Chapter 39: The Mirror Gallery of the Abyss

With a gentle swipe of his hand across the stone table, he unleashed the profound principles and divine power of a third-tier Quasi-Emperor, which instantly permeated the space above the tabletop.

In a fleeting moment, spatial laws manifested, twisting reality to carve out a pocket dimension.

A small world measuring tens of thousands of miles across was folded and compressed like paper crumpled by a child’s hand, reduced to the size of an unassuming, transparent glass box resting quietly on the stone table.

Inside that glass-like world, five lizard-like creatures scurried about in a panic, a far cry from the massive, ferocious beings that had dominated the sky moments before.

Fang Zheng found this quite intriguing. Recalling science fiction films he had once seen, he asked curiously, "Did you shrink them?"

"Is this spatial compression reducing the spatial scale, are they still elsewhere with their optical images projected here, or have you actually reduced the microscopic gaps between the particles that make up their bodies?"

Jiang Wen glanced at the featureless, block-like man and replied with a hint of surprise, "Senior Fang Zheng, you have quite an insight into the laws of space."

"This is a pocket dimension I opened within the chaos energy using the power of spatial laws. It is a case of 'Mount Sumeru contained within a mustard seed'; its spatial scale has been condensed."

Watching the flood dragons scurrying in panic inside the "glass box," Fang Zheng asked hesitantly, "Um... could you put me in there?"

"After all, I am the one who created them. I would like to see if I can speak with them."

Jiang Wen’s gaze shifted slightly. "If you wish to converse with them, Senior, there is no need to enter yourself. Let me simply pluck these little loaches out."

With that, Jiang Wen’s withered, wrinkled hand reached directly into the small world on the table, which resembled a fishbowl.

Within the newly formed realm, chaotic currents surged wildly. The five Great Saint-level flood dragons, incensed, let out earth-shaking roars.

They opened their massive maws in unison, spewing black beams of light forged from Yin-煞 energy. The five beams intertwined, their power escalating sharply as they attempted to shatter the space and break free from their confinement, only to fail at every turn.

Seeing the golden hand suddenly appear in the darkened sky, the dragons' roars intensified. Driven to desperation, they even tore at their own flesh, releasing torrents of black blood saturated with immense Yin-煞 and vital energy.

The blood instantly transformed into a frigid mist, which then coalesced into vast, dark clouds. Concealed within, the five dragons summoned a bolt of pure black lightning—a divine ability etched into their very bloodlines known as the Taiyin Profound-煞 Lightning.

This attack, which drained most of their vital essence, carried the potential to tear through the sealed space of the pocket dimension as it slammed into the descending golden hand.

The destructive power of this Taiyin Profound-煞 Lightning had subtly surpassed the limits of a Great Saint, brushing against the threshold of a first-tier Quasi-Emperor. It was enough to pierce through a galaxy like the Milky Way and instantly obliterate tens of thousands of stars aligned in its path.

However, with a soft "pfft," the destructive lightning bolt vanished the instant it struck the giant golden hand, like a dying spark.

While both Great Saints and third-tier Quasi-Emperors reside within the Great Secret Realm of Sendai, the disparity in their power levels is an unbridgeable chasm, unlike the cross-realm battles common in lower cultivation stages.

A Great Saint requires a full-force strike to destroy a star, whereas a Quasi-Emperor, even with the prefix "Quasi," already possesses the faint power of the Supreme Dao.

The Quasi-Emperor realm, though seemingly only a line away from the Great Saint level, is further divided into nine heavens, with the gap between each level growing into an insurmountable abyss.

Even a first-tier Quasi-Emperor can overturn a galaxy with a single full-force strike, and their unrestrained pressure alone is enough to crush a Saint King to death.

Against such power, the resistance of the five dragons was more futile than an egg striking a stone; it was like ants attempting to withstand a meteorite capable of annihilating a planetary ecosystem.

Their desperate roars echoed throughout the pocket dimension, reaching the table outside only after being filtered by the realm's laws.

With the ease of an angler catching an earthworm, Jiang Wen flicked his finger. Silver Dao patterns spread out like a spiderweb, and the realm collapsed, morphing into a complex, spiraling structure.

This was a secret technique known as the "Return to Ruin Mirror Corridor."

Before the five Great Saint-level dragons could even roar, their scales and claws were folded deep into overlapping spatial faults.

The five thousand-mile-long dragons were completely sealed within a spatial cage, with only a negligible fraction of their power allowed to seep through the temporal labyrinth.

Any attempt to move required their power to traverse hundreds of thousands of miles, only to be weakened and canceled out by the layers of spatial distortion within the maze.

Ultimately, only a sliver of power, weaker than that of a kitten or puppy, was permitted to pass through the Mirror Corridor.

More terrifying still was the inversion of spatial orientation caused by the interwoven Dao runes.

External grains of sand would become unstoppable meteors within the maze, while a child's pat, magnified by trillions of spatial refractions, would transform into a distortion capable of crushing all things.

Monsters that could shatter stars with a mere movement of their bodies became as fragile as kittens under the influence of the Mirror Corridor.

Now, shrouded in the spatial maze, the five dragons were truly no different from geckos. Even a human child could crush them into pulp, as the structure of the Mirror Corridor would amplify the force to inflict horrific damage.

For a cultivator, such a sealing method is far more terrifying than having one's cultivation severed.

To be reduced to a mortal and humiliated is perhaps acceptable. But to be trapped in a spatial cage—retaining one's immense power yet unable to cause even the slightest destruction, vulnerable to being slaughtered by a mortal—is the ultimate insult to a practitioner.

...

A moment later, Jiang Wen produced the five creatures, now looking like four-legged snakes, and tossed them onto the table.

The five small beasts, though still looking ferocious, were now tiny, their power completely bound by the spatial maze, unable to leak out in the slightest.

These "little geckos" could only gaze helplessly at the "giants" surrounding the table, hissing incessantly.

Their once earth-shaking roars, which used space itself as a medium to shatter stars, now sounded like the mewling of kittens—soft, tender, and strangely naive.

Fang Zheng stared at them for a long while, listening to their mewling, and asked with hesitant, conflicted intent: "So... can you speak?"

"Can you understand me?"

"I am the one who created you."

"If you can understand me, what do you think of me?"

Alas, they showed no reaction to Fang Zheng's words, appearing only more enraged.

After their attempts to attack the "giants" on the table proved fruitless, they even tried to self-destruct, but Jiang Wen suppressed them with a mere wave of his hand.

This left Fang Zheng feeling somewhat dejected.