436: Chapter 436 The Collapse of the Universe Was Not My Will, The Turmoil of the World Disrupts My Heart

"What are you supposed to be?"

Zhou Wannian's calm voice echoed over the ruins littered with the wreckage of Truth Warships. There was no hoarse roaring, nor was there any gnashing of teeth in hatred. There was only the indifference and disgust of someone looking at a foul-smelling gutter by the roadside.

This sentence was like a rusty yet impossibly blunt and heavy iron hammer, striking squarely against Li Changgeng's half-human, half-mechanical face.

The bone throne hovering above the sinkhole shuddered slightly.

Li Changgeng's mechanical hand, extended in mid-air and covered in gears and circuitry, froze in place. On his half-flesh cheek, withered like parchment, the drooping corner of his mouth began to twitch uncontrollably, causing his bloodshot, cloudy organic eye to jerk violently as well.

The wind blew up from the bottom of the abyss, carrying a few wisps of the pungent smell of machine oil, brushing past the optical sensor that flickered alternately red and blue on his metal cheek.

"What am I supposed to be..."

Li Changgeng muttered to himself, his throat emitting a "gurgling" sound like a leaking, broken bellows.

At first, the sound carried a hint of bewilderment, but in an instant, it transformed into a heart-wrenching, hysterical peal of laughter. The shriveled flesh twisted and deformed in the laughter, as if it might peel off his cheekbones at any moment; meanwhile, the other half of cold matrix metal remained rigidly smooth, making this madness all the more hair-raising.

"Hahaha! Good! A fine idler who only cares about the peace beneath his own feet!"

Li Changgeng suddenly straightened up on the bone throne. He no longer hunched over, nor did he beg. His mechanical hand gripped the armrest so tightly that it crushed the hard bone into pale powder, which fell in a rustling stream between his fingers.

"You don't understand! A monster like you, born with Absolute Mass and strolling through the Universe as if it were an inn—how could you possibly understand the despair of all living beings in the face of heat death!"

He pointed at Zhou Wannian, his voice's electronic synthesis completely drowning out his human voice, turning into a sharp, piercing sound of metal grinding.

"I cut myself to pieces to stuff into this iron shell; I bear the infamy of slaughtering billions of worlds, all just to find a stone to mend the sky in this drafty, broken house! Now the stone is right in front of me, and you tell me you only care about whether your rice wine is sour!"

The thick optical fibers connected deep into Li Changgeng's brain lit up with a blinding red light due to his emotional outburst. Coolant boiled within the transparent tubes, emitting green bubbles.

"Since you won't give it, and since you are unwilling to part with your meager, idle life."

In Li Changgeng's only remaining cloudy organic eye, his humanity was completely devoured by mechanical coldness and paranoia. He suddenly raised his mechanical hand and grabbed the thickest data cable on the top of his skull.

"Rip!"

Without the slightest hesitation, he ripped the cable that was embedded deep into his brain matter right out.

Dark red, viscous blood mixed with green coolant sprayed out like a fountain from his skull, splashing onto the bone throne and emitting a nauseating, metallic-sweet stench.

"Then I will crush this inn along with you and take it myself!"

The moment he pulled out the cable, Li Changgeng slammed the physical key—which represented the highest authority of the Truth Realm Mainframe—into a hidden port on the armrest of the bone throne.

"Ultimate sequence unlocked. Discarding three-dimensional coordinate system. Initiating—dimensionality collapse!"

Following this shrill command, the already dim and oppressive sky over the core area of the Taiwu Ancestral Court split open without warning, creating a massive black fissure that stretched for millions of miles.

There was no thunder, no fire. There was only a deathly silence that made one feel as if their very Soul was being pulled away.

Zhou Wannian stood on the Void Realm stairs, his feet stepping on an invisible barrier. He tilted his head slightly, watching the changes occurring all around him.

The wind stopped. Or rather, the wind lost the space in which to flow.

In the perception granted by the Great Perfection Space Law, Zhou Wannian saw clearly that the three basic dimensions of "length, width, and height" that constituted this world were being forcibly stripped of one by an irresistible, terrifying force.

The first thing to be affected was light.

The pale white light that had originally shone on the ruins, casting long shadows, suddenly lost its dimensionality. The towering broken walls and the wreckage of warships scattered on the ground, the moment they lost a dimension, were like being forcibly slapped onto a flat sheet of white paper by an invisible giant hand.

At the bottom of the sinkhole, several Truth Warships that had luckily not been smashed earlier—the crew inside the hulls didn't even have time to let out a scream before the massive, three-dimensional geometric structure of the entire warship rapidly flattened amidst the teeth-aching "crackle-crackle" sounds of folding. The thick, high-dimensional alloy armor lost its thickness, and the complex power matrix turned into lines on a plane.

In the blink of an eye, those three-dimensional warships turned into steel pictures imprinted in the Void Realm, possessing only length and width but no thickness. Machine oil and residual blood looked like cheap watercolors smudged across the painting.

This was the Truth Realm's final trump card, and the killing move Li Changgeng used to gamble his life—the dimensionality reduction strike.

It compressed all three-dimensional matter into a two-dimensional plane. During this process, anything that relied on three-dimensional space for existence, no matter how thick its armor or how high its magic power, would face total destruction at the level of physical Law the moment it lost its thickness.

Space was contracting. The gray sky above and the split-open abyss sinkhole below were rapidly closing in toward the center in a way that defied all reason.

It was like a heavy, ancient book being forcefully slammed shut from both top and bottom, intending to crush the insect caught between the pages into pulp.

The surrounding palace ruins turned into scrolls piece by piece, and the dust and stones floating in mid-air all lost their dimensionality, turning into flat black spots in the Void Realm.

The barrier of dimensionality reduction, carrying an edge that could slice through everything, frantically closed in on the center point where Zhou Wannian stood.

Zhou Wannian stood in the center of the constantly collapsing world. He watched the palaces that had become like paper cutouts, and he watched Li Changgeng's half-mechanical face, which was twisted on the edge of dimensionality reduction.

In his nostrils, that three-dimensional, sour, rotting Death Qi also became shriveled, losing its original layers. Beside his ears, the sounds emitted as all things were flattened no longer had any echo, leaving only a monotonous, piercing "hiss" sound, like a giant paper cutter tearing through the curtain of the Universe.

"Heaven and Earth are a great furnace, burning nothing but foul-smelling, rotten firewood all day long."

Zhou Wannian lowered his head and glanced at the washed-out blue cloth robe he was wearing. The hem of his garment, which would usually wrinkle and flutter in the airflow, was now being pulled by the dimensionality reduction force, presenting a tendency to stiffly flatten out to the sides.

If this mended old garment were pressed into a picture, it would be impossible to wear anymore.

"Mending the sky, mending the earth, only to mend an iron clamp that wants to crush people into meat patties. The troubles of this mortal world really don't let one have a moment of peace."

Zhou Wannian let out a sigh. In those eyes, deep as an abyss, there was no terror at facing the collapse of dimensions, nor any anger at being betrayed by an old friend. There was only an impatience, as if his stroll had been disturbed, a disgust that went down to his very bones.

He did not perform any incantations, he did not bring out any Magic Treasure for protection, and he did not even undo the chains on his Divine Soul by the slightest bit.

Facing this dimensionality reduction strike capable of reducing the entire Taiwu Ancestral Court to nothingness, Zhou Wannian simply, calmly, pulled out the right hand that had been clasped behind his back.

He raised his arm, and his sleeve slid down his wrist, revealing a segment of fair, well-proportioned forearm. His five fingers spread naturally, palm facing upward, just like a common drinker at a table casually lifting a light wine cup.

Then, he steadily held this hand up toward the two-dimensional Void Realm barrier that was frantically pressing down from above.

"Bang—"

An extremely muffled sound of impact, as if even time itself had been struck and cracked, exploded the moment Zhou Wannian's palm made contact with the dimensionality reduction barrier.

There were no brilliant lights scattering, nor was there any clash of Spiritual Qi storms. This was a deadlock on a purely physical level.

The dimensionality reduction barrier, carrying the terrifying kinetic energy of an entire world being stripped of a dimension, acted like a boundless, thickness-less absolute blade, slashing fiercely toward Zhou Wannian's palm.

This force intended to flatten his flesh, blood, and even the basic particles that made up his body. However, when that invisible barrier pressed against Zhou Wannian's palm, it stopped.

The Absolute Mass refined by the Great Perfection Space Law was, at this moment, concentrated without reservation on this seemingly delicate palm.

Zhou Wannian held up the sky with one hand. His arm did not bend even the slightest bit, and his wrist was as steady as Mount Tai. The sleeve of his blue robe was blown straight back, taut in the aftermath generated by the collision of the two forces.

Above his head, that two-dimensional space, which had originally been unstoppable and intended to close this "ancient book," encountered a stabilizing needle at Zhou Wannian's palm that could not be broken no matter what.

"Hiss—creak—"

A sound of friction that made one's teeth ache and scalp numb rang out around Zhou Wannian's palm. It was the rules of dimensionality reduction desperately trying to slice the edges of his palm. The invisible dimensional barrier twisted frantically around his palm, and the originally flat two-dimensional cross-section was forcibly pushed out by Zhou Wannian's palm into a protruding three-dimensional groove.

The surrounding world continued to turn into scrolls. The scrap iron at the edge of the sinkhole and the gray, hazy horizon in the distance all became paper cutouts without thickness.

Only the small plot of land where Zhou Wannian stood remained. With one hand, he forcibly held open an island of three-dimensionality.

He did not use force to push back, nor did he tear that barrier. He just held his hand up casually, as if supporting a piece of broken tile that had fallen from a roof, letting the pressure of dimensionality reduction wash down in wave after wave like a tsunami.

"Crack... crack..."

The sound of the space barrier cracking under the unbearable weight began to spread around Zhou Wannian's palm.

In the distance, on the bone throne hovering in mid-air, with half his body already beginning to be assimilated into a flat picture by the dimensionality reduction force, Li Changgeng's cloudy, bloodshot organic eye stared fixedly at the hand Zhou Wannian was holding up.

On his metallic right face, his optical sensor flickered like crazy, magnifying the image of Zhou Wannian's palm ten thousand times, a hundred thousand times, attempting to find even a trace of deformation within the texture of that flesh.

In the physical codex of the Truth Realm that Li Changgeng had spent countless epochs establishing, the dimensionality reduction strike was irreversible.

Any three-dimensional matter, the moment it touched the dimensionality reduction barrier, would inevitably suffer a collapse of its microscopic structure. Even a black hole with a density great enough to swallow a galaxy, after having its thickness extracted, would turn into a flat black disc.

He had thought that although Zhou Wannian's Absolute Mass was immense, under this level of pressure at the level of Law, even if this hand wasn't pressed into paper, it would inevitably be torn and mangled, its bones shattered, and its core Origin forced out.

However, the data fed back by the optical sensor was like a cold, sharp knife, fiercely stabbing through the reason and logic Li Changgeng took such pride in.

No deformation. Not even a little.

In the image, on Zhou Wannian's fair palm, the palm prints were clearly visible, like the crisscrossing streams in the Jiangnan water towns. The edges of his fingernails maintained a perfectly rounded curve. Even through his thin skin, Li Changgeng could clearly see the three-dimensional outline of the blue veins underneath.

Under the terrifying pressure capable of compressing a Major Thousand Worlds into a two-dimensional scroll, this human flesh palm still maintained the most perfect, most solid three-dimensional state. Not even a single pore had collapsed.

This scene completely shattered Li Changgeng's perception. He finally understood a fact that made all high-dimensional civilizations feel despair.

Zhou Wannian's mass did not depend on the spatial volume he occupied at all. He had not compressed massive amounts of matter into this body, which was why he didn't fear being pressed.

His mass was an "Absolute" that transcended the very Laws of dimensional definition. Whether in three dimensions, two dimensions, a one-dimensional line, or a zero-dimensional point, as long as Zhou Wannian existed, his mass was unsolvable. Dimensions could not limit him, and Laws could not define him. A dimensionality reduction strike trying to flatten him was like trying to wrap a blazing sun with a sheet of paper; other than burning the paper to ashes, it was meaningless.

"No... this is impossible... there is no such thing in the mathematical models..."

Li Changgeng's half-flesh face was twisted to the extreme due to utter disbelief. A leaking, wind-like roar came from his throat, and his mechanical arm pounded desperately against the bone armrest that had already turned half-flat. "This violates theorems! This doesn't conform to logic! How can you not even be compressed by dimensionality reduction!"

Zhou Wannian held up the dimensionality reduction barrier that was constantly cracking with one hand. He heard Li Changgeng's breakdown roar, which carried a sobbing tone, and lifted his eyelids slightly. In those deep eyes, the bizarre two-dimensional scrolls all around were reflected, as was the old acquaintance who had transformed himself into a stitched-together monster.

"Theorems? Logic?"

Zhou Wannian's wrist did not shake in the slightest, and his tone was as calm as a stagnant pool of water. He looked at Li Changgeng's desperate face, his voice piercing through the wailing of dimensions and falling clearly into the ear of this madman.

"You've been hiding in an iron shell, flipping through books for tens of thousands of years, and you actually think you've seen through all the rules of this world."

Zhou Wannian's five fingers, which were supporting the barrier, tapped lightly against the invisible spatial cross-section.

"Tap."

A light sound. "Your pathetic abacus beads cannot calculate how heavy this hand of mine is."