However—

SWISH!

Faced with a storm of saber light that could easily shred a peak high-rank Martial Artist, the green-clothed virtual man showed no hesitation or panic.

He casually raised the long staff in his hand. With a few light flicks of his wrist at an imperceptible frequency, the staff transformed into a tight, circular barrier of afterimages.

DING DING DING DING DING DING---!!!

A series of crisp clashes, so dense they almost overlapped, rang out like a sudden squall beating against banana leaves. Sparks flew wildly where the staff’s afterimages met the saber’s light.

The seemingly overwhelming torrent of saber light crashed against it like waves on the hardest reef. The steady, simple barrier of afterimages precisely blocked and deflected every strike, preventing it from advancing even an inch.

The green-clothed man hadn’t even budged an inch.

What shocked Li Wen even more was what happened next. Just as the immense impact of his attack was neutralized with casual ease, his old momentum was spent, and he hadn’t yet generated new force. In that most subtle, stagnant moment between moves, the ordinary-looking long staff struck. Like a long-dormant venomous dragon, it silently broke through the remnants of his saber light.

There was no earth-shattering power, only a thrust so fast it was nothing more than a faint, sharp shadow. The tip of the staff aimed straight for Li Wen’s heart.

The very air seemed to part before its tip.

’Not good!’ An intense sense of crisis made Li Wen’s scalp prickle as pure survival instinct drove his body to react.

CLANG---!

A deep, explosive clang, far louder than anything before.

In the split second before the staff could strike his heart, Li Wen twisted and sidestepped. He barely managed to raise his saber, using the flat of the blade to intercept the staff’s tip just inches from his chest.

The terrifying, concussive force that traveled up the blade far surpassed any blow from his earlier fight with the yellow-clothed man.

This force was savage, precise, and focused. It shot through the blade into his arms, then slammed into his entire body.

PFFT! Li Wen felt as if his arms had been smashed by a high-speed battering ram. They went instantly numb. His chest churned, and a metallic, sweet taste rose in his throat.

Like a kite with a snapped string, he was blasted off his feet and sent flying backward by the irresistible force.

THUD THUD THUD THUD~! Li Wen stumbled back a good seven or eight meters across the incredibly hard arena floor, his feet gouging long marks into its surface. He just barely managed to regain his footing and avoid collapsing completely.

The webbing of his hands had split open, oozing blood. The searing pain and numbness that shot through his arms almost made him drop his saber. His chest felt crushed, as if by a great boulder, and he could barely breathe.

A single blow! They had the same virtual body level, yet the gap between them was as wide as heaven and earth.

This was the undeniable, overwhelming advantage a top-tier technique at Minor Achievement held over one that was merely entry-level. The disparity went far beyond mere familiarity with the moves.

Each new level in a technique’s mastery brought a transformative change to one’s understanding, application, and efficiency in unleashing power.

In the hands of a Martial Artist at the Minor Achievement realm, a given amount of physical strength could unleash a degree of power, speed, and destructive force that someone at the entry-level realm couldn’t even dream of matching.

It was a deeper level of tapping into and controlling the body’s potential.

"Hah... hah..." Li Wen gasped for air, a sharp pain lancing through his chest with every inhale and exhale.

Sweat mingled with the blood seeping from his torn hands, staining the hilt of his saber red.

That single strike had shown him the enormous chasm between them.

’If I just keep taking hits like this, I won’t last more than a few moves... I can’t keep defending and dragging this out.’

As he watched the green-clothed man advance, staff in hand and radiating a crushing aura, a flash of desperate, all-or-nothing resolve glinted in Li Wen’s eyes.

He realized that relying on his entry-level Rainbow Light Saber Skill alone, he was utterly powerless to fight back.

The time had come to play his trump card.

’Activate—[Absolute Focus]!’

The thought flashed through his mind.

In fact, the moment he entered the virtual world, Li Wen had cautiously tried to access it.

He’d discovered that even in this incredibly realistic virtual space, he could still activate his talent, [Absolute Focus], without any hindrance.

This was the ultimate source of his confidence, the reason he dared to face the green-clothed man head-on.

How could he possibly pass up this perfect, incredibly rare opportunity to fight with abandon, without worrying about backlash or straining his physical body?

How could he give up such a precious chance to hone his skills just because the gap in power was immense?

Besides, he had never activated [Absolute Focus] under the intense pressure of a true life-and-death battle before.

In his past training, he had mostly used the thirty-percent boost to his comprehension that came with the [Absolute Focus] state.

He would immerse himself in understanding his saber arts and the deeper meanings of his Cultivation Technique, but he’d rarely—if ever—had the chance to fully apply the skill’s boost to the ultra-precise control of his physical body.

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

Against a top-tier opponent at Minor Achievement, just how much could a level-three Absolute Focus improve his control over this "virtual" body’s power?

How much combat power could he unleash, far beyond the entry-level realm? How much could he close this seemingly insurmountable gap?

As for whether anyone in the outside world would notice anything unusual... Li Wen sneered inwardly, dismissing the thought entirely.

First, the activation of his level-three [Absolute Focus] was extremely subtle. The only outward sign was a state of heightened concentration and his eyes becoming sharper and more focused—a perfectly normal occurrence in a life-or-death Martial Dao battle.

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

From that single, distant perspective, who could possibly discern a subtle, instantaneous change in a Martial Artist’s eyes amidst the high-speed, flickering images of combat?

It was a fool’s errand. The skill activated, and a switch in his spiritual world was flipped.

BOOM---!

A vast Spiritual Power—cold, clear, and so potent it felt like it could freeze every impurity in the depths of his mind—instantly took over Li Wen’s consciousness.

In that instant, his brain’s processing speed accelerated to an unimaginable degree.

His thoughts became like an accelerated particle stream. The entire process of observing, judging, and deciding—which normally took tenths of a second—was now compressed into microseconds.

In his eyes, the entire world seemed to slow down.

The green-clothed man’s advancing posture, the flow of power along the staff, the subtle currents of disturbed air... a torrent of information flooded his senses, only to be instantly deconstructed and analyzed by his hyper-accelerated mind.

This was the qualitative change brought on by the thirty-percent comprehension boost from his level-three [Absolute Focus].

It wasn’t just about learning; on the razor’s edge of a life-and-death battle, it transformed into the most precise battlefield awareness and predictive power.

But that wasn’t all.

A deeper sensation, the feeling of his control over his physical body being forcibly "optimized," spread like an electric current through every nerve ending of his "virtual" body.

It was precise control over every single muscle fiber, a more refined command over every wisp of coursing blood and qi.