The unexpected incident happened too quickly.

The strange scale didn't trigger any instruments, and the explosion happened in an instant.

No one could escape the speed of light, so everyone around was caught off guard.

Except for Sheng Lingyuan.

Sheng Lingyuan had been carefully monitoring Xuan Ji's every move, his gaze lingering on him slightly longer than on anyone else.

After all, he was an "old friend," and it would be unnatural to avoid looking at him for too long.

But he also attached a strand of divine consciousness to him.

He and Chiyuan shared the same origin, and if he disguised himself, his divine consciousness and aura would be indistinguishable from Chiyuan's, who had bound Xuan Ji for three thousand years.

Xuan Ji was no longer sensitive to his presence, so he could openly "peek" without anyone noticing.

Therefore, almost simultaneously, Sheng Lingyuan reached out and stopped the fire and Xuan Ji in their tracks.

As soon as he touched the flame-colored light, Sheng Lingyuan was startled.

The heavenly demon body itself is a part of the rules of heaven and earth, although it is firmly suppressed and bound. But from another perspective, he is also the person in the world who is closest to the invisible and intangible 'heavenly rules'.

The immense power of the rules mixed in the firelight almost dragged him in.

Sheng Lingyuan instantly recognized that power of the rules, which is the most ruthless and untransferable in the world... time.

Time around them began to warp and distort.

Without hesitation, Sheng Lingyuan held Xuan Ji in his arms and released his suppressed heavenly demon energy.

This 'half of the Chiyuan' collided with the chaotic flow of time and space. In an instant, Sheng Lingyuan's body disintegrated into countless tiny particles.

Lightning struck the tomb, causing the armor and ancient weapons buried underground to fall silent. All the sacrificial texts evaporated into thin air.

Yan Qiushan, who was guarding the entrance, suddenly trembled for no apparent reason. He quickly picked up Zhi Chun and tucked him into his arms.

Without hesitation, he grabbed Chief Huang and handed him to his colleague, saying, "Get out of here now! Notify everyone to retreat!"

Without hesitation, Yan Qiushan ordered them to retreat.

But as soon as they left, the one and a half acre grave was struck by a thunderstorm, causing everyone to see stars and their hair to stand on end.

Yan Qiushan, who was on the edge of the storm, was trembling all over as metal is most afraid of lightning.

However, Zhi Chun struggled to break free from his embrace and handed him an unusual energy detector that he had taken from him.

Yan Qiushan reluctantly took a look and his face immediately changed - the device was so quiet that it was suffocating, showing a sudden cliff-like drop in abnormal energy activity nearby.

The thunderstorm lasted for several minutes, and the air was filled with the smell of ozone.

Yan Qiushan, as the leader, ordered everyone to retreat 50 meters back, leaving only a few Wind Gods to guard the edge of the thunderstorm.

For a while, no one on the ground dared to move. After the thunderstorm dissipated, they waited for another 20 minutes before the reconnaissance team emerged from the underground entrance.

When Wang Ze climbed up, his feet stumbled, and everyone behind him looked as if they had seen a ghost.

No one could explain what had happened.

The mysterious big shot who had nailed the heavenly demon to his clamshell was actually carried out by Xuan Ji.

"Seal the entrance first," Xiao Zheng stuttered, his whole body trembling and his speech incoherent. "Everyone, retreat."

"Already evacuated," Yan Qiushan held onto his shoulder and was shocked to find Xiao Zheng trembling like a fallen leaf, his eyes unfocused.

He quickly asked, "What's wrong with you?"

Xiao Zheng tried to speak, but his muscles spasmed and he almost bit his tongue. The sound of his teeth chattering could be heard several meters away.

Yan Qiushan shouted, "Medical team!"

The medical team was already prepared, and the special doctors rushed forward, stuffing everyone into the ambulance.

After a thorough examination, they found that there was nothing wrong with anyone.

"Scared?" Despite his poker face, Yan Qiushan was taken aback by the diagnosis.

His eyebrows almost flew off his face as he looked around at his colleagues, guided by the leader of the special medical team.

Among them were Xiao Zheng, Wang Ze, and a large group of special agents he had personally trained. Their daily work was to keep their heads cool in dangerous situations, not to mention the presence of Director Xuan and that mysterious figure.

"Impossible, what could have scared them?"

The leader of the special medical team shook his head.

"Have you checked for any psychological trauma?" Yan Qiushan asked. "Could it be caused by a spiritual item that creates fear directly?"

After speaking, he realized that it was not right.

While others couldn't resist most mental attacks, Gu Yuexi, who grew up in a mental prison and didn't go crazy, could resist them all. If there was something so powerful, why didn't the Shadow person use it when they were caused chaos?

"Director! Captain Yan!" A special doctor ran over holding something. "Take a look at this, it was taken off of Team Leader Zhang."

Yan Qiushan's pupils slightly contracted as he saw that the metal casing of Zhang Zhao's paused stopwatch had been deformed, as if it had been melted and pulled by something.

Zhang Zhao's "pause for one second" pocket watch was very special, and even the Research Institute couldn't figure it out.

The material of the metal casing on the outer ring of the stopwatch is unknown. So far, famous metal experts from all over the world, including Yan Qiushan himself, have come to try it out, but no one can establish a connection with the material of the metal casing.

The stopwatch cannot be lost or borrowed, only Zhang Zhao himself can use it, it is like a part of his body.

The doctor whispered, "Team Leader Gu seemed to have said something to our colleague just now, but no one understood it. She didn't say anything when we asked her again."

"What did she say?"

"It seems to be... 'time'."

Xuan Ji carried Sheng Lingyuan onto a medical ambulance, shook his head and refused routine checks and sedatives.

He also reached out to stop the special abilities doctor who wanted to take Sheng Lingyuan over, and he rarely spoke so sparingly, saying, "No."

The specialist asked, "Don't you want to have a check-up just in case of any mental damage?"

Xuan Ji opened his mouth, usually able to chat with anyone for five bucks, but now he seemed to have forgotten how to speak.

After hesitating for a while, he only managed to say the word "no" - it was difficult for him to cooperate with tone and eye contact, and say the single word politely, expressing the complex meaning of "I want to be quiet for a while."

"Okay then, the pager is on your left hand side. If you feel uncomfortable, call us anytime." The specialists exchanged a glance, suspecting that he might have damaged the part of his brain controlling speech, and put on the mental healing headphones before quietly leaving.

As the voices faded away, Xuan Ji finally breathed a sigh of relief.

With this relaxation, he felt his muscles trembling slightly.

Inside that mysterious scale, there was actually a small section of time rules - of course, not "time" itself. If time rules were concretized, not even gods, demons, or monsters could handle it, and the universe might have to undergo another big bang.

Despite this, everyone present was collectively speechless.

For insignificant mortals, witnessing the explosion of a small-scale time and space rule up close was no different from experiencing a catastrophic event. The impact they received far exceeded their individual limits.

It was as if the consciousness of a tiny ant had been expanded to the ends of the universe in the blink of an eye, and the fear of having one's soul "infinitely" diluted to the point of almost non-existence was indescribable to outsiders.

Even Sheng Lingyuan was not feeling well at the moment. On the surface, he appeared unscathed, but in reality, his entire body had been torn apart and pieced back together again.

The process was so quick that no one else had noticed.

Although his body had been reassembled, his shattered sea of consciousness was slower to recover. His entire body was numb, and he had no control over it, nor did he have any sensation.

Fortunately, the thread of divine consciousness that hung on Xuan Ji's body had not been severed, and he knew that the man was unharmed.

He settled down and waited for the turbulent heavenly demon energy to repair his sea of consciousness.

In the moment of collision with the time rules in the scale, he had captured something, but the speed was too fast, and he needed to reshape his sea of consciousness to reproduce it.

"Ling, Lingyuan..." Xuan Ji seemed to call out to him, and Sheng Lingyuan, who had been meditating with his eyes closed, was startled by him.

He focused his attention and listened carefully as Xuan Ji stuttered and said several sentences, none of which he understood.

Sheng Lingyuan furrowed his brow.

However, when Xuan Ji suddenly started stuttering, he seemed to become less impatient.

His words were mixed with a northern and southern accent, like he was learning a foreign language.

He spoke slowly and off-key for five or six minutes before his pronunciation returned to normal.

Sheng Lingyuan recognized that he was reciting the first chapter of the "Knocking on the Mystery" that Dan Li taught him when he first started practicing as a child.

As Xuan Ji recited, he asked and answered himself, recounting every word of the conversation between his young self, Sheng Lingyuan, and Dan Li. Sheng Lingyuan felt a string in his heart being gently plucked, making him feel soft and wondering if his heart had grown back.

Next, Xuan Ji's accent began to change, mixed with many obscure foreign languages.

After listening for a while, Sheng Lingyuan probably understood his situation: Xuan Ji was the one who personally walked through thousands of years and suppressed the demonic energy of the Chiyuan with his own strength.

The rules of time and space did not manage to explode his mind into a vegetable, but his brain not only retained the changes in Chinese over three thousand years, he also knew a little bit of the languages of various ethnic groups and regions. In the turbulent flow of time, he momentarily forgot some words when he opened his mouth, but after a moment of settling down, he was fine.

So Sheng Lingyuan, amidst his incessant background chatter, refocused his attention back to his own sea of consciousness, as if he had returned to his youth - he was focused on cultivation, while little Ji beside him was not content to be lonely and kept chattering, trying to attract his attention and asking him to go out and play.

The old dream that he never dared to relive became a reality three thousand years later.

The heavenly demon energy churning in his sea of consciousness was filtered out by Xuan Ji's voice, and it became almost gentle, even speeding up the progress.

Sheng Lingyuan saw fragments of information in the scale and was somewhat surprised. The howling sound he heard in the temporal turbulence was actually the sound of waves, mixed with faint singing.

Mermaid singing?

Sheng Lingyuan focused on the mermaid's song, struggling to distinguish the lyrics from the blurry tail notes.

'Praise'...what? Then it's something about 'water surface'. In the mermaid language, 'sky' and 'water surface' are the same word. 'Gemstone'... 'white'... 'white gemstone'? This description sounded like jade. After that was something 'grand and majestic,' but the singing was too blurry and he couldn't make it out.

Sheng Lingyuan played back the segment of the song recorded in his mind over and over again, when suddenly a light bulb went off in his head - wait a minute, 'sky,' 'white gemstone,' 'grand and majestic,' isn't this like something out of a legend...?

"Lingyuan, you're hurting my hand."

Finally, Xuan Ji managed to switch to modern Mandarin and interrupted Sheng Lingyuan's thoughts with this sudden statement, without any preamble or signature.

Sheng Lingyuan was immediately snapped out of his reverie.

He realized that he had been tightly gripping Xuan Ji's right hand, probably exerting too much force when pulling him, and had unknowingly held on even after he had 'fainted.'

This guy, calling him 'Your Majesty' in front of others but behind his back, he would mutter 'Lingyuan' under his breath, as if he had been wronged.

"Endure it for a while," Sheng Lingyuan secretly replied with a smile in his own sea of consciousness. "How painful could it be, you spoiled brat."

Of course, Xuan Ji couldn't hear his response as he struggled alone.

Hope was like a poisonous seed, finding any crack to burrow into and stubbornly taking root.

Xuan Ji desperately tried to regain his composure, but he was still retreating step by step, unable to form a cohesive plan.

A malicious voice in his head told him, 'The fight or flight response doesn't lie. Look at how he instinctively protected you at all costs.'

Xuan Ji pinched his thigh and struggled to convince himself: No, disregarding everything may not necessarily be because of caring for him. He has the last Vermilion Bird bone in your body, and there's no replacement if it gets cold. This may be for the sake of...the bigger picture.

But the voice in his head that tempted him spoke up again: 'But he was clearly standing three steps away. Why didn't anyone else react, only he could rush over in the first moment? He must have been watching you.'

Xuan Ji gritted his teeth and rubbed his leg, which he had turned purple from pinching: 'Nonsense. His Majesty is well-versed in the laws of heaven and earth, he's just sharp. He's killed more people than those field agents know, so what's so special about his quick reflexes?'

'For the sake of the bigger picture, why did he still hold onto your hand when everyone else had passed out? Look, he's even made your hand into a claw.'

'Maybe he just forgot to let go, or maybe he had a muscle spasm... a cramp?'

'Haha... he once drew blood from his own heart and broke his sword repeatedly in front of the furnace, all for you.'

'Who hasn't been a little foolish in their youth? The kid upstairs ran away from home because his mom tore down one of his posters... I bet he was more upset about being forced out of the palace by his courtiers.'

'But he never married in his lifetime!'

Xuan Ji's breathing suddenly became heavy.

'He was young when he broke his sword, but when he jumped into the abyss of Chiyuan, he was no longer young. Do you remember that day? He gave up his crown, his jade pendant, and his seal to his followers, and left alone... except for the broken pieces of of your sword.'

Xuan Ji finally stopped struggling, lifted his eyelids that felt like they weighed tons, and trembled as he looked at Sheng Lingyuan's face.

His throat moved with difficulty.

The devilish voice in his head urged him on, 'Why don't you give it a try?'

Go ahead and try.

Are you too scared to even try?

You've done some questionable things before, remember what you did in the sixth year of the Qi Dynasty?

The whole idea of nobility and power is outdated. It's a new era, why are you still afraid of being caught?

And even if you do get caught, what's the worst that could happen?

You're already the last resort... no, the last Vermilion Bird bone.

If he breaks you, where will he find another bone to replace you?

Do you remember what happened in the underwater tomb last time?

Xuan Ji's throat moved as he recalled the scene in the Mountain king's tomb, and his heart began to race. In the wreckage of the underwater tomb, the emperor had frozen himself in a coffin, bravely battling the cold sea.

But when Xuan Ji recklessly broke in, he expected to face a few knives, not the overwhelming heavenly demon energy that seemed to recognize him and dissipated gently.

Xuan Ji hung his head like a demon-possessed man, inching closer and closer to Sheng Lingyuan.

When his lips touched the cold yet soft ones, a thought flashed through his mind like a shooting star.

"Please wake up and stab me," he prayed, "beat me up, or give me a death glare..."

That way, he could rid himself of the demon-like hope that plagued him.

However, he did not have such 'good luck'.

Sheng Lingyuan did not comply with his wishes and wake up. Even when he took advantage of the situation and pried open the emperor's jaw, Sheng Lingyuan's tense muscles seemed to relax a bit, causing the strength in his hand to disappear.

But he still did not let go.

Within a motionless body that was studying the mermaid language in his sea of consciousness, the emperor was stunned.

His sea of consciousness, which had just gathered together, was hit by a tsunami and almost scattered on the spot.