Chapter 546: Superior

The new energy circulating through Liam’s body hastened his recovery. It didn’t take long before the pain completely subsided, only leaving a lingering discomfort where his fangs had grown.

The hissing had stopped, too, getting Liam’s Qi under control, but he didn’t move yet. His breakthrough had broken his isolated room, leaving him exposed, but he had a few things to check before looking for another hideout.

First, Liam cleaned himself with a talisman, remaining naked as he checked his fangs again. They were directly under and above his glands, meaning the venom would flow over them, but he was more worried about another function.

Liam sighed in relief when a muscle he didn’t know he had activated, and his fangs retracted. They weren’t long enough to hinder his daily life, but having them sticking behind his canines all the time would have been problematic.

With a forbidden lineage to keep hidden, Liam couldn’t walk around with fangs clearly belonging to a snake.

Of course, there was additional minor reassurance. Grace wouldn’t risk cutting her tongue when she kissed Liam.

As much as pieces of shed skin still hung from Liam’s body, having resisted the cleaning talisman, his mind went to his cultivation next. His destructive power burst had already proven the breakthrough’s success, but he wanted to see it.

The overall color had darkened even further, the green hues almost completely absent in the ominous, profound, thick light Liam’s cultivation radiated.

The spiritual and minor roots were somewhat unchanged. Light aside, they only looked slightly more durable, but there was a power Liam hadn’t felt before in their texture, a trait inexplicable in material terms.

Instead, the core had something new. A thin protuberance had grown from its top, wanting to expand higher, treating Liam’s dantian like the trunk of a tree.

Naturally, that was Liam’s first branch in its undeveloped shape, which had grown somewhat meaningfully through the remnants of the Boar’s Touch the breakthrough hadn’t used.

That conclusion also used Liam’s inspections of Grace’s cultivation as a comparison. She hadn’t developed much, if at all, after reaching the branching stage, but he knew how many spirit stones she had burned, enabling some mental math.

’It’s meaningful,’ Liam accepted, ’But very, very slow.’

Grace hadn’t developed branches the last time Liam checked, so he didn’t know how long they needed to be for their growth to be complete, and there was his unique issue to account for.

’One thousand branches for the peak,’ Liam thought. ’I took almost three years to complete the rooting stage, meaning ...’

The branching stage was considered the great divider in the cultivation journey for multiple reasons. Its far greater length was the most obvious, which would be unfathomably worse in Liam’s case.

’A single decade would be wishful thinking, wouldn’t it?’ Liam concluded, some bitterness invading his mind as his thoughts went to Adrian, snapping out of that pensive mood in the next second.

Of course, Liam had ways to hasten his growth. He already planned to rely on poisonous swamps of his own creation. The location was the problem there.

The shed skin came next. Liam removed every remnant of discarded tissue, cleaning himself again afterward, before taking a good look at his body.

The previous breakthrough had already improved Liam’s muscles, bloating them a bit, making them fuller and sturdier. Their size hadn’t changed now, but pressing on his bicep revealed a newfound density.

Liam’s muscles were properly tough now, to a concerning degree, but stretching confirmed that he hadn’t lost any flexibility.

’It’s as if they aren’t human tissues anymore,’ Liam pondered. ’Will they act as a passive defensive technique?’

The question came from the main offender. Liam’s muscles had indeed evolved somewhat, but his skin was what had changed the most.

Liam’s skin now radiated a strange luster. It wasn’t bright or metallic, but it was there, actually embodying the words "glowing skin".

That superficial layer was even tough to the touch, like a proper flexible barrier. Also, the tide of information that Liam perceived whenever something landed on it was straight up absurd, standing out like when his mouth had learned to taste scents.

’This will take a bit to get used to,’ Liam acknowledged. His skin’s new receptors almost caused a headache due to how overwhelming they were.

Liam couldn’t call that a completely new organ, but checking his hands almost made him rethink that conclusion.

’They are gone,’ Liam thought.

There was nothing on Liam’s palms, no calluses, no marks of his life on Krosstoen’s mountain. They were utterly spotless, as if new.

Liam knew that the breakthrough was a perfecting of sorts, an elevation of a cultivator to a higher form of being.

Yet, Grace’s hideous scar hadn’t disappeared after her breakthrough. Liam’s dragon burn was still there, too. Somehow, only those superficial marks of his mortal life had vanished.

And Liam understood why. It was just bittersweet. He had earned those calluses after all. However, mortal scars were truly beyond him, so distant he struggled to acknowledge them, his new mind providing that perspective.

Liam had already felt it. It would have been impossible to ignore due to how much he perceived. His senses’ range had expanded by leaps and bounds. The mental weight from the rank 3 fan was no more, and everything just felt weak.

The world parted when Liam jumped. Gravity, air pressure, and other hindrances had no shackles on his action. He ended up in the sky, the slimy hole dozens of meters under him, his figure not falling right away.

Liam took in the desert’s beautiful night scenery. What had previously felt immense now seemed manageable, as if the world had shrunk.

The sand, sky, and very air felt beneath Liam. They weren’t frail anymore. They were straight-up inferior, unable to have any influence on his existence.

Because of that superiority, Liam could see the truth of things, the real face of the world, finding it obvious.

’It’s exactly as Grace said,’ Liam recalled. ’It’s as if a veil had been lifted.’

The darkness had color. Each grain of sand was unique despite carrying the same nature. The dunes told stories of their own, but all that beauty couldn’t faze Liam. He was beyond it.

What mortals saw as mountains were nothing more than boulders for giants, and that was exactly what Liam had become. Wolves didn’t even notice insects, just like branching experts couldn’t care for something so below them.

’It has always been so small,’ Liam realized, his body starting to fall. ’How have I not seen that?’

Through Grace’s experience, Liam already had clues to work with. He knew he had to absorb that new perspective and make it his new norm, just as he knew where that superiority came from.

Despite falling, Liam sent his mind to his Qi, checking it again, studying it, feeling it. That new energy was more than power. It was somewhat alive, but one with him more than it had ever been in the past.

The Qi actually felt like Liam himself.

That inspection seemed to have taken ages, but not even a second had passed. Liam still wasn’t anywhere close to the ground when he tested something.

’Stop,’ Liam ordered to himself, his mere intention unleashing a shocking effect.

No Qi leaked or was depleted, but Liam’s presence suddenly expanded, becoming more intense, forcing gravity to release its grasp on him. His figure stopped mid-air, hovering in the same spot for two full seconds.

Nevertheless, it seemed gravity was still deserving of some respect. The pull toward the ground intensified until Liam’s presence alone couldn’t suffice anymore, and his slow fall resumed.

Eventually, Liam landed softly on the sand, barely displacing it. He understood now. As a being fueled by such superior energy, his mere intentions carried power. It was as if he had gained a new, invisible arm or a permanent version of the rank 2 Aura.

There was also something else. With how superior that Qi was, it dethroned organs and sheer flesh as the core of Liam’s being. His body was just a container. His cultivation was his true heart, at least the one of the higher being he had become.

’What about this?’ Liam wondered, not needing to think for his presence to become suffocating and pressing on the sand.

A several-meters-wide circular area immediately formed around Liam, the sand flattened. Then, he intensified his presence even further, whips of black Qi leaking from his figure as he summoned his true nature.

There was no direct attack or infection, but the sand under Liam’s feet began to sizzle, transforming. The change soon spread, painting the ground black, melting it into a deadly substance.

It didn’t take long before Liam found himself at the center of a dark, muddy swamp, toxic fumes leaking out of it. He had changed the world with his presence alone, and the results perfectly matched what his great Master had once told him.

’Unnatural compulsion,’ Liam pondered.

Dominic had been an unmovable mountain. Jessica had been one with the air, and Grace was weightless, ethereal energy. Instead, Liam was an inescapable infection that could turn everything into poison, even the Heavens themselves.