The Grand Lord did not dodge. He raised his right hand, spread his five fingers, palm facing forward, and met Xu Wuyi's fist head-on. The instant fist and palm collided, the entire gray-white space began to tremble violently from its center. Dense cracks surfaced across the smooth walls at once, stretching from the dome to the floor, making the entire space look like a mirror smashed by a hammer. Xu Wuyi felt his punch being received by something. It was not a hard block, but a continuous, even absorption, as though his fist had struck a mass of flowing viscous liquid, its energy dispersed and consumed layer by layer.
The Grand Lord's palm retreated an inch as it received the blow.
The movement was slight, but his center of gravity shifted from stable to faintly tilted backward. His feet slid back across the gray-white ground by the width of a foot before stopping. He looked at Xu Wuyi, and the relaxed quality in his gaze changed for an instant, like a crack being struck through the ice on water. "The height of your Rules does not match your own realm."
Xu Wuyi sensed it too. When he threw that punch, all five layers of patterns on the tree canopy had lit up, and their blended warm golden radiance covered his entire fist. But when the punch met the Grand Lord's palm, its strength was dispersed and consumed layer by layer. His fist had failed to break through the block, leaving behind only an inch of displacement in the palm and a foot-width of movement in his stance. His energy reserves, muscle strength, and bone density had yet to reach the level needed to support the full output of all his Rules at once. The body's capacity had limited the upper