High Martial: I Grind Professions

It contained a Law of Piercing, pure to the extreme.

Ignoring the distance between them, it struck first despite being launched second, landing with perfect precision on the rotating core of annihilation within the massive, dark-gold finger.

PSST—HUMMM!

There was no violent collision as one might expect.

The core of annihilation, powerful enough to obliterate someone at the Peak of Saint Realm, was like a soap bubble pierced by a red-hot needle in the face of that dark-red spear glint.

It twisted and warped in an instant, then let out a sorrowful hum before violently disintegrating.

The spear glint’s momentum was unbroken. It pierced through the entire colossal, dark-gold finger as easily as a hot knife through butter, completely unimpeded.

The body of the finger, formed from countless compressed spatial fragments, shattered and disintegrated inch by inch like fragile glass.

A massive backlash of energy struck Li Wen like a sledgehammer. He grunted, and blood once again trickled from the corner of his mouth.

And after piercing the All Things Return to Ruins Finger, the dark-red spear glint had only dimmed a fraction.

It continued onward with the terrifying power to pierce stars, shooting straight for the space between Li Wen’s eyebrows.

’Too fast! Too strong!’

The power of the Star Lord Level, its application of the Laws, was a form of suppression from an entirely different dimension!

Li Wen felt a mortal terror wash over him. His reaction speed, pushed to its absolute limit by his [Berserk] state, saved his life.

He had no time to think. His body, driven by pure instinct, sidestepped to its physical extreme while his long blade erupted with the strongest light he had ever produced, forming a block in front of him!

"Space-Severing! Starfall! Guardian of the Ruin!"

Three layers of Blade Intent instantly stacked upon each other!

A diamond-shaped, dark-gold blade shield, so condensed it was almost corporeal, materialized before him!

CLANG—CRACK!!!

The dark-red spear glint struck the center of the blade shield.

The stalemate lasted for only a fraction of an instant.

The blade shield, strong enough to defend against an attack from the Peak of Saint Realm, was as if made of paper-mâché.

A hole instantly appeared at the point of impact, and a dense web of cracks immediately spread across the shield’s entire surface with terrifying speed.

POP!

The blade shield exploded completely!

Though its power was greatly diminished, the remnant of the spear glint still slammed viciously into the body of the long blade.

Li Wen felt as though he’d been hit by a Starship. He was sent flying backward like a cannonball, blood spraying from his mouth.

The long blade in his hand let out a mournful cry as its light instantly dimmed. Faint cracks even appeared on its surface.

He felt as if his organs had all been rearranged, that his entire skeleton was about to fall apart.

If his [Berserk] state hadn’t drastically increased his defenses, and if the blade shield hadn’t absorbed most of the impact, that single blow would have severely injured, if not instantly killed, him.

’The gap... It’s too vast!’ A chill crept into Li Wen’s heart.

For the first time, he so clearly perceived the chasm between the Peak of Saint Realm and the Star Lord Level. It looked like a single step, but in truth, it was a gulf as wide as the heavens.

It wasn’t just a disparity in energy. It was an absolute suppression in terms of life-form hierarchy and the dimensional mastery of Laws.

The metal giant took a single step and appeared above the still-recoiling Li Wen as if it had teleported.

It raised its enormous dark-red spear high, the streams of dark-red energy coiling around its shaft roaring like a Star River of destruction.

"Perish here."

Carrying the unstoppable might of the stars, the spear descended like a pillar of heavenly punishment, crashing down on Li Wen below with clean, decisive force!

Before the spear even arrived, its terrifying pressure had already locked Li Wen firmly in the void.

The surrounding space solidified like steel, leaving him no room to evade and no way to block!

In his field of vision, the only thing he could see was the rapidly growing shadow of the dark-red spear, an image that blotted out the starry sky and radiated destruction!

’So this is the Star Lord Level... It’s as powerful as it is despairing...’

Feeling the absolute dominance and the crushing weight of the Laws contained in that final spear thrust, this was the only thought left in Li Wen’s mind.

The next moment.

The dark-red spear struck Li Wen’s body without any suspense.

There was no pain.

There was only a pure white light that flooded his consciousness.

Li Wen was instantly annihilated.

...

「Outside the tower.」

On the light screen, the dot of light representing Li Wen in the eighth layer’s zone flickered tenaciously for just over ten seconds, then, without warning, went out.

The crowd, deathly silent before the light screen, stared at the dot of light that had finally gone out, momentarily unsure how to react.

There had been too many shocks today, one wave after another. From the early and late sections of the 7th Layer, to breaking into the eighth, and now to this... their nerves had long been battered into total numbness.

"It... it’s out..."

"The eighth layer... He... he really lasted for more than ten seconds on the eighth layer..."

"Fighting a Star Lord Level... for more than ten seconds... That... that’s already..." Someone wanted to say it was "heaven-defying," but even that phrase felt pale and inadequate at this moment.

Today, they had personally witnessed the emergence of a peerless genius who had broken into the eighth layer of the Heaven-Reaching Tower.

Such an individual was as rare as a phoenix feather even in the core training camps of advanced empires, the seed of a future titan destined to stir the winds and clouds of the Star River.

And yet, one had just been discovered here, in the proving grounds of their mid-level empire.

Instructor Blood Blade stared fixedly at the extinguished dot of light, the shock in his eyes not receding but instead growing even deeper.

He took a deep breath, his chest heaving once as he barely managed to suppress the towering waves of emotion in his heart.

’More than ten seconds... Facing a Star Lord Level guardian, a young kid at the Venerable Realm managed to hold on for more than ten seconds just by relying on an explosive Secret Technique...’

’Even among the monstrous talents of the advanced empires, a record like this would be far from the bottom! Terrifying! Absolutely terrifying!’

The alarm bells in his mind rang even louder.

This person’s value far exceeded his initial assessment.

Across all the proving grounds in the entire jurisdiction of the Alka Advanced Empire, it wasn’t just a matter of three years—you might not encounter a monster like this even in five!

The expressions on the faces of the crowd were complex to the extreme.

Shock, awe, bewilderment, disbelief, a slight sense of loss, and an incomparably intense curiosity—