163: The Second Strike of Heaven

The Ruoshui Black Tortoise successfully blocked and rebounded the attack from the Envoy of Heavens Path. Although it did not injure the opponent's core, it was undoubtedly like a shot of adrenaline injected into the almost frozen Bloodline of the Lei Yan Divine Dynasty.

Above the city walls, the tense atmosphere eased slightly, and the light from the muzzles of the Sequence Legion units seemed to stabilize a bit.

Mo Yu panted slightly, her jade hand pressed against the cold back shell of the Ruoshui Black Tortoise, quickly regulating her breath to prepare for the next round of impact.

The Envoy of Heavens Path stood silently in the distance, his white robes still as pristine as snow, unblemished by dust.

He did not show the slightest anger because his attack was blocked; the cold eyes beneath that blurred face merely lingered on the Ruoshui Black Tortoise and Mo Yu for a moment longer, as if re-evaluating this "unexpected" defensive unit.

However, the assessment brought not increased attention, but a kind of... more indifferent scrutiny based on an absolute gap in strength.

It was like a human seeing an ant hold up a leaf to block the rain; there might be a trace of surprise, but they would never think it could change anything.

He did not raise his hand again to "deliver" Sword Intent.

Instead, he made a more puzzling movement.

His left hand, which had just extinguished the rebound beam, did not lower. Instead, his five fingers slightly spread, and he made an extremely gentle... flick towards the Void Realm of the Lei Yan Divine Dynasty's territory.

There was no surging Sword Intent, no explosion of energy, not even a whisper of wind.

It was as if he were simply brushing away a speck of dust that did not exist before his eyes.

However, the moment his fingers flicked—

An extremely strange and indescribable change occurred quietly.

The first to notice something wrong were the sequence units inside the command tower responsible for monitoring the energy flow and the stability of Law across the entire region.

"Alert! Unknown Law-level interference detected!"

"Abnormal fluctuations in time flow parameters... unable to calibrate!"

"Source of interference... cannot be locked! Suspected to be from the underlying structure of the entire space!"

The alarm sounded sharp yet carried a trace of bewilderment, for they could not comprehend the essence of this interference at all.

Immediately after, all living beings within the territory began to feel a discomfort and dizziness stemming from instinct.

The Cultivators were the first to change color; they felt the operation of their own mana becoming erratic, fast and slow, difficult to control.

Their Divine Sense swept across the surroundings, discovering that the speed at which leaves swayed, the rhythm of drifting clouds, and even the intervals of their own heartbeats had become chaotic and disordered!

It was as if an invisible hand was randomly plucking the strings of time, playing a ridiculous and discordant tune!

"Time... time seems wrong!" A Nascent Soul Cultivator discovered in horror that when he cast the simplest Fireball Spell, the Spell was finished, but the fireball was delayed by several breaths before it suddenly appeared, and it was extremely unstable.

This disorder of time was not uniform, but presented in a mottled, fragmented state.

It was possible that the time flow in the east of the city was twice as fast as in the west; a falling leaf might drift in the air for an entire incense stick of time without landing, while a running child nearby might instantly rush far away as if in fast-forward.

This sense of confusion made people dizzy and nauseous.

Even the actions of the Sequence Legion were affected; their synchronization coordination System began to show errors due to inconsistent time benchmarks.

But this was just the beginning.

The true malice of the Heavenly Dao's second strike was not aimed at the Cultivators and the sequence, but directed at the largest and most fragile Foundation of the Lei Yan Divine Dynasty—the Mortal!

Those Mortals who had just recovered from cognitive pollution and were hiding in shelters or homes, still shaken, bore the brunt!

A middle-aged man was nervously observing the outside through a crack in the window when he suddenly felt a sense of extreme exhaustion. He looked down at the back of his hand and discovered in horror that the skin there was losing its luster at a speed visible to the naked eye, becoming loose, with ugly spots and wrinkles appearing!

His hair began to turn gray and withered rapidly from the roots!

"Ah! I... how am I..." The voice he emitted became old and hoarse, filled with unbelievable fear.

Similar scenes were playing out on countless Mortals simultaneously!

Youths instantly entered middle age, those in their prime turned old in the blink of an eye, and the tender faces of children were rapidly covered with signs of weathering!

Their life vitality, their youth, was being frantically drained by an invisible and terrifying force!

The passage of time was being accelerated tenfold, hundredfold, thousandfold on them!

This was not a simple aging Spell; this was a distortion acting directly on the level of the Law of time!

It was the Heavenly Dao's malicious tampering with the timeline of the "Mortal" group within the entire region!

"No—!"

"My child! Why has my child grown old!?"

"Help! Immortal Master, help!"

Desperate wails and terrified screams instantly replaced the previous bewilderment, becoming the main melody of the city.

Inside the shelters, it was chaos; people watched helplessly as their relatives, friends, and even themselves completed a life journey that should have taken decades or centuries in just a few breaths, becoming white-haired and decrepit, and some even withered away entirely, turning into dry bones and crumbling into ash in the extreme aging!

Death arrived on a large scale in this silent and terrifying way.

Mo Yu and Mo Yun, who had just recovered a little, had their expressions change drastically!

They could clearly sense that the life fires of those Mortals within the territory were rapidly dimming and extinguishing in large swathes in an extremely abnormal way!

"Law of time! He is distorting time!" Mo Yun exclaimed, her eyes filled with horror.

The authority over the earth allowed her to perceive the state of living beings, but she was powerless to resist this attack targeting the timeline!

Mo Yu tried to invoke the Four Seas Tide-Rising Token to nourish all things with the power of water and delay the aging, but the power of the water element could not reach that accelerated time flow at all.

Her power was like trying to scoop dry a rushing river with a spoon; it was futile!

The Ruoshui Black Tortoise floated silently; it could resist sharp attacks, but it was powerless against this Law distortion that permeated the entire space and acted on the time level.

The Envoy of Heavens Path stood silently, as if he had only done a trivial thing.

His method of attack once again exceeded their cognition and limits of response.

He did not directly attack the point with the strongest defense, but bypassed them to strike precisely and viciously at their most fragile and undefended Foundation!

If the Mortals died out, the Lei Yan Divine Dynasty would lose its meaning for existence, and it would further provoke the Heavenly Dao (one of the three iron Laws), and the Immortal in a Bottle would inevitably suffer a backlash.

And watching their people die so miserably while being unable to do anything was also a huge blow to the Dao Heart of Mo Yun and Mo Yu!

Attacking the heart is paramount; killing the body is secondary to breaking the spirit!

This was the true terror of the Heavenly Dao's second strike!

"Father!" Mo Yun suddenly looked up, staring in the direction of the Thunder Abyss, her voice carrying a trace of desperate trembling.

They had exhausted all their means, yet they still could not stop this silent massacre.

Just at this critical moment—

Inside the Hall of Valor, an extreme chill suddenly erupted, instantly breaking through the restraints of the side hall!

"Enough."

A cold, ethereal voice, yet containing suppressed anger to the extreme, slowly sounded.

The sleeping Ink Snow had awakened, though no one knew when.

She slowly stood up, her body enveloped in cold air like ten-thousand-year black ice. In those deep eyes, the left eye sealed all things, the right eye saw the birth and destruction of thunder light, and even deeper, it reflected the timelines of countless living beings that were rapidly dissipating!

In her hand, the Reincarnation Butterfly Seal shone brightly, producing a strong resonance with the Reincarnation Butterfly entity deep within the magic bottle!

Law of time?

Perfect!

She also... understood a thing or two!

Ink Snow took a step, her figure appearing on the city wall, standing shoulder to shoulder with Mo Yu.

She did not even look at the Envoy of Heavens Path, but poured all her focus into the perception and... control of this chaotic time flow!

The Heavenly Dao's second strike, time disorder, Mortal lives like candles in the wind.

Ink Snow awakened, intending to use the Reincarnation Butterfly Seal to steal time and defy the Heavenly Dao!