In the void space, the atmosphere felt like solidified magma—hot, heavy, and on the verge of eruption.
Yan straightened his body, rearranging his collar and bow tie, which had been slightly disheveled from his earlier shock.
The pure white mask without eyeholes concealed his true expression, but through the smooth depressions over the eyes, one could almost detect a fleeting fluctuation in his ice-blue pupils behind it, immediately engulfed by a deeper calmness, like a millennia-old cold pond.
“Even if… you’ve recovered, so what?”
His voice came through the mask—low, steady, but like heavy lead blocks smashing into the void, carrying an undeniable, almost arrogant sense of declaration.
As if Lin Mo’s sudden outburst and shift in momentum just now were nothing more than an insignificant interlude, utterly unable to shake the already written conclusion.
“Your fate has long been sealed.”
Yan raised his white-gloved hand, pointing at Lin Mo from a distance, his movement elegant and resolute.
“No matter what power you erupt with now, no matter what unyielding flame burns in your heart, the final trajectory… will only lead to that singular, predetermined conclusion.”
He tilted his head slightly, as if making a final confirmation or admiring the futile struggle of his prey.
“This is the demand of logic, the decree of my god, and also… the error in your very existence that needs to be corrected, the price that must be paid.”
However, facing this cold and merciless judgment that seemed to come from a higher dimension, Lin Mo’s reaction was unexpectedly… calm.
He didn’t roar in anger, didn’t scream in despair, nor did he show any more intense emotions.
He just stood there, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.
It was an extremely subtle curve, carrying a hint of cold mockery, a touch of detached insight, and a sliver of… the sharp edge of a hunter who had finally seen his prey’s flaw.
“Is that so?”
He only replied with two words.
His voice was not loud, but it cut through Yan’s destiny-laden words like two nails, viciously hammered into this space shrouded by fate.
The moment his voice fell.
Deep within Lin Mo’s eyes, which had returned to normal, his pupils—blazing like molten gold—suddenly flashed.
It wasn’t a simple flicker of light.
But a more bizarre, more profound change.
At times blazing bright like the midday sun, then dimming like a frigid star at midnight.
The two extreme radiances rapidly alternated, collided, and merged in his eyes, as if two forces born from the same source but with completely opposite effects were awakening, surging, annihilating each other, and giving birth to new, unprecedented possibilities in the deepest part of his soul.
No nonsense, no buildup.
The very next second after the pupil transformation, Lin Mo moved.
His figure left an extremely blurred afterimage at his original position, and the void under his feet seemed to be violently trampled and twisted by a savage force.
His clenched fist emitted faint cracking sounds from the knuckles under the strain.
Wrapped around it was no longer the previous deep blue energy glow, but a more restrained, purer, almost transparent distorted force field that seemed to directly shake the fundamental rules of existence.
Target—Yan.
A simple, direct, and extremely savage punch, aimed straight at Yan’s seemingly undefended abdomen.
In the face of this attack with a completely different momentum, Yan’s reaction still seemed so… nonchalant.
He didn’t even make any obvious evasive or defensive moves.
He just stood there, his pure white mask slightly lowered, as if watching Lin Mo charge in.
The voice coming through the mask even carried a hint of almost pitying ease: “Cannot be injured within the death realm, and Lin Mo will surely die by my hand…”
He seemed to be reciting an iron law that had been verified countless times, as indisputable as 1+1=2.
“I sent seventeen hundred and sixty-three prayers to my god before obtaining this unchangeable fateful throw…”
His tone was filled with absolute confidence in the divine favor earned through his devotion, and a faint mockery of Lin Mo’s futile resistance.
“You cannot… However.”
He never finished that sentence.
His voice came to an abrupt halt.
Like a tape recorder playing steadily, the magnetic head had been roughly snapped off.
Yan’s body, instinctively, lowered his head ever so slightly.
His gaze seemed to pierce through the mask and tailcoat, landing on his own abdomen.
There.
A fist wrapped in a transparent distorted force field was firmly imprinted on his flat stomach.
No earth-shattering explosion, no dazzling brilliance of energy clash.
Just the most direct contact of fist with cloth and flesh.
But it was precisely this contact that, at this moment, seemed so… impossible.
Yan’s body stiffened the instant the fist made contact.
Not the rigidity caused by a massive impact, but a deeper, stunned stillness from a complete subversion of his cognition.
His pure white mask seemed to have a subtle, unnatural tilt due to this lowering and stiffening.
“How…”
A dry voice, like a rusted gear turning with difficulty, squeezed out from behind the mask.
In that voice, for the first time, all composure and elegance were lost, replaced by incomprehension and unacceptable… incredulity.
One could even hear a faint, almost unprecedented… tremor.
“Possible—?!”
He practically roared the last two words.
His voice was completely distorted by extreme shock and a certain hidden fear.
And in the next moment after his roar.
A pain too intense to describe—as if his internal organs were being violently gripped, twisted, and torn by an invisible giant hand—suddenly exploded from the point of impact on his abdomen, like a flood bursting a dam, instantly overwhelming all his nerves.
“Ugh—!”
A suppressed groan of pain came from under the mask.
Yan’s spine, which had been as straight as a ruler, inevitably and awkwardly bent under the impact of this intense pain.
And the power on Lin Mo’s fist, seemingly restrained but actually savage, exploded fully at this moment.
Stagger, stagger, stagger.
Yan stumbled, involuntarily retreating three steps backward.
Each step left invisible ripples on the void ground, as if shaking the entire space.
He tried hard to steady himself, to maintain his last shred of dignity, but the intense pain and residual force from his abdomen made him look exceptionally disheveled.
“Impossible… is it?”
Lin Mo slowly withdrew his fist and straightened up.
He didn’t rush to pursue, just calmly watched Yan retreating with those eyes that still flickered with golden light, as if containing the birth and destruction of the universe.
If anyone could closely and meticulously observe Lin Mo’s pupils at this moment, they would be horrified to discover that it wasn’t a simple flicker of light.
Deep within those blazing golden pupils, it seemed that two forces—homogenous in nature but completely opposite in effect, intangible yet truly existing—were colliding, annihilating, and giving birth to each other in some inscrutable manner.
“My oracle…”
Lin Mo’s voice rang out, steady and clear, as if stating an objective fact.
“Is called—White Jade Capital.”
He suddenly twisted his waist and hips, his body releasing like a fully drawn bowstring.
His other arm shot up like lightning, elbow bent, condensing all his strength into one point, transforming into a terrifyingly sharp streak of dark light, viciously smashing toward Yan’s temple.
This strike was even faster, more cunning, and more… lethal than the previous straight punch.
And Yan, still immersed in the dual shock of abdominal pain and cognitive subversion, was so shaken that his reaction was more than a beat slower than usual.
He couldn’t even make an effective block or dodge.
BAM.
A dull, heart-stopping thud.
The forceful elbow strike, without any flourish, landed solidly on the side of Yan’s masked head at the temple.
Time seemed to freeze at that moment.
Then.
Yan’s entire body, like a puppet hit head-on by a battering ram, completely lost balance, spinning and crashing to the ground in an extremely disheveled, inelegant posture.
The pure white mask scraped against the ground, making a teeth-grinding sound.
The tails of his tailcoat flew up.
Yan lay there, seeming for the moment to have lost the ability to get up immediately.
Lin Mo slowly lowered his arm, straightened up, and gently twisted the wrist he had used for the attack.
The joints made a faint cracking sound, unusually clear in the silence.
He took a step, then another, unhurried yet carrying the crushing weight of a thousand tons, walking toward the fallen Yan.
“White Jade Capital…”
He continued to explain as he walked, in that terrifyingly calm tone, as if the one on the ground was not a mortal enemy but a student in need of a lesson.
“It can suppress, strip, or temporarily negate the source of almost all forms of power.”
“Whether it’s the power of oracles, yao energy, or the polluted aura of Abnormal Beings…”
He paused, stopping less than three steps from Yan, slightly lowering his head to look down at him.
“…So I tried to apply my oracle to the most elusive yet real symbol borne by an individual’s existence—”
Lin Mo’s lips curled upward again.
It wasn’t a pleasant smile, but a curve of cold insight and absolute control.
“—Fate.”
These two words struck down like a final judgment hammer.
“And…”