When the light slanted into the corner of his eye, Li Wen finally stopped his mechanical repetitions.
He wiped a handful of dust-streaked sweat from his face and glanced at the virtual clock on the wall, which showed that school had ended.
He had spent the entire afternoon, with the persistence of a man moving mountains, forcefully breaking through more than half of the dozen or so barriers.
Through this almost clumsy, point-by-point method, the only remaining obstacles were the few most challenging forms—
The most difficult of all: the sixtieth form, "Shadow"; the sixty-first, "Fleeting Grace"; the sixty-second, "Thousand Illusions"; the sixty-third, "Sun"; and the ultimate, final form that served as the entire saber skill's peak burst of power—the sixty-fourth form, "Piercing the Sun."
Li Wen pulled a towel from his backpack and vigorously wiped the sticky sweat from his body. A tide of exhaustion washed over him, his limbs feeling heavy.
But he didn't hesitate. He walked straight to the control panel in the corner of the training room, skillfully entered a command, and set a thirty-minute countdown timer.
'Time... time for the final sprint!'
Taking a deep breath, Li Wen turned and firmly gripped the quick-saber on the floor once more. The cold touch spread through his palm again.
"Activate—[Absolute Focus]!"
The thought was like a start button; the skill activated instantly!
VMM—!
An invisible force instantly washed through his mind, dispelling all fatigue, all distracting thoughts, and every perception unrelated to the saber!
His slightly tired eyes, in that instant, became like polished obsidian—deep, cold, and shining with an inhumanly pure light.
His world narrowed to only the quick-saber in his hand. His weary body felt as if it had been forcibly injected with a powerful stimulant, and every cell became incredibly active.
His mind, operating at high speed, was like an overloaded quantum computer, frantically extracting, combining, deducing, and optimizing the details of the saber forms that had stumped him for so long.
'Subtle deviations that were imperceptible under normal training conditions—was the angle of muscle exertion off by 0.1 degrees? Was the timing of his wrist-flip 0.02 seconds too fast? Was there a slight lag in the coordination between the force from his ankle and the shift in his center of gravity?'
Under the effect of Lv. 3 [Absolute Focus], these minute errors, which would normally be overlooked, were infinitely magnified and dissected with meticulous precision.
A stream of data surged through his mind as simulated trajectories were constructed at high speed.
He moved!
Li Wen's standing figure blurred in an instant, without any warning, as if pulled by invisible strings.
SWOOSH—
It was almost instantaneous! Like a teleport!
One moment he was there, the next, he had already appeared in the opposite corner of the training room, so fast that even the dust motes in the air hadn't had time to react.
What was even stranger was—
SHINK! Only then did the faint but absolutely clear sound of a saber being sheathed arrive, belatedly.
At some unknown moment, the quick-saber in his hand had already completed the full sequence of being drawn, striking, and being sheathed.
The sixtieth form—Shadow!
The essence of this form was the ultimate fusion of "speed" and "stealth."
So fast that the enemy had no way to react, unable even to tell if you had drawn your saber to attack.
So fast that the instant your figure moved, a cold blade might have already slit their throat! This was the one move in the Rainbow Light Saber Skill that pushed "deceptive speed" to its absolute limit.
The form was a success!
The moment Li Wen's body instinctively and perfectly reproduced the results deduced in his [Absolute Focus] state, successfully executing "Shadow"...
...the passive skill [Once Learned, Forever Known] within him, like a divine sigil branded deep in his soul, blazed to life.
The "sensation of success" and the "physical data"—how to gather power, how to erupt with force, how to coordinate mind and body to perfect the movement—were all instantly and clearly branded into his neural memory and muscle instinct.
From that point on, this experience became a permanent part of his natural talent, never to be forgotten or diminished.
SWISH~
The thought flashed by in a fraction of a second. His mind highly focused, Li Wen didn't pause for even a moment. Aided by his [Absolute Focus] state, he immediately began to tackle the sixty-first form, "Fleeting Grace."
This time, reality showed him what a true gap felt like. The sixty-first form didn't come together as smoothly as "Shadow" had.
There were still deviations in the fine rhythm of his power exertion and the transition points of his Body Technique.
However, the Li Wen of this moment had no concept of failure.
His absolutely focused mind had no emotions, only cold, efficient commands for correction.
First attempt, a failure?
[Deduction: Fine-tune wrist exertion angle by +3 degrees, increase force of right foot push-off by 5%... Try again!]
Second attempt, a failure?
[Deduction: Core rotation 0.05 seconds earlier, optimize arc of horizontal blade pull by 0.8%... Redo!]
Third time, fourth time, fifth time...
Time slipped away with the ticking of the clock. As the shrill alarm began its final ten-minute countdown—
'It's done!' An indescribable feeling of exhilaration flowed through his entire body as the brand of [Once Learned, Forever Known] settled clearly once again.
The sixty-first form, "Fleeting Grace"—mastered at the introductory level!
Repeat! Correct! Attack again!
Like a tireless, emotionless, precision machine.
When the countdown reached the final five minutes, the dazzling saber light of the sixty-third form, "Sun," accompanied by Li Wen's rapidly spinning figure and layers of afterimages, tore through the air of the training room for the first time in its true form.
Final two minutes.
Li Wen's body trembled slightly from the high-intensity exertion, and his mind was approaching some kind of breaking point, but the absolutely focused light in his eyes hadn't dimmed in the slightest.
Only the final form remained—that last strike of unparalleled power, said to pierce through everything with ultimate speed and force, capable of making even the great sun lose its brilliance.
The sixty-fourth form—Piercing the Sun!
He poured all of his remaining strength, his will, and all the mental and physical power he had pushed to the limit with Lv. 3 [Absolute Focus] into this one strike.
"HAA—!" A suppressed roar erupted from his throat.
His entire being transformed into a resolute streak of light. The quick-saber in his hand seemed to drag with immense weight, yet it moved so fast it tore past the limits of vision as it stabbed forward.
VMM—CLANG!!!!
A saber's cry, far surpassing any before it—a resonant harmony of force and speed, like the roar of a dragon and the cry of a tiger—suddenly echoed throughout the soundproof training room.
The saber's light was no longer a simple cold glint, but an instantaneous explosion like a miniature sun that filled his vision! Countless brilliant afterimages of the blade intertwined and flickered, as if trying to slice space itself into fragments.
The sixty-fourth form—Piercing the Sun! Successfully executed!
The execution of this form also marked the official declaration that the top-tier saber art, the >, in Li Wen's hands, had been—
Mastered at the introductory level!
VMM!
The instant he successfully executed "Piercing the Sun," a profound and mysterious understanding shot through every cell in Li Wen's body like an electric current.
The foundational framework of the sixty-four forms of the Rainbow Light Saber Skill, its core methods of power exertion, and the essential principles of coordinating Body Technique with saber moves—it all clicked into place at that moment.
They were no longer isolated forms, but an organic, interconnected whole.
The nascent form of the unique essence belonging to a top-tier skill took shape clearly in the sea of Li Wen's consciousness for the first time.