Before a word could be spoken, the grey-robed woman launched her attack! Her palm thrust forth with a grey radiance that embodied the essence of time. This palm was like the past, present, and future merged into one.
Yan Zaizen paid rapt attention to this palm, but it felt disjointed. Before he could even react, it had touched his body despite being quite a distance away! However, with the next breath, it was still coming like a slow-moving wave. Then, it was as if it had never been made!
It honestly felt like you were watching things in reverse, and this startled him greatly. In his cultivation life, he's been in fights before, but never against someone of this profound level or cultivation base. In truth, he didn't know what her cultivation base was!
With his senses restricted by her robe, he could only analyze the aura emitted from her body, but with its unique aura that embodied time, it was all over the place making it incredibly difficult to pinpoint. Regardless, Yan Zaizen was not a pushover, and he had no intention of holding back against this woman who he knew nothing about.
"HA!!"
His heavenly might exploded!!!
His aura rose to the sky like a pillar of light. The palm landed swiftly on this pillar of light, causing distortions and regressions to appear, but it remained stable and strong. This was a protective ward of unhindered heavenly might infused with the heavenly essence of a Heavenly Commander!
The grey-robed woman pulled her palm back, created a fist, and punched viciously forth without saying a single word in response! This punch held the same grey radiance that contained the essence of time, but this seemed oddly focused. It smashed into the ward of heavenly might, and in a blink, all of the heavenly might created disappeared.
"What?!" Yan Zaizen's eyes widened slightly. He retreated instantly witnessing this, his body turning into a bolt of lightning. His heavenly might didn't just vanish, it returned back into his body as if it never erupted in the beginning!
With a step backward, he set a distance of a thousand miles between them. However, the grey-robed woman's actions didn't cease. Instead, it regressed and repeated. Her fist once more turned into a palm and she thrust it forth. She didn't move a single inch, but the palm was directly before Yan Zaizen despite the vast distance!
"WHAT?!" The scene surrounding Yan Zaizen shifted suddenly, as if he never retreated a thousand miles or stepped backwards a single inch. The palm was still coming, and it was just a few inches away from his chest. This made everything feel surreal and almost like an illusion. If it weren't for the deep essence of time being released, he would've expected it to be!
The world looked as if it rewinded twice in a matter of moments until it reached its original state! The only thing that progressed in this world was that slow-moving palm that carried a hint of the past, present, and future.
"So this is what high-level fights are like!" Not dejected by this sudden event, Yan Zaizen smiled with excitement. A long-hidden, heavy and dense battle intent surfaced within his eyes.
"I've reached the peak of a Sovereign-level in the Law of Time! I can control all time beneath the heavens, I am TIME!" Mentally, he violently roared as the surrounding area heavily distorted. Any outside observers would only see an area similar to an ocean's reflection with a mash of various figures.
His heavenly might, his heavenly shrine, shifted into a pure grey color! It contained the heavenly law of time and various concepts, not limited to just anyone! His heavenly might erupted once more, this time more subtly as it engulfed his body like a soft layer of light. With a clenched fist, he threw it forward to meet that inexplicable palm.
PA!!
Both palm and fist met, stopping each other. An eerie, ghastly silence erupted from a thousand miles in all directions. The plant life, animal life, air, water, and even bystanders were influenced by this silence. They were all like still pictures or a mark of a brush for a painting.
The world was frozen!
The grey-robed woman let out a startled sound. She didn't expect her fist to be intercepted so directly, carrying an essence of flowing time energy to counter her distorted time! This direct confrontation induced a state of stasis in the surrounding area, even if a Heavenly Monarch at the Minor Heaven were right there, they would've been frozen in time as well!
Only two existences held complete control over their facilities, capable of keeping their bodies at a constant flow of consistent time.
"Tch, you are at least worth being one of 'his' descendant," she scoffed slightly before pulling her palm back.
Yan Zaizen didn't comprehend why she said this, but his eyes grew slightly cold. If she wanted to see his abilities, then he was more than willing to show her!
Let's have a battle of time!!!
Clenching both fists, he shot them forth in a ferocious punch. His right contained the law of the past while his left contained the future. When they both were launched, they created a unique field that seemed to put all things into stasis! To defeat someone using time laws, Yan Zaizen already had an inkling on the direction.
The goal: To break their consistent flow of time!
The grey-robed woman sneered, her palm became palms as she replied with two strikes of her own, clashing directly with Yan Zaizen's. The clash nullified each other, inducing a state of nothingness in much the same way as the sum of a negative and positive equivalent of a number created zero, this did the same.
If one of them breaks the other's consistent flow of time, they could be aged or regressed thousands of years in a blink. Both sides knew this, so they kept their aura raised and their strength exploding outwards constantly to retaliate against any minute change.
The clashes continued.
Pa! Pa! Pa!
A fierce engagement of close-combat strikes was made, from palms, fists, to feet and legs. Yan Zaizen was excited, and invigorated that he discovered an interesting fact!
This woman was not a Heavenly Cultivator! She cultivated her own energy, didn't rely on the energy of the heavens, and struck using a unique base inside her that seemed to have been thoroughly developed. With every clash, she revealed a little bit of her internal world that fueled her strikes, allowing Yan Zaizen to see more of her abilities and origins.
Only after a thousand clashes did Yan Zaizen finally deduce her origin.
A Celestial!
While he was casually engaging, deducing her origins, the grey-robed woman was startled into disbelief! She did not expect someone who recently stole the body of another to be so proficient in using it! Was this the body of a Non-Entity? Not to mention, the laws exuded by Yan Zaizen exceeded her expectations. He seemed to grasp the very core of time laws beneath the heavens. Every strike leveraged the heavenly forces, produced minute domains that clashed with her own Celestial Energy.
It was beyond mind-boggling!
"Someone at this level must be at the Sovereign-Level of the Time Laws, perhaps even at the very peak!" When she thought this, her brows furrowed. To reach that level in Time Laws should be immensely difficult, requiring the utmost talent and strength. After all, it was a World Law!
As a Celestial, they had their own divisions according to their own Internal Heavens, their own quality and quantity of Celestial Energy, and she was deeply aware of the level one must reach to be at that level. If you wanted to put it in comparison, then it equaled her very own level! She, by celestial standards and its Path, was at the Celestial Monarch, Ninth Phase.
This meant, in terms of her own Internal Heaven, her understanding and structure of her essence of time, equaled the peak of the Heavenly Law of Time!
She grew frustrated. Deeply so!
Celestials were powerful, fiercely so. They weren't restricted by the environment, and they can construct their own heavens within their bodies without requiring a shrine that worships before the heavens for power! It was fundamentally different and freer! However, it had its own limitations.
Firstly, it based highly on talent, resources, and one's intelligence! This essence of time was developed by her, constructed by her, and was unique to her! While it may carry similarities to the Heavenly Law of Time, there were crucial differences between them. However, this did not mean she was more powerful than the heavens above and below!
If that wasn't the case, why weren't all Celestials the Gods beneath all creation? Why did Heavenly Cultivators, those who borrow and comprehend another entity's power, be capable of rivaling their own?
So, she was deeply frustrated.
Because…
As she fights Yan Zaizen more and more, she realized...she was his equal!