Ling'er raised both hands, fingers spread, palms facing outward.
She poured every last trace of her Ghost Law into her palms, forming one final silver-white barrier before her—the thickest one yet.
The barrier resembled a giant mirror of ice. Dense Ghost Law patterns flowed across its surface, each one carrying all the source power she had accumulated since she first began cultivating.
The dark-gold beam struck the silver-white barrier.
At the instant of impact, every sound above the Arena vanished.
The wind stopped. The Saintly Breath stopped. The hum of the laws in motion stopped. Even the flow of time seemed to stretch severalfold in that single instant.
The laws within the Coiling Dragon Pillars let out a piercing shriek together, and fine cracks appeared on all four pillars at once.
The moment those cracks appeared, they rapidly repaired themselves.
The silver-white barrier held beneath the crushing dark-gold beam for three full breaths.
On the first breath, a crack appeared on its surface.
It spread from the edge toward the center, like the first fracture left when a heavy hammer struck a sheet of ice.
On the second breath, one crack became dozens.
Dense, web-like fractures covered the entire barrier. The Ghost Law patterns flowing across its surface began to break apart, slip out of alignment, and collapse.
On the third breath, the barrier began to shatter from its center. Silver-white fragments peeled away one after another, broke apart, and dissolved into nothingness.
The fragments fell away faster and faster, until the entire barrier shattered in an instant into a shower of silver-white light.
The dark-gold beam passed through the barrier's ruins.
It passed through Ling'er's body.
It entered through the center of her chest and burst from her back, trailing a thick plume of dark-gold flame before slamming into