Time was traceless, formless, intangible, unforeseeable, untouchable, and completely unable to be sensed. In any place with time, everything and everyone would be affected by it. They would unknowingly age, decay, and ultimately return to dust.
Time was a poison without cure and the greatest enemy of all existence.
In its most condensed form, it took a shape that could be registered by the senses—the light of time.
Such light could collect into a body of water, such as the river of time. Lu Yun had collected ten inches of it with a karmic fruit, and now he released it.
It circled around him, increasing the strength of time in his vicinity. With his body as the epicenter, an enormous boundary of time sprang up, spanning a million kilometers from end to end. It enhanced his Spacetime Reincarnation so that it reached the limits of the boundary as well.
However, his combat art was too weak. Though he grasped the order of time, light in tangible form was too heavy for him; he couldn’t control it with his current level of strength. All he could do was use his combat art to protect the crystal mountain and those he cared about beneath it.
Elsewhere…
The Beast King’s startled yelps slowly turned into anguished shrieks that were echoed by the other kings of the Colosseum. All of them wailed and howled with horror and hopelessness.
“The poison of time!” Despair flooded the Beast King’s tones. He was aging irrepressibly and following a rhythm that no living being could violate.
“You’ve been to the lost ancient city and retrieved time from the river! A full ten inches of it!” the Spacetime King screamed with disbelief. He was supposed to be a handsome young man, but a few seconds in the boundary saw him swiftly mature into an elder with white hair.
“No, I can’t die here!” Two beams of dazzling light blossomed from his body—the power of space and time.
He poured everything he had into chipping a crack in the boundary, almost combusting himself in the process. With a shake of his body, he slipped out through the barest hint of a hard-won crack.
Despite making good his escape, it was only a strand of his soul that made it out.
The ten inches of time thoroughly combined with the boundary a million kilometers across; time inside of it officially took on a bizarre cast.
Some of the Colosseum cultivators aged so much that they turned into a pile of bones. Others returned to their origins as a baby, then progressed to even more primitive beginnings.
Rather than accompanied by brilliant light or earth shattering momentum, the power of time slipped in as a gentle, warm presence that not even sixth step kings could deny.
All beings were equal in front of time! There was no cultivation or strength that could defy it.
It was as if a torrent of ice cold water doused the cultivators a million kilometers away; a bone piercing cold rose from their hearts.
“As expected, how would someone hailed as the Immortal King by the Hongmeng Tower be killed so easily…” The two girls of Sublime Pavilion looked at each other and shuddered in unison.
“It’s the order of time! The legends say that only this order can manipulate the light of time within the river of time…”
“He’s grasped the order of time! That’s completely forbidden within the Hongmeng, a taboo on par with the Dragonquake Scripture!”
“The Immortal King is dead meat! So what if he’s the Immortal King? Anyone who dares touch a taboo is destined for death!”
“Maybe he’ll turn into a big fish one day and swim in the…”
The Dragonquake Scripture was a prohibited method in the realm and the order of time was on the same level as it. Both absolute taboos, anyone who touched them would die!
“He’s dangerous, this Immortal King is far too dangerous! No sixth step king is his match if he possesses the light of time! Only seventh, eighth, and ninth level kings can withstand the power of time!”
But it was far easier said than done to have those higher level kings take action. Even when the Purple King had run rampant through the Hongmeng and claimed five keys to the tower, only three seventh step kings emerged in the end to jointly throw him out into the chaos.
The current Immortal King was just in the common realm. Though he grasped the power of time, there was no seventh step king who was willing to humble themself so much as to move against him.
……
Time passed and gradually dissipated.
As there was no overarching order of time in the Hongmeng, thus making it rootless, time decreased with each bit that was consumed until it finally evaporated. Lu Yun didn’t yet possess the ability necessary to retract it, so he could only watch on as it dissolved into the realm.
The boundary of time vanished, leaving behind an uncanny void a million kilometers across. Everything was as if newly born, but also as if decrepit dust. Time had expressed itself with the poles of two extremes in this area.
Apart from those under Lu Yun’s protection, all of the cultivators within the boundary had returned to the realm as dust, like they’d ever existed. That domineering sixth step king was no exception either.
Deathly silence rang throughout Multitude City. The atmosphere hung heavy with gravity; this was the first time something like this had occurred in the city that ranked in the top ten of the Hongmeng.
No one knew what to do.
“Investigate! Find out who the Immortal King is and who’s his patron!” An overbearing will flashed through the skies of the city, causing numerous figures to vanish from its streets.
……
“So this is the power of time… Indeed, all life is but an ant in front of time,” murmured Hua Fengwen as he looked upon the scene of eerie devastation.
“We can’t say all life. If there’d been a seventh step king present just now, they would’ve broken the boundary of time.” Lu Yun shook his head slightly. “There’s a saying that sheer force can overcome all methods. The ten inches of time wouldn’t have harmed a seventh step king.”
He would need stronger power of time to do so, but ten inches of it was all that a karmic fruit could contain.
Hua Fengwen pursed his lips. “A seventh step king? Just a bigger ant among ants.”
“Well what, what do we do now?” Dusksnow Morningstar shook his head ferociously. It all seemed so surreal.
The Colosseum lay in rubble around their feet; hundreds of thousands of cultivators, including twenty kings, were no longer. This would shake the Hongmeng.
However…
The Colosseum hadn’t completely dissolved as a faction. While more than ninety percent of its kings may have died, it still boasted of two terrifying existences—the Human King and Blood King!
They were both peak sixth step kings and weighed heavily on Lu Yun’s heart like two inexorable mountains. They might not care that their faction had been destroyed, but they would take revenge for the death of the Beast King.
“What do we do?” Lu Yun’s expression twisted. “Many people dream of carving out a territory for themselves in Multitude City. This area a million miles across belongs to us now instead of the Colosseum!”
