Chapter Thirty-Nine: Blue Sky’s Terrifying Comprehension

With this idea in mind, everything became much simpler.

Lan Tian calmed himself, crouched on a reef, and remained motionless, his gaze fixed on the surging waves, not missing a single detail.

Gradually, his entire spirit was drawn in. It was as if his body had transformed into a droplet of seawater, drifting with the tide, quietly experiencing the waves that at first seemed ordinary but increasingly revealed a strange and profound rhythm.

As time passed, Lan Tian slipped into a peculiar, ethereal state. His pupils gradually lost focus, his mind emptied, leaving only the countless wave patterns churning in his consciousness. An indescribable, mysterious aura began to stir within him, and once this aura was born, his body—from skin to blood, down to every cell—began to subtly ripple, resonating continuously with the surrounding waves.

Unconsciously, his hands began to sway, power surging and rising within him, a feeling of pent-up energy flooding his palms, aching for release but finding no outlet.

It was uncomfortable, like holding a breath that could neither rise nor fall.

Moreover, as his palms continued to sway with the strange rhythm of the waves, that mysterious aura gradually shifted to his hands. A faint pain arose in his palms, as if all the strength in his body was gathering there, wave after wave, demanding to be unleashed.

Until a certain moment, when the movement of his palms perfectly matched the rhythm of the sea’s waves, that aura trembled gently. Almost involuntarily, he brought his palm down toward the sea below.

Only after his palm fell did Lan Tian regain his senses. To his shock, he found that before his hand even touched the water, the force of his strike had already pressed the nearby seawater downward. Then, when his palm actually met the sea, a thunderous impact sounded, and a burst of spray soared more than ten meters into the air!

But it wasn’t over yet. Lan Tian had thought that was the end of it and was about to withdraw his hand when, unexpectedly, another surge of power welled up from nowhere within his palm—stronger than before—driving his hand down even further.

A deafening explosion split the sky as a colossal column of water erupted upward, icy seawater plummeting from dozens of meters above as if a torrential rain had begun to fall.

"This strike… it actually contained two layers of force, and the second was even stronger than the first!" Lan Tian stared in a daze at the falling cascade, continually estimating the power he had just unleashed.

When he finished his calculations, even he found it hard to believe. That strike was delivered with his right arm, which normally possessed around 15,000 kilograms of raw strength, typically enough to produce a destructive force of more than twenty tons. Enhanced by the mysterious aura, the first blow had unleashed nearly fifty tons—double his usual strength—while the second strike had doubled that again, reaching a terrifying hundred tons of destructive power!

Still incredulous, he summoned the mysterious aura once more, let his right hand sway as before, and punched the surface of the sea with all his might.

Bang!

Bang!

Spray flew everywhere as two towering waves, one after another, soared into the sky—the second clearly even greater than the first!

Lan Tian looked at his fist, delight flickering in his eyes. As he had thought, so long as he harnessed that mysterious aura, he could deliver double-layered force—four times his strength!

What a frightening basic combat technique!

Suddenly, his surroundings blurred, and the vast ocean vanished. The scene reverted to the first layer.

"Well, well, isn’t this our esteemed Lord Bai, the super-intelligent lifeform? I got so carried away practicing the first layer of the basic combat technique that I lost track of time. Can you tell me how long I spent training just now?" Lan Tian grinned mischievously at Bai, who stood in a daze before him.

In truth, he didn’t know how much time had passed, but he was certain it hadn’t exceeded an hour. Recalling how Bai had previously described this first layer as so difficult to master, he couldn’t help but tease.

Bai simply stood there, staring blankly at him without a word for a long time.

Eventually, Bai’s silence began to unnerve Lan Tian. "Um… are you going to say something? Why are you looking at me like that? Did I do something wrong?"

"..."

"I... don’t even know what to say..." After a long pause, Bai finally replied in a strained voice, "Forty-eight minutes and thirty-nine seconds..."

"I used to think your comprehension was decent, but I never expected... you’d give me such a shock!"

"I don’t know if anyone has broken this record since I lost contact with the Virtual Universe Network, but before then, as far as I know, no one in the universe had achieved this..."

"The previous fastest record for clearing the first layer of the Absolute Heaven Tower was eight hours, forty-one minutes, and twenty-seven seconds. Your time today is a mere fraction of that..."

"And this isn’t even the real Absolute Heaven Tower. According to the data, the genuine tower contains unique rules that make comprehending the technique even easier inside..."

"So... if you’d been in the real Absolute Heaven Tower, you’d probably have been even faster..."

"Let me catch my breath, my core programming is starting to malfunction again..." Bai babbled incoherently, then fell silent once more, staring fixedly at Lan Tian as though meeting him for the first time.

Bai simply could not believe that the Lan Tian he knew had achieved something no one in the universe had ever accomplished!

And it was an achievement of the highest order!

What did this mean? Even though Bai’s usual definition of "the universe" only included the Yuanlan Empire and some neighboring universal nations, that was already an immense expanse. Within the Yuanlan Empire alone, how many universal trialists ever managed to leave the empire in their lifetimes?

A single Yuanlan Empire encompassed tens or even hundreds of thousands of galactic systems, with a population beyond counting.

Even if the ratio of universal cultivators to ordinary people was low, across the entire empire their numbers still reached into the billions!

Add in all the larger and smaller surrounding universal nations, and among this endless sea of cultivators, Lan Tian’s comprehension of the first layer of the basic combat technique was unsurpassed since time immemorial.

Bai was truly shaken. He had never imagined that Lan Tian, whom he had always considered lacking in cultivation aptitude, would prove so terrifyingly gifted in comprehension.

“Haha, judging by your reaction, I must have been pretty quick,” Lan Tian said with a smile.

“Pretty quick? You’re practically defying the heavens! It’s such a waste—how could such peerless comprehension end up in someone with such lousy aptitude? With this level of perception, you could have reached the very pinnacle! What a pity…”

Bai’s voice wavered between laughter and tears, leaving Lan Tian with a face full of black lines.

What kind of comment was that? Why did it sound so backhanded?

What did he mean, “peerless comprehension in someone with such lousy aptitude”?

That was just rubbing salt in the wound…

So, having great comprehension is actually a disadvantage for me…

Lan Tian was left speechless and tearful, staring at the still-muttering Bai, unsure whether to laugh or cry.