Yan Zaizen's near-death experience left him seething with fury. His sole focus at this moment was to eliminate this threat regardless of the cost.
However, the situation seemed to have been flipped on its head. While Yan Zaizen fumed with thick murderous intent dead-set on causing his opponent's demise, the grey-robed woman held none of that. Her previous icy-cold aura melted and instantly replaced with relief, happiness, and no battle intent.
Instead, it was as if her previous strike with her very essence and domain never happened.
Yan Zaizen, shrouded in an aura of death, clenched his fist tightly. The sounds of his knuckles cracking resounded. From the palm of this, an inky, black radiance erupted like an entrapped sun.
The grey-robed woman saw Yan Zaizen's ferocious expression, and her mood seemed to be changed. She held her hands out protectively, waving them slightly as if detailing her unwillingness to engage. However, faint grey light flowed between her fingers as she shook them back and forth in a weird rhythm.
Yan Zaizen's amber-gold eyes started to spew out grey light. Immediately, his body felt strange and the flow of time in his body seemed to have been somewhat shifted. On guard, he internalized a flow of temporal energy from his heavenly might to regulate his time flow. However, the feeling remained.
As he approached, he realized that his state of time remained consistent, but the surrounding area seemed to have changed. It was different than the domain produced earlier, inducing a state of pause.
"What...is...this…?" With each inch closer, it was as if he was wading through an omnidirectionally flowing river.
The grey-robed woman kept waving her hands about. Her index, middle, and ring finger remained unmoving, but her thumb and little finger moved in a pendulum manner. This occurred for both hands, grey light flowing between them like majestic dragons soaring through mountains with the utmost freedom.
Yan Zaizen felt the deathly aura's consciousness roar wildly as if desiring to escape, but Yan Zaizen wasn't entrapped. His time-flow was consistent, his body continued to approach, closing the distance with each passing second. Then, a sudden urge overcame him, and he couldn't help but speak once more after he reached a certain point.
"siht...si...thaW?" Yan Zaizen's eyes widened disbelievingly. He stopped, his eyes cold, calm, and sharper than the blades of gods. With rapt attention, he looked at his surroundings. After a short while, he took in a deep breath, the deathly shroud started to retreat into his body. The deathly energy within started to burn. A white flame danced about fiercely.
The death energy started to deplete with a vibrant life energy replaced it. It started to help heal any remnant damage left behind by the previous attack.
The grey-robed woman stopped her hands. Despite not being able to see her eyes, Yan Zaizen knew she was looking at him with an intent-filled gaze. It was oddly uncomfortable.
"How did you manipulate time to such a degree?" Yan Zaizen asked, but before the woman could speak, he continued, "To change my flow of time is one thing, but the flow of time in the entire area to influence me is another. Not to mention this altered timeline anomaly you produced. To create a starting point, an endpoint, and then cycle through them without alerting your target is…"
"How long have I been in that timeline before you ended it?"
Yan Zaizen couldn't appropriately explained what happened in just words. He had been trapped in a separate timeline that had a set starting point and an endpoint. Likely, from the moment he saw her hands to some other point, this event had reoccurred without him knowing in a seamless manner. He felt himself traveling a certain distance because he did, but he would restart to the beginning unknowingly, but the surroundings were very odd and deceptive.
To try to explain this, it was like a puppet show with a moving background. Yan Zaizen was a flying puppet, and the background repeated endlessly from point A to point B. He traveled, moved, felt the progression of time, but the background simply repeats, perhaps it changes, but the puppet never really moves. Regardless of what he would do, he could never 'exit' the background.
As for how she was capable of overwriting his flow of time, the simple reason: she didn't. Instead, she manipulated the things around him, then this time flow naturally interacted with his own. His time flow became its time flow, naturally progressing along this new timeline.
When she froze time, this was what she originally did. However, this time, it was different. If earlier could be considered a 'hard pause,' then this was a 'soft repeat.'
When he tried to speak earlier, he was at the point of 'rewind,' and it came out in reverse unnaturally - its only flaw.
This was an advanced application of time laws, time essence, and temporal interactions. Yan Zaizen had only gained the most basic understanding of time at its core, but when it came to application, how could he match a full-blown expert?
If he held some arts related to time, perhaps he could prevent this naturally interacting timeline from affecting his personal time flow.
Yan Zaizen had to give her an applause. Her skilled usage bewildered him for a short period. However, that's about it. Yan Zaizen's application in his laws were all mostly brute force and slowly discovering the upper limits of their abilities. Time was not his most skilled law, nor did he have any arts trail blazed by experts for millions of years, all the secrets and intricacies unraveled, so he didn't let it get him down.
Not only that, he was currently deducing how to do this very thing.
The grey-robed woman didn't reply quickly, only after a while did she answer his question, "You went through the cycle seventy-three times."
Nodding in acceptance, Yan Zaizen looked at her, his murderous intent held deep within his eyes didn't dissipate. Instead, it became far, far stronger.
The battle intent especially became like a blazing star in the sky, unable to be hidden.
"I admit my inferiority in the laws of time. That is your win. However," Yan Zaizen raised his hand, his palm facing the grey-robed woman, "time laws is not invincible." A speck of black appeared at the center of his palm. When this speck of black appeared, like a dirt particle, the world of dusk turned into everlasting night.
"All things must experience death. Allow me…"
The speck of black transformed into a perfect spherical orb the size of a marble.
"To let you…"
The black orb rotated slowly, no aura was emitted from this aura. However, deep within this orb was a myriad of laws. If one inspected it, they would see death, destruction, space, darkness, fire, gravity, life, and yang.
"Lead you to your first and last experience." When those words were said, the world went silent.
The grey-robed woman exclaimed a feminine welp, her posture visibly shaken looking at the black orb. "You're creating a DEATH STAR?! YOU CAN CREATE ONE?!?!" Immediately, she retreated. There was no tricks, arts, or actions other than retreating like a brilliant grey comet into the horizon.
"ARE YOU INSANE?!?!" She screamed hysterically, her voice filled with a hint of horror. To think that he would actually create a real death star, she couldn't help but hold deep regret in her heart as she blazed across the black skies away. However, the feeling of encroaching death never disappeared from that very heart.
"You sliced open my brain, YOU LET ME KNOW!!!" Yan Zaizen roared, he thrust the death star within his palm outwards. Suddenly, it expanded! A kilometer, ten, a thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand, million!!!
Like an expanding ball of foam, Yan Zaizen was devoured by the black orb in an instant!
The grey-robed woman turned around, her gaze trembling fiercely at the expanding colossal that was the black orb and couldn't help but stop. This was the creation of a star, she would never leave its gravity field before being pulled into it, time, space, and even all life would be drawn in and brought to its end immediately.
A death star.
A literal death star!
In the myriad heavens and universes, a Death Star was an incredible oddity. It exuded no light but was utterly black. Whenever it is born, the entire realm its within would be drawn into it and eliminated. The Death Star would expand, continuing to devour space, time, life, and all forms of matter. It just would not cease until the entire realm was consumed.
Then, it would continue to expand.
It wouldn't stop.
It would continue drawing things in like an insatiable beast that would never become full, and it never did. Only after some time, unless interfered with, would a brilliant white light at its core would counter-absorb it with a wild force. Many speculated that the white light was the true core of the planet, and for some reason, it was hibernating until a certain point
Regardless, after the white light appears, the darkness changes, and the realm becomes a realm of life. This was the concept of extreme birthing opposing extreme. This realm would become unprecedented in quality and growth, prompting all forms of life, creating planets, stars, and a larger realm in turn.
This was the origin of how every 'titan' realm was birthed.
Yan Zaizen had used the myriad laws to recreate this very event!
How can you fight something that consumed everything?!
The grey-robed woman turned, then, unexpectedly, she removed her hood.
Yan Zaizen who was a white light within the center of the black star was aware of everything, and when his senses saw her remove her hood, his eyes widened. The expansion abruptly stopped.
"You?!"
The immense level of disbelief and shock caused his body to tremble fiercely. The star reflected this, shaking as if it was about to experience an explosion at any moment. He didn't want to believe in his eyes as he checked his Meteor Ring, finding a soft lifeform just sleeping there.
He looked once more at the revealed grey-robed woman and couldn't help but say, "Yan Linzen?!?!"