"Could that be where the monster Zhou is hiding?" Yan wondered to himself.
According to the information the lord of Guan Town had given him, Jing Kingdom was mainly under attack from a monster called Zhou.
As for the other seven kingdoms, there was no clear information. But Jing Kingdom had suffered such a calamity, and the other kingdoms had made no move at all. The seven were probably too busy dealing with their own troubles.
"Named Zhou... That makes sense. The monsters we've encountered along the way all fight by manipulating light. The leader should be skilled at manipulating light too." Yan considered his options. "I'll take a closer look."
There were no other monsters in Ying, so Yan made it all the way to the imperial palace without hindrance.
A brilliant white light blocked off everything beyond it. Even Yan couldn't force his way through the column of light; it was too resilient.
But he didn't need to force his way through.
"Teleportation!"
Yan surrounded himself with a transparent barrier, then teleported straight inside the column of light.
The inside of the column was unbearably hot. The air must have been over a thousand degrees. If Yan hadn't formed a semi-transparent shield around himself beforehand, he would have been roasted the moment he entered.
After all, having his body strengthened by World Authority alone wasn't enough to withstand such heat.
The palace within the column had already been baked into a bizarre expanse of ceramic. Its once-gorgeous buildings had vanished completely.
Only after entering the column did Yan notice another beam at its very center, barely ten meters thick, stretching up to the heavens. His instincts told him that the monster Zhou must be there.
"Let's see what you are."
After teleporting several times in a row, Yan arrived outside the smaller beam and raised a hand toward it.
Two enormous hands, seemingly made of pure blackness, appeared on either side of the beam. Space Fragment after Space Fragment flickered between them.
"Clap!"
The hands came together, striking the beam.
There was no collision. Somehow, the black hands and the brilliant white beam interwove. The beam warped, its path through heaven and earth turning crooked and twisted, as if its light were being refracted.
"Crackle..."
Space Fragment after Space Fragment swallowed and bent the light, making the beam twist more and more.
Perhaps affected by the smaller beam, the enormous column of light around it began to tremble violently as well.
"Roar!"
A furious roar shook the earth, coming from directly beneath the smaller beam. The monster said nothing, but its rage was unmistakable.
"You only noticed now? Too late!"
Yan's face twisted with effort as he brought his hands together and manipulated his World Authority with all his might.
Countless tiny Space Fragments joined together, forming a gigantic rift dozens of meters wide. It cleaved the smaller beam in two.
"Boom!"
The smaller beam broke apart and vanished.
As it snapped, the enormous column of light shuddered, then quickly shattered into specks of starlight.
The giant rift suspended in midair also closed, repaired by space itself.
"Ha... ha..."
Yan panted. Space Strangling was one application of his Space Authority.
Small rifts were no problem, but his final move had formed a massive one despite the beam's interference. That had taken a great deal out of him.
Fortunately, he'd only needed to sustain it briefly, so the strain was limited.
Just then, a sense of danger welled up in his heart.
"Teleportation!"
Yan teleported rapidly away from the palace. Each time he had just left a spot, a white beam erupted from the ground there like a volcanic blast.
Only after he teleported beyond the palace did Yan feel that the attack had finally stopped.
"Roar!"
Another roar sounded. A monster covered in light burst from the ground and hovered in the air, facing Yan from a distance.
"So this is the monster Zhou?"
Yan was surprised when he saw Zhou for the first time.
Zhou looked nothing like he had imagined. He'd thought Zhou would resemble its ugly, birdlike underlings.
But Zhou had nothing to do with birds. It was a platinum-colored lizard, over ten meters long, with a single horn atop its head. Intricate Secret Patterns covered the horn, though many sections seemed incomplete, disrupting its mysterious, perfect rhythm.
Even so, the Platinum Horned Lizard was stunningly beautiful, nothing like the hideous monsters Yan had encountered on the way.
"Are you Zhou?"
Yan called out. From the lively look in its eyes, he thought the Platinum Horned Lizard was intelligent, unlike the puppet-like monsters.
"Zhou? Heh heh heh... I wondered who it was. So it's you. No surprise there. Who else in this world could ruin my plans?" The Platinum Horned Lizard gave a strange chuckle at Yan's words, then gazed at him meaningfully.
Its look made Yan uncomfortable.
"So it was me? This lizard knows me?" Questions swirled in Yan's mind. Ever since his birth, he'd never left Bauhinia Village. Before setting out on this journey, he'd never met any supernatural beings besides Mountain Ghost, let alone this Platinum Horned Lizard.
"Could I have forgotten something?" Yan felt lost. Since leaving the village, he'd encountered too many strange and inexplicable things. All his doubts and confusion reached a peak at the lizard's words.
For a moment, he even wondered whether the eighteen years of memories he'd lived through were real—or merely a dream.
The doubts pressed down on the eighteen-year-old boy, who had only just left home, until he could barely breathe.
"Who... who are you? Why do you know me? What do you know?!" Yan stared at the Platinum Horned Lizard, his voice turning angry.
The Platinum Horned Lizard merely sized him up, then sneered. "You can't even handle this? Hmph! What a disappointment. Someone as weak as you has no right to..."
It left the sentence unfinished, but it had said enough to enrage Yan. Sick of its cryptic remarks, he snapped, "Fine! If you won't talk, I'll beat it out of you!"
The moment the words left his mouth, Yan attacked.
With a wave of his hand, he peeled away the space around the Platinum Horned Lizard from the normal world. Then the power of Strangulation swept through with a surge of spatial energy.
But to Yan's shock, the Platinum Horned Lizard's body turned intangible for a second as the attack passed over it. It then simply ignored the Space Strangling, completely unharmed.
The corner of its mouth lifted, as if mocking Yan for overestimating himself. Then a strange force acted on the sealed space, and Yan felt the Space Fragment he had peeled away merge back into normal space.
"So all you have is Strangulation and Teleportation? Ridiculous. How could a sealed Space Fragment, torn away with brute force like that, possibly contain me?" The Platinum Horned Lizard taunted him.
Yan burned with rage. "Take this! And this! And this..."
Wind, light, thunder, and fire intertwined, while the power of Strangulation struck from time to time.
But no matter how many techniques Yan used or how many kinds of World Authority he wielded, the Platinum Horned Lizard remained at ease. Its body would occasionally turn intangible, letting it ignore every attack.
Yan was being toyed with completely.
That was how he felt now, and the helplessness only made him lose control further.
"...It seems I was too cautious. Even though it's him, his former mind has been clouded, and he's never been through any trials. He's still far too immature."
As Yan and the Platinum Horned Lizard fought, a hidden gaze watched them from the shadows.
After observing for a while, its owner lost interest. "It seems nothing unexpected will happen. I should deal with it next... Damn it, this world restricts me more than any other. Even using a little power outside takes so much out of me. Otherwise, why would I..."
The observer in the shadows ground its teeth, then slowly withdrew its awareness.
Neither Yan nor the Platinum Horned Lizard noticed a thing.
After dodging another Space Strangling, the Platinum Horned Lizard seemed to have grown tired of the fight.
"That's enough. It seems this is the limit of your abilities. You have no further part to play." The Platinum Horned Lizard stared coldly at Yan, who was panting across from it.
Keeping up his full-power use of World Authority had drained him badly. Yan was now at the end of his strength.
"You think you can kill me? Dream on!" Yan glared at the lizard, his imposing air at odds with the despair in his heart.
Once he'd calmed down a little, Yan realized he couldn't make out what Authority the Platinum Horned Lizard had mastered.
To him, that meant the lizard had solved at least five hundred more games of the Rhino Emperor Game than he had.
And though he'd lost his temper earlier, he had still given it everything he had.
Yet no matter how he attacked, the Platinum Horned Lizard had always dealt with his moves effortlessly. The fight had left him feeling utterly powerless.
The Platinum Horned Lizard brushed aside Yan's furious words. "It doesn't matter how unwilling you are. Once I've dealt with you, I'll deal with him..."
As it spoke, a silver Flowing Light shot from its horn. Caught off guard, Yan took the beam head-on.
Stillness. Numbness.
Yan suddenly felt completely frozen in that instant. His body and mind had both slowed down billions of times compared with before.
Seeing that its attack had landed, the Platinum Horned Lizard walked toward Yan at a leisurely pace.
But from Yan's perspective, it seemed to move with the most terrifying speed in the world.
Move! Teleportation!
Yan roared in his mind, trying to control his World Authority. But the thought seemed to take billions of years to form and carry out, while the Platinum Horned Lizard had already reached him.