The five worked together seamlessly, their unspoken understanding honed through countless life-and-death battles.
Encirclement, restraint, frontal assault, and support-a battle formation relying on their bodies took shape in an instant.
There were no earth-shaking manifestations or thunderous roars, only the purest, deadliest edge of slaughter.
Having worked out the surface rules, they were staking all their reserves on a desperate counterattack.
Since all methods were shackled, they would break the deadlock with something outside those methods.
But in the next instant, every ferocious attack came to nothing.
Sun Wukong's supreme fist force plunged into the void before the Immortal Lord of Myriad Laws, producing neither an explosive collision nor a shock wave.
Like a blazing stone cast into the sea, like a gale rushing into emptiness, it dissolved without a sound.
Layer upon layer of surging brute strength unraveled, falling still inch by inch, unable to stir even the hem of his Daoist robe.
A clay ox sank into the sea, leaving not a ripple.
The close-quarters attacks, flanking strikes, and crushing encirclement that followed met the same fate.
Any bodily force that came within three feet of the white-robed figure was swallowed, smoothed away, and dispersed by invisible rules.
There was no rebound, no resistance, no dismantling.
Only pure reduction to zero, absolute annihilation.
The five's pupils contracted sharply, and a chill struck their hearts.
They had anticipated backlash, blocking, even overwhelming defeat in a head-on clash.
Only this utterly unanswerable situation had never crossed their minds.
Physical force, too, belonged among the myriad laws.
The brute strength of the flesh was likewise governed by rules.
They had abandoned their treasures and sealed their Dao resonance, believing they had stepped off the chessboard, only to remain trapped in the cage.
With their assault ineffective and their brute strength useless,