The dark crimson canopy hung low, like a dried blood scab pressing heavily overhead.
Hyuga Xiao stood on a floating slab of white marble. There was no ground beneath his feet, only a bottomless void. All around him, hundreds upon thousands of pure white temples hung upside down, their roofs facing down and their foundations facing up. Massive stone pillars lay shattered, domes had collapsed, and silvery-blue light clung to the ruins like some viscous mold, giving off a nauseating metallic stench.
The sensation of weightlessness tugged at Xiao's spiritual body. There was no wind in the air, yet countless tiny currents scraped against the Tenseigan Chakra cloak around him, producing piercing hissing sounds. They were remnants of the laws of time, like countless invisible scalpels trying to slice through his defenses.
Xiao ignored the scraping. His gaze passed through layer upon layer of inverted structures and locked onto the only intact temple radiating intense light in the deepest part of the void.
"Whoosh—"
He exerted force beneath his feet, crushing the stone slab. His body turned into a streak of azure light and shot straight toward the temple.
The instant he charged forward, the entire space came alive.
The once-motionless cluster of inverted temples suddenly began to spin violently. The space ahead was like a crumpled ball of paper, folding and twisting layer by layer. A massive stone pillar that had been a hundred meters away one second stood directly before him the next; the originally straight path instantly twisted into a Möbius loop connected end to end.
Up and down reversed. Left and right became distorted.
Gravity completely lost all meaning at that moment. A droplet of silvery-blue water flowed upward from below toward the sky, exploding before Xiao's eyes into a blinding curtain of light.
Buzz!
A