Top-Tier Perception Starts From Basic Fist Techniques

"I knew it. It is a nuclear bomb!" Lu Changsheng huffed.

This world's technology was already fairly advanced. It had the internet, satellites, electrical appliances, and many other technologies familiar to him, yet nuclear weapons had strangely never appeared. It was as though some crucial step in its technological development had been skipped, preventing anyone from unlocking atomic fission.

But clearly, the Flame Dragon Federation had finally achieved that breakthrough, and it had kept the resulting weapon secret until now.

The bomb had detonated only about one hundred zhang[1] away from Lu Changsheng. At that distance, he was practically at the epicenter of the nuclear explosion.

At the heart of the explosion, the temperature soared past ten thousand degrees in an instant. Although that extreme heat lasted only briefly and was concentrated around the center of the blast, the surrounding temperature still remained at several thousand degrees before gradually falling as the explosion expanded outward.

For an ordinary person, the combination of extreme heat, the shockwave, and radiation from a nuclear explosion would be devastating. Lu Changsheng was not really concerned about the radiation. With his Fourth Growth physique, he was confident that his body could withstand such a thing.

The heat and shockwave, however, were forces he would have to endure directly.

The instant the bomb hit the ground behind him, he released the compression on his body. His frame expanded violently until he stood more than thirty chi tall. A larger body exposed him to more of the blast, but this was nevertheless his strongest physical state.

Faced with a weapon whose destructive power had undoubtedly reached the Dao Foundation Realm, and perhaps even the peak of that realm, he could not afford to hold anything back.

"Come on, then." Lu Changsheng planted himself firmly in place and faced the approaching inferno. He was going to hold off the heat and shockwave from the nuclear explosion with his bare body.

The next second, the searing heat, roaring flames, and tremendous shockwave swallowed him completely.

Meanwhile, throughout the area surrounding the Jade Dragon Kingdom's capital, countless people stared in horror at the enormous fireball rising into the sky. An explosion of such magnitude in the heart of the capital was impossible to ignore.

"Wh-What is that?"

"Was it an earthquake? A hurricane? Some kind of massive fire?"

"Are you guys dumb? Did you forget those missiles that struck the capital just now? This has to be some kind of secret weapon from the Flame Dragon Federation."

"Look at the news! The Flame Dragon Federation has issued an official bulletin. The Flame Dragon Federation has claimed responsibility for the strike and is telling the Jade Dragon Kingdom to surrender."

"If the Flame Dragon Federation has a weapon like this, how are we supposed to fight them? The capital is finished..."

Despair swept through the Jade Dragon Kingdom. What good were courage and numbers against a weapon like that?

The shock did not stop at the Jade Dragon Kingdom's borders. The entire world had witnessed the explosion. Cameras had captured the enormous fireball and the destruction that followed, leaving governments everywhere with a horrifying realization.

They had just watched the Flame Dragon Federation unleash a weapon capable of annihilating an entire capital in seconds. And if the Federation possessed more than one, the global balance of power could be overturned overnight.

Every nation now had to confront the same grim reality—the Flame Dragon Federation would probably be able to drag every last one of them into a war none of them wanted, and they would not be able to defend themselves at all.

The leaders of several nations reacted immediately.

"Find out what weapon that was. I want an answer as soon as possible!"

"What has our intelligence department been doing? The Flame Dragon Federation secretly developed a weapon capable of destroying a capital, and we knew nothing about it?"

"Whatever that weapon is, if the Flame Dragon Federation can build it, then so can we. Investigate it now!"

Some other governments, however, were not as surprised. They already had a good idea of what they had just witnessed.

"They succeeded far sooner than we expected," one official murmured. "And instead of conducting another test, they used it directly against the Jade Dragon Kingdom... How far has our own research progressed?"

"This has to be the weapon our research team warned us about, the one built on atomic fission. I brushed it off when they described the kind of damage it could do. But looking at what's left of that capital, I don't think they described it well enough. This thing is worse than anyone said."

Across the world, intelligence agencies and research institutions quickly sprang into action. Many countries had already discovered the principles behind atomic fission and had begun conducting their own secret research into nuclear weapons, so the concept itself was not entirely unknown.

The difference was that most of them were still experimenting, while the Flame Dragon Federation had already built a functioning nuclear bomb and, more importantly, had demonstrated that it could deploy one in actual combat.

By the time the worst of the nuclear explosion had passed, the Jade Dragon Kingdom's capital had been reduced to ruins. Once the violent shaking finally subsided, the people from the Extreme Martial Dao Center emerged from the air-raid shelters one after another.

Senior Sister Xiang froze the moment she stepped outside, staring in disbelief at the devastation around her. "Wh-What kind of weapon could do something like this?"

Then a thought struck her, and the blood drained from her face.

"Master! What about Master? Where is Master? Hurry, find him!" Her voice trembled with panic.

She had witnessed Lu Yuan perform feats that should have been impossible for any human being. Blades and bullets could not harm him. He could catch bullets with his bare hands, withstand explosives with his body, and even destroy a warship weighing over ten thousand tons with his fists.

But this apocalyptic weapon was on a completely different level...

The destruction before her looked less like the work of a weapon than a natural disaster. An entire section of the capital had been destroyed in a single explosion. No matter how powerful Lu Yuan was, she could not imagine how he could survive something like this.

Senior Sister Xiang became hysterical as she frantically searched for Lu Yuan within the rubble.

"Senior Sister Xiang, calm down. Please calm down," the others urged, holding her back.

None of them dared say what they were thinking, but in their mind, they knew that Lu Yuan had most likely died upon getting hit by such an attack. After seeing what the blast had done to the capital, it was difficult to believe that even the man who had ushered in the age of evolvers could have survived it. He was probably reduced to ashes before he even had a chance to resist.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

A damaged building suddenly collapsed nearby, sending a cloud of dust billowing through the street and driving everyone toward an open area.

Surrounded by ruins and with no idea how much of the capital remained standing, the disciples of the Extreme Martial Dao Center were momentarily at a loss.

Senior Sister Xiang forced herself to regain her composure. Since Lu Yuan was no more, she had to take the lead. "Start searching for survivors!"

The others immediately scattered across the surrounding ruins. Senior Sister Xiang, however, turned toward the center of the explosion.

She knew it was unlikely she would find Lu Yuan alive. The explosion was so great that he had probably been reduced to ash, but she could not bring herself to leave without searching for him.

Even if the possibility was almost nonexistent, she still clung to the hope that he had somehow survived.

She walked deeper into the devastated city, and the closer she came to the epicenter, the worse the damage was. The ground had been scorched black. Vehicles had been crushed or blown apart, while other objects had simply been vaporized by the tremendous heat of the explosion.

With every step, her remaining hope dwindled. There was no way anyone could possibly survive this.

Then Senior Sister Xiang stopped in her tracks. Her eyes widened, fixed on the sight ahead.

Right in front of her stood the still figure of a man more than thirty chi tall. Its enormous body was charred black from head to toe, and from a distance, it resembled a massive sculpture burned into the landscape.

But Senior Sister Xiang knew better. This was near the very center of the nuclear blast; a real sculpture would have been turned to dust by now.

"Could that be... Master?" She approached cautiously until she stood beside the figure. Then she reached out and touched the blackened surface of its body. The texture was rough beneath her fingers, as if it really had become a mass of charcoal.

1. A few hundred meters ☜