282: Twilight

This was not a city at all.

It was a massive, living museum of specimens.

And every person in the city was a specimen carefully fixed onto a display stand.

Li Dong restrained all his Divine Might, transforming into the most inconspicuous traveler as he walked among these "specimens."

His pace was completely different from everyone else's; it was erratic, fast and slow. Every step was like a pebble thrown into a stagnant pool; although it didn't stir any ripples, it created the most fundamental "dissonance" on the invisible level of the Law.

He could clearly "hear" a ubiquitous Law of "Confinement" frantically trying to "correct" his pace, wanting to pull him back into that uniform, synchronized rhythm.

But the aura of the ancient stone slab rippled gently, dissolving this corrective force into nothingness.

Li Dong was like a ghost, drifting outside the precise gears of this massive machine.

Suddenly, a patrol turned out from a street corner.

They wore gray-white uniforms, their faces blurred as if covered by a layer of frosted glass.

There were no pupils in their eyes, only two rotating gray vortices symbolizing absolute order.

"Law Enforcers."

The executors of the Law in this world.

They were not living beings; they were more like tentacles and probes extended from the Law of equilibrium.

The patrol walked past Li Dong without the slightest pause.

In their perception, Li Dong, this "Advanced Variable," was perfectly concealed by the ancient stone slab and did not exist on their target-seeking radar.

Li Dong walked into a teahouse.

The teahouse was full of people, yet it was so quiet that one could hear the sound of dust settling.

Everyone had a steaming cup of tea in front of them, but from the moment the tea was served until it cooled completely, no one reached out to touch it.

They just sat there, maintaining the posture of "drinking tea."

Li Dong found a corner and sat down.

Just then, a discordant "noise" appeared.

In the corner of the teahouse, a ragged young man was hunched over a table, quickly scribbling on a piece of worn-out scrap paper with a piece of charred charcoal.

His movements were the only scene in this city that could be called "vivid."

His eyes were focused and fanatical, as if the whole world consisted only of him and the drawing in his hands.

Li Dong looked over with the eyes of Attunement.

On that scrap paper, there were none of the city's signature, rigid straight lines and geometric figures.

It was a raging fire, a wild horse breaking free from its reins, a flower blooming in defiance of thunder on a cliffside!

Chaotic, wild, and full of primitive vitality, unrestrained by anything.

This drawing was completely out of place with the entire world.

It was a profanity, a curse shouted aloud in a solemn and dignified funeral hall.

Every stroke of the artist was like using a carving knife to gouge deeply into the core Law of this world.

The corners of Li Dong's mouth curled into an imperceptible arc.

A spark, found.

Just as the artist was about to draw the final stroke, to add the stamen to that cliffside flower—

"Swish!"

Two "Law Enforcers" appeared silently behind him.

They did not say a word.

One of the Law Enforcers reached out; that hand lacked the texture of flesh and blood, appearing more like it was made of pure gray light.

He picked up the drawing.

Then, in front of the artist, he tore it in half, extremely slowly and with great force.

Then into four pieces.

Eight pieces...

Until it turned into a pile of fluttering black butterflies, scattering onto the ground.

Throughout the whole process, the other guests in the teahouse didn't even twitch an eyelid, continuing to maintain their unchanging postures of eternity.

Dead silence.

A dead silence that could freeze even the Soul.

The artist's body trembled violently. He stared fixedly at the paper scraps on the ground, his eyes, which had originally been burning with fire, dimming bit by bit, covered by a gray color called "despair."

However, just before that gray was about to completely swallow him up.

A ripple, so weak it was almost non-existent, flashed and vanished from the depths of his Divine Soul.

That was anger.

It was unwillingness.

It was the most instinctive urge to roar after having one's dreams crushed.

It was this ripple that confirmed to Li Dong that the "sickness" of this world could still be saved.

An old tea drinker sitting at the table next to Li Dong, who looked like he was on his last legs, sighed faintly in a voice that was barely audible.

"Another... foolish child."

His voice was dry and mechanical, yet miraculously, it carried a trace of emotional residue that had long since been worn away.

"Child, you shouldn't have come here. Before the 'Lord of Equilibrium' descended, our world... also once had color, had songs, had... the heartbeat of loved ones."

After saying this, the faint light in the old man's eyes extinguished completely, and he turned back into a living statue.

"Lord of Equilibrium," huh...

Li Dong recited this name silently in his heart.

He through the Law of Attunement, instantly analyzed the power composition of those two "Law Enforcers" just now.

Their power did not originate from themselves but, like network terminals, was connected to an immensely vast energy source hidden deep beneath the city.

A massive "equilibrium hub."

That was the heart of this cage.

The Law Enforcers finished the "correction" and turned to leave.

The artist remained slumped on the table, his body like a pile of mud, without even the strength to lift his head.

Li Dong stood up and walked slowly toward him.

He walked to the artist's table and gently placed an inconspicuous stone on the corner of the table.

It was a most ordinary Spirit Stone, yet on it, he had carved a flower using Divine Thought.

A flower blooming with ultimate vitality.

What it contained was a thread of the purest Law of "vitality" that Li Dong had stripped from the Origin of the heart of the universe.

After doing all this, Li Dong turned and left without leaving any words.

Just as he brushed shoulders with the patrolling Law Enforcers.

The two Law Enforcers stopped abruptly, and their gray vortex pupils showed violent fluctuations for the first time.

They turned their heads in unison, locking onto Li Dong's back.

A massive force of the Law of equilibrium, like an invisible giant wave, crushed toward Li Dong, intending to completely analyze, assimilate, and format him, this "anomaly point"!

The space inside the teahouse was instantly solidified under this force.

However, Li Dong just walked calmly.

The power of the ancient stone slab formed an absolute "conceptual black hole" outside his existence.

The Law force of the Law Enforcers surged over, but it was like a clay ox entering the sea; it didn't even stir up a ripple before being swallowed up completely.

In the "vision" of the Law Enforcers, Li Dong's back was sometimes existent, sometimes void.

He was clearly right there, yet he could not be defined by any Law.

He was clearly walking, yet he could not be captured by time and space.

This feeling caused a kind of chaos called "uncertainty" to arise for the first time in the absolutely rational, mechanical "thinking" of the Law Enforcers.

They were "1," and the world was "0."

And Li Dong was the "X" that could not be calculated.

This in itself was a highest-level pollution.

The gray vortices in the eyes of the Law Enforcers spun wildly. Finally, because they could not analyze him, they could only judge Li Dong as a "non-existent phantom" and gave up the suppression.

Li Dong walked out of the teahouse calmly.

He knew that destroying the "equilibrium hub" directly was simple.

But that would treat the symptoms, not the root cause.

What he wanted to do was not to use one order to cover another.

He wanted to replant the seeds of "possibility" in this dead soil and let this world "come alive" on its own.

This was the true essence of Attunement.

Behind him, inside the teahouse.

The artist, who was slumped like mud, inadvertently had his fingertips touch the cold stone on the corner of the table.

A warm current, a "vitality" he thought he had long forgotten and long dead, surged along his fingertips and violently rushed into his mind!

Before his eyes, there was no longer the grayish-yellow twilight.

He saw an endless starry sky, saw the birth and extinction of billions of stars, saw a seed break through the darkness of the Universe and grow into a World Tree that supported the entire dimension!

That was... life!

It was true, free, wild, and indefinable... life!

The artist suddenly lifted his head, and in those dead-gray eyes, a spark reignited.

He trembled, clutching the stone tightly in his palm.

Fear still bound him like shackles.

But this time, deep within his heart, another force began to quietly sprout.

Li Dong walked on the street at dusk, feeling the spark that had been ignited, and the corners of his mouth curled up again.

He cast his gaze toward the deepest part of the city.

"Lord of Equilibrium... why did you turn the entire world into specimens?"

"Is it fear of change? Or... are you afraid of some more terrifying Variable that even you cannot 'equilibrium'?"

This game of chess was getting more and more interesting.