"Decay!"
"Corrosion!"
"Deterioration!"
Invisible waves rippled outward in circles from the Shadow Tree. Like raging waves crashing against the shore, they came layer upon layer without end, battering the Red Moon power until it dimmed step by step and retreated.
The Half-God was the incarnation of rules, while the Shadow Tree was the embodiment of rules.
He could still make out its features.
But time and space, which had been pulled back onto their normal tracks, began to decay once more. Space peeled away layer by layer like a thousand-layer pastry, while time was drawn out strand by strand like silken thread.
Space was the foundation.
Everything that existed within space had its own Timeline.
But.
Now they were breaking apart.
Shattering.
Being pulled out of space.
Time could not exist independently outside space; it was the measure of space's movement. For humans, space likewise could not leave time's markings, or they would lose themselves.
Jiang Qiao was within it.
He felt as though he had been isolated in a voidlike, desolate, shattered world.
There was nothing here.
Yet it also seemed as though there was everything.
Front and back, left and right.
In every direction.
All of it had lost its meaning, but none of it had truly vanished.
"The rules of decay have pried at time and space."
"It can't erase me for the time being, so it plans to exile me from this world. Space cannot truly be destroyed, but it can be stripped of order. Its rules can be disrupted until it becomes utterly chaotic."
"For living humans who rely on order to exist, that's fatal."
"Chaos drowns out order."
"Order rejects chaos."
"Even if one doesn't die after being exiled into chaotic space, returning will be extremely difficult."
Red light misted through Jiang Qiao's eyes.