The moment the portal closed behind them, a damp mist carrying the smell of decay surged in.
Lin Yi's pupils gleamed with silver light, and the laws of spacetime outlined a pale blue silhouette on his retina—three feet away, a white-bearded figure was wiping his face, water droplets trickling down his snow-white beard; Su Qing's hair was covered in mist droplets, yet it maintained a clear, flowing curve, as if deliberately supported by some force; Chu Yao's projection floated somewhat in the mist, but the blue light from her hair grew ever brighter, scanning environmental data.
"Visibility is less than five meters." Chu Yao's voice crackled with electricity. "The air composition is abnormal, containing a high concentration of extradimensional particles."
Master, how far can your spatial and temporal perception cover?
"A radius of twenty meters." Lin Yi raised his hand and pressed it to his brow. The patterns of laws flowed across his skin like a galaxy. "The flow of time here is 0.3 times slower than outside."
Watch your step.
Before he could finish speaking, a dull cracking sound suddenly came from the ground.
Whitebeard, at the forefront, narrowed his eyes. The power of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit condensed into transparent ripples in his palm, and a black shadow suddenly burst out from the crack at his feet—it was an obsidian pillar covered with barbs, its tip dripping with dark green slime.
"Watch out!" Su Qing shouted in a low voice. Just as the faint light gathered at her fingertips was about to burst forth, she saw the space-time around Lin Yi suddenly freeze.
The mist hung suspended in mid-air, the stone pillar hovered three inches to the side of the white-bearded man's waist, and even the white-bearded man's raised eyebrows were frozen into a wary arc.
Lin Yi stepped forward, and the silvery-white power of law flowed into the river of time through his fingertips. The "now" he grasped trembled slightly and then began to flow again.
"Let's go." He pulled Chu Yao's hand and stepped over the stone pillar. When he turned around, the white-bearded man was staring wide-eyed at the spot where they had just been. "This trap is triggered; it refreshes every ten seconds."
"Good lad!" Whitebeard patted him on the shoulder, the shockwave shattering the cracks beneath their feet. "Back when I was navigating traps on the Grand Line, I'd never seen such a clean solution!"
The four had only taken ten steps when the cracks in the ground suddenly began to spread out in a radial pattern.
Rows of stone pillars pierced the ground like wildly growing thorns, weaving an impenetrable cage around them.
Chu Yao's projection suddenly flickered, and a data interface appeared before everyone's eyes: "Trap core detected five meters underground, coordinates (3,7,-5)."
Lin Yi's fingertip touched the void, and the laws of space penetrated the ground like threads.
The next second, all the stone pillars suddenly changed direction and plunged into the depths of the mist with a "boom," clearing a path filled with rubble beneath the four people's feet.
"Time manipulation can be used like this?" A hint of surprise flashed in Su Qing's eyes. "I've read about 'moving mountains and filling seas' in ancient books before. It turns out that some people can actually do it."
"This is just the basics." Lin Yi smirked, the patterns of laws faintly visible on his sleeve. "True spacetime magic can reverse the sun and cause stars to fall."
As soon as he finished speaking, the fog in front of him was suddenly torn open.
It was a stone hall with several bronze lamps hanging from the dome, their oil glowing with a faint blue light.
Embedded in the wall directly opposite are three rows of mechanisms, each with twelve holes, which are now emitting a cold glint—poisoned black-feathered arrows, their arrowheads grazing the corner of the white-bearded man's clothes and embedding themselves in the stone wall, making a teeth-grinding scraping sound.
"This mechanism... fires a volley every three seconds." Chu Yao's projection suddenly materialized. She caught an arrow, a blue light flashing at her fingertips. "The poison can corrode the power of laws, Master, be careful."
Lin Yi's figure suddenly became blurry.
Whitebeard rubbed his eyes, and saw that his trajectory through the rain of arrows left a silver afterimage, each step precisely avoiding the trajectory of the arrows.
When the last arrow pierced the wall, he was already standing in front of the trap wall, his palm pressed against a protruding stone brick.
"Found it." He shouted in a low voice, and the power of spacetime surged into the mechanism like a tide.
Amidst the turning of bronze gears, the entire wall suddenly receded, revealing a secret chamber behind it—on a central stone platform, a fragment shimmering with starlight floated, the surrounding air distorted by fluctuations in the laws of nature.
"Fragments of the laws of spacetime!" Chu Yao's voice trembled slightly, a rare occurrence. "Master, these are the keys to completing your core profession!"
Just as Lin Yi was about to reach out, the surrounding fog suddenly became thicker, the temperature dropped sharply, and a sinister aura spread out.
A sinister laugh echoed from within the mist.
"Young friend, you've got some tricks up your sleeve." Night Owl's figure emerged from the mist, his face half-lit and half-shadowed beneath his black robe. "Too bad, you thought this trap was for ordinary adventurers?"
Before the words were finished, black slime suddenly seeped from the floor of the secret room, transforming into dozens of semi-transparent phantom monsters.
They had no facial features, but possessed sharp bone claws. When their claws sliced through the air, they emitted a shrill cry like that of an infant, and in an instant, they surrounded the four of them.
"Chu Yao, scan for weaknesses!" Lin Yi drew his tactical dagger, the blade enveloped in the power of laws. "Senior Whitebeard, you take charge of large-scale suppression!"
Su Qing, please protect Yao Yao!
The white-bearded man grinned, and the shockwaves from his palm spread out as if they were tangible.
The three monsters closest to the dinosaur were sent flying backward, their bodies dissipating like punctured balloons.
But more monsters crawled out of the slime, their bone claws brushing against Lin Yi's arm, leaving spiderweb-like cracks on his law shield.
"These monsters are extradimensional energy beings!" Blue light shot from Chu Yao's fingertips, and a data link swarmed the nearest monster. "Attack their core!"
Lin Yi's pupils suddenly contracted.
He saw a flickering dark red dot inside each monster, like a imprisoned soul.
The profound mystery of space and time unfolded beneath his feet, and his figure instantly appeared in the densest horde of monsters. His dagger drew a silver arc—the cores of three monsters shattered simultaneously, turning into black smoke and dissipating.
"Night Owl!" Lin Yi looked up at the black-robed man opposite him. "You think you can stop me with these defective goods?"
"Of course not." Night Owl's smile widened, and he snapped his fingers. "But I can take you where you need to be."
The air suddenly twisted into a strange spiral, the light flickering erratically, and everyone felt a dizzying sensation.
When their vision cleared again, the four of them were standing in a gray-white void.
Above them was a collapsing star map, and beneath their feet, the ground cracked open like a spiderweb, with black spatial turbulence surging from each crack.
In the distance, translucent fragments floated, resembling the ruins of a massive building.
What made Lin Yi frown the most was that his spatial perception was disrupted here, and he could not detect the area twenty meters away at all.
"This is... the edge of a rift in another dimension?" Su Qing's voice was unusually tense. "The spatial laws here are extremely chaotic, and it could collapse completely at any moment."
Chu Yao's projection re-condensed, but it was three-tenths fainter than before: "Spatial stability index detected: 37%".
Stability decreases by 5% every minute.
Master, we need to find the exit within eight minutes.
Lin Yi gripped the fragment of the spacetime law in his hand tightly.
The starry sky on the fragment suddenly brightened, and a subtle fluctuation of law flowed from his palm into his entire body.
He looked up at the crowd, the silver light in his eyes growing even more intense: "Stay calm, I can tear open the spatial barrier."
But…” His gaze swept over the crumbling star map, “There’s something here interfering with the laws of spacetime.”
"It's Night Owl." Whitebeard's voice was deep and thunderous as he gazed at the floating ruins of buildings in the distance. "I've fought Night Owl before and I'm familiar with his unique aura. His scent is on those fragments."
This old bastard is probably planning to trap us here and make us perish with the collapsing space.
Su Qing suddenly reached out and pressed down on Lin Yi's wrist.
Her fingertips carried a coolness that was not human, yet it made Lin Yi's sense of space and time suddenly clear for a moment—he saw a dark red light in the distance, like the core of some kind of seal.
"That's..."
"Spatial anchor point." Su Qing withdrew her hand. "Destroy it, and we'll find the exit."
But…” she gazed at the approaching spatial rift, “there’s not enough time.”
Lin Yi took a deep breath, and the patterns of laws flowed around his body, forming a complete galaxy.
He pressed the fragment of the laws of spacetime to his chest, feeling the power resonate with the core of his profession.
As the first wave of spatial turbulence swept in, his figure suddenly transformed into countless silver butterflies, protecting Whitebeard, Su Qing, and Chu Yao respectively.
"Hold on." His voice came from all directions. "Eight minutes is enough for me to do a lot of things."
In the unseen void, the Night Owl's black robe was lifted by a corner by spatial turbulence.
He stared at the increasingly bright silver ball of light below, a hint of apprehension flashing in his eyes, but it was quickly replaced by ruthlessness: "The master of time and space."
Even if you could manipulate time, in a completely collapsed space…” he licked his lips, “you'd just be an ant living a few more minutes.”
In the gray-white void, spatial rifts are expanding at a visible speed.
Chu Yao's projection suddenly flickered and grabbed Lin Yi's sleeve: "Master, the spatial stability index has dropped below 30%!"
Lin Yi remained silent.
He gazed at the dark red light in the distance, the silver light condensing into a tangible form in his eyes.
Just as the final spatial rift was about to engulf everyone, a light brighter than the sun suddenly emanated from his palm—
That is the profound mystery of the master of time and space, tearing apart this collapsing cage.
But no one noticed that at the very center of the light, the galaxy on the fragment of the spacetime law was resonating subtly with the silver light in Lin Yi's pupils.
Deeper into the void, an ancient law is resonating and awakening, like a slumbering beast finally being awakened by this power...
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