The group stood before the bronze gates of the Forgotten City. The runes on the city walls were still rotating counterclockwise, and the clear chimes carried the melancholy of a thousand years.
Long Wu's true dragon blood surged beneath his skin, and fine sweat beaded on his forehead—the restrictive power pressing on his chest was even three points stronger than the ninth-tier boss he encountered in the abyss rift.
“Boss, this restriction…” He clenched his fist, his knuckles turning white, “I’ve seen a similar description in the family’s ancient books before. It was said to be a ‘space-time lock’ set up by an ancient powerful being to seal forbidden objects. It can only be broken with the source power of the corresponding attribute.”
The ghostly flame at Lan Ran's fingertips suddenly shrank to the size of a bean, its blue flame reflecting the city's pattern: "Young Master Long is right. The patterns on this restriction are a superposition of 'Reverse Time Pattern' and 'Lock Void Seal.' Ordinary job changers would be drained dry just by touching it, let alone breaking it." He turned to Lin Yi, "However, you are the Master of Time and Space, so perhaps you can give it a try."
Lin Yi didn't speak.
He stared at the churning spacetime mist in the center of the city gate, the spacetime emblem on his palm burning hot, as if something alive was pulsating beneath his skin—this was the resonance of primal power.
Since awakening to a mythical-level profession, this was the first time he had ever felt such pure fluctuations of the origin of spacetime, like an infant smelling the fragrance of breast milk and instinctively wanting to get closer.
"Step back ten meters," he suddenly said, his voice filled with unwavering certainty.
Everyone instinctively stepped back, and even the seriously injured Su Qing was half-supported by the white-bearded man and moved to a safe area.
The next second, Lin Yi's pupils glowed with a silvery-purple light.
He raised his hand and placed it on the city gate. The moment his fingertips touched it, the entire bronze gate suddenly trembled, and the runes on the city wall all turned clockwise with a "whoosh," emitting a sharp buzzing sound.
"Mythical-level energy intervention detected!" Chu Yao's projection appeared beside everyone, data streams swirling in her eyes, "The restriction is reconstructing its defense mode, current resistance strength: peak of the ninth tier!"
Long Wu gasped, "Peak Ninth Rank? That's someone who can withstand a nuclear bomb! Boss, you—"
Before he finished speaking, ripples of spacetime suddenly appeared on Lin Yi's arm.
His palm seemed to pierce through the physical bronze door, reaching directly into the core of the restriction.
As everyone watched in disbelief, the originally violent anti-time patterns and void-locking seals disintegrated into light points, like pieces of paper being crumpled by an invisible hand.
"This is... a deconstruction of spacetime?" The white-bearded old man's eyes widened suddenly.
As a former commander-in-chief of the war department, he had seen too many top-level skills, but he had never heard of dismantling a ninth-order restriction directly with his own source power in his sixty years of life.
"Not only that." Aizen's ghostly flames suddenly surged three feet, illuminating the faint phantom of the God of Time and Space behind Lin Yi. "He is assimilating the restrictions. Those runes weren't destroyed; they've come to recognize him as their master."
The facts are just as Aizen said.
When Lin Yi's fingertips touched the "time-space anchor," the core of the restriction, the entire bronze gate suddenly emitted a clear and resonant sound.
Golden light seeped from the cracks in the city gate, climbing up Lin Yi's arm like a living thing, and finally disappearing into the spacetime emblem between his eyebrows.
"Click—"
With a soft sound, the bronze door slowly opened.
The wind wafting out of the door carried the scent of bygone eras, but no longer felt oppressive.
Long Wu tentatively reached out and touched the edge of the door. The restriction that could have burned through his dragon scales was now as docile as a kitten.
"Boss, how did you do that?" He scratched his head. "I slapped it twice with my dragon claws before, and my hand was almost ruined."
“The power of the master of time and space.” Lin Yi turned around, the silver-purple light in his eyes still lingering. “The essence of the restriction is the manipulation of time and space, and I… am the rule itself.”
Everyone's breath caught in their throat.
The domineering aura in that sentence is more awe-inspiring than any skill demonstration.
Even Whitebeard shook his head in amazement—he had thought this kid was just exceptionally talented, but now he realized that the so-called "mythical hidden profession" was simply a power handed over by God himself.
The scene inside the gate gradually became clear as the city gate opened.
As the group walked along the cobblestone path strewn with fragments of time and space, they looked up to see starlight filtering through the broken dome, and the dilapidated palace complex looming in the distance through the mist.
Although the murals on the walls have peeled off, they still depict scenes of a great war between the gods: angels with twelve pairs of wings of light tear through space, and Titans wielding giant axes smash through dimensional barriers with mountains. In the very center, there is a figure holding an hourglass, piecing together the scattered fragments of spacetime.
“That’s… the God of Time and Space?” Su Qing suddenly exclaimed.
Her voice was clearer than usual, and her originally pale face flushed with a sickly redness. "I think... I've remembered some things."
Lin Yi immediately turned to look at her.
This was the first time Su Qing had spoken on her own initiative since her serious injury.
Just as he was about to ask, Chu Yao's alarm suddenly sounded: "Danger! There is abnormal fluctuation in the spacetime rift 300 meters directly ahead!"
Everyone instantly went into battle mode.
Dragon scales instantly covered Long Wu's entire body, Whitebeard's Xuan Tie Heavy Sword hummed as it was unsheathed, and Lan Ran's ghostly flames condensed into a blade in his palm.
Lin Yi stood at the forefront, and the power of spacetime formed a vortex beneath his feet—he could clearly sense that something was squeezing in from another dimension.
"roar--"
A deafening roar tore through the air.
The spacetime fragments before everyone's eyes suddenly began to spin wildly, and a monster as tall as twenty meters burst out of the "hole".
Its body is composed of distorted spacetime turbulence, and its surface is covered with dark gold scales, each scale engraved with the same reverse-time pattern as the city's emblem.
The most horrifying thing was its head—it wasn't a living being's head at all, but a miniature version of the gate to the Forgotten City, with two scarlet eyeballs embedded in the center, dripping corrosive black blood.
"A spacetime construct!" Whitebeard pointed his greatsword at the monster. "This thing has no physical form; attacks will penetrate its body!"
"But its scales have a physical form!" Aizen's ghostly flames suddenly split into hundreds, striking precisely the gaps in the monster's scales under its ribs. "The weakness of the Reverse Time Mark is the third scale on the left!"
The monster was clearly enraged.
It flicks its tail, and wherever it sweeps, space shatters into a black hole.
Long Wu roared and charged forward, his dragon claws tearing through the air: "My dragon scales aren't afraid of spacetime turbulence, how many hits can your broken shell withstand?"
"Watch out!" Lin Yi suddenly teleported behind Long Wu, grabbed him by the back of his collar and threw him backward.
Almost simultaneously, the monster's city gate head opened, and a black beam of light shot out—wherever the beam passed, even time began to flow backward, and tender shoots sprouted from the ground where Long Wu had just stood.
"This is 'Time Reversal'!" Chu Yao's voice was unusually urgent. "If you get hit, you'll be reverted to your birth state!"
Lin Yi's pupils shrank to pinpoints.
He raised his right hand, and the Spacetime Emblem emitted a blinding light: "Spacetime Imprisonment!"
Before the words were even finished, space and time around the monster suddenly froze.
Its tail hovered in mid-air, a black beam of light suspended in front of the city gate's head, and even the spacetime fragments floating in the air were frozen into sculptures.
Everyone watched this scene, their breath almost stopping—a peak ninth-tier monster was actually immobilized by Lin Yi's single skill!
"Opportunity!" Whitebeard shouted, channeling all his spiritual power into his greatsword as he slashed at the monster's third scale on the left.
Aizen's ghostly flames followed closely behind, coating the blade with a layer of flames that scorched time and space.
Long Wu wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and unleashed a torrent of dragon breath, blasting it directly at the monster's lower body.
"Snap—"
The sound of the scales shattering was crisper than I had imagined.
When the three attacks hit simultaneously, the monster's body suddenly began to collapse.
Its spacetime structure was torn open with huge gaps, and dark golden blood (actually solidified spacetime turbulence) splattered onto the bluestone slab, corroding deep holes.
Finally, Lin Yi conjured a silver blade of light at his fingertips, which pierced directly into the monster's city gate head—its core.
"boom!"
The monster exploded into countless points of light.
Everyone instinctively closed their eyes, and when they opened them again, there was a palm-sized rhombus-shaped crystal on the ground.
Silver-purple light flowed inside the crystal, like a miniature hourglass of time.
"Crystallization of the Origin of Spacetime!" Chu Yao's projection was so excited it was almost unreal. "High concentration of the Origin of Spacetime has been detected. It can be used to enhance mythical-level equipment or repair damaged spacetime rifts!"
Long Wu immediately pounced on it, picked it up, and handed it to Lin Yi like a treasure: "Boss, this is definitely yours!"
Lin Yi took the crystal, but his gaze fell on Su Qing, who was not far away.
She was staring in the direction of the monster's explosion, her eyes filled with confusion, pain, and a hint of... nostalgia?
"Su Qing?" he called softly.
Su Qing snapped back to reality, managing a weak smile on her pale face: "I'm fine. It's just... I feel like the core of this monster looks a bit like something I've seen in my dream."
Before anyone could ask any further questions, a slight tremor suddenly came from the ground.
Chu Yao's alarm sounded again: "Unknown energy fluctuations detected, source... underground!"
Lin Yi frowned and looked at the ground.
The time fragments on the bluestone slab suddenly began to rotate clockwise, echoing the runes on the city wall.
From the distant, dilapidated palace complex, a muffled sound like gears turning could be heard, as if some enormous creature was awakening.
"It seems our exploration has only just begun." Lin Yi gripped the Crystal of the Origin of Time and Space, silver-purple light surging in his eyes. "Stay vigilant and keep moving forward."
The group exchanged glances and gripped their weapons tightly.
Ryugo reinforced the dragon scales with another layer, Whitebeard's greatsword hung at his side, ready to strike at any moment, and Aizen's ghostly flames re-condensed into a blade.
Although Su Qing was weak, she took the initiative to stand beside Lin Yi—this was the first time she had not been helped.
They walked forward, stepping on fragments of time and space.
The bronze city gate behind them slammed shut the moment they passed by, as if to say: Getting in is easy, but getting out... is not so simple.
And within the palace complex ahead, a secret sealed for a thousand years is slowly opening its eyes as they walk.
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