pjbooks Chapter 145 The Laws of Time
Chapter 145 The Laws of Time
The moment the Fifth Apostle Baal burst out of the rift, the temperature of the entire void rose by more than 100 degrees Celsius.
His body was not made of flesh and blood, but a war machine of formless origin, composed entirely of dark red lava. Sometimes it was humanoid, sometimes beast-like, and sometimes a grotesque behemoth pieced together from countless lava fragments. The only constant was the enormous, ever-beating dark red heart in the very center of his chest—the core of the war furnace, and the very source of his laws.
"Jiang Chen!"
Baal's roar shook the very void. His molten body expanded with each charge, growing from the size of a normal human to three, five, and ten zhang (approximately 6.6 meters). His head was bald, adorned only with seven curved horns, each tipped with flames of a different color—crimson, dark red, deep purple, ghostly blue, pale white, pitch black, and transparent. These seven flames intertwined, collided, and fused on the horns, transforming the entire void into a boiling sea of fire.
"Three months ago, you killed that idiot Balsalon with a single sword strike outside Liangzhou City! I've been wanting to meet you for a long time!"
His right fist, crackling with a blazing inferno powerful enough to melt stars, hurtled toward Jiang Chen. Wherever his fist passed, the void itself ignited, and dark red flames spread in all directions along the trajectory of the fist's wind, distorting and warping the space within a hundred feet radius.
Jiang Chen did not dodge. The Primordial Sword was held horizontally in front of him, and the dark red stars on the hilt suddenly lit up at this moment—that was the Burning Heaven Immortal Emperor's Burning Silence Flame, which shared the same origin as Baal's Burning Heaven Flame, but was a higher dimension.
At the moment the two flames collided, there was no explosion, no roar. The Flame of Incineration, like an invisible giant hand, peeled away, absorbed, and assimilated Baal's Blazing Heaven Flame layer by layer, starting from the edges. The instant Baal's right fist came into contact with the Flame of Incineration, the flames on his fist dimmed, his lava skin cracked, and the crimson horn on his horn began to turn to ash from its tip.
"What?!"
Baal's pupils contracted sharply. His War Furnace Laws activated at full power—his body began absorbing the power of Jiang Chen's Burning Silence Flame, attempting to transform this higher-dimensional flame into his own. But the Burning Silence Flame was no ordinary flame; it was one of the nine Heavenly Flames, refined by the Burning Heaven Immortal Emperor using a 30,000-year-old Immortal Emperor Dao Fruit, specifically designed to burn through the Demon Ancestor's Demon Armor. The moment Baal's War Furnace came into contact with the Burning Silence Flame, it didn't absorb its power; instead, its Law Structure was burned through from within.
The enormous, dark red heart in his chest began to tremble violently. Fine cracks appeared on the surface of the heart, from which dark red light surged—a sign of the overload of the War Furnace, a harbinger of Baal's body's impending collapse under the erosion of the Burning Flames.
"Baal! Retreat!" The voice of the Sixth Apostle, Sorgel, came from the void, calm yet urgent.
His spatial weaving laws activated in an instant. The space around Baal was folded, twisted, and reorganized, teleporting him a hundred feet away just before the Flame of Incineration touched his heart. Baal knelt in the void, his heart still pounding wildly, cracks spreading across its surface, though much slower than before. His right arm from the shoulder down was completely charred, and the crimson horn on his arm had turned to ash.
"Sorgol, thanks." Baal's voice was hoarse, but a wild smile spread across his face. "This fire's potent."
Sorgir remained silent. In his pure white eyes, runes flowed at several times the usual speed. He was analyzing the structural laws of Jiang Chen's Burning Silence Flame, attempting to find its frequency, then use spatial weaving to isolate, fold, and even reflect it back. But his runes disintegrated the instant they came into contact with the Flame's frequency—not destroyed, but negated. The essence of the Burning Silence Flame was "burning everything," including the laws themselves.
"His flames are outside the laws of space." For the first time, Sorgel's voice carried a hint of uncertainty. "They don't burn matter, they burn existence. My spatial weaving can fold space, but it cannot fold 'non-existence'."
The third apostle, Nesario, remained motionless.
He stood half a step behind Kahn, his dark blue skin gleaming with a cold, bronze sheen in the dark golden light. His pupil-less, dark blue eyes remained half-closed, as if nothing in the world was worth fully seeing. His law was absolute stillness—in a single thought, he could completely freeze anything in motion—matter, energy, or even the laws themselves, including time.
He is waiting.
When Jiang Chen's sword domain expands to its maximum extent, when all his students are isolated into different spatial units, when all six stars of the Primordial Sword light up and the three-colored light intertwines at the most complex point—that is the moment when Jiang Chen's attention is most scattered, and also the point where his laws are most weakly covered.
Then he opened his eyes.
Those dark blue pupils opened completely for the first time.
"Absolute stillness".
The moment those four words were uttered, all matter, energy, and laws in motion in the entire void stopped at the same instant.
Wang Kai's "Dao" sword hovered in mid-air, its blade less than an inch from the throat of a mirror image of Mephisto, yet it could not advance any further. Shen Qingxue's right fist, enveloped in icy blue spiritual power, was less than three inches from the face of an apostle's projection, suspended motionless in mid-air. Bing Li's icy Xuan power condensed in her palm into an ice flower about to bloom, its petals freezing at the moment of opening, remaining half-open and half-closed. Xuanming's chaotic power formed a pure white shield around her, the patterns on its surface ceasing to flow.
The sword light of the Primordial Sword also stopped. The golden, red, and blue rays of light hung in the void, like a painting that had been paused. The rotation of the six stars on the hilt stopped, the light on the surface of the stars dimmed, and the entire sword resembled a sculpture that had been frozen for ten thousand years.
Jiang Chen also stopped.
His right hand still gripped the hilt of the Primordial Sword, his left hand remained in a hand seal, and his right foot was still suspended in mid-air. His eyes were still open, reflecting Kahn's amber eyes, but the light deep within them had frozen.
"Three breaths."
Nesario spoke, his voice low and calm, as if stating a formula that had been verified countless times.
"My absolute stillness can lock him in place for three breaths. Within those three breaths, he cannot move, attack, defend, or activate any laws. After three breaths, his true essence will break free of the stillness's restraints, because the Immortal Emperor's Dao heart is not within the scope of the stillness law. But three breaths—"
He paused for a moment, his dark blue pupils reflecting Jiang Chen's frozen figure.
"That's enough."
Kahn made a move.
His speed was slow. He didn't even use any laws; he simply gripped the Watcher's Sword and walked step by step towards Jiang Chen. Each step landed on the void, producing a dull, drum-like sound. The black robe remained perfectly still, and the old scar on his forehead gleamed coldly in the dark golden light.
He walked up to Jiang Chen and stopped. His amber pupils looked into Jiang Chen's fixed eyes, into the reflection of his own face deep within those unfathomable pools.
"Jiang Chen. Your Dao heart is indeed steadfast. So steadfast that my Watcher's Law cannot penetrate it, so steadfast that Thran's Reflection cannot see through it, so steadfast that Neltharion's Absolute Stillness can only lock you down for three breaths." He raised the Watcher's Sword, its tip pressed against Jiang Chen's chest, directly at his heart. "But your Dao heart cannot protect your physical body."
The tip of the Watcher's Sword pierced Jiang Chen's chest. Dark golden light surged from the blade, spreading along the wound into Jiang Chen's body.