Laws!

At his command, a torrent of savage, cryptic information surged into Lin Fan's sea of consciousness.

Without the slightest warning, Lin Fan felt as if the back of his head had been struck by a mighty hammer.

"Ugh!"

The pain was so intense that his vision went black and his mind went blank.

Then he felt as if an invisible hand had yanked him out of his body and violently hurled him somewhere unknown.

As his vision slowly returned, Lin Fan realized he was in a pitch-black void.

It was different from when he had extracted the first level of the Calamity Killing Art. Last time, he had been beneath a river of stars. This time, there were no celestial bodies at all; his surroundings were utterly empty.

Suddenly—

Whoosh!

A blinding purple bolt of lightning appeared before Lin Fan, tearing through the darkness and splitting the void wide open.

The lightning carried an eerie, savage, and destructive aura.

Unlike natural lightning, which vanished in an instant, this purple bolt spread out like countless enraged purple dragons, circling and roaring through the void without fading.

The lightning illuminated the abyss, and Lin Fan's pupils contracted.

He saw a towering figure concealed deep within the void.

A blurred silhouette that seemed to reach the heavens stood in the boundless emptiness, holding a massive scythe.

Its face was indistinct, but Lin Fan could feel its cold, overbearing disdain for all things in heaven and earth.

Then, under Lin Fan's stunned gaze, the blurred figure slowly raised the scythe in its hand.

Its movements seemed slow, yet they followed some profound rhythm, drawing the lightning throughout the void to coil around the blade.

The scythe no longer looked heavy. Purple arcs of lightning danced along its edge.

With every leap of the arcs, the surrounding void twisted. Even the space closest to the blade developed fine black cracks.

They were spatial rifts.

Though tiny, they emanated a devouring force that made Lin Fan's heart tremble.

"Thun...der Collapse!"

A vast voice, wrapped in the rumble of thunder, exploded in Lin Fan's mind.

Boom!

The massive scythe in the figure's hand came crashing down.

There was no fancy technique, only the utmost speed and the utmost force.

In that instant, lightning erupted and space collapsed.

The once-stable void crumbled. Countless fine black cracks sealed off everything ahead and tore it apart.

Along with this earth-shattering strike, a cold, imposing stream of information forcefully branded itself into the depths of Lin Fan's memory.

[Calamity Killing Art, Second Level—Thunder Collapse]

[Core Concept: Lightning Law, Space Law]

[Description: Use the intent of lightning to unleash explosive speed, and use calamity to trigger the collapse of space in an instant. With one strike, thunder crashes down, space is locked, and there is nowhere to escape.]

Back in the underground training hall.

"Huff... huff..."

Lin Fan's eyes snapped open. Two purple bolts of lightning seemed to flash and vanish deep within his pupils.

He panted heavily, his whole body drenched in cold sweat as if he had just been pulled from the water.

"Unbelievable..."

Though he had only just received the information, he had already sensed how terrifyingly high the bar was for this move.

It wasn't something one could perform through brute strength. It required mastery of the laws.

If the first level of the Calamity Killing Art, Mountain Collapse, was pure physical perfection—a violent aesthetic of gravity and mass, and an absolute pursuit of the Force Application Technique—

Then the second level, Thunder Collapse, was a move that touched the Universe Origin Law.

"The Lightning Law governs explosive power, while the Space Law governs containment."

Lin Fan took a deep breath and looked at Calamity in his hand.

"Although I've never had any contact with the laws before, if I can grasp even a little of the second level of the Calamity Killing Art—even a trace of the intent of lightning—my attack speed and destructive power will increase exponentially."

That was the power of the laws.

Even a beginner's grasp of them could overwhelm pure physical attacks.

"I might even comprehend the Lightning Law and the Space Law, just like those cosmic geniuses, and cross the threshold of the laws while still at Star Level."

Lin Fan gripped the hilt, feeling the urge to destroy everything rise within him, but forced himself to suppress his desire to test the blade.

Now wasn't the time.

Taking advantage of his heightened mental state, Lin Fan pressed on while the information was still fresh.

"System, continue extracting the second level of the Sky-Splitting Escape Method!"

Buzz!

Lin Fan felt a sudden tightness at the nape of his neck and the base of his spine, as if an icy thread had cinched around him and yanked him upward.

Then everything went black.

When his vision returned, Lin Fan found himself standing in a pure white space.

There was no lightning, no celestial bodies—only light, everywhere.

Just then, Lin Fan saw the light before him twist. A silver-white roc appeared in front of him.

The silver-white roc wasn't as imposing or oppressive as the phantom giant before, but every feather-blade on its body seemed to be made of the purest light. Even a glance at their edges revealed a sharpness that hurt the eyes.

The instant Lin Fan looked at the silver roc, it moved.

It merely gave a light flap of its wings, and then something strange happened.

In Lin Fan's field of vision, the roc still hovered in place, frozen in its wing-beating pose.

But in the next moment, an indescribably sharp chill had already skimmed past his scalp.

The sharp mismatch between what he saw and what he sensed gave Lin Fan an intense feeling of being torn apart, a profound sense that something was wrong.

And that was only the beginning. The light all around him suddenly began refracting and twisting wildly.

Everything around him seemed to slow down, while the silver figure became a streak of Flowing Light, freely cutting through the "absolutely still" time and space.

It was impossibly fast—so fast that even time seemed to stall behind it.

When you saw it, all you saw was the afterimage it had left behind.

Whoosh!

The myriad images of light suddenly converged. The roc transformed into a thin, brilliant beam that pierced the entire white space in an instant and shot into Lin Fan's mind.

[Sky-Splitting Escape Method, Second Level—Flowing Light]

[Core Concept: Light Law, Time Law (Embryonic Form)]

[Description: Transform the body into light and distort light and shadow. In the instant of an explosive burst of speed, cause the flow of time around yourself to pause briefly. What the enemy sees is all illusion; you have already crossed to the ends of the earth.]

Back in the underground training hall.

"Ugh!"

Lin Fan's eyes snapped open. The first thing he felt was nausea.

He braced both hands against the floor, his face pale as paper.

His brain felt as if it had been tossed around inside a washing machine hundreds of times. The intense dizziness left him unable to keep his balance.

If anyone had looked into his eyes then, they would have seen his pupils still dilated, as if his focus had yet to return from that stretched-out world.

If Thunder Collapse from the Calamity Killing Art was the height of destructive power, then Flowing Light from the Sky-Splitting Escape Method was the height of strangeness and speed.

It was a terrifying speed that could deceive even the senses.

Lin Fan panted heavily, and it took quite a while for him to suppress the urge to vomit.

"Ha... hahaha... hahahaha..."

Once he had recovered, Lin Fan looked down at the silver Sky Splitter and the black Calamity in front of him and burst into uncontrollable laughter.

If the first-level inheritance had given him the foundation of a powerful fighter, then the second level had given him a ladder to climb to greater heights.

"Calamity specializes in killing—direct, head-on force that can destroy heaven and earth."

"Sky Splitter specializes in the deceptive path—interweaving light and shadow to kill without a trace."

One was hard, the other soft; one was bright, the other dark.

The concepts of the two laws complemented each other, forming an almost perfect combat system.

If the first level of the two weapons had taught him Force Application Technique and how to increase the amplification of his telekinetic weapons—

Then the second level had brought him into genuine contact with the laws, multiplying their power countless times over.

This was no longer a quantitative accumulation, but a qualitative leap.

Lin Fan closed his eyes and sank his consciousness into his sea of consciousness once more.

"True Self."

In the center of the magnificent Bronze Hall, the True Self Clone immediately stopped what it was doing.

"Record the second level of the Calamity Killing Art and the second level of the Sky-Splitting Escape Method."