The valley walls on either side of his dim vision narrowed inward, then spread outward again. A fork appeared ahead where they widened.
A speck of dust floated at the entrance to the left passage. It had fallen from the rock face above the valley wall and was drifting downward.
It fell extremely slowly. Chu Ming watched that speck descend less than half an inch from where it had broken loose, counting his pulse in the meantime. Eight beats.
In eight heartbeats, the speck had fallen only half an inch.
There was also a speck of dust at the entrance to the right passage. It fell from the valley wall, and Chu Ming did not even catch its trajectory as it dropped. The instant his gaze caught the point where it had detached, it had already scattered across the ground.
Chu Ming split the power of order into two streams and sent them into both passages at once.
The right passage was empty within.
Even the remnants of laws had been scoured away in the region where time flowed at extreme speed, like a river running too fast and carrying all the silt from its bed away, leaving the riverbed bare.
Deep within the left passage was an exceedingly faint law fluctuation. Its frequency had been compressed to the extreme, until the gap between its crests and troughs was smaller than the limit his divine sense could perceive.
The fluctuation lay roughly two li into the passage, steady and unmoving.
He stepped into the left passage.
The instant he entered the slow-time region, his body felt as though it had been immersed in high-density liquid.
He raised his hand.
His fingers rose from his knee to shoulder height. He had performed that movement countless times, and it normally took less