bioinnovel Chapter 358 When the Extraterrestrials Arrived, the Cage Was Already Locked
Chapter 358 When the Extraterrestrials Arrived, the Cage Was Already Locked
Before Nezha's Fire-Tipped Spear could even touch Pangu's Axe, the axe blade had already sliced open Su Fan's left palm.
Golden blood gushed out.
Nezha couldn't retract his spear in time, and the spear tip stopped abruptly three inches from Su Fan's wrist, leaving two scorch marks on the ground with his Wind Fire Wheels.
He looked up at Su Fan, his mouth opening and closing before he uttered, "Are you crazy?"
Su Fan didn't look at him.
Golden blood flowed down the palm lines onto the axe surface. The Pangu Axe seemed to come alive, absorbing all the blood. The white light on the axe blade suddenly surged, illuminating the entire city wall in a snowy white light.
The soldiers on the city wall simultaneously raised their hands to shield their eyes, and the light leaking through their fingers stung their eyes.
"This is not the blood of Pangu."
Su Fan held his bleeding left hand, his palm hovering above the axe blade. Drops of blood fell one by one, each one being absorbed cleanly by the axe blade.
"Pangu's blood is scattered throughout the primordial world; it is the blood of Pangu's physical body, capable of inheriting the Heavenly Dao. But this is not it."
He turned his left hand over, palm facing the thousands of people on the city wall.
The wound is healing, and new skin and flesh are growing outward from the edge of the tear. Golden lines extend along the palm lines toward the wrist, like tree roots burrowing into the soil.
"I have tried using five paths. The power of Typhon. The power of Ra. The power of Pangu. The path of protection. The path of killing."
Su Fan raised his hand and pointed to the soldiers on the city wall. His fingertip swept from the breeze to the human warriors, from the human warriors to the wolf demons, and finally stopped in the midst of the army.
"I even borrowed their passage."
The whisk of the Primordial Celestial Venerable hung in the crook of his arm, his white beard swaying slightly in the light.
He watched as the golden lines on Su Fan's palm spread from his wrist into his sleeve, then crawled out from his collar and up his neck.
Golden lines flowed beneath his skin, each beat synchronized with Su Fan's heartbeat.
"You fused five Daos in the chaos, and even their Daos?" Yuanshi Tianzun frowned deeply.
"Yes. I spent three days in the chaos, doing this all the time except for searching for fragments."
Su Fan spread out his left hand, his five fingers straight, and the golden lines had already climbed to the tips of his fingers, with a faint golden light shining through the nails.
"The five paths plus the path of ten thousand people combine to form a new path. Pangu's remnant consciousness says this is the 'path of Heaven.' But it is not yet the path of Heaven. It is..."
Su Fan withdrew his hand and grasped the handle of the Pangu Axe. "It is the Dao formed by the will of all living beings in the primordial world."
Peng let out a cry.
Short and sharp, it broke before it even spread to Nantianmen.
The man in the black robe stopped.
He hovered at the edge of the clouds, the curved space around him seemingly frozen in place, as if someone had pressed a pause button. His pure black eyes were fixed on Su Fan, on the glowing axe in his hand, and on the golden patterns flowing beneath his skin.
A long time passed, so long that the white light on the city wall began to fade, before the voice of the man in black robes finally rang in Su Fan's mind.
"Your number of rules has doubled."
Su Fan raised the Pangu Axe, blade facing upwards, and pointed it at the black-robed man's face, which looked as perfect as if it had been painted.
His voice cut through the howling wind on the city walls: "Shall we talk? Or fight?"
The man in black robes did not answer.
The other eleven black dots in the sky began to move.
The arc-shaped array is shrinking.
Eleven black dots descended simultaneously from the depths of the clouds, darkening the sky by one zhang (approximately 3.3 meters) for every zhang they fell.
The gray mist that had been split apart by Peng regrouped and surged in from all directions.
The last patch of blue sky above Nantianmen was swallowed up, leaving only iron-gray clouds and white light on the city walls between heaven and earth.
Peng spread its wings and took flight from Su Fan's shoulder, its second cry soaring into the sky.
The hissing sound was like a sharp needle piercing the clouds, tearing the descending gray fog in two.
The fog rolled to both sides like a wounded living thing, revealing a narrow crack in the middle.
Immediately, Peng's voice echoed in everyone's minds: "They want to completely sever the Southern Heavenly Gate from the karma of the primordial world."
Su Fan looked up at the eleven approaching black dots.
He swung the Pangu Axe, the blade slicing across his head, golden patterns bursting from his palms and instantly covering his entire body.
The light enveloped his body, tightening and tightening until it finally solidified into a thin layer of armor clinging tightly to his skin.
The thin armor was golden, covered with marks that matched the lines beneath the skin, each mark pulsating slightly.
He looked down at the city gate. The human warrior pushed aside Qingfeng and took a step forward.
The two bare legs that Yuanshi Tianzun conjured with his whisk stepped onto the city bricks. The bricks could not withstand the density of the laws inside the bare legs and cracked with two circles of spider web-like patterns.
He held the broken sword horizontally, the white light of the Heavenly Dao Repair Technique still lingering on its blade.
"Boss, what is 'lawful pressure'?"
Su Fan crouched down and picked up a loose brick from beside his feet. The white light within the brick had not yet dissipated, and the brick vibrated slightly in his hand.
He weighed it in his hand, stood up, and handed the brick to the human warrior.
"They intend to use the Dao of Cause and Effect to enclose the Southern Heavenly Gate, building a cage from which all the primordial rules within will become food. Time, space, heavenly light, temperature, the spirits of soldiers, and Daoist arts—they will devour them all."
Su Fan patted the city brick in the human warrior's hand, and a flash of white light appeared inside the brick.
"But once this cage is closed, the density of the rules among the twelve of them inside will be locked."
"How so?"
The human warrior caught the brick, glanced down, and saw white light seeping out from the cracks in the brick.
Nezha glanced at the city bricks. He thrust his Fire-Tipped Spear into the ground, the butt of the spear penetrating three inches into the brick, and crossed his arms over his chest: "They swallowed too much, and too fast."
Yang Jian leaned against a pillar on the city tower, his third eye on his forehead open only a slit, seeping with beads of blood that hadn't been wiped clean.
He rubbed his eyelids, his tone softening: "In chaos, the laws circulate like air, freely absorbed. But if the cage is sealed shut, all the primordial laws absorbed are trapped in a limited space. When the density reaches a certain level—"
"The frequency of intake and output will slow down." Su Fan continued, turning to face the gradually darkening light on the city wall.
He raised his voice, drowning out the wind and the hum of the bricks:
"Listen up, brothers. The first wave, let them devour you. They're not devouring your strength, they're devouring the primordial rules of this space. Heaven, earth, military spirits, Taoist arts, they're all bait. Use the entire Southern Heavenly Gate as bait."
Qingfeng planted the broken sword into the ground, the shards emitting a low hum. The hilt was firmly held in his bare hand, his knuckles distinct.
At the foot of the city wall, 10,050 soldiers roared in unison: "Use the entire South Heavenly Gate as bait!"
"When they've devoured it—" Su Fan slung the Pangu Axe over his shoulder, the last wisp of white light on the blade disappearing into the air. "The moment the laws become congested will be the time for our counterattack."
Sun Wukong lowered his golden cudgel from his shoulder. The tip of the cudgel was aimed at the approaching gray fog outside the city wall crenellations, where the outlines of eleven black dots could already be seen.
Some resemble insects, curled up in a ball; some resemble people, but with their limbs bent in the opposite direction; some are just a swirling mass of runes.
The one at the very front, also dressed in a black robe, had three iron chains protruding from his sleeves instead of hands.
At the end of each chain hangs a black hook, which rotates in the mist. With each rotation, a circle of gray mist around it disappears.
"They've started devouring the outer laws." Yang Jian said with his eyes closed, relying on the perception of the Heavenly Calculation. "Eighty percent of the celestial light rules outside the Southern Heavenly Gate have been consumed. The sky is now transparent to them."
"Then let it be transparent." Su Fan walked down the crenellation, passed through layers of soldiers, and stood on the step closest to the city gate.
He turned to face Nezha, Yang Jian, and Sun Wukong. The three of them looked up at the same time.
"Nezha. The outermost layer of the Wind and Fire Wheels is a manifestation of the Law of Separation of Fire. When they absorb the cause and effect of the Separation of Fire, a magical explosion will occur at the point of flame collapse. Wherever the point of the magical explosion is, that's where your spear tip should pierce."
Nezha grinned, pulled the Fire-Tipped Spear from the ground, and twirled the spear around his wrist.
Two tongues of fire shot out from beneath his feet, the flames licking the floor tiles, and the white light in the cracks between the tiles sizzled as it was heated.
"Yang Jian. Your Heavenly Eye can see through the causal gaps. After they finish consuming each type of rule, there will be a half-breath digestion gap. During this half-breath, you command the archer battalion to disarm their hooks."
"clear."
"Great Sage." Su Fan looked at Sun Wukong one last time.
The monkey squatted on the stack without making a sound, its eyes reflecting the golden armor on Su Fan's body.
"The Seventy-Two Transformations are the threads of fate and cause and effect in the primordial world. Every time you transform in the cage, their causal chains form another knot."
Sun Wukong held his golden cudgel behind his neck, his arms dangling from either end, and grinned, revealing two tiger teeth: "The more you transform, the more blocked they become?"
"The more you block them, the more your changes become like a wire stuffed into their mouths. They can't swallow it, and they can't spit it out."
Sun Wukong laughed.
Yuanshi Tianzun walked up from behind, his whisk draped over his arm, his white beard fluttering slightly in the gray mist.
He looked into Su Fan's eyes and spoke calmly:
"The laws within the cage are congested to a critical point. They will detonate the half of the laws they have devoured to break through the blockage. The Southern Heavenly Gate must withstand this collision. Those whose cultivation level is insufficient will have their souls expelled from their bodies by the laws, and even the Heavenly Dao Repair Technique will be unable to bring them back."
Su Fan turned around and looked at the ten thousand soldiers on and off the city wall. His gaze swept from one face to another, past Qingfeng's severed arm, past the bare legs of the human warriors, and past the bared fangs of the wolf demon.
"Those whose cultivation level is insufficient, all shall retreat to the inner courtyard."
"No retreat," Qingfeng said first.
"We will not retreat," the human warrior replied.
The wolf demon growled in its throat, "Don't retreat."
Su Fan shook his head: "I'm not letting you fight, I want you to live. You'll be needed when the counter-offensive starts."
The wolf demon stared at him. A white light flickered in its single eye, like the moon's reflection in water.
After a long time, it lowered its head, turned around, and ran towards the inner courtyard.
He took three steps, then suddenly turned back, baring his teeth at Su Fan: "You'd better be alive and shout the order to make me run back!"
Su Fan did not answer.
He turned and leaped onto the crenellations of the city wall, standing on the outermost loose brick, his Pangu Axe held horizontally in front of his chest.
Three hundred feet away, the gray fog condensed into a dense, impenetrable gray curtain.
A man in black robes hangs in front of the curtain wall, with iron chains dangling at his feet and three black hooks slowly rotating.
Su Fan's voice crashed into the gray mist, and also struck the twelve extraterrestrial gods: "Open the cage."
The gray fog rolled up.
The first chain of cause and effect shot out from the black-robed man's sleeve, the iron hook piercing into the sky above the South Heavenly Gate, and suddenly pulled downwards.
The sky cracked open. There was no light, no fog, only pure emptiness within the crack.
The second hook followed closely, then the third, and the fourth. The twelve extraterrestrial gods simultaneously nailed their natal causal singularities, and the moment the hook blades pierced the primordial space, twelve rifts were torn open in the sky.
Su Fan stood on the edge of the battlement, and the sensation under his feet became lighter. It wasn't that he had become lighter; rather, the laws of gravity beneath his feet were dissipating.
The wind blew across my face, and the stinging sensation that should have been there disappeared—the pain was swallowed up.
The colors before my eyes faded layer by layer. Qingfeng's broken sword changed from bluish-gray to gray, Nezha's Hun Tian Ling changed from crimson to dark red, and the sky changed from iron gray to lead gray.
Even Wan Jun's breathing sounded distant, as if separated by a thick layer of cotton cloth.
They are chewing on the rules.
When the extraterrestrial god stepped into the cage, he no longer maintained his human form.
An extraterrestrial god disintegrated into countless rotating runes, which coiled into a humanoid silhouette and tumbled in mid-air.
An extraterrestrial god collapsed into a dark palm print that stretched across the sky, its five fingers slowly closing together.
An extraterrestrial deity transformed into a giant eyeball hanging in front of the city gate. The whites of the eye were gray, and the pupils were spiraled with black threads. Every time it blinked, a hoarse grinding sound echoed in the skulls of everyone in the city.
The black-robed figure at the very front did not transform. The black robe covered him completely, his face was as white as paper, and there were two pure black lines in his eye sockets.
He stopped three hundred feet outside the South Heavenly Gate, his lips not moving, but the sound was forced out of his throat:
"All living beings in this primordial world are but ants. The rules are our sustenance. You are not worth killing."
He raised his right hand, and eleven extraterrestrial gods behind him simultaneously emitted resonant incantations.
The entire cage began to shrink, and the iron hooks hanging outside the city wall spun faster, with dark law storms gushing out from the hook tips and crushing against the cage walls.
Yang Jian closed his eyes and counted: "Thirty percent. Nearly half of the outer perimeter's laws are gone."
Su Fan didn't move.
"Fifty percent. The sunlight, temperature, and part of the soldier's spirit energy have been transformed."
Su Fan still didn't move.
Sun Wukong kicked his golden cudgel and muttered, "If I wait any longer, my golden cudgel will rust."
The tip of Nezha's spear pressed against the city bricks, and the flames subsided into the last wisp of smoke.
He lowered his voice, cutting each word extremely short: "What are you waiting for?"
The iron hooks high in the air suddenly jammed for a moment. The buzzing stopped for a short while.
The giant eye behind the black-robed man stopped blinking twitchingly, and the spiral patterns in its pupils solidified.
"Eighty percent." Yang Jian opened his third eye, golden light shooting out from his forehead. "The density of the laws within the cage is approaching the critical point. The absorption and release cycle has tripled."
Su Fan's lips twitched slightly.
A burst of white light erupted from Pangu's axe. He shattered the outermost brick of the crenellation beneath his feet, and his entire body transformed into a golden rainbow, rushing out of the city wall and heading straight for the dark sky above the black-robed man's head, where the laws were condensed to the point of near solidification.
The axe flashed downwards, leaving a trail of white-hot residue in the air.
"Three times the clearance, that's enough! Old Yang, hook it!"
Yang Jian's Heavenly Eye swept over the twelve causal hooks. In the gaps where the laws were being absorbed and blocked, the twelve nodes lit up simultaneously before his eyes, like twelve nails driven into the gray curtain.
The divine calculations were activated, and the message was transmitted to various parts of the city wall.
Eight hundred Heavenly Dao Repairing Bows were simultaneously drawn to their full strength, the white light on the arrowheads forming a line, and the bowstrings snapped at the same instant.
Eight hundred arrows of light pierced twelve black hooks. Sparks of law exploded at the tips of the hooks, pale and silent, one after another.
The man in black robes abruptly pulled back his left arm, and two of the three iron chains snapped instantly, oozing a thick, caustic fluid from the broken ends.
He stared at the axe blade that Su Fan was slashing at, his eyes shooting out black beams of light that condensed into a layer of laws in front of him.
"Your axe cannot sever cause and effect," the black-robed man said hoarsely.
"If you can't split it, smash it open."
Su Fan's axe blade didn't strike the man in black robes; instead, it cleaved the edge of the cage.
The white light of Pangu's axe collided with the dark barrier of the causal path, and the ripples of law that exploded at the point of impact swept across the city wall, causing the feet of ten thousand soldiers to sink an inch into the city bricks.
After the shockwave subsided, the entire cage was pushed outwards by three-tenths of an inch by the force of the axe.
Sun Wukong sprang up from the top of the barricade, and his golden cudgel transformed into a hundred streaks, smashing into the cage.
His body split in the cage at the same time, the phantom of the ancient demonic ape roared, a crooked, nine-bend broken pillar pierced through the void, and thunderclouds that had disappeared tens of thousands of years ago surged in mid-air.
The chain of cause and effect trembled violently. Every causal line that was closing was forcibly shoved into a wrong path, entangled, knotted, and twisted into a dead knot by Sun Wukong's transformation.
Yang Jian, speaking in a steady voice, announced the numbers: "The congestion rate is 92%."
All the extraterrestrial gods inside the cage paused for a moment. A moment was enough for Nezha to make his move.
The Wind and Fire Wheels exploded with two tongues of fire like magma, while the Fire-Tipped Spear pierced through the giant eye on its side. The spear tip plunged into the barrier of laws with a crisp sound like metal striking stone, and the giant eye's pupil cracked with spiderweb-like patterns, spewing out grayish-white fragments of laws from the fissure.
Before Nezha could even put away his spear, he twisted his wrist, and the shaft swept across the rune-like humanoid figure beside him, smashing the rune aggregate into the crenellations of the city wall.
Qingfeng stepped forward, his broken sword slicing into the gap in the runes, a dull thud exploding from within the runes.
"95% -"
The man in black robes retreated.
After the layer of laws in front of him collapsed, he moved five hundred feet toward the edge of chaos, and the causal liquid seeping from the broken iron chain drew an archway in front of him.
He shouted sternly, "Close the door! Explode the cage!"
The eleven extraterrestrial gods simultaneously withdrew from their offensive and retreated towards the edge of the cage.
"Laojun," Su Fan called out.
The Primordial Celestial Venerable sat cross-legged on the ridge of the South Heavenly Gate, surrounded by 108 floating runes. He did not stand up, but simply pressed his whisk heavily onto the ground.
"Soldier Soul Formation, Lock Cage."
Ten thousand soldiers retreating into the inner courtyard simultaneously thrust their weapons into the ground. Knives, swords, spears, axes, halberds, and hammers—those with broken blades, missing handles, or chipped edges—were all stuck into the cracks between the bricks.
White light surged along the cracks in the floor tiles, converged, and took shape. One hundred and eight chains rose from the white light, rolled back into the sky, and bound the departing extraterrestrial gods one by one.
The archway drawn by the causal liquid was held firmly at its edge by three chains of light, and the archway remained completely still.
The man in black robes turned around. His pure black eyes were aimed at the Primordial Celestial Venerable sitting cross-legged on the spine, and a circle of fine causal runes flashed around the edges of his eyes.
He remembered the old man's law of destiny.
Su Fan stood between the two men, his axe held horizontally.
Pangu's axe lay horizontally in front of him, golden patterns flowing beneath his armor.
He looked at the man in black robes, his voice not loud, but everyone in the cage heard him: "Didn't you want to swallow the rules? The cage is already full. Now you can't swallow them, and you can't spit them out either."
The man in the black robe remained silent.
The rules have reached their limit of congestion.
The inner walls of the cage began to tremble, and the dark laws and white light chains squeezed against each other, emitting a piercing shriek.
With a sharp screech, the Peng spread its wings and flew to the top of the cage. Gray feathers fell off its body one by one, revealing a pure white body beneath, without flesh or bones, just a pure white outline of law, shaped like a bird.
The sound, as loud as a bell, struck the twelve fissures, causing fragments of law to fall from their edges.
"The first primordial rule—'Force'—has been completely devoured. From this moment forward, irreversible deficiencies will occur in the physical structure within the primordial realm. This is the price to pay."
The city fell silent.
Su Fan clearly heard the additional sentence Peng added in his mind. Without hesitation, he took a step forward, and the Pangu Axe cleaved into the void.
The axe blade got stuck between the dark law and the white light chain, making a crisp metallic clanging sound.
"One rule of the primordial world can be removed. But the price of an invasion from beyond the realm is that the entire causal path is blocked in a cage."
Su Fan sheathed his axe and returned it to his shoulder, his voice sweeping over the shrill cries of the laws that filled the city, and over the heavy breaths of thousands of people.
"This path is called the Path of All Beings. In the primordial world, everyone is a rule, and everyone can act on behalf of the Heavenly Way."
The black-robed man's pure black eye sockets contracted violently. The causal runes at the edges of his eye sockets instantly became disordered, and a wisp of black mist leaked out from under his black robe, dispersing into the crowded laws within the cage.
Outside the cage, three even larger black stars are rising from the deepest part of the chaos.
The dark patterns on the surface of the black star were clearly visible, and the direction of each pattern was exactly the same as the runes around the eye sockets of the black-robed man.
Yang Jian opened his Heavenly Eye.
He glanced at the three black stars, then closed his eyes, his tone calm to the point of being almost indifferent:
"The three newcomers each possess a greater amount of laws than the twelve in the cage combined."
Nezha pulled the spear from the pile of giant eye fragments, glanced up at it, then lowered his head to continue wiping the remnants of law from the spear tip. After wiping it a couple of times, he suddenly chuckled.
Sun Wukong squatted on the stack of rocks, his golden cudgel resting across his knees. He stared at the three black stars for a long time, then turned to look at Su Fan:
"Kid, can your 'Path of All Beings' block those three as well?"
Su Fan did not answer.
He moved the Pangu Axe from his left shoulder to his right shoulder. The white light on the axe blade was still there, but it was a fraction dimmer than before.
He glanced down at the axe blade, then looked up at the three rising black stars.
Peng folded its wings again on his shoulder, the pure white outline of its laws trembling slightly in the wind.
The white light on the city wall had not yet dissipated. Ten thousand and fifty soldiers gripped their weapons, which were stuck in the ground, and the white light was slowly creeping up their weapons from the cracks in the paving stones.
Qingfeng stood by the battlements, leaning on his broken sword. His bare left hand gripped the hilt, his fingers clenched and knuckles white.
He pulled the broken sword out of the crack in the bricks, the remaining blade pointing outwards from the cage.
The white light from the broken sword illuminated the gathering gray mist.
It also illuminated the first golden line that quietly cracked on the dark law layer that was congested to the extreme in the cage.