Good News: They Could Combine; Bad News: They Had to Withstand the Fifth Step

From the depths of the Inverted Battlefield came an incomparably muffled tremor.

The sound was not like an explosion.

Nor was it like thunder.

It was more like an Ancient Graveyard buried in the deepest folds of time, where some monster that had slept for countless Eras gently tapped the lid of its coffin from within.

Thud.

The boundless Sea of Corpses shuddered as one.

The remains of gods and demons floating in the darkness seemed to sense some irresistible existence and actually moved aside of their own accord.

The Blood River froze.

Death Qi sank.

Even the Dilapidated Stars hanging upside down in the void seemed pressed down by some power of ultimate purity, their surfaces splitting open with spiderweb-like cracks.

The next moment.

An enormous skeleton slowly rose from the deepest darkness.

It had no flesh.

No Dharma Aspect.

No World-Extinguishing Halo circling its body.

It did not even release the most basic pressure possessed by high-level beings.

It merely stood there.

Yet the instant it rose, the entire Inverted Battlefield seemed as though an invisible giant hand had gripped its spine.

Two clusters of Pale Flame burned within the skeleton's hollow eye sockets.

The flames had no heat.

Nor did they carry any soul fluctuations.

They possessed only an extremely pure sense of "existence."

As though all Laws, Causality, time, and space in the world were merely superfluous decorations before it.

The skeleton raised its hand.

The Law of Gravity across the entire Inverted Battlefield collapsed on the spot.

The Blood River that had been flowing in reverse came to an abrupt halt.

The Time Texture embedded in the void shattered inch by inch.

The floating corpses in the distance were swept by the invisible aftershock stirred up by that hand and vanished directly into nothingness, leaving