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Transcending Mortal Limits
After concluding her first preliminary match within the mortal arena, Diyah immediately opened a portal and sought out Ken within the dimension of the Korzian Realm.
The afternoon sun pierced through the gaps in the crystal tree canopy of the Korzian Realm, reflecting a silvery-blue luminescence that pacified the soul. Diyah strolled slowly along the dirt path. Her breaths still felt slightly heavy—the residual effect of her violently churning Qi circulation following the lethal battle earlier. Even though every single muscle fiber in her mortal shell screamed in agony from exhaustion, her heart hammered with unadulterated enthusiasm; there was one specific person she desperately yearned to meet to share her triumph.
”Brother Ken… where are you?” Diyah called out, glancing left and right. Her soft voice echoed, bouncing gently amidst the vast crystal formations.
”Princess, I am right here.”
An exceedingly tranquil and heavy voice abruptly resonated from directly behind her.
Diyah jolted in sheer shock. She whipped around, her hands reflexively clutching her wildly hammering chest. “Heavens, Brother Ken! My heart nearly leaped out of my throat, you truly startled me,” she exclaimed, her eyes widening into saucers before she exhaled a long breath, patting her chest in profound relief. She hadn’t detected even a microscopic fluctuation of the youth’s aura of existence approaching.
Ken stood as still as a statue, his hands tucked neatly beneath his black robes. His gaze was abyssal, yet its surface remained as flat as a frozen lake. “Come now, I assumed the Princess came here to torture herself in cultivation, not to daydream,” he remarked, taking slow, deliberate steps closer.
”Hmmm…” Diyah lowered her visage for a fleeting moment, her fingers subconsciously twirling the tips of her silver hair in a flustered manner. “Truthfully, yes. But my primary reason… I also wanted to see you immediately, Brother Ken.” An incredibly sweet, bashful smile graced her beautiful visage.
Ken raised a single eyebrow. “Oh, is that so?” His voice remained frigid, deliberately erecting a fortress so as not to be effortlessly swept away by the maiden’s warmth and innocence.
”Yes, of course, Brother Ken! Oh, right!” Diyah suddenly recalled her main objective, her eyes instantly sparking with brilliance. “How was my match in the arena earlier? You watched it from beginning to end, didn’t you, Brother Ken?” she asked hopefully, awaiting the verdict from the grandmaster.
Ken stared straight ahead. His expression did not morph into euphoria, but rather continued to radiate the absolute seriousness of a military evaluation. “The Princess fought phenomenally well. The explosive yield of your technique was even capable of blasting the Wind Kingdom Prince and his entire vanguard out of the arena in a single breath.”
Hearing that praise, Diyah’s smile blossomed even wider, though she quickly lowered her head to remain humble. “That was purely due to the execution of our solid teamwork… not solely my own power,” she replied with a gentle tone. However, a heartbeat later, her radiant cheerfulness dimmed slightly. “Unfortunately… in our formation earlier, Onoke and Arsa did not answer the summons,” she added softly, implying the bitter disappointment of a comrade.
Hearing the names of those two traitors, Ken narrowed his eyes sharply. The ambient temperature plummeted several degrees. “A piece of advice from me: It would be best if the Princess no longer harbors any sympathy or hope regarding their loyalty.”
”Hah? Why would you say that, Brother Ken?” Diyah looked at him with a furrowed brow, not fully comprehending the dark intrigues veiled in the shadows.
Ken averted his gaze to stare into the distance, his eyes dimming as he harbored a blood-soaked secret that was not yet ripe for revelation. “Sooner or later, the Princess will witness with her own eyes the truth hiding behind their masks.”
Diyah fell silent, swallowing the barrage of questions hanging on the tip of her tongue. Realizing Ken was reluctant to delve further into the matter, she merely exhaled a soft sigh. “Hmmm… very well then,” she said, fortifying her resolve, before pivoting her body and marching toward the maw of the obsidian cave—the God Training Room.
Ken walked in tandem beside her. His footsteps were sturdy and unwavering, implying he knew absolutely that Diyah’s journey from this exact coordinate onward would mercilessly shred the maiden’s physical limits and sanity.
The moment they crossed the threshold of the formation boundary, the two stood in the epicenter of a colossal chamber lined with white jade walls. Diyah’s long silver hair cascaded partially down her back; her beautiful visage still bore the traces of exhaustion from yesterday’s endless simulations and today’s brutal clash. Yet, beneath all that mortal fatigue, her gaze blazed as bright as a blue inferno. She was acutely aware that today was no mere routine cultivation. Today, she had to prove to Ken—and to herself—that her physical vessel was capable of keeping pace with the absolute might of her soul, which had now attained a Golden Star.
Ken stood outside the arena ring, crossing his arms over his chest. “I shall warn you from the very beginning. Today, I will not grant you even a microscopic sliver of leniency, Princess. Consider this your inaugural introduction to cultivating against a manipulated gravitational field,” he declared, his heavy voice echoing and bouncing off the walls of the vast chamber.
Diyah drew a deep breath, flooding her lungs with oxygen, then gave a nod of ironclad resolve. “I am ready, Brother Ken. Break me.”
Ken pressed the runic control panel engraved into the stone wall near the entrance.
WUMMM! The energy field activated instantaneously. Diyah’s mortal shell felt as though it had been pulverized by an invisible sledgehammer descending from the heavens. Her feet were immediately nailed violently to the jade floor. Her lungs were instantly choked, forced to work with lunatic ferocity merely to draw a single breath.
”This tier has been calibrated to five times the normal gravity of the mortal realm,” Ken stated, his tone cruel in its absolute tranquility. “Begin taking steps. Walk and move.”
Diyah mobilized the entire reserve of Qi within her meridians. The moment she attempted to lift one foot, her knee trembled violently. Her very first step felt as though she were dragging a boulder the weight of a volcano. Her skeletal frame groaned, protesting the crushing pressure, and her heart hammered wildly like a war drum.
”Move, Princess! Do not allow that burden to swallow you whole!” Ken commanded mercilessly.
Diyah ground her teeth until her jawline bulged. Beads of cold sweat began to pour profusely from her temples, entirely ignoring the fact that the temperature within the chamber felt as freezing as glacial ice. One step… two steps… her petite frame quivered violently in every single inch, yet she absolutely refused to halt her advance. Slowly, her muscle memory and cellular structure were forced to mutate to adapt to the abnormal pressure.
”Now… jump,” Ken decreed, ruthlessly breaking her rhythm of adaptation.
Diyah lowered her head, gritted her teeth, and compressed every ounce of her strength into her calf muscles. She forced a leap. However, the gravity utterly refused to release its death grip. Her knees nearly snapped; her body only managed to levitate a few measly centimeters off the floor before she was violently slammed back down with a deafening thud. Her breath hitched instantly as her chest crashed against the jade tiles.
”Rise!” Ken’s voice boomed with unquestionable authority.
With the absolute dregs of her remaining strength and pride, Diyah bit her lip and attempted to propel her body upward once more. This time, she forced her leap marginally higher. Yet the five-fold gravity slammed her down again. Both her palms collided harshly against the floor tiles to brace the impact until they scraped and bled, but her fragile arms successfully supported her body, preventing her visage from being pulverized. Her chest heaved rapidly, desperately hunting for air, and her pale face was now flushed crimson due to the intensely concentrated blood pressure.
”Excellent. Do not surrender,” Ken offered a slow nod of cold appreciation. “Now, hold your martial stance and execute punches into the air.”
Diyah clenched her fists with agonizing difficulty, then forced a straight punch forward. Her velocity decelerated drastically, as if she were punching through quicksand, while the muscle fibers in her arms felt as though they were being incinerated alive by molten lava. She repeated the torture. One… two… three… up to ten consecutive swings. Her skeletal frame whimpered as if yearning to collapse into dust, but her mentality of steel successfully endured it all.
After several minutes—which felt akin to hours of agonizing torture in the abyss of hell—Ken finally touched the runic panel and deactivated the gravitational field.
The laws of nature returned to equilibrium. The sudden absence of that extreme pressure caused Diyah to instantly collapse, slumping onto the floor. She gasped ravenously for air. However, the moment her lungs pacified, she realized a miracle; her body abruptly felt phenomenally lighter and more liberated than ever before, as if the genuine gravity of the mortal realm was no longer capable of shackling her movements. Her velocity was absolutely guaranteed to skyrocket.
Ken did not grant her a lengthy reprieve. He clapped his hands exactly once.
ZWASH! A summoning Runic circle flared brilliantly in the center of the floor. From within that luminescence, an Automaton Golem manifested. Its shape and posture were nearly identical to Diyah’s own anatomical proportions, but the entire figure was forged from an amalgamation of dense cosmic metal and glittering eternal ice crystals. The golem’s eyes blazed with a pure blue spiritual flame, while the contours of its metallic visage were profoundly cold and utterly devoid of emotion.
”This is your first sparring partner, Princess. A combat Automaton possessing purely physical strength parameters exactly twice your own,” Ken announced, detailing the adversary. “Defeat it. This inanimate object is programmed to harbor absolutely zero mercy. And as an additional handicap… I shall lock the gravitational pressure in this arena to exactly one tier above normal.”
Diyah forced both her legs to stand tall. Her chest still heaved, but the lethal glint in her fighter’s eyes did not waver in the slightest.
The moment the signal was given, the Golem immediately charged forward. It shot forth with astounding velocity, cleaving the air. An impossibly heavy mechanical punch slammed flawlessly into Diyah’s left shoulder, blasting the maiden’s body through the air and sending her crashing into the edge of the arena.
”Ughh!” Diyah winced, enduring the agony radiating through her collarbone, but her survival instincts compelled her to immediately roll her body and scramble back to her feet.
The Automaton was relentless. It unleashed a consecutive barrage of assaults, this time launching a straight kick that sliced through the wind. Diyah ducked beneath the trajectory of the metallic leg, then retaliated with a devastating punch aimed straight at the golem’s abdomen. However, BAM! The crystal-metal body barely budged a microscopic inch, as if Diyah had just punched a solid block of cosmic steel.
Ken stood tranquilly outside the arena, his voice sliding through the air to deliver tactical directives. “Utilize your elemental intellect. Do not be a fool and rely purely on raw physical brawn against steel. Summon your ice Qi, Princess! Coat both of your hands in pure ice crystals to forge freezing gauntlets!”
Diyah drew a rapid breath, absorbing the instruction. She recalled the absolute foundations of Ken’s tutelage: bodily equilibrium, rotational flow of power, mental focus, and elemental manipulation. In the blink of an eye, chunks of impenetrable ice materialized, encasing both of her fists.
This time, she did not charge recklessly, but rather awaited the perfect momentum. As the Golem lunged again with a brutal, sweeping punch, Diyah pivoted her body nimbly to evade, then fired an ice-coated counter-punch directly into the joint hinge of the automaton’s arm.
CLANG! The resonant sound of fracturing frozen metal echoed sharply. For the first time, the Golem staggered and was forced to take a step back.
Diyah flashed a faint smirk at the corner of her bleeding lips. I… I can destroy it…
Yet before that relief could settle, the Golem’s blue eyes blazed even brighter. It rocketed forward once more, shifting into a combat mode that was exponentially swifter. A profoundly brutal close-quarters brawl erupted. The thunderous impacts of ice-coated fists colliding violently against metal saturated every corner of the chamber. Diyah was blasted away and slammed into the ground repeatedly, until fresh blood trickled from the corner of her lips and her temples. But with every single fall, she perpetually rose back up, her eyes blazing fiercer than before.
”Never resign yourself to defeat!” Ken’s voice echoed loudly, incinerating her hesitations and fueling her spirit.
Capitalizing on her absolute last dregs of strength, Diyah vaulted high into the air, contorting her body to generate an explosive shock value, then unleashed a spinning heel kick coated in the ice element with maximum yield. CRAAACK! The strike landed with flawless surgical precision upon the Golem’s neck. The metallic head violently shook, before the golem’s body finally lost its equilibrium, collapsed, and pulverized into a million shards of crystal and iron dust.
Diyah landed, panting severely. Her entire mortal shell trembled violently, enduring extreme exhaustion, yet her gaze glinted with absolute, unadulterated victory.
”Phase one is concluded. Now, summon your heirloom spear, Princess,” Ken commanded without granting her a single second of respite. “The next adversary awaits. The parameters of this second Golem are calibrated to be twice as formidable as the first, and its protective armor is astronomically thicker.”
Diyah gasped, her body reflexively stiffening. But before she even had the opportunity to part her lips to protest, the Runic circle flared brilliantly once more. Expanding from that luminescence, a new Golem emerged—its size one and a half times more massive than the previous iteration, and every single contour of its iron body was encased in a profoundly thick layer of primordial ice armor.
The colossal Golem stepped forward. Every single one of its thunderously heavy footfalls sent miniature seismic tremors rippling across the entire floor surface.
Diyah possessed no alternative. She summoned her Silver Spear from her dimensional ring, spun it elegantly into a defensive stance, and planted the butt of its shaft onto the floor. When the colossal Golem swung a sledgehammer-like fist from its arm, Diyah executed an acrobatic rotation and parried the devastating sweep using the middle shaft of her spear.
CLANG! The collision of pure power detonated. The pressure was so utterly brutal it nearly pulverized the bones in Diyah’s wrists, violently forcing her to drag backward to absorb the repulsive force.
Ignoring the agony, Diyah ground her teeth. She sprang, rebounding off the wall, spun the tip of her spear, and drove a fatal thrust straight toward the golem’s chest. SHHHINK! The spear tip successfully pierced the ice armor, but its kinetic force was completely arrested, utterly incapable of penetrating deeper into the core of the metallic steel. The colossal Golem retaliated by brutally swatting the spear shaft aside; the kinetic transfer of that energy nearly hurled Diyah across the entire expanse of the arena.
Ken called out, delivering corrections from the arena’s perimeter. “Do not pit your muscles against steel! Exploit the absolute advantage of your velocity and agility, Diyah! Do not squander your energy on futile slashes!”
Diyah nodded rapidly, mutating her strategy. She now moved with the nimble grace of a wind dance, relying entirely upon evasion techniques. She spun, hunting for the enemy’s blind spots, executing shallow thrusts purely to bait a reaction, then evading once more with the velocity of a phantom. Diyah’s consecutive movements grew phenomenally more fluid as the seconds ticked by.
Her laser-focused eyes finally pinpointed a single structural vulnerability: a microscopic, unarmored crevice at the articulation joint of the Automaton’s neck. With a shrill, piercing war cry, Diyah pumped the absolute entirety of her residual Qi into her legs, vaulted astronomically high, and drove her spear down like a falling comet, striking flawlessly into that fatal coordinate.
CRAAACK! BLAAR! The Automaton’s neck was impaled cleanly. Its crystal machinery convulsed wildly due to a catastrophic energy short-circuit, then shattered with a deafening crunch, scattering debris across the floor.
Diyah staggered upon landing, her spear still gripped in a death hold serving as the sole pillar supporting her body. Her lungs screamed in agony, desperately hunting for air.
Ken lowered his arms, which had been crossed the entire time. “Phase two is concluded. Now, banish your armament once more. You shall confront this final trial purely with your bare hands.”
Diyah stared in sheer disbelief, then, with hands trembling from absolute exhaustion, she stored her spear back into her spatial dimension. However, before her nervous system could even fully process the pain, the Runic circle projected its third illumination. This final Golem possessed the exact same proportions and physical dimensions as Diyah herself, yet its parameters of raw power and velocity had been multiplied to exactly three times the absolute limit of a mortal human.
Diyah clenched her fists tightly, chanting an incantation to re-coat her knuckles in chunks of pure ice. The final phase of the unarmed brawl detonated instantly.
A relentless barrage of supersonic punches, sweeping kicks, and grappling techniques clashed at a velocity nearly imperceptible to the naked eye. Diyah was battered backward and knocked down repeatedly, yet she perpetually forced herself to crawl back up and retaliate with a strike of her own. Her entire mortal shell was now painted with dark bruises, yet her eyes continued to blaze with an absolutely merciless inferno. She nailed Ken’s fundamental teachings into her brain: Never merely defend and await death… attack and fight utilizing the absolute instincts of your heart!
Seizing the microscopic momentum when the golem dropped its guard after unleashing an uppercut, Diyah borrowed the repulsive force from her footing, vaulted sideways, spun her body as fast as a whipping top, and smashed her ice-coated fist—compressed with her absolute last dregs of power—flawlessly into the temple of the killing machine.
CRAAAK! The sickening crunch of fracturing metal echoed sharply. The high-velocity golem staggered, completely stripped of its equilibrium, its motor systems detonating, before its entire metallic shell finally collapsed into a pile of crystal scrap.
Diyah collapsed to her knees. Her chest heaved up and down with brutal rapidity; her robes and skin were entirely drenched in a morbid concoction of sweat and blood. Yet, behind the torture that nearly reaped her life, an immensely satisfying smile of absolute victory was carved upon her beautiful visage.
Ken strolled slowly across the pulverized debris of the arena, then crouched down and patted the maiden’s shoulder with a gaze overflowing with unadulterated, pure pride. “An absolutely brilliant performance, Princess. Today, you have truly succeeded in shredding and transcending the absolute tolerance limits of your mortal shell.”
Ken reached into his robes and presented a single pill. “Swallow this recovery pill… then immediately regulate your breathing. Because after this, we shall repeat the exact same cycle, but I will elevate the gravitational pressure to Level Two,” Ken stated flatly, his visage completely sinless.
Diyah snapped her head up, staring at the man with a pair of eyes that widened drastically, as if she utterly refused to believe what she had just heard. “Hah?! Brother Ken… a-are you genuinely trying to kill me?” she asked in profound shock, her body barely capable of standing anymore.
”Naturally, I am dead serious. We shall continuously loop this torture round and round for the entire day,” Ken flashed a faint smirk—a demonic smile masquerading as an instructor.
”Hah!… Heavens above… Very well, Brother Ken,” Diyah replied with an incredibly resigned and feeble sigh.
Diyah sat, leaning her entire weight against the floor, fighting to suppress her ragged breaths. Her silver hair clung limply to her sweat-drenched forehead. Her beautiful lips were cracked and parched, yet within the absolute depths of her gaze, the inferno of ambition never once extinguished.
The shadow of Ken’s towering physique fell, eclipsing Diyah. Even though the youth’s expression remained as petrified and flat as a god of death, the cadence of his voice resonated with an absolute firmness that inexplicably bestowed a profound inner tranquility. “Merely possessing the capability to transcend your current physical limits is naught but the inaugural step, Princess. If you harbor the absolute ambition to sit atop the apex of the food chain as the strongest… then you possess no alternative but to continue climbing and escalating the tier of this gravitational pressure until your bones are pulverized and reforged into eternal cosmic steel.”
Diyah slowly raised her visage. Her sapphire-blue eyes glinted with defiance, even though her entire skeletal frame trembled in protest. “Brother Ken… is lunatic torture like this truly an absolute prerequisite to becoming a victor? At this very moment… all of my internal organs and joints feel utterly numb; I can barely move an inch,” she murmured softly. She fell silent for a heartbeat, absorbing the agony, then flashed a faint smile radiating unparalleled valor. “But I know… even if I were to wail and beg you for mercy, you would absolutely never order me to stop, would you?”
Ken stared at the stubbornly resolute maiden for a long epoch. He uttered not a single syllable of defense, but instead slowly extended a spherical, luminous spiritual pill—the Pancasona Pill. “Open your mouth and swallow this. The exact moment your meridians are rejuvenated, we shall immediately resume this ruthless session.” The faint smirk he offered now felt infinitely more like a life-and-death challenge rather than mere encouragement.
Diyah swallowed hard with a parched throat. With hands that still trembled violently, she accepted the invaluable pill. “Hah… very well, my Hero,” she murmured in resignation.
She swallowed the pill instantly. For a fleeting second, an intensely bitter sensation stung her tongue, but in the next heartbeat, cosmic warmth detonated and infiltrated the entirety of her bloodstream, knitting her torn muscles back together and instantaneously restoring the remnants of her strength.
Capitalizing on that absolute rejuvenation, Diyah rose to her feet slowly. Even though both of her legs were still slightly wobbly and unstable, her martial posture remained proudly defiant. “Brother Ken… listen to me very carefully. If, in the subsequent round, I collapse helplessly to the floor once more, do not ever attempt to assist me. Allow me to discover my own path to crawl back up and salvage my own pride,” the maiden decreed, challenging her master.
Hearing that ultimatum, one of Ken’s eyebrows arched slightly. He did not utter a single word, merely offering a solitary, exceedingly slow nod. His razor-sharp gaze seemingly granted absolute acknowledgment: That is precisely how the mentality of a true god of war must be tempered.
Absolute silence once again blanketed the colossal training chamber. The only audible sound was the rhythm of Diyah’s inhales as she fought to stabilize her heartbeat.
Without a shred of hesitation, Ken turned on his heel and strode tranquilly toward the stone panel on the chamber wall, his fingers poised to press the runic control node.
”Brace your bones. The gravitational level… I am elevating it to Level Two,” Ken delivered the merciless verdict.
Diyah closed her eyes, clenching both her fists with every ounce of her might. A faint smile of pure valor pierced through the layers of bruises and sweat adorning her visage. “Very well… let us begin this hell once more.”
And exactly at the moment the gravitational burden—twice as horrifying as before—crashed down and attempted to pulverize her mortal shell, the resolve within Diyah’s soul detonated, blazing a hundred times brighter. This day of torture officially marked the genesis of an evolutionary journey that would be exponentially more brutal, exponentially bloodier, yet would absolutely dictate her destiny in the impending future.