This secret art was refined little by little by King Tideblade.
By the time he perfected this secret art, King Tideblade may already have grasped a deeper mystery beyond spatial traversal, instant teleportation.
Luo Fan, however, had only mastered spatial traversal at this point.
As a result, not only was the Tideblade Battle Art unable to fully bring out his true strength,
he was also unable to unleash the maximum power of the Tideblade Battle Art.
This was because every person's combat style had subtle differences.
Even though Luo Fan was King Tideblade's disciple, it was the same for him.
The secret arts created by King Tideblade were all meant to better unleash his own strength.
Thus, this secret art was tailored specifically for himself.
Generally speaking, most secret arts were created this way.
Once Luo Fan reached his current level, using this secret art made him feel slightly awkward.
After all, when King Tideblade created this secret art, his understanding of the laws was different from Luo Fan's.
It was possible that King Tideblade had not been using spatial traversal at the time, but another branch of instant teleportation that Luo Fan had not yet mastered, such as merging with space or spatial transfer.
Even if King Tideblade's law comprehension had been identical to Luo Fan's when he created the secret art,
their application of the Space Origin Law would still have been different.
Coupled with individual differences,
this made it impossible for Luo Fan to fully unleash his strongest power.
The reason he had been able to force the mysterious man to retreat was mainly due to his terrifying bodily amplification, which gave him far greater base strength than his opponent.
Soon, the two collided again.
This time, the mysterious man had learned his lesson.
He did not clash head-on with Luo Fan, instead relying on his superior comprehension of the Space Origin Law to circle around him, looking for chances to launch sneak attacks.
At this moment, the two were completely locked in a stalemate.
On the massive icy peak of the Sky-Piercing Bridge, the sound of blades colliding rang out from time to time.
Luo Fan knew that this could not continue.
He tried to deliberately expose an opening, luring the mysterious man into attacking him.
Then he planned to trade injuries for injuries.
His bodily amplification was simply too terrifying.
So even though his law comprehension was weaker,
the power of his attacks was still far greater than the mysterious man's.
Relying on the speed granted by his bodily amplification, Luo Fan rapidly dodged.
In the universe, amplification was not only capable of increasing attack power.
Defense and speed were also affected by amplification.
The mysterious man, on the other hand, used his higher comprehension of the Space Origin Law to constantly traverse through space.
Even though he saw Luo Fan exposing an opening,
as a gatekeeper specially created by the Virtual Universe, his combat experience was terrifyingly strong.
This gatekeeper had been created by gathering the combat experience of countless powerful experts.
How could he fail to understand Luo Fan's intentions?
The reason the gatekeepers were given such terrifying combat experience was precisely to prevent these geniuses from relying on combat experience to force their way through the Heaven-Reaching Bridge with weaker law comprehension.
After all, the Sky-Piercing Bridge was primarily meant to test law comprehension, not combat experience.
Only by relying on true strength could one pass.
Seeing that the opponent did not fall for the bait, Luo Fan felt somewhat helpless.
However, he was not particularly discouraged.
After all, although it looked like the mysterious man was searching for opportunities to ambush him while he could only dodge passively,
in reality, this situation was even more disadvantageous for the mysterious man.
Continuously traversing through space to avoid letting Luo Fan grasp a clear pattern
consumed a tremendous amount of energy.
Moreover, the mysterious man's law comprehension was only slightly higher than Luo Fan's.
If their strength had been equal, this small difference in law comprehension could indeed decide the outcome.
But in the face of a ninetyfold difference in strength, this amount of law comprehension was completely insufficient to defeat Luo Fan.
If this had been a normal life-and-death battle, the mysterious man might have been able to escape.
But here, one of them had to die.
Thus, the mysterious man could only continue fighting.
…
In this way, the two fought continuously for a full day.
Finally, Luo Fan noticed that the opponent's speed had slowed down.
Without the slightest hesitation, he directly used spatial traversal to appear in front of him.
Even at the cost of injury, he was determined to slash the opponent.
The terrifying attack directly severed both of the mysterious man's legs.
As for Luo Fan, he had merely lost a small forearm.
This level of injury was nothing for a Domain Lord.
Thus, Luo Fan immediately pressed his advantage and stayed in close combat with the mysterious man.
Finally, after another hour had passed, Luo Fan completely killed the mysterious man.
He did not continue to challenge the next level.
He was already struggling like this on the sixteenth level.
Going to the seventeenth level would only result in him being kited to death.
So Luo Fan directly left the Sky-Piercing Bridge space.
…
On the plaza within the Sky-Piercing Bridge space,
the King-level Immortals present still had not recovered from their shock.
Although Luo Fan had relied on a delaying tactic to kill the mysterious man,
everyone could see it clearly.
Luo Fan's law comprehension was at least equivalent to the fifteenth level of the Sky-Piercing Bridge.
In other words, Luo Fan's law comprehension was already comparable to that of a Marquis-level Immortal!
With the vision of these powerful experts, this was naturally obvious to them.
The reason he could only rely on delaying tactics was mainly because he had not created his own secret art.
At his level, other people's secret arts could no longer fully unleash his strength.
Everyone present had personally experienced this kind of situation before.
The higher one's strength and realm, the less power one could unleash using someone else's secret art.
It was not exactly that the power was weaker, but rather that the higher one's level, the less suitable other people's secret arts became.
At present, Luo Fan only felt slightly awkward when using the Tideblade Battle Art.
Once his law comprehension increased further, using the Tideblade Battle Art would even feel uncomfortable.
This was completely normal.
Therefore, powerful experts generally created their own secret arts.
In fact, many geniuses began creating secret arts at a very early stage.
They would gradually refine their secret arts as their law comprehension improved.
However, Luo Fan's growth rate was simply too fast.
His speed of growth exceeded everyone's expectations.
Not only King Tideblade and Grandor,
even the Lord of the Ice Peak had not anticipated this.
After all, only a few dozen years had passed since leaving Chaos City, yet his law comprehension was already comparable to that of a Marquis-level Immortal.
Neither the Lord of the Ice Peak nor King Tideblade had ever intended for Luo Fan to create his own secret art so early.
Although Luo Fan knew that powerful experts needed to create their own secret arts,
his understanding of this came from novels.
As for the details, Tomato never wrote about them. (TL/N: Tomato is the original Swallowed Star Author's name.)
Who knew exactly when one needed to start creating a secret art suited to oneself?
The Lord of the Ice Peak and King Tideblade thought along similar lines.
They hoped Luo Fan would gain more experience and fight more battles before beginning to create a secret art.
Although Luo Fan was powerful now,
his perspective was actually not that high yet.
The number of secret arts and combat styles he had seen was still insufficient.
Therefore, the two of them had not planned for Luo Fan to start creating his own secret art so early.
The main issue was still that Luo Fan's growth was too fast.
Under normal circumstances, even geniuses at the Domain Lord level with law comprehension comparable to Marquis-level Immortals would not grow so quickly.
After obtaining such comprehension, these geniuses would complete missions for the Virtual Universe Company and experience many combat styles and secret arts.
At that point, they could begin creating a secret art suited to themselves.
King Tideblade recalled Luo Fan's battle just now and prepared to go find Luo Fan shortly.
His main purpose was to have Luo Fan seek guidance from the Lord of the Ice Peak on how to create his own secret art.
He was quite self-aware.
His insight was certainly not as good as that of the Lord of the Ice Peak,
and his experience was also inferior.
Since that was the case, he chose not to tell Luo Fan his own thoughts.
Letting the Lord of the Ice Peak teach him directly was the best option.
…
At this moment, the King-level Immortals and several Venerables around King Tideblade looked at him with eyes full of envy.
Every time they saw news about Luo Fan, they would curse King Tideblade for being such an unbelievably lucky bastard.
These Kings also knew by now.
That Luo Fan had been poached by King Tideblade from Grandor.
They all wished that such good fortune could fall upon themselves.
After chatting for a while, everyone dispersed.
Bafen, as usual, began mass-sending emails, spreading the news that Luo Fan had cleared the sixteenth level of the Sky-Piercing Bridge.
This news could not be hidden anyway.
It was better to spread it out and "motivate" those geniuses.
…
After leaving the Sky-Piercing Bridge space, Luo Fan went directly to the location of the Sky Mountain.
The Primal Sky Mountain had three trials in total, located at the foot of the mountain, the mountainside, and the summit.
Each trial involved a joint assault by a minotaur warrior, an ape mentalist, and a serpent-woman illusionist.
With three different types of cultivators attacking together, this required the challenger not only to be strong, but also to have no weaknesses.
The trial at the mountain foot was the easiest, the mountainside was clearly much harder, and the summit was absurdly difficult.
Only by clearing all three trials could one be considered successful.
It could be said that the Primal Sky Mountain was never intended to be cleared.
It was merely set up as an unreachable benchmark.
Yet humanity would always produce monstrous geniuses.
Some peerless talents who appeared once in tens of millions of eras could clear the Primal Sky Mountain.
To clear the Cosmic-level Primal Sky Mountain required strength equivalent to clearing the twelfth level of the Sky-Piercing Bridge.
To clear the Domain Lord–level Primal Sky Mountain required strength roughly equivalent to clearing the sixteenth level of the Sky-Piercing Bridge.
To clear the World Master–level Primal Sky Mountain required strength roughly equivalent to clearing the twentieth level of the Sky-Piercing Bridge.
Of course, clearing the Primal Sky Mountain came with special additional rewards from the Virtual Universe Company.
If one passed the Cosmic-level Primal Sky Mountain, upon becoming a World Master, one would directly receive 100 million points.
If one passed the Domain Lord–level Primal Sky Mountain, upon becoming a World Master, one would directly receive 3 billion points.
If one passed the World Master–level Primal Sky Mountain, one would directly receive 100 billion points.
For any genius, this could be considered an astronomical reward.
Although the reward was extremely tempting,
historically, very few people had managed to clear the Primal Sky Mountain.
Even the simplest Cosmic-level Primal Sky Mountain had been cleared by almost no one.
…
As soon as Luo Fan arrived at the Sky Mountain plane, he saw three towering mountains rising from a vast and desolate land.
On the mountainsides of the three peaks were golden characters glowing with light: Heaven and Earth, Absolute Beginning, and Primal.
Luo Fan's gaze went straight to the tallest mountain.
At its peak were one enormous golden characters:
Primal!
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