Top-Tier Perception Starts From Basic Fist Techniques

"He's dead? Just like that?"

"He... didn't even last one hit! The Dragon Abyss Saint is so weak!"

"Don't say that... If the Dragon Abyss Saint is weak, what does that make all the Earthly Saints he killed? They wouldn't even be able to stand before him!"

"It isn't him, it's Lu Changsheng. Killing the Dragon Abyss Saint in a single strike? Are we sure that man isn't a Heavenly Saint?"

"He hasn't manifested a Martial Dao yet, so he's still an Earthly Saint. His Martial Dao Will is monstrous, though, and the raw strength in his Dao Body is simply beyond imagination."

"An Earthly Saint that strong in both of those is something you almost never see."

All the spectators were stunned, regardless of whether they were Martial Saints or Earthly Saints. Watching the Dragon Abyss Saint go down in one strike was enough to tell them how strong Lu Changsheng was. Since a top-tier Earthly Saint had died that fast before him, just where was the limit of his strength?

Lu Changsheng looked at what was left of Long Yuan without much expression. An Earthly Saint's strength came down to two things—the Martial Dao Will and the Dao Body, and he knew exactly where he stood on both.

Lu Changsheng's Dao Body sat on foundations nobody else's did. He had built it since the Body Tempering Realm, one step at a time, and the accumulation of all of it was who he was now. He believed that any Earthly Saints with a stronger foundation than his could probably be counted on one hand.

Not to mention he still had his Martial Dao Will, and its strength came from whatever Martial Dao he had condensed. It was the Infinite Martial Dao, which claimed to hold every Martial Dao inside it. Nothing about that indicated a ceiling, so how weak could his Martial Dao Will be?

𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Whether it was one Long Yuan or ten, the outcome would remain the same. The only difference was whether it would take him two or three palms.

Afterward, Lu Changsheng turned his attention toward the palace and calmly asked, "Spirit Saint, can I come in and talk now?"

The Spirit Saint blinked and took a moment to compose himself. "Of course you may! The Sacred Spirit Palace welcomes you, the Supreme Elder of the Hundred Flowers Sect."

He waved a hand, and the grand formation opened, allowing Lu Changsheng and Zhang Ling to step through without hesitation.

The Spirit Saint was a strikingly handsome man, and a hurt one. The injury was to the spirit and would take a long time to recover, most likely done to him by the Dragon Abyss Saint's Martial Dao Will. A top-tier Martial Dao Will could affect a man's spirit if he could not hold up under it.

Regardless, he was smiling all the same. Long Yuan was dead, which meant his Dao companion was avenged, so there was no reason not to smile. "Fellow Daoist Lu, Sect Master Zhang, please follow me to the hall."

He knew what the man had come for and did not draw it out. "These are the coordinates of the secret world I obtained. The energy-level response is high. It needs another three months at least before it comes near enough to the Immortal Martial World for you to descend into it, so you'll have that long to prepare."

Lu Changsheng took them. He had no way to verify anything standing there, but the Spirit Saint certainly verified it.

"Does anyone else have these coordinates?"

"Only me, and I don't intend to enter this secret world, so nobody will be competing with you for it." He understood the worry behind the question. Anyone holding the coordinates could enter with a little preparation.

It was not competition that Lu Changsheng minded, but more people inside meant more variables he could not predict.

"Good. Please do not tell a third person, then. If the coordinates get out, I may not be able to condense a Martial Dao in there at all." It was a warning as much as a request. He had no interest in watching the man sell the coordinates around or further hand them out as gifts.

The Spirit Saint nodded. The fewer who knew, the better for everyone. Having handed them over, he was not about to leak them and make a permanent enemy of the man who had just killed Long Yuan in one blow.

"You have my thanks."

"The thanks are mine. You killed Long Yuan and gave my companion's soul some peace."

He was clearly a man who loved her deeply, and the loss had struck him hard.

With the coordinates in hand, there was nothing keeping Lu Changsheng, so he took his leave.

Back at the Hundred Flowers Sect, he tried to sense the secret world from the coordinates himself and got nothing. Sensing one required a spatial formation, which the sect did not have, and he could not lay one himself.

The good news was that the Secret World Pavilion handled all of it end to end. As long as someone brought their own coordinates, they would set everything up, provided they were willing to pay for it. Entering the secret world using this method was safe enough that nothing was going to go wrong. It was only expensive.

To Lu Changsheng, the word "expensive" left his vocabulary the day he became Supreme Elder of a sect with several hundred deity fragments.

When he went to the pavilion, their tests confirmed the world was still some way off, and he would have to wait another three months.

He went back to the sect and waited patiently, then left a little early as the third month came around and went straight to the pavilion, where five deity fragments bought him a cultivation chamber.

The cultivation chamber had everything in it: formations, restorative pills and miraculous medicines, more formations and curious items to keep his body and his consciousness safe. Five fragments were steep, but he thought it was worth it.

After that, all he had to do was wait. Once the secret world drew close to the Immortal Martial World, the pavilion's spatial formation would put him straight into it.

This was his second secret world, and its energy-level response stood level with a Martial Saint. The obstacles would be harder than the first by a wide margin, but if he succeeded, the profit would be worth it all.

After ten days or so, the spatial formation in the chamber finally stirred. The secret world had come close enough to fall inside the formation's reach, and his consciousness could now descend into it.

The pavilion holds contact between the two worlds for roughly ten years. That's ten years in there to condense a Martial Dao. Once it's condensed, my true body can project its power in, break the Dao, and take the fragments.

He drew a breath. Last time, he had been given three years. This time he had ten, and more time meant he could be better prepared.

He closed his eyes. Let's begin.

Buzz.

The cultivation chamber's formation came alive, and his consciousness went out of him and into the secret world.

In Drum Mountain City, the Kao residence was holding a funeral where the old were burying the young. A heavy silence sat over the whole house. The dead man was Kao Wen, young master of the Kao family, and the only son. Rumor had it he had seen a demon[1], and it had frightened him to death.

A coffin stood in the mourning hall with his body in it. Incense smoke hung thick in the room, and the master of the house and his wife stood over the coffin unsteadily, their eyes long since swollen from crying.

The Kao family had three generations with only one son in each. Since Kao Wen was dead, the family line was over. Who was going to inherit a fortune like theirs? The thought was more than the old man could stand, and he wished it was him in the coffin instead of his son.

"That demon! If he had never seen it, he would never have died of fright."

His teeth were clenched around a hatred he could do nothing with. The Kao family had no way to hunt a demon. His son had died for nothing and was never coming back.

Whoosh.

A gust came through the hall, hard enough that the smoke made it impossible to keep one's eyes open.

In the coffin, Kao Wen's eyes suddenly snapped open.

1. the word demon here is rendered from the cn word "妖 yao" ☜