## Chapter 200: Mythical Evolution
The world was screaming.
It wasn't a sound, but a feeling—a pressure in the marrow of his bones, a vibration in the air that tasted of ozone and dust. Li Chang'an's body was a star about to go supernova. Energy, raw and untamed, boiled under his skin, threatening to tear him apart molecule by molecule. He could feel the spatial cracks around him, hairline fractures in reality itself, weeping a cold, void-like chill.
This is the limit, a part of him whispered. The world's limit. Push further, and you break it.
But to stop was to lose. To become a servant. To accept a fate written by someone else.
"No," he growled, the word scraping his throat raw.
He closed his eyes, shutting out the crumbling arena, the distant, horrified gasps of the spectators, the grim silhouette of the grandmaster. Inside, he turned his focus inward, to the brilliant, chaotic core of his being. This was where his true power lived: [Innate Talent: Heaven-Defying Comprehension].
It wasn't just about learning. It was about seeing. Seeing the underlying principles, the threads of cause and effect, the fundamental truths that governed force and energy. He saw his martial arts not as fixed forms, but as living, breathing ideas. The [Mountain-Crushing Palm] was a concept of concentrated, overwhelming force. The [Nine Phantom Steps] was the principle of spatial ambiguity.
And now, he fed them the forbidden knowledge—the sensation of the world's ceiling, the texture of the spatial cracks, the grandmaster's own law-defying pressure.
Comprehend. Evolve.
It was like a silent detonation in his soul. The advanced-tier techniques dissolved, their structures unraveling and re-knitting with the terrifying new data. His meridians, which felt like they were carrying molten lead, suddenly cooled and clarified. The raging energy didn't diminish; it refined, focusing from a chaotic inferno into a blade of pure, directed potential.
The glow around him didn't fade. It changed. The wild, white-hot light deepened, taking on hues of deep violet and gold, swirling like a contained galaxy around his form. The spatial cracks near him didn't widen; they… hesitated, as if confused by the new energy signature.
He opened his eyes.
The world looked different. He could see the flow of the world's own energy now—a faint, golden latticework underlying everything, like the veins of a giant, sleeping beast. The grandmaster stood across from him, a knot of distorted, angry red pressure straining against that golden lattice.
A name surfaced in Li Chang'an's mind, born fully formed from his comprehension. A technique that didn't just use his own power, but borrowed, just for a moment, the weight of the world itself.
[Celestial Annihilation Fist].
He needed to test it. Not on the grandmaster. Not yet.
He turned his head, his gaze slicing across miles of forested landscape to a distant, jagged mountain peak, its tip painted white with snow. He raised his right fist. He didn't draw on his own core alone. Instead, he reached out with his newfound sense, his will hooking gently into the golden lattice of the world's energy around the mountain.
He pulled.
Then, he threw a punch into empty air.
There was no sound. No blinding beam of light.
One moment, the mountain peak stood against the blue sky.
The next, a perfect spherical section of it—from the snowy tip down several hundred meters—simply ceased to exist. It didn't explode. It didn't crumble. It was erased, leaving behind a smooth, glassy crater that reflected the sun like a monstrous mirror. A heartbeat later, the thunderous WHUMP of displaced air hit the arena, shaking the ground and sending a gale-force wind screaming through the stands.
Silence. A profound, deafening silence of utter disbelief.
Li Chang'an lowered his fist, feeling a slight, strange hollowness. The world's energy had yielded to him, but reluctantly. He had taken a sip from an ocean, and the ocean had noticed.
He looked back at the grandmaster.
The old man's expression had finally shattered. The arrogance, the condescending calm, was gone. In its place was a grave, bone-deep recognition. A flicker of something that might have been fear. He looked from the vanished mountain peak back to Li Chang'an, and gave a slow, stiff nod.
"Mythical," the grandmaster said, his voice carrying clearly in the dead air. "A tier thought only theoretical. To see it born in a Trial… you are not just defying fate, boy. You are defying definition."
No more words were needed.
The grandmaster moved. This time, there was no elegance, no effortless flow. It was pure, devastating purpose. He became a blur of crimson light, the air around him crystallizing and shattering with each step. He threw a punch, and it was like a meteor falling.
Li Chang'an met it with the [Celestial Annihilation Fist].
The collision wasn't loud. It was final.
A dome of silent force erupted from the point of impact, flattening the remaining arena walls into powder. The ground didn't crack—it split. A chasm, wide enough to swallow houses, tore open between them, racing to the horizon in both directions, the earth groaning in agony. The sky above darkened, clouds ripped apart by the shockwave.
They were no longer just fighting each other. They were fighting the world's tolerance.
Blow after blow, they traded techniques that could level cities. Li Chang'an's evolved [Nine Phantom Steps] left after-images that lingered like solid ghosts, confusing space itself. The grandmaster's crimson energy lashed out like sentient, hungry vipers, each strike carrying the weight of a hundred years of refined slaughter.
Li Chang'an was losing ground. His body, even strengthened by mythical evolution, was being pushed past its limits. Blood trickled from his nose, his ears. The grandmaster's experience was a vast, oppressive ocean. But Li Chang'an had one advantage: his comprehension was still active, in real-time, adapting, learning the grandmaster's patterns, finding the infinitesimal flaws in his world-defying pressure.
He saw it. A micro-fracture. A moment, less than a heartbeat, where the grandmaster's crimson energy, straining so hard against the world's golden lattice, recoiled slightly to cycle back to its source—his center, a point just below his sternum.
It was all the opening Li Chang'an needed.
He feigned a stumble, letting a crimson whip graze his shoulder, tearing cloth and skin. The grandmaster surged forward, a killing thrust aimed at his heart. At the last possible instant, Li Chang'an twisted, the phantom steps carrying him in an impossible diagonal. He channeled every ounce of the [Celestial Annihilation Fist], not into a wide blast, but into a single, focused point at the tip of his finger.
He didn't punch. He stabbed.
His finger, glowing with violet-gold annihilation, pierced through the grandmaster's frantic, last-moment guard and struck true, right on that center point below the sternum.
A sound like a giant bell cracking echoed across the shattered landscape.
The grandmaster's eyes flew wide. A web of light, part crimson and part of the world's own gold, erupted across his chest. He didn't scream. He just… froze.
And Li Chang'an felt it.
Not the satisfaction of a blow landed. Not the fatigue of his ravaged body.
Something else.
As his finger made contact, through the conduit of his own mythical energy and the grandmaster's fractured power, he felt a resonance. A deep, rhythmic, thrumming pulse that came not from his enemy, but from somewhere far, far below. From the very heart of the Trial World itself.
And with the pulse, a wave of pure, ancient consciousness washed over him. It held no words, only impressions: profound weariness, a simmering anger, and a terrifying, focused attention.
The world wasn't just a stage. It was alive. And it was now looking directly at him.
End of Chapter 200
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