Lu Yuan's Arrangements, and a Universe Explodes

The shimmering Spatial Rifts outside the Cosmic Boundary steadily retreated, stretching into thin threads before fading away entirely.

Mados and the others stared at Lu Yuan, whose body still pulsed with a terrifying surge of Spirit Power. Their eyes were full of stunned disbelief.

The sheer magnitude of that power left them thunderstruck.

But more than that — they had never imagined he would actually pull it off. He had moved an entire universe. In one piece. And he had done it here, in the Chaos Sea, where spatial stability was at its most extreme.

As warriors at the War God level, they understood better than most just how unyielding space was in the Chaos Sea. That knowledge only made what they had witnessed feel all the more impossible, as if the very foundations of their worldview had been pulverized.

Time passed. After a while, the threads outside the Cosmic Boundary swelled back into Spatial Rifts, then blurred, and finally resolved into the familiar amber murk of the Chaos Sea.

In this new region, not a single Aberrant Beast was in sight. Utterly peaceful.

The Spirit Power around Lu Yuan quietly ebbed. His face had gone pale. He let out a slow breath.

Moving an entire universe through space — even at his current level of strength, the strain had been immense.

The others were coming back to themselves now. They turned to him, faces lit with exhilaration.

"Ah-Yuan, you actually did it!" Kro burst out. "I can't believe you managed to take our entire universe with you! That's unbelievable!"

Yingu's eyes still held a dazed quality. "Impossible... absolutely impossible..."

"It really is..." Mados was gazing out at the amber expanse of the Chaos Sea, his voice hushed with something like reverence. "And this area — not a single Aberrant Beast. So quiet. So peaceful."

It was a scene he had never dared dream of.

The others heard his words and turned to look, their expressions a mixture of joy and complicated emotion.

Lu Yuan watched them for a moment, letting them take it in. Then he spoke.

"I'd hold off on celebrating just yet, seniors."

They looked at him.

"Ah-Yuan, what do you mean?"

Lu Yuan shook his head. "We've left that part of the Chaos Sea, yes. But we have no idea what the Mother of Aberration is truly capable of. We can't assume she won't be able to track the traces we left behind. Even now, we've only bought ourselves a little time. We may need to keep moving."

The group fell quiet. They exchanged glances.

Bingling was the first to speak. "Lu Yuan's right. As long as the Mother of Aberration is still alive, there's always a chance she finds us. It's too soon to celebrate."

"True. Those creatures found our universe before — there's no guarantee they won't find our position again. When all is said and done, the only real answer is to train harder. Even if the Mother of Aberration does track us down eventually, we need to have the strength to fight back."

"This region has no Aberrant Beasts. We have some breathing room for the first time. We can't waste it."

The voices came one after another.

Lu Yuan gave a small nod. "Then I'll head back and get to work."

"Of course, Brother Lu Yuan. And — thank you again. Especially for this."

Mados stepped forward quickly. The others offered their farewells as well.

Lu Yuan smiled, and vanished.

Back in the Land of Origin, he returned to the Gravity Room and prepared to resume cultivation.

But before he could begin, his mind kept drifting.

He was turning over a question he couldn't put aside.

He still didn't know how strong the Mother of Aberration truly was.

*Know yourself, know your enemy — only then can you fight a hundred battles without loss.*

Without understanding her actual power, any assessment of his own readiness would be flawed.

He didn't believe for a moment that simply shifting position in the Chaos Sea would shake her off. What he'd said at the boundary was what he genuinely thought — he preferred to plan for the worst. If the Mother of Aberration could track their location, a confrontation was inevitable; it was only a matter of when. He had to understand her strength before he could know what it would take to defeat her.

Beyond that, if she truly could track them, staying put was itself a liability. He would need to keep moving the universe, changing position continuously to delay the moment she caught up. That in turn required him to have a rough fix on her location at all times.

And in the middle of all this, his own cultivation could not fall behind. Raw power was the only thing that would matter when she finally arrived.

The problems were piling up. The pressure was real.

He furrowed his brow, thinking it through. Then a shimmer of pale light rippled around him.

A silver-white figure materialized before him.

This was a Laws Avatar — built by Lu Yuan on the principles underlying Shadow Divine Messenger, but forged entirely from Spatial Laws. As a Laws Avatar, it possessed a certain degree of spatial mastery; the power it could bring to bear was roughly at Laws Rank level.

Nothing compared to Lu Yuan's true body, of course. But what he needed it for wasn't combat.

His plan: send this Spatial Laws Avatar back to the universe's previous position, where it would lie in wait for the Mother of Aberration's arrival and gauge her true strength. It would also give him a rough fix on her location.

With that decided, a single thought sent the avatar flickering out of existence.

Once the Spatial Laws Avatar had been dispatched, Spirit Power surged around Lu Yuan again.

Stellar Laws and Spatial Laws intertwined, weaving together into a second silver-white figure — this one threaded with faint pinpoints of starlight.

This avatar had been born from the fusion of Stellar Laws and Spatial Laws.

Lu Yuan's purpose for it was to keep the Universe Bubble moving. He couldn't be manually relocating the universe while simultaneously in deep cultivation — his true body had to focus entirely on comprehending Laws.

This avatar possessed powerful Stellar Laws, augmented by Cosmic Origin energy and reinforced with Spatial Laws. It couldn't traverse the rigid space of the Chaos Sea the way Lu Yuan's true body could, but it could manage the slower, incremental task of dragging the universe through space — enough to keep them drifting.

That was enough. At the very least, the Mother of Aberration would have no way of pinpointing where their universe was.

Lu Yuan imprinted his intent into the avatar. In an instant it dissolved from sight, merging fully into the universe through Cosmic Origin energy and stellar force. Carried by Spatial Laws, the Universe Bubble began to ease its way through the Chaos Sea, edging forward in small, steady increments.

From inside, Lu Yuan's true body could feel the shift at the universe's edges. Something in him quietly loosened.

*This approach will work after all.*

*That means I actually have real time to cultivate.*

A faint smile crossed his face. The weight that had been pressing down on him lifted, just a little.

He settled into a cross-legged position and turned his focus inward, reaching toward the Laws once more.

His next target had been decided long since: Time Laws.

Compared to Fate Laws or Fantasy Laws, Time Laws were harder to grasp. But Spatial Laws and Time Laws shared a deep, inherent resonance — one that would cut down the difficulty considerably.

Beyond that, he had now comprehended seven Laws. With a Heart of Laws as a catalyst and Cosmic Origin energy as a foundation, he held real confidence that Time Laws were within reach.

Mastering Time Laws was, in a sense, an experiment Lu Yuan had been building toward for some time — ever since he first noticed the difference in temporal flow between the Land of Origin and the outside world.

If he fully mastered Time Laws, could he influence the flow of time in his immediate surroundings? If he could, he might be able to accelerate time around himself — and if he could do that, he might complete all remaining Laws comprehensions in the shortest possible span, reaching the absolute ceiling of his power in time to face the Mother of Aberration.

This idea had been in the back of his mind for a long time. But before, he hadn't even grasped Spatial Laws yet; attempting Time Laws under those conditions would have been far too risky. The difficulty was too high, the chance of failure too great. A failed attempt would have wasted both time and a precious Heart of Laws. That wasn't a gamble worth taking.

Things were different now. He wasn't at the end of his rope. Steady progress was still his way — but for the first time, he had the confidence to make the attempt.

He activated a Heart of Laws.

His consciousness blurred and dissolved. The River of Time stretched out before him, vast and unfathomable. Fragments of time glittered within its currents, and amid them, the bronze-hued Sands of Time flowed in endless loops.

Lu Yuan gazed out at the flickering panoramas of history drifting past and began to feel for the hidden truths of time.

In the region where the Universe Bubble had been, the Aberrant Beasts were thrashing about in frenzied confusion, howling without direction.

The overwhelming presence of Cosmic Origin had simply vanished.

For creatures drawn to that energy above all else, its sudden absence drove them to a howling frenzy.

Among those beasts were some at the War God level of strength — creatures of considerable intelligence. When they saw the Universe Bubble fold itself into the fabric of the Chaos Sea and disappear, every Divine Grade beast among them was struck speechless.

In all their travels through the Chaos Sea, devouring universe after universe, not one of them had ever seen this. The concept didn't exist in their experience.

For a moment, none of them knew what to do.

But soon enough, one of the Divine Grade beasts used a special method to relay everything it had witnessed to the Mother of Aberration.

In a universe already suffocated by Corruption.

The Mother of Aberration was in the midst of consuming that universe's Cosmic Origin when she suddenly froze.

Then an incomprehensible force erupted from her body — a tempest of raw power that swept the entire dying universe in a single instant.

The universe, already riddled and broken, tore apart. Dead stars crumbled to dust. The spatial fabric cracked open, and Chaos Qi poured in through the fissures, drowning what little remained of this ruined place.

The Mother of Aberration's tentacles thrashed and writhed. The countless eyes upon them blazed with sickly green light. From her gaping mouths came a guttural, bone-rattling roar.

Her grotesque face twisted with fury.

"Both of my other children are dead now?" A thin frost settled over her rage, her voice crawling out cold between her twisted features. "He has comprehended seven Laws? In a universe so young — how could something like this exist?"

"He's grown this far in such a short span of time. His rate of growth is extraordinary." Her green eyes gleamed with a slow, hungry light. "He cannot be allowed to continue. With that being's strength — if I devour him, I might ascend to become a true Origin."

The thought fed something deep and covetous in her gaze.

Then, without warning, she went still.

She listened.

As the message from her offspring became clear, the power radiating off her body surged to catastrophic levels. Every eye on her body blazed green. Dozens of emerald beams tore through the Chaos Sea like lances of light. And from every one of her mouths rose a shriek of pure, deranged fury.

"It *disappeared?!* How is that *possible?!*"

Even the Mother of Aberration was genuinely shaken.

"Even a wielder of Spatial Laws cannot move an entire Universe Bubble through space! How did he *do* this?!"

She had encountered spatial-Laws wielders before. Not one of them had ever been capable of taking a Universe Bubble with them — they could only flee with a handful of survivors, buying a little more time before the end.

But this? She had no frame of reference for it. No answer came to her.

She stopped trying to find one.

She moved.

Her colossal form tore free from the shattered husk of the dying universe. As her tentacles ripped loose, the last structural integrity of that universe gave way — stars extinguished themselves in cascading silence, the spatial fabric collapsed entirely, and then the universe detonated. A shockwave of incomprehensible force radiated outward in every direction, killing every Aberrant Beast that had taken root within it and sending the surrounding Chaos Sea churning with enormous waves.

The Mother of Aberration stood at the center of that explosion.

Not a scratch on her.

Her tentacles rippled. Light blazed from every surface of her massive body — the light of Law Force, dozens upon hundreds of distinct streams all coiling around her. Their combined presence made her aura feel like a force of nature even by the standards of the Chaos Sea. The Chaos Sea itself groaned as she moved, the turbulence of her passing rolling outward like a tide.

She pulled the Law Force inward, letting it sink into her enormous body. Where it settled, it carved intricate, unknowable patterns across her flesh — and then those patterns pulsed with their eerie green radiance.

The Mother of Aberration vanished from the spot, becoming a streak of light blazing toward where Lu Yuan's universe had been, moving faster than light by an unimaginable margin.

Her roar echoed behind her through the Chaos Sea, so powerful it stirred the Chaos Qi itself into rolling swells.

"Even if you take your Universe Bubble and run, I will find you! Worthless insects — don't think you can escape! I will devour you and your universe entire!"

Not long after the Divine Grade Aberrant Beasts had relayed their report to the Mother of Aberration, the space of the Chaos Sea gave a faint tremor. A silver-white silhouette stepped into existence.

This was Lu Yuan's Spatial Laws Avatar.

It carried a portion of his consciousness. Its gaze swept across the region where the Universe Bubble had been, and something in it grew faintly complex. Then it turned toward the seething, raging mass of Aberrant Beasts below.

Cold Spirit Power stirred around it.

*In the rush to leave, there was no time to deal with these. No matter — it can be handled now.*

Space tore open across the Chaos Sea. The more stable the space, the more devastating the force released when it ruptured. The spatial storm that erupted engulfed swaths of Aberrant Beasts in an instant.

The Divine Grade beasts that remained let out terrified howls.

It didn't matter. In the next moment, they were gone too.

The Spatial Laws Avatar, for all that it was only an avatar, wielded Spatial Laws — and wielded them absolutely. Lu Yuan swept the entire swarm without effort. Then he turned his attention to the faint spatial ripples still lingering in the area — traces left by the universe's departure. Another application of Spatial Laws, and those ripples were erased entirely.

With that done, even a wielder of Spatial Laws would find it near-impossible to determine which direction the universe had fled, or where it had gone.