Everyone was watching Yue Yang.

Waiting for the world-shattering answer.

“The weakness of the Restoration talent,” Yue Yang said, “is that it restores — it doesn’t resurrect.”

Ming Rihao hit the floor face-first.

That’s it? That’s the weakness? Restoration alone was already terrifying beyond reasonable description — taking everything back to a prior state, undoing damage, reversing loss — and the complaint was that it couldn’t also bring people back from the dead? What kind of standard was that? What additional suffering did the universe need to heap onto the people in this room before the talent qualified as genuinely problematic?

The Solar King’s expression went somewhere it had not been before. Dark. Closed. Wrong, in the specific way that a face looks wrong when something has been said that the face’s owner would have preferred not to hear.

The Silent King, who had not shown any expression since arriving — turned to look at the Solar King. Because in all the years of standing beside him, he had never seen that reaction.

Had the young man actually said something true?

The Revenge Domain Emperor and the others were lost. The answer had been delivered, and they still couldn’t parse it. They understood the words individually. The combination wasn’t landing.

Blue Wolf had a private fantasy involving no clothes, the stone world floor, and a extended series of extremely loud words that he would never actually say given his position and company.

The inability to understand was, he reflected, possibly a gift. The smarter you were, the harder the Solar King worked to kill you. Just look at the Titan Young Lord.

“Well said,” the Solar King finally offered, after a silence that had communicated more than words would have. He nodded. Then shook his head. “The Titan Young Lord’s perception genuinely astonishes me. Another period of growth, and where would any of us stand?”

“Restoration is actually a weakness?” The Two-Faced King, who was rarely confused by anything, was confused.

The Silent King, truthfully, was also confused. He had heard the Solar King mention a limitation to the Restoration talent once, years ago, in passing. He had not understood it then either.

“Tell us,” Ming Rihao said, curiosity pulling at him despite everything. “Quickly.”

“The Solar King’s Restoration talent, working inside the Time Domain, can restore any object to a prior state. But it cannot restore life.” Yue Yang let that settle. “Meaning the Solar King’s ability isn’t true time reversal — or rather, it isn’t complete time reversal. It’s targeted temporal regression, applied to matter. On the surface, it looks identical to genuine time reversal. In practice, it has one fundamental limitation: if a living being is killed during the process, the Restoration talent cannot affect it. The reversal works on damage to things. It doesn’t work on death.”

The room understood.

If you killed someone before the reversal ran — they stayed dead.

“This has possibilities,” Ming Rihao said, with the sudden energy of someone who has just been handed a tool they weren’t certain existed. Self-detonation looked different now. The Silent King and the Two-Faced King might survive it, but they’d be critically damaged. The Eight Generals absolutely wouldn’t make it. If death was outside the reversal’s scope—

“Even if you’ve understood my ability, I won’t give you the opportunity to use the understanding.” The Solar King’s smile returned — the composure of someone whose position hasn’t actually changed. “Not unless you have divine power. Or significant law-force.”

The Revenge Domain Emperor looked at Ming Rihao.

“Don’t look at me.” Ming Rihao shook his head. His law-force, such as it was, operated nowhere near the Solar King’s Time Law. You couldn’t fight someone at their own specialty when they’d spent their entire existence developing that specialty.

“I may be able to contribute something.”

The Freedom Queen moved forward. Her voice was quiet, directed at Yue Yang alone.

“But you have to promise me: after this, take responsibility for Tianhua Domain. Help the people here have better lives. I believe you would be the best ruler this place has ever had — you’re careless, yes, but your heart is genuinely good.” She paused. “Promise me, and I’ll send you out of here.”

“First time anyone has called me genuinely good-hearted,” Yue Yang said, with a laugh. “Thank you. But do I look like a soldier running from a battlefield?” He waved one hand. The Freedom Queen was moved — gently, without violence, but firmly — approximately a hundred meters to the side.

“Even if she sacrificed her life to lend you divine power,” the Solar King said, watching, “you still couldn’t escape.”

“Then let’s fight.” Ming Rihao’s battle intent had come alive — there was something to work with now. But he needed Yue Yang’s direction before moving. Storm the Solar King directly? A strategy? What was the arrangement?

He looked to Yue Yang.

The Revenge Domain Emperor looked to Yue Yang.

Then the Rage Domain Emperor, with great reluctance, looked to Yue Yang.

The Radiance Domain Emperor’s eyes still flickered with undecided calculation — the Solar King was simply too strong, even with this many allies the arithmetic was brutal, and the Solar King had people to spare.

“Old Hao,” Yue Yang said, waving a hand. “Fall back. It’s king versus king now. Not your turn yet.”

“What king?” Ming Rihao’s temper flared. “If I’m a common soldier, you’re a civilian.“

Yue Yang’s response was two fingers and a recommendation to leave.

The Solar King mirrored the gesture — waving back the Silent King, the Two-Faced King, and the Eight Generals. Killing Ming Rihao and the domain emperors was not his primary objective today. The target was the new Prison Emperor of the Sky Tower. The once-in-ten-thousand-years genius who had spent a few years becoming someone that the Solar King had needed to dedicate years of his own attention to tracking. That was the person who needed to die here. Everything else was secondary.

For that goal, he would give up anything.

A young person who could identify the weakness of his ability within minutes of seeing it demonstrated — this person could not be allowed to grow further. The decision had finalized itself. This ended here.

Black light rose around Yue Yang — rising from within, spreading outward, covering him completely, intercepting the Solar Bell’s illumination before it could reach him.

The Solar King recognized the technique. His eyes narrowed — a slight sharpening, like a needle finding its angle.

He snapped his fingers.

The Solar Bell reversed.

Around Yue Yang, something invisible exchanged itself with something else invisible — the others couldn’t see the mechanism, only its evidence: electricity crackling through the air around him, the sound of an exchange happening in a dimension that eyes couldn’t access. Force meeting force. Law pressing against law.

The reversal won. The Solar Bell’s hands returned to position. The black light dissolved.

“You’ve comprehended minor law-force,” the Solar King said. Something in his voice had shifted — not toward fear, but toward a kind of intensity that hadn’t been there before. “At your age — when I was your age, I was still devastated by my own uselessness. To kill a genius of your caliber is more satisfying than destroying a divine artifact.” He looked at Yue Yang with complete focus. “If you have nothing further to show me — this exploration ends now. Every moment you remain here increases the likelihood of further surprises, and I won’t allow that. Your final words, please.”

“Come on then,” Yue Yang said.

Simple. And he crooked one finger at the Solar King.

The Solar King’s eyes lit.

He extended one hand. One finger. Deliberate.

A beam of light from the Solar Bell descended — aimed precisely.

Zhongguan appeared above Yue Yang. His body-substitution ability fired. He took the beam.

He fell from the air smiling, the kind of smile that arrives when there’s nothing left to calculate. “This is the limit of what I could do.”

“Time — a hundred years of flow.” The Solar King’s finger snapped.

Zhongguan hit the stone floor.

His body didn’t age — it depleted. A hundred years of energy expenditure, with nothing to replace it, struck him all at once. He became, visibly, in the space of moments, the shape of someone who had spent a century with nothing to eat. The hunger wasn’t merely physical — every form of exhaustion, every form of drain, compressed into a single instant of experience.

“Didn’t expect that,” Zhongguan murmured, breath going thin. “Starved to death.” His eyes closed.

“No—!” Baima and Heitu broke from the group, crying out, and flung themselves forward — two pillars of light aimed at the Solar King. They’d seen what had happened to Zhongguan. They went anyway. If their deaths bought Yue Yang another few seconds to find another weakness—

“Time — a hundred years of flow.”

The entire escort unit went down simultaneously. Gold-Tooth and Steward Ye, without cultivation to anchor them, simply stopped — unconscious before they reached the floor, alive by the narrowest margin, requiring nothing more than a breath to finish.

The Freedom Queen remained in place, unchanged, hovering exactly where she had been. Whatever time flowing past meant for the rest of them, it arrived at her and found nothing to work with.

Ming Rihao touched his stomach, the gesture of someone checking an internal reading. He looked at the Revenge Domain Emperor. Both of them slowly shook their heads.

Not immediately incapacitating, at their level. But the impact was real — the quality of someone who had slept for a century and woken to find the world had continued without them.

The Two-Faced King began forming a comment.

The Solar King’s eyes had widened.

Because the only person in the space who had registered no impact whatsoever was standing at the front of the group.

Yue Yang.

How. Human cultivators were among the most vulnerable to temporal effects — the body’s energy ran on time, depended on time, could be unmade by time faster than almost any other type of living thing. There was no mechanism by which this person should be standing upright.

“I’m unaffected by the time flow because the Solar Bell, the Time Domain, and the Time Law don’t work on me.” Yue Yang’s voice was even. “The one thing I’m cautious about is your Restoration talent — that’s your true strength. As for your Time Law — to me, it’s a bad joke.” He straightened slightly. “I comprehended the fundamentals of sovereign intent at the Life-Death Gate. My mind carries the unmoving divine will of a Perfect Innate Sovereign. I hold my own unique law, inherent to my own nature. My body isn’t a divine body — but in terms of what my cultivation has reached, it competes with one. What you’ve built through your will and your law — why would it touch me?” He looked at the Solar King without looking away. “In my world, everything answers to me. Space, time, life itself. To defeat me, you’ll need more than what you’ve shown. Solar King — show me what you actually have. I’m curious about something: what does it feel like to kill a quasi-divine sovereign, a half-god, and what kind of advancement does it produce?” A beat. “I’m genuinely looking forward to finding out.”

“As you wish.”

The Solar King’s face had changed. Something underneath the composure had moved — anger, real anger, the kind that came from someone who had been meticulous and careful and had still been wrong about the most critical variable. He had underestimated. Again. Despite everything he had done not to.

This person was more than he had imagined. More than that.

Time’s law couldn’t kill him.

No wonder the Nine-Radiance Empress fell.

He drew a slow breath. Looked at his own hands.

“Before our decisive engagement — I’ll clear the field. That way you can use your full strength when it comes to it.”

He raised both hands.

Aimed at the ceiling of the stone world.

Light bloomed around him with the quality of a divine presence making itself known. The Solar Bell blazed.

“Time — ten thousand years of flow.”

Ming Rihao felt his body’s strength begin leaving at a rate that was not compatible with continuing. In the last available moment, he managed words:

“You insufferable — take care of my sister—”

And then he heard something impossible.

A voice, close, in his ear.

“Time — ten thousand years reversed.”

He stopped.

What?

…What?