his eyes:

[Name: Li Wen]

[Age: 37]

[Realm: King-level]

[Class: Scholar Lv. 18 (4,545,442/13,107,200)]

[Skills: Blade Arts · Venerable (Void Break 100%, Starfall 100%, Thunder Prison 99%)]

[Cultivation Technique: Shocking God Stab · 7th Layer (100%)]

His gaze swept over the panel, his heart as calm as an ancient well.

One year in this forbidden lightning zone where Laws intertwined had yielded remarkable results.

He had not only perfected the first form, ”Void Break,” which had just touched the threshold of the Venerable level.

Building on that foundation, he had also successfully created a second form, ”Starfall,” which focused on extreme single-target burst damage.

Now, he was just one final step away from completing the third form, ”Thunder Prison,” which focused on area-of-effect attacks.

The concept for the Five Forms of this Venerable-level blade technique series had long since taken shape in his mind.

Void Break for extreme speed, Starfall for single-point destruction, Thunder Prison for area attacks, and two more yet-to-be-developed forms focusing on defense and continuous bursts.

At the same time, his Scholar experience had continued to accumulate over the past year. Thanks to the steady income from his previously published papers, he had amassed over 4.5 million points.

Ten new papers, written in his spare time, now lay quietly in his storage bracelet.

He only needed to return to Blue Star to publish them, and it would be time for him to advance to Scholar Lv. 19 and probe the mysteries of the eighth layer of the Primordial Spirit.

’The eighth layer of the Primordial Spirit... the hope of controlling Blue Star’s core...’ A powerful wave of hope rippled in the depths of his sea of consciousness before he suppressed it.

He closed the panel, and his gaze turned as sharp as a blade.

His attention returned to his blade arts realm.

’Today is the day I will fully create the third form!’ A strong premonition rose in his heart.

With a flip of his wrist, the Jinghong long blade—his companion through many battles, its body inscribed with ancient dragon patterns and faintly flowing with lightning—was in his grasp.

In an instant, a sharp aura of unity between man and blade spread out.

”[Absolute Focus], activate!”

VMM!

In his sea of consciousness, the massive Primordial Spirit manifestation suddenly flared with brilliant light. His Spiritual Power, like the most precise instrument, was instantly ignited to its absolute limit.

He took a step, and his figure appeared in a hundred-meter-radius area temporarily cleared of lightning strikes by a special force field.

This would be his training ground for the day.

His opening move was not an earth-shattering explosion, but a slow and heavy swing of his blade, like an old farmer tilling his fields.

The tip of the blade cut through the air, creating a low rumble of wind and thunder. Its trajectory was profound and unpredictable, as if tracing an invisible grand formation in the void.

With every swing, a visible, highly compressed, pale golden True Gang condensed on the blade.

Threads of pure Primordial Spirit power coiled around it like roaming dragons, also drawing in the stray lightning particles from the surrounding void, which emitted a fine, crackling sizzle.

His movements grew faster and faster. The blade’s light shifted from slow to rapid, gradually blurring into a golden orb of light.

Inside the orb, countless blade shadows overlapped. At times, they scattered like a pear blossom storm, weaving countless fine blade-threads into a net.

At other times, they were like a great python turning over, condensing into a violent, ring-shaped shockwave.

And at other times, the blade’s momentum would abruptly converge into a single point of ultimate, destructive starlight, only to cleverly dissipate a moment before erupting, transforming into a wide-range, concussive slash...

He was repeatedly practicing and experimenting, trying to perfectly fuse the ”area-of-effect” and ”destructive” properties of lightning into this third blade form in a more efficient way that better suited his own path.

The Spiritual Power in his sea of consciousness flowed away rapidly like a flood from an open sluice gate, consumed at an extreme rate under [Absolute Focus].

Wherever the blade light passed, fine black cracks were cut into space, which then swiftly healed under the power of the Law, leaving faint ripples behind.

Time flew by in his selfless practice, half a day passing in the blink of an eye.