Chapter 435

The silver-white light deep within the Order Sanctum stirred.

It did not move. Movement is from one position to another, with a start, an end, and a process. It did not move.

It had always been there, at the exact center of the Sanctum, at the intersection of the ground patterns, where the dome's light curtain fell. It had never left, nor ever changed position. But now it "moved"—not in the sense of position, but in the sense of existence.

Like a great eye waking from sleep. Not opening, but "already open." It had always been closed, yet even closed, it was seeing.

Now it lifted its eyelid—though it had no true eyelid, this motion occurred on the level of law. At that moment, law shifted from "inward" to "outward," from "ignoring" to "gazing."

The power of its gaze radiated outward from the Sanctum's center, and wherever it passed, all things lay beneath its gaze.

The eyelid lifted slowly. It was an extremely slow process, slow enough that every cultivator present could see every detail. The silver-white light had originally been a shapeless bright mist, edges blurred, surface undulating.

During the "lifting," the mist began to stratify—upper layer pulled upward, lower layer sank downward, revealing a gap in the middle. The interior of the gap had no color—not black, not white, not gray.

It was "nothing." Nothing is the ultimate foundation of order. The essence of order is not existence, but exclusion. Exclude all non-order, and what remains is order itself. At the deepest point of order, only nothing remains.

Revealing the pupil beneath. The pupil was silver—not the silver of money, not the silver of moonlight, not the silver of any metal or celestial body. It was the silver of order, the silver of law itself, the silver of "absolute."

It was looking at them—at Wang Ping, at Cang Xuan, at You Ying, at Yu Liuli, at the seven Unity Realm cultivators, at the thirty late Nascent Soul cultivators. The pupil did not turn, for it needed not to turn. It simultaneously gazed in all directions, and every one it beheld felt it was looking only at them.

Everyone's face was reflected in that eye. Wang Ping's face, Cang Xuan's face, You Ying's face, Yu Liuli's face. The faces of the seven Unity Realm cultivators—Xuan Yan Dao Zun gaunt like withered firewood, Feng Huang white hair flying, Shan Yue black rock rough, Xing Mou transparent as crystal, Xu Tian Cang Lao hunched back, Bing Po Xian Zi cold white as jade, Lei Zu Lao Zi purple face with bristly beard.

The faces of the thirty late Nascent Soul cultivators—some young, some old, some wounded, some weary, some calm, some gritting their teeth. Everyone's face was in that eye, one after another, arranged into a silent mural.

Everyone's fear was seen by it. Fear cannot be hidden. You can control expression, control breath, control heartbeat, control spiritual power flow—but fear remains.

It lay deeper, in the fissures of the Dao heart, in the folds of the nascent spirit. The pupil of the Lord of Order saw those fissures and folds, drew out the fear within, and laid it bare beneath the light of day. It said nothing, but it saw. To see is to judge.

Wang Ping's hand trembled. Not from cold. There was no temperature in the Sanctum—here temperature was held at the exact point just above absolute zero where blood would not freeze. Not the pain of physical injury, not the emptiness of exhausted spiritual power.

It was fear. He thought he no longer feared—after returning from the Gui Xu, after crossing the Sea of Laws, after walking the time reversal, after passing the Dao heart tribulation, after walking out of the Chaos Immortal Stele. He thought he had left fear behind in those places, thought he had been reborn, thought he was the Chaos True Lord, disciple of Jiang Mingyuan, hope of the Spirit Realm.

But he feared. Fear is something older than imagination. It lies outside the jurisdiction of reason, beyond the reach of will. It dwells in the bones, lives in the gaps between heartbeats, hides at the base of every breath. You suppress it once, and it rises again on the next breath.

Because what stood before him was not something describable. Language has boundaries, and boundaries are experience. People can only describe what they have seen, heard of, or can imagine. The Lord of Order lies outside these ranges.

It had no form. That cluster of silver-white light was not its body—not like a human with head and limbs, not like a demon beast with scales, claws, and fangs, not like a puppet with mechanical structure. Light was its "existence" itself.

Existence was too great—not in volume, but in "order of magnitude." Compare the existence of a Nascent Soul cultivator to a match flame, a Unity Realm cultivator to a torch, and the Lord of Order to a burning star.

Match, torch, and star are all fire, but the star's flame can swallow all. So vast that light cannot envelop it, only spill from its edges. Light does not emanate from him; rather, when he "is," light is squeezed out, fleeing from high-pressure existence to low-pressure areas, like water bursting from a broken dam. Thus, the silver-white light is not his radiance, but his boundary.

Wherever the silver light reaches, that is his body. His body is not solid, not liquid, not gas, not plasma. It is "order-state"—the condensation of law itself. Silver light covers the entire Sanctum, so the whole Sanctum is his body.

The walls are his skin, the ground his palm, the dome his skull. They stand within his body. From the moment he awoke, they have already been within his body.

Jiang Mingyuan died. Died in the Spirit Realm, died on the great defensive array, died at the moment he used his own body to uphold the entire array. His spiritual power dried drop by drop, his life force ebbed point by point, his consciousness dissipated thread by thread. All that remained was a pair of eyes still gazing at the sky, and an unfinished sentence. The words were meant for Wang Ping—Guard the Spirit Realm. Four words, Wang Ping received them.

Lei Wan Ting died. Died at the edge of Gui Xu, died in the battle where he covered the allied forces' retreat. He used his Chaos Immortal Lightning to blast open the entrance of a void passage, blocking the pursuers at the other end. As he exploded, he was still laughing, his laughter drowned by thunder. He left a thread of lightning for Wang Ping—Kid, chop a few more for me.

Ban Shan Lao Zu died. Died on Xiao Han Mountain, died after passing the Chaos Dao Foundation to Wang Ping. He exhausted his cultivation, turned into a handful of yellow earth, from which a small pine tree grew. The pine still lives, on the back slope of Xiao Han Mountain, blown slightly askew by the wind.

Countless people died. Wang Ping cannot recall all their names. Some names he never even asked—what was the name of the Nascent Soul cultivator who lit the way with a bronze lamp? What was the name of the Yuan Ying disciple who blocked a remnant wave of order for him? What was the name of the young female cultivator who looked back one last time at the Spirit Realm sky at the passage entrance? He does not know. No one knows. Their names will be lost, but their deaths are etched in this silver-white light.

Now it was Wang Ping's turn. He did not retreat, nor did he hide. He simply stood there, hand trembling, heart beating, eyes fixed on the silver pupil. Afraid, yet still standing.

The seven Unity Realm cultivators stood at the front. Their duty was to block the first wave. In this formation, Unity Realm cultivators are not spears for assault, but shields to hold the line. Their bodies are the line. Behind them are Wang Ping and Cang Xuan's group—responsible for finding weaknesses, the sharp knives. Behind them are the thirty late Nascent Soul cultivators—responsible for support and reinforcement. This is the most reasonable formation they can muster, but it is still unreasonable. For their opponent is a Void Refinement cultivator, and all reasonableness collapses before him. Yet they still stood here.

Their bodies appeared tiny in the silver-white light. Not truly shrunk, but the reference was too vast. The Order Sanctum has no boundary, the silver-white light has no end, the pupil of the Lord of Order has no scale. Before an immeasurably vast existence, any finite being appears small. Like a few trees surrounded by a blizzard—trunks thick, bark deep, roots deep. Each has endured ten thousand years of wind and frost, seen countless sunrises and moonsets, weathered countless lightning tribulations and wars. The trees are old, the roots deep. But the blizzard is too great—the snow does not fall from the sky, but surges simultaneously from all directions. Silver-white snowflakes strike the trunks, each embedding into the bark, the bark freezing, cracking, peeling in the snow. So great that the trees bend—trunks bend, crowns nearly touching the ground. Bent so far that roots rupture half out of the soil, roots exposed in the blizzard. Bent near to breaking. But not yet broken. Trees can bend, but cannot break. If broken, nothing remains.

Xuan Yan Dao Zun stood at the front. He was the highest cultivator among the seven, Unity Realm peak, half a step into Void Refinement. But that "half step" he had trod for thirty thousand years, until calluses formed on his soles, then wore through to skin, then skin wore back to callus, over and over, yet he could not cross. Not lack of talent, not weak Dao heart—after the Chaos Immortal Sovereign's death, the laws of this heaven and earth could no longer accommodate the birth of Void Refinement from the chaos side. So he remained stuck at that half step, stuck for thirty thousand years. His eyes fixed on that cluster of light, gazing long. His gaze did not wander, did not evade, did not retreat. He was searching. Searching for a flaw he had seen thirty thousand years ago—not a flaw, but an omen. At the moment the Lord of Order fully awoke from slumber, its order of magnitude would undergo an extremely brief dip, like a great heart between systole and diastole having a zero-point-zero-something second of stillness. That was the only window to wound him. Thirty thousand years ago they missed that window, for then no one knew. Later he repeatedly retraced every detail of that battle in memory, drew out this window, enlarged, marked it. He had spent thirty thousand years preparing for this strike, for this moment.

"Attack." His voice was cold, cold as if not issuing from a human throat. Throat is flesh and blood, flesh and blood have warmth. His voice had no warmth—not emotional cold, but the cold of focus, of freezing all distracting thoughts, leaving only battle will. Like winter wind scraping ice, like a blade brushing skin, like death. Death is not an end, but a process. They were on their way to die.

The seven Unity Realm cultivators attacked simultaneously. Not sequentially, not cooperatively, but "simultaneously." Before attacking, they had not exchanged glances, had not shouted commands, had not communicated tactics via divine sense. Yet at the instant Xuan Yan Dao Zun uttered the two words "Attack," the seven attacks erupted together. This was not tacit understanding, which requires coordination. It was "Dao in unison"—though their Daos differed, at this moment they all pointed simultaneously at the same target. Between their Daos arose resonance, which compressed their attack timing to the same instant.

Xuan Yan Dao Zun's palm struck out. This palm was not aimed at the Lord of Order—the distance was too great, and under the Lord of Order's will, the Sanctum's space could be infinitely lengthened. He struck the ground beneath his feet. At the moment his palm touched earth, a mountain-shattering roar echoed from his palm bones. That was not sound, but the tremor of law breaking—he had uprooted a mountain from the root of his Dao foundation. Cultivated for thirty thousand years, from a stone to a mountain peak, from a peak to a mountain range. That stone was one he picked from behind the mountain in his Foundation Establishment year, fist-sized, blue-gray, rough-surfaced. Every day in meditation he held it in his palm, warmed it with body heat, soaked it in spiritual power. In his Yuan Ying year the stone became a peak, in his God Transformation year the peak extended into a range. For thirty thousand years he had never once released it—not from reluctance, but from lack of a worthy opponent. The mountain range unfurled in the silver-white light, not an illusion—illusions are spiritual projections, having light but no substance. His mountain range had substance. Every rock was real matter, every ridge carved with the marks of time, every snowflake he had personally caught on the mountain's peak over thirty thousand years. Ridges rose, valleys sank, the snow line spread along the mountain's curved surface like a great dragon coiled in the Sanctum.

The Lord of Order's silver light was blocked by the mountain range. Not entirely blocked—the range, though large, is still finite before the immeasurable light of the Lord of Order. But it blocked a sufficiently large portion. Light struck the mountain's face, exploding into countless tiny silver-white sparks on the cliff face. Each spark was a law collision—order law and chaos law on the mountain's surface attacked, canceled, and reborn at invisible speeds. The mountain was worn layer by layer, yet the mountain remained. Xuan Yan Dao Zun stood behind the mountain, his palm still pressed to the ground, spiritual power pouring in like a man forsaking his life. He was using all thirty thousand years of accumulated spiritual power to uphold this mountain.

Feng Huang's wings unfolded. Not for flight—flight is riding the wind, borrowing strength. His wings unfolded to "cut." The wing bones of the Yu Zu tribe are hollow, each joint a natural law resonance chamber. He infused wind law into the wing bone cavities, the cavities resonated, compressing wind into an ultrawide blade—thin to the thickness of law itself. This pair of wings was his deadliest weapon: wing tips swept forward, blade edge so fine the naked eye cannot see it, only the faint distortion of air severed at the wing's edge reveals its path. He spun in the light—not one or two turns, but continuous accelerating rotation. The spin caused the wind blades to form a cutting band, like a saw blade speeding across material, one cut after another piling on the same groove. Like a knife cutting cloth—cloth splits in two, the middle revealing black void. That was the severed space itself.

The void flashed and the cloth closed again. But Feng Huang saw—within that void, there was the true form of the Lord of Order. Not a light cluster, not the pupil, not nothing—in the depths of the black void, an extremely small silver-white core. Fist-sized, surface smooth to absolute zero defect, shaped like a suspended drop of mercury. That was the condensed existence of the Lord of Order. He saw it, but had no time to speak. The cloth closed too fast—just as he opened his mouth, silver-white light covered everything again.

Shan Yue's hammer came down. It did not strike the Lord of Order's true form—the void slit Feng Huang had cut had already closed, the true form retreated into the silver-white depths. This hammer struck the outer law barrier. The hammer head was forged from star-core iron, so dense that an ordinary Nascent Soul cultivator could not lift it with both hands. Shan Yue gripped the hammer with one hand, pouring his entire vein power into the handle. When the hammer head struck the silver-white light, no sparks flew—not metal-on-metal sparks, but plasma flashes from two laws mutually repelling. Like striking iron—iron does not shatter, hammer does not break. But the Sanctum shuddered. Not ground tremor—the Sanctum's ground is absolutely flat, and absolutely flat things do not tremble. It was spatial tremor. At the hammer's impact point, space was compressed to the limit, forming an infinitesimal singularity. The singularity rebounded outward, releasing a ring of spatial ripples. The ripples spread from the hammerhead in all directions, like ripples from a stone tossed into water.

Where the ripples passed, the silver-white light trembled. Not from fear, but from "being disturbed." Like a candle flame blown by wind—the flame bends, brightness shifts suddenly, but does not yet go out. The Lord of Order felt an infinitesimal disturbance—this existence, undisturbed for tens of thousands of years, was at that moment slightly disturbed in its equilibrium by a group of low-level law lifeforms. Not pain, but "someone is touching me." He disliked being touched. That dislike transformed into law-level fluctuation, the entire Sanctum's light grew brighter—he was displeased.

Xing Mou's deduction unfolded in the light. She had been calculating. The Ji Zu tribe are not adept at frontal combat; her role was information. Before battle began, she had already entered deduction mode, her body floating behind the team, within her transparent shell countless light points rotating at extreme speed. Each light point was an abacus bead, all beads calculating in parallel. She calculated the fluctuation pattern of the Lord of Order's law barrier—so vast a light group, surface appearing uniform, yet any law has cycles, and cycles have peaks and troughs. Find the peaks and troughs, mark them for comrades. Their attacks could then land on the weakest phase, the same force causing greater damage. Her fingers traced in the air—not writing, but manifesting deduction results. Where her fingertip passed, faint purple light traces remained, traces interweaving into an extremely complex network. Each node on the network was a potential attack window.

She had found the weakness—while she closed her eyes and frenziedly deduced at super-temporal speed, the results simultaneously appeared on her fingertips—on the left, on the right, in front, below. Everywhere were weaknesses, yet everywhere were not. Too many weaknesses meant his defense map was not a single flaw, but based on omnidirectional crushing power advantage, every point a weakness, yet thus in actual combat none counted as weakness. For he was a Void Refinement cultivator, his weaknesses were too many, too many to be weaknesses. Power can compensate for any weakness. If you strike him at his weakest phase, he need only release a little more power, and weakness returns to invulnerability. Yet Xing Mou continued marking—marking every weakness so comrades knew. Her speed was extreme, her fingers in the air nearly congealing into a sheet of purple light mist.

Xu Tian's staff tapped the ground once. Tapped so lightly that when the staff tip touched earth, no sound was made. But the bead on the staff head lit up. The left eye of the Wan Xiang Guan Xing Zhe. When the Gui Xu clan fell, the last stargazer dug out his own left eye and gave it to him. The eyeball was set in the staff head, sealed in solidified void, and for thirty thousand years had emitted a faint light. Now that light suddenly intensified—not actively provoked by Xu Tian, but the bead sensed the presence of the Lord of Order. The mission of the Wan Xiang Guan Xing Zhe is to "see"—to see all existence, no matter how deeply, far, or hidden it hides. The bead saw the true form of the Lord of Order. Light shone into the silver-white light, and the silver-white light naturally wanted to reflect. But the bead's light was not ordinary light—it was Gui Xu light, light from the edge of the universe, light from the end of all things. There, order had already lost meaning, laws no longer took effect, existence itself had become tenuous. Gui Xu light shone in, and the silver-white mist dispersed. Not driven away—driving away is using force to push aside. The bead's light had no force, it merely "shone." After shining in, the order-light found it could not reflect this light—because Gui Xu light lies outside the jurisdiction of order law. It came from order's end, from where all laws fail. The dispersal was being "seen through." The mist remained, but through it, one saw what lay behind.

Xu Tian's eyes lacked Xing Mou's deduction ability, lacked Feng Huang's high-speed vision. His eyes were very old, old to the point of yellowed whites, blurred pupil edges. But through Gui Xu light he saw—the true form of the Lord of Order was constantly shifting, it had no true form, forever flickering and overlapping between legal fragments and humanoid shards. Each flicker, its condensed existence reorganized, each reorganization had billions of possible configurations, only one was the true master position. Xu Tian whispered, transmitting the master-position coordinates sensed from the Guan Xing Zhe's left eye to Xing Mou. Xing Mou's abacus beads instantly rearranged, cross-referencing the Guan Xing Zhe's data with her own deduction results, confirming the master position's coordinates.

The ice of the Ice Soul Immortal Maiden spread across the floor of the Holy Hall. Starting from beneath her feet—not a thin layer of ice, but a glacier. The law of extreme cold unfurled across the ground, the ice surface advancing outward with her as the center. When the silver-white floor met the ice layer, it emitted a piercing shriek—the sound of friction when lower-order laws are forcibly suppressed by higher-order power, the two laws violently clashing at their interface. The ice did not retreat. The Ice Soul Dao is not a destructive law—pure freezing damage is limited, and against the Lord of Order, it cannot even break defenses. Her role is not to wound the enemy, but to "delay." Within the area covered by the glacier, the flow speed of Order's power decreases. It is not that the law is weakened, but that the medium carrying the law has been altered—light travels slower in ice than in a vacuum, and the operation speed of Order's power within the glacier is also slower than in normal space. Slower by only a few percent. But for the attacks of the seven Unity Realm cultivators, that few percent is all they can seize. The silver-white light could no longer flow across the glacier—light is inherently diffuse, spreading outward from the Holy Hall's center, bending around or reflecting off obstacles. But within the glacier-covered area, the light came to a halt. Its form remained, its brightness remained, but its propagation was frozen. The Lord of Order's movement slowed slightly—just a little, so slight he might not even notice it himself. But for Unity Realm attacks, that little bit is exactly what they need.

The hammer of the Thunder Prison Ancestor came down. Not striking the silver-white light, not striking the Lord of Order's law barrier. It struck the ice of the Ice Soul Immortal Maiden. Before acting, he saw that the Ice Soul Immortal Maiden's glacier had spread beneath the position of the Lord of Order's true form—the very main coordinate jointly confirmed by the Abyssal Heaven and Star Pupil. At that location, the ice layer had frozen a portion of Order's power, creating an extremely brief window. How short was the window? No one could measure it. But it was enough for the Thunder Prison Ancestor to act. He chose the most direct method—smash the ice. The hammerhead struck the ice surface, and the ice shattered. Not into a few pieces, but into countless tiny ice crystals. The ice crystals sprayed outward from the impact point in all directions, each one a miniature prism. Prisms refract light—the silver-white Order light within the ice crystals underwent repeated reflection, splitting, interference, and scattering. The entire center of the Holy Hall filled with ice crystals, forming a labyrinth of light. The Lord of Order's light was scattered in direction within the labyrinth, unable to coalesce for a short time.

Lightning surged forth from the hammerhead. The Thunder Prison Ancestor's lightning was the heaven-and-earth thunder collected over ten thousand years in Thunder Prison Valley, each strand compressed and sealed within his body after being tempered by heavenly tribulation-level thunderstorms. As the hammerhead shattered the ice surface, lightning followed the network of shattered ice, spreading simultaneously in all directions. Lightning leapt through the ice crystals—are each ice crystal a conductor? No. But the Ice Soul Immortal Maiden's ice is not ordinary ice; it is law-ice. Law-ice can bear the Thunder Prison Ancestor's law-lightning. The lightning shuttled through the ice crystal network, like countless silver snakes swimming. They swam so fast that even the Thunder Prison Ancestor himself could not clearly trace each lightning serpent's path. The lightning serpents poured from the shattered ice crystal network into the direction of the Lord of Order's main position, one after another drilling into that core. The Lord of Order's condensed existence was struck by lightning. Not his body struck—he has no body. It was "existence" that was struck. The collision of law-lightning with Order's law triggered a violent law annihilation, releasing a spatial tremor tens of times stronger than the recent mountain-heavy hammer blow. Existence trembled. Not pain, but surprise. A Void Refinement cultivator like him had been struck by a group of Unity Realm cultivators. Though only a minuscule disturbance, it indeed struck his most core part—that mercury-bead-sized silver core, fist-sized.

The Lord of Order counterattacked. Not with a move, not by releasing a specific technique. It was "pressure." He disdained using skill against them; he had no need. Skill is used to compensate for insufficient strength, and his strength had no "insufficiency." His counterattack was the most primitive, most direct, and least skill-dependent way—unleashing the pressure of a Void Refinement cultivator without any restraint. The pressure surged from the deepest part of the Holy Hall—not a tide, which has waves and undulations. Not an avalanche, which has rolling stones and duration. Not a sky-collapse, which has a dome and weight. His pressure was pure existence-level crushing. He manifested the gap between the existence level of a Void Refinement cultivator and that of a Unity Realm cultivator as a sense of oppression. How great is the gap? It cannot be described in numbers. The Chaos Immortal Stele once showed Wang Ping an image—a drop of ink falling into the sea. The ink is Unity Realm, the sea is the Lord of Order. No, even this metaphor is inaccurate. Unity Realm is merely a grain of sand; the Lord of Order is the entire desert. Now, the entire desert pressed down upon that grain of sand.

Wherever the pressure passed, space twisted. Not physical space bending, but the space law itself deforming. Within the range of the Order pressure, the space law was forced to rewrite from the底层 code—originally orthogonal three-dimensional coordinate axes mutually inclined, Euclidean geometric structure collapsed, direction and distance no longer stable. Cultivators could see the space's distortion with the naked eye: the silver-white light no longer propagated in straight lines, but was compressed, stretched, bent, and circulated, like light kneaded into a tangled mess. Time stagnated. Not a slowing of flow, but a "pause." In the densest core region of the pressure, the time law was crushed, the causal chain severed, each moment no longer related to the next. Cultivators' thoughts could still function, but their bodies could not move. The cultivators' spiritual power and weapons froze together with time. Laws were collapsing. Not a single law collapsing, but the very concept of "law" itself collapsing. The Lord of Order's pressure is an absolute edict transcending the existing law system—in his presence, all lower-order laws must yield. The law of gravity yields, the law of wind yields, the law of ice yields, the law of thunder yields. The respective Daos of the seven Unity Realm cultivators all belong to lower-order laws, and in the face of absolute order's crushing, they instinctively contract inward, seeking to retreat to the depths of their Dao foundations for self-preservation.

The seven Unity Realm cultivators stood at the forefront, bearing the brunt. They upheld themselves with their respective law-domains—Xuan Yan's mountain-range law condensed into stone armor, Feng Huang's wind wings folded into a shield, Shan Yue's body hardened to extreme density, Star Pupil laid down countless warning nodes via deduction law across his body, Abyssal Heaven guided approaching pressure into the depths of nothingness via the Return to the Abyss law, Ice Soul encased herself within her glacier, and Thunder Prison's thunder network covered his entire body, forming an electromagnetic barrier.

Seven layers of law-domains stacked, like seven city walls. The walls bent simultaneously under the pressure—not one layer after another collapsing, but all seven bending at once, the curvature perfectly synchronized. Because the pressure was uniform, uniform to the point that each law-domain bore precisely equal pressure. Their bodies bent under the pressure, like bamboo bent by wind.

The wind came from one direction, and the bend was in that same direction. They bent low—so low that Xuan Yan's knees nearly touched the ground, so low that Feng Huang's broken wings drooped onto the ice surface, so low that Shan Yue's waist arched like a stone bridge, so low that Abyssal Heaven's hunched back pressed against his knees.

But they did not break. The resilience of bamboo lies in its joints—each joint is an energy storage point. When bending, bamboo absorbs the wind's force into its joints, which compress and store energy. When the wind stops, bamboo springs back, straighter than before.

Their faces showed no expression. Not because they felt no fear, but because they refused to let it show—fear is contagious. If a Unity Realm cultivator revealed a fearful expression, the God Transformation cultivators behind would instantly collapse. They must not collapse, for Unity Realm cultivators are the last psychological line of defense for the Heavenly Realm Alliance.

Their cheeks could not twitch, their mouth corners could not slacken, their eyelids could not blink. Spiritual power had already been infused into their facial muscles, countering the pressure's micro-spasms—the more suppressed, the stiffer the face. The stiff face happened to show no expression. They knew they could not fall. If they fell, those behind would be doomed.