149: Chapter 149 Time Flicker!?

VIP Area.

The Purple-Robed Chief gripped the railing tightly with both hands, his beard trembling violently.

He had lived for over two hundred years, witnessed the firepower exchange of 9th-tier Supremes, seen scenes where Abyss Lord Rifts were scorched into glass, and observed the resonance of laws when some of the strongest Rainbow Cards in human history were activated simultaneously.

But he had never seen anyone Stand in the midst of the continuous bombardment of a National Treasure without even moving their feet.

"...An illusion?"

The Gray-Robed Elder murmured beside him.

But he knew himself that those words were nonsense.

Sun and Moon in Palm would not produce illusions.

National Treasures always crushed all falsehoods with absolute reality.

"It's not an illusion. It's a spacetime gap!"

The Purple-Robed Chief's voice deepened.

He had recovered from his shock, and his old eyes, clouded by the erosion of time, were now surging with an extremely bright light.

"That girl used some kind of method to create an extremely short spacetime misalignment in front of herself. The sun was indeed crashing toward her, but at the moment of contact—the point where she was supposed to be hit was no longer in the current time frame."

Thinking of this possibility, the Gray-Robed Elder's pupils contracted sharply.

"The Law of Time?"

The Purple-Robed Chief did not answer.

He had seen no fewer than ten space-type Supremes in his life.

However, he had only seen one time-type—Li Qingyue!

And now, the girl on the arena stage who hadn't said a single word from start to finish was using a method he couldn't understand at all, repeatedly using the Law of Time to dodge the attacks of the 9th-tier National Treasure.

What the hell is this?

Su Bai's card, whatever it is, can just casually produce time-type abilities?

That's impossible!

If he had known this, how could he have mocked him back then?

You have to know, the time-type, along with the causality-type and space-type, are known as the three invincible top-tier abilities, among which the time-type is the rarest. And yet, one just appeared here?

What a joke!

Waiting Area.

Shen Ye's left hand pressed tightly against the metal railing, his knuckles turning white.

All the data panels in the void to his right were frozen on a single frame; he stared at those numbers for a long time, not changing a single one.

The Law of Time.

The Stand Card involved the Law of Time.

It wasn't through items, not through magic circles, not through any auxiliary devices requiring mana. It was pure Mental Power directly touching the Law of Time.

He moved his lips, but made no sound.

War Emperor Wei Potian lowered his arms from his chest.

Wei Tianlong's smile froze on his face; his rough 8th-tier Berserker face was now filled with confusion.

"...That Stand. Doesn't it need to strike weird poses and carry the risk of the heart exploding?!" Wei Tianlong's voice was very low.

"But she didn't even strike a pose, she just directly—"

He didn't finish.

Because War Emperor Wei Potian raised his hand and pressed it onto his shoulder.

"Quiet."

War Emperor Wei Potian's voice was deep.

The War Emperor had lived for forty years, fought Abyss Demon Lords, and witnessed the firepower exchange of 9th-tier Supremes.

But his expression right now was even more solemn than when facing an Abyss Lord Rift.

He had previously heard Su Bai himself state the activation conditions for the Stand Card—JOJO poses, weird shouting slogans, and the risk of heart explosion.

The reason he agreed to let his daughter give up this card was precisely because these conditions were too unreasonable.

But now, Qin Ye on the arena stage had no superfluous movements, no slogans, and not even the shadow of a Stand could be seen.

Yet she stood in the very center of the bombardment of Sun and Moon in Palm.

Her heels hadn't moved even a centimeter.

The Empress lowered her right hand.

The golden sun slowly retracted and hovered again directly above the arena.

She turned her head and looked toward the box not far away.

Her plain white modified dragon robe remained motionless in the heat wave, and for the first time, a rare emotion flashed in her dark golden eyes—not surprise, not admiration, but confusion.

"Lady Qingyue."

Her voice was very soft, but all the sound-collecting arrays in the entire arena captured this sentence simultaneously.

"This really is..."

Li Qingyue stood before the box railing.

Her silvery-white long hair fluttered slightly, pushed by the heat waves, and the nine emblems on her deep blue robe shimmered with dim starlight reflected by the golden glow.

She gazed at the motionless figure on the arena stage, silent for a long time.

"That's right, it is indeed the Law of Time."

She finally spoke.

"The Stand is using Mental Power to directly touch the Law of Time."

Her voice was calm, but those who knew Li Qingyue understood that Li Qingyue was truly at a loss.

The Law of Time, why has it become so cheap?

How does Su Bai manage to come up with the Law of Time every single time?

And the current Stand is not quite the same as before!

Su Bai's Magical Girl can also use Time Stop.

She had seen that with her own eyes.

The moment the hourglass in the shield reversed and the pink light dispersed, the entire world was frozen.

That was achieved through an item—the Law of Time was materialized into an hourglass on the shield, and the user froze time by manipulating the hourglass.

The principle was clear and the logic self-consistent; although extremely absurd, it could at least be explained by "genius circuit design."

But the Stand is different.

The Stand has no hourglass; the Stand doesn't need any items.

What Qin Ye just did—the Stand used Mental Power to directly touch the Law of Time, then directly paused time at the level of the law, and then she went straight behind the sun!

Yes, it's just that simple and brutal!

To onlookers, Qin Ye's body seemed to be flickering in place, but in reality, she used such a shameless method to make it appear as if she were teleporting.

Furthermore, because this method of pausing time and moving was carried out right in front of the sun, the light couldn't react in time, illuminating Qin Ye who had previously remained in place.

This resulted in... her looking like an afterimage, or like frame skipping!

Put simply, the sun didn't hit her body; it hit the projection of her previous time frame!

The two had no difference in appearance.

Both were Time Stop, both caused attacks to miss.

But the underlying principles differed by an entire dimensional law.

The hourglass is a tool—a tool means it is borrowed, and the law itself is not mastered by the user.

Of course, a Magical Girl can also master time in the very late stages, but the Stand is only at the 2nd-tier level right now!

Moreover, using Mental Power to directly touch the Law of Time is completely different from using an item to perform a Time Stop.

It means the Law of Time itself has been touched!

It transformed from an ultimate law that only a very small number of 9th-tier Supremes could barely touch after decades of arduous cultivation into a general skill that a 2nd-tier card could bestow upon a user!

Those old scholars who had spent most of their lives in the Sanctuary Research Institute, exhausting all their efforts to find even the slightest entry path to the Law of Time... their life's dream was achieved by Su Bai with a posture easier than writing a diary.

Li Qingyue's eyelashes were trembling slightly.

She took a deep breath.

"Your Majesty. The Stand's method of interfering with time is completely different from Su Bai's previous Magical Girl System."

She paused.

"The Magical Girl uses an item—the time hourglass on the shield—to freeze the flow of time. But the Stand uses the user's Mental Power itself to touch the Law of Time; this method is extremely powerful, and it is powerful in an incredible way."

The Empress's eyebrows twitched slightly.

"What is the substantial difference between the two?"

"The Time Stop hourglass itself is something like a weapon; although it can make the user stronger, it doesn't affect the essence. But the Stand mechanism itself is showing you the rules directly."

Li Qingyue said, enunciating every word.

"Anyone who has sufficient Mental Power density and enough soul depth can directly learn how to touch time upon obtaining this card. Theoretically, the Stand's Time Stop experience has nothing to do with the personality."

The Empress was silent.

She turned her head back and looked at Qin Ye on the arena stage again.

"...Lady Qingyue, this disciple of yours."

She paused for a long while.

"When I bestowed the Dragon Vein Baptism upon him, I thought he was already absurd enough. Now he tells me that my vision is still not enough."

Li Qingyue said nothing and cast her gaze back to the arena stage; however, seemingly thinking of Su Bai being her disciple, the corners of her mouth couldn't help but curl up for a moment.

On the arena stage.

The golden sun spiraled at high speed around Qin Ye.

It had become faster.

The Empress had not given an order, but the sun's rotation speed was accelerating on its own—like an enraged beast frantically slamming against the iron bars of a cage.

It drew all kinds of incredible trajectories in the air: arcs, straight lines, spirals, sharp angles, sudden turns.

Those trajectories spread out above the arena into an increasingly dense golden fire net, the mesh tightening more and more, until it was so dense that even the slowest high-speed camera couldn't distinguish the start and end points of each trajectory.

But Qin Ye was still standing there.

The golden sun crashed from her left—it passed through.

It slashed down diagonally from her right—it passed through.

It smashed down vertically from above her head—it passed through.

It exploded from beneath her feet—it still passed through.

Her figure produced an extremely bizarre visual effect amidst the high-speed impacts.

Still, flickering, still again, flickering again.

The gap between each flicker was so short that the naked eye couldn't distinguish it at all, but the flicker itself existed—because each flicker corresponded to the moment she was extracted from the time frame and put back in.

The sun couldn't touch her.

It couldn't touch her for even a millisecond.

No one in the audience was shouting anymore.

The barrage comments were no longer garbled text either.

Everyone was watching the same scene: a golden sun capable of scorching through an Abyss Lord Rift was being toyed with by a 2nd-tier Stand Card in a way that was almost contemptuous.

The Purple-Robed Chief's beard no longer trembled.

The Gray-Robed Elder's mouth was pressed into a tight line.

In the waiting area, Shen Ye's left hand had pinched an extremely obvious fingerprint into the metal railing—a depression the depth of a knuckle, as if hammered out by an iron mallet.

War Emperor Wei Potian's hand, resting on his knee, slowly clenched into a fist, but once clenched, he did not release it.

Wei Tianlong stood beside him, his two copper-bell-sized eyes staring fixedly at the arena, never blinking once.

At this moment, there was only one sentence in their hearts:

What the hell is this? Did we run into a mechanics-breaking monster?