Chapter 335 - 334: Sha Luo (3)

The second thing Lin Yuan noticed was that the technique depended upon the existing structure of the Sacred Grounds. Sha Luo could rearrange the relationships between spatial connections, but she could not simply invent any relationship she desired, because the ancient laws beneath the realm imposed certain limitations upon what could be connected.

Her domain was powerful precisely because she understood how to work within those limitations, using the surviving structure of the ancient Dongtian to achieve effects that would have required far more energy if she had attempted to create them from nothing.

Lin Yuan’s lips curved slightly. "So that is your advantage. You do not need to establish an entirely new spatial foundation every time you use a technique, because the Sacred Grounds already possess the structure you require. You only need to alter the connections that are available to you, and the ancient laws will do most of the work on your behalf."

Sha Luo’s gaze sharpened. "And what will you do with that understanding?"

"Study it," Lin Yuan answered without hesitation. "If I cannot overcome your technique by destroying its structure, then I will examine the relationships that sustain it. A mountain does not need to be demolished before one can understand its shape, and a river does not need to be drained before one can discover where its water flows."

His answer caused Sha Luo to fall silent for a moment. She had encountered countless powerful cultivators throughout her long existence, including individuals whose cultivation foundations were far more stable than Lin Yuan’s, but most of them had approached combat as a contest of strength, techniques, or accumulated experience.

Lin Yuan treated every exchange as an opportunity to understand something new, and even when confronted by an opponent who could threaten his life, his first instinct was to examine the principles that governed the danger.

Sha Luo raised her left hand. "Then study this."

One of the silver rings suddenly stopped rotating, and the entire mountain range shuddered. The space directly above Lin Yuan compressed into a narrow point, causing the surrounding spiritual Qi to rush toward it as though an invisible abyss had opened in the sky. A moment later, the compressed space expanded in every direction, releasing a violent wave that swept across the clearing and tore enormous chunks of stone from the mountainsides.

The attack arrived without a visible projectile. There was no blade of spatial energy to evade, no beam of light to block, and no obvious point of impact that Lin Yuan could target with a counterattack. The space itself had become the weapon, and the moment the expanding wave reached his position, the pressure threatened to crush the surrounding environment into a chaotic mass of distorted coordinates.

Lin Yuan’s eyes flashed.

Golden-purple thunder erupted from his body, while silver-blue rain spread outward in a thin, shimmering layer. Rather than attempting to stop the expanding wave through brute force, he used the rain to perceive the movement of the spatial disturbance and directed his thunder toward the points where the compressed space began to expand.

The two principles interacted through the circulation of Three Rebirths, allowing him to identify a narrow interval during which the expanding wave had not yet completed its transformation.

He stepped into that interval.

Immortal Cloud Step carried him sideways, but the movement did not take him directly away from the attack.

Instead, Lin Yuan followed the slight difference between the spatial relationships on either side of the expanding wave, slipping through a region where the pressure had not yet reached its full intensity. The destructive force swept past him, tearing apart the mountain behind him, while Lin Yuan emerged several dozen feet away with his robes fluttering in the turbulent wind.

Sha Luo’s eyes narrowed. She had deliberately used an attack that offered almost no conventional avenue of escape, expecting Lin Yuan either to counter the spatial compression directly or to rely upon a powerful defensive technique.

Instead, he had identified the moment when the attack transitioned from compression to expansion and used the difference between those two states to escape.

"Your Dao Fruit is more troublesome than I expected," she said, allowing the silver ring to resume its rotation. "You do not merely observe the movement of spatial energy. You examine the relationships that determine how it behaves, and then you use those relationships to find a path through attacks that should leave no room for escape."

Lin Yuan appeared beside a broken boulder and brushed a small fragment of stone from his sleeve. "You make it sound as though I have discovered something extraordinary, but the principle is not particularly complicated. Your attack had to pass through a transition between two different states, and that transition could not occur everywhere at precisely the same moment. I merely found the part of the process that gave me the greatest opportunity to move."

"An explanation does not make the achievement less impressive," Sha Luo replied. "Most cultivators would have died before they could even perceive the transition you described, and those who survived would probably have attempted to resist the attack rather than understand it. Your ability to analyze techniques during combat is dangerous, Lin Yuan, but I have no intention of allowing you enough time to study mine."

The silver rings expanded again, and dozens of thin lines appeared across the sky. Each line connected two points in the surrounding environment, forming a vast network that covered the mountains, the forests, and the clearing where the three Demon Kings had fallen.

The lines were almost invisible, but Lin Yuan could feel the spatial relationships they represented, and he immediately understood that Sha Luo had begun constructing a more complex arrangement.

This time, she was not simply changing the distance between herself and her opponent. She was dividing the battlefield into countless overlapping regions, each governed by a different set of spatial relationships.

A movement that was safe in one region might lead directly into a lethal distortion in another, while an attack that followed a straight trajectory could be redirected through several connected regions before reaching its intended target.

The domain had become a maze whose walls could change position without warning.

Lin Yuan’s gaze swept across the network. "You intend to make every possible movement dangerous, forcing me to spend my attention examining the spatial arrangement instead of attacking you."

Sha Luo did not deny it. "Your comprehension is exceptional, but it is not infinite. Even if you can understand the structure of every individual connection, you still need time to process the information and determine how each connection will change. My domain will continue to evolve, and every adjustment will force you to reconsider the conclusions you have already reached."

She extended her right hand, and a silver line passed through the air between them. The line split into three, then nine, then twenty-seven, each new division creating another set of spatial connections that overlapped with the previous arrangement.

Within moments, the sky had become a vast lattice of silver lines, and the surrounding mountains appeared to exist simultaneously in several different positions.

Lin Yuan felt the pressure increase. Sha Luo was correct that his perception had limitations, even with the assistance of his Dao Fruit, and attempting to examine every connection individually would consume too much time. The problem was not that he lacked the ability to understand the technique, but that the number of relationships he needed to examine was growing faster than he could analyze them one by one.

He needed another approach.