After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

Marcus Weber's voice flowed out languidly.

"Your friends, your estate, the thirty million people you protect."

From this moment on, every quarter of an hour, one part of it will become part of the illusory realm.

"Radiation at the rule level cannot be blocked by magic, and brute force is useless."

Your mere idealistic elixir cannot define the entire world.

Zhou Ran stood in the blood-red light, without replying.

He lowered his head and glanced into his dantian.

The six gray lines were burning hot, and the seventh fine line, which he had previously suppressed, began to arch outwards along the red wall again.

With each expansion of the ripples in the sky, the ripples grow longer.

With only 27 days left in the countdown, the beat is getting faster and faster under this radiation.

He raised his head.

A blood-red sky, a wildly spinning heart, and a perfectly steady projection of capital.

More than 10,000 red dots were jumping on the screen, each one tied to the life of a living person.

The gray line that Lin Qingxue guarded.

The tidal array supported by Su Qingling and her sister.

The broken jade pendant that Li Zhiyao had condensed.

What had been weighing on his eyes for so long finally ignited.

Magic light.

Zhou Ran raised his hand and peered into the empty space behind him.

There is something in Ye Futian's memories that he couldn't grasp when he was on Blue Star, and the Heavenly Dao suppressed it.

No one is pressing down here anymore.

A black blade was pulled out from the very source of his nascent soul.

The blade does not reflect light, and a dark gold dragon pattern is coiled on the spine of the blade.

The moment it was drawn, the blood-red light in the room receded by half a foot.

Taihuang Black Blade.

Marcus's hand, holding the coffee cup, hovered in mid-air.

For the first time, the gray membrane in those blue eyes went out of rhythm.

"What's that in your hand...?"

Zhou Ran gripped the knife handle with both hands.

The primordial energy flowed from his palm into the blade, and the dragon pattern awakened, letting out a low groan that made the heart of the entire sacred mountain skip a beat.

His gaze swept over the glaring Western-style machines, over the screens, over the pipes, and finally landed on the face of the man holding the coffee.

"You haven't even scratched the surface of what strength is."

The Taihuang Black Blade roared like a dragon, crashing straight into the dome.

The dragon's roar crashed into the metal dome, shattering the simulated starry sky light panel into a net of fragments.

Marcus put down his cup.

The cup tipped over, and the black liquid spilled onto the control panel, seeping into the gaps between the buttons.

"That's interesting."

He sat up straight again, a gray film covering the back of his eyes.

"You think you can sever the radiation of rules with just a knife?"

He raised his hand and slammed it on the table.

The crimson ripples suddenly accelerated, twisting from undulating circles into a solid red light curtain that poured down from the mountaintop, enveloping Zhou Ran.

That's thunder, the "decomposition" that breaks everything down to its smallest particles.

Wherever the light curtain swept, the platform's metal, the dust in the air, and even the light itself were disintegrated and reduced to nothingness.

"World-destroying level".

When Marcus pronounced those three words, his tone was full of appreciation.

"It was fed by the vitality of 30 million people."

It is more than enough to assimilate a city.

I will dismantle one of your nascent souls.

He paused.

"It's perfectly adequate."

Under the red light.

Zhou Ran did not back down.

The fourth level of the Primordial Overlord Body was fully activated, and black and gold scales covered his entire body.

The nascent soul churned within the dantian, and purple-gold law patterns burned from the chest all the way to the tip of the knife.

The Demon Emperor's essence was drawn from his marrow and poured into the blade.

The killing intent of Ye Futian, who was conquering the void realm, solidified on the spine of the blade.

The primordial energy surged forth, unleashing black and gold smoke that rushed up from behind to support the entire blade, while the Law of the Mind pressed down last.

Zhou Ran mentally defined the meaning of this stab.

Where the knife passes, the boundary is severed.

Instead of taking physical approaches, we follow the rules of "segmentation".

Whatever is struck—whether it's matter, energy, or laws—is forcibly split in two, with no further connection between the two halves.

The Golden Elixir of the Mind trembled and became extremely hot.

If this definition were applied to Earth, the Heavenly Dao would immediately strip him of 70% of his true essence.

There is no Heavenly Way here.

The cost is zero.

Zhou Ran held the knife in both hands and slashed it down from above his head.

The black blade's edge met the world-destroying red light head-on.

"It's no use—"

Marcus had just uttered two words.

The blade's edge collided with the red light.

There was no explosion, no collision, no struggle between light.

The red light was cut open.

The world-destroying decomposition radiation split into two streams from the center, obediently flowing past the black light and crashing into the metal wall behind it, turning the wall into two piles of ash.

Marcus's smile froze.

The blade's edge didn't stop.

Cut through the red light, cut through the pipes, cut through the laboratory floor.

The black light surged forward, heading towards the control panel, towards the face holding the coffee.

Marcus pressed down on the table, summoning all his life force to create a red protective barrier in front of him.

That was the energy he gathered together using more than ten thousand gray lines.

The retaining wall held up.

It lasted less than a breath.

The Black Blade's "Boundary Severance" does not recognize the amount of energy.

It only recognizes one thing: once it strikes, it divides the target.

The red retaining wall splits open in the middle.

Marcus's projection husk, along with the more than ten-meter-wide metal control panel beneath him, was cleaved in two by the black light.

These two halves can never be put back together, absolutely, cleanly.

There was no blood, no parts, and no broken metal fragments at the cut.

Only nothingness.

The split half vanished from the world, erasing even the trace of its existence.

Marcus's upper body, his face that had just turned around, was frozen in a look of astonishment.

The other half, attached to the coffee cup, is gone.

He looked down at his cleaved body.

"impossible."

The sound leaked from the speakers, mixed with electrical noise.

"These are...the rules..."

I've finished stitching it up..."

"You're sewing up a corpse."

Zhou Ran sheathed his sword.

The black and gold dragon pattern on the blade darkened.

"Strength is not a statistic."

Zhou Ran watched the projection dissipate.

"If I say it will break, it will break."

Marcus's projection, connected to the cleaved control panel, transformed into two ethereal rifts, completely erasing him from the laboratory.

That device, which connected the mortal realm, the nerve center of the celestial corpses, and the lives of over ten thousand people, is gone.

Immediately afterwards, the entire sacred mountain trembled.

The blood-red sky stopped.

The outward-radiating reverse assimilation ripple, having lost its source, froze in mid-air and then quickly retreated back towards the sacred mountain.

The hundred-foot-deep heart underground, pounding wildly, suddenly stopped.

Within Zhou Ran's dantian, the six burning heads with gray lines descended.

The seventh fine line that had just appeared stopped and shrank back.

The 27-day countdown has stopped.

More than 11,000 gray lines on the ground in Jiangcheng were all loosened at once.

Those lives held by the gray thread, that death calamity hanging over the heads of thirty million people, were severed with this single strike.

Inside the laboratory, the alarm stopped.

The screen is completely black.

Only the Taihuang Black Blade remained, emitting a final low hum in Zhou Ran's hand.

Zhou Ran stood in the center of the laboratory that had been split in two, his chest heaving as he gasped for breath.

The primordial energy and blood within his body were repairing the backlash from the Severing Boundary Blade.

Although this strike did not cause the Heavenly Dao to extract true essence, it defined "severing the boundary" itself, emptying nearly half of the law reserves in his nascent soul.

He held the knife and took three breaths.

Then he saw it.

The console was split open, and after it was scattered, the ground underneath was exposed.

That was a piece of ice.