Aoyue and Xilos fell silent for a moment, but Enrosis neither responded nor asked any further questions. She simply stepped through the doorway first.
Xilos followed her. One after another, the three of them disappeared into the new portal.
Light and shadow shifted around them in an instant. Beyond the doorway lay scorched earth.
With his first step out, Shen Yi trod on a crust of burned ash. It was hollow underneath, collapsing under the slightest pressure.
The small world he had prepared earlier was now nothing but fragments floating in place, large and small. Streaks of errant rules still clung to many of its torn edges, flickering like severed tendons that had never drawn back.
He had built this small world piece by piece, layering rules together until it had begun to take shape as a world. Now there was nothing beneath it, only these fragments circling where they stood.
Everything he had left within that small world had vanished as well.
He surveyed his surroundings.
Winnie, Wen Ke'er, and the others were long gone.
There were no bodies, no auras. Even the traces a chaotic battle should have left behind had been buried beneath those rampaging rules.
Looking farther out, Shen Yi spotted numerous Authority Holders he did not recognize.
Their auras mingled together, all different in color, form, and nature. Clearly, they had not come from the same place. Now they were packed into this field of wreckage, locked in furious combat.
Some used entire floating land fragments as footholds, charging back and forth across them. Every collision split another crack through the ground.
Others simply grappled in midair, pulling the rules from one another's bodies into fine threads, which broke, wound back together, then broke again.
Standing at the portal's entrance, Shen Yi checked the position