"Rumble..."
The canopy formed of purple lightning tore open at its very center, revealing a massive rift as pitch-black as a black hole.
It was as though an invisible giant hand had violently pulled it apart from both sides.
Along the edges of the rift, lightning leaped wildly, giving off piercing hisses, as though even the lightning were trembling in fear.
An eye so enormous that its edges could not be seen appeared within the rift.
It had neither white nor pupil, only a chaotic grayish white, like the nothingness before the primordial wilderness had taken shape.
The eye slowly turned.
It looked down from high above without any trace of feeling or fluctuation of emotion, like a god inspecting ants.
All things were straw dogs; all it saw was dust.
The eye of rules.
The manifestation of the secret realm's power of rules.
Any fluctuation of spiritual power beyond the Meridian Opening Realm would draw its gaze, followed by merciless annihilation.
The kind that completely erased even the soul and divine sense.
Gai Jiuyou raised her head and looked at that manifested eye. Her phantomlike body stiffened slightly, and a bitter smile touched her lips.
"The power of rules is utterly merciless. In its eyes, all living beings are straw dogs, and we are all insignificant specks of dust."
Little Nine stopped attacking as well.
Its wings folded in swiftly. Crimson-gold flames danced upon its feathers, but it dared not release even the slightest wisp.
The deeper one's cultivation, the more profoundly one understood the manifestation of the power of rules.
Instinctive wariness flashed through Little Nine's eyes, along with a trace of fear from the depths of its instincts.
An artifact spirit was itself formed from rules. Beneath the gaze of this eye of rules, it trembled as