393: Gods play chess, mortals astound the heavens.

That giant hand, composed of billions of Order runes, reached out from the rift in time and space, slowly pressing down with the ultimate pressure to judge and sentence everything.

Its target was crystal clear.

It was precisely the head of that Rock Giant.

That was the core where Lin Fan's will resided.

Inside the Ark, atop the ruins of the shelter.

Zhao Linger, Fatty Zhang, Li Hanyue, and all the surviving Xin Huo Members felt a freezing sensation emanating from their very Souls.

It was as if their existence was not even worth a speck of dust before that giant hand.

If the opponent wished, a single thought could format them along with this newly reassembled Ark.

"Brother Fan..."

Fatty Zhang's lips were pale, the fat on his face frozen, unable to even tremble.

Li Hanyue's fingers gripping the sword hilt turned white from excessive force, but the disparity in power left her without even the courage to draw her blade.

'It's over; this time it's for real.'

'This aura is countless tiers higher than that fleet just now.'

'It's the mastermind.'

Lin Fan's will was now the will of this Rock Giant.

He "looked up," his pure golden eyes reflecting the slowly descending giant hand of Order, while his inner monologue was racing.

But he did not back down.

This Ark was now his turtle shell; if it shattered, it would be hard to find another such cozy nest.

Controlling the giant made of countless mountains and metallic ruins, he slowly raised his other intact arm against the world-ending pressure.

Then, he threw a punch.

There was no sound.

There was no explosion of light.

The Rock Giant's fist and the giant hand of Order collided silently within the Chaos of the Void Realm.

However, the aftershock of the collision turned into an invisible ripple that erased everything.

The ripple swept through.

Dozens of the nearest Purification Battleships, along with the low-level Puppets inside, vanished without a trace from the tapestry of time and space, like pencil marks erased by a rubber.

The next second.

Crack—

The Rock Giant's arm, pieced together from countless wrecks and continents, began to shatter inch by inch.

It wasn't a physical shattering, but rather the "existence" itself that composed it was being forcibly erased by a higher-dimensional "Heavenly Law."

An unshakable force of Order penetrated the Ark's barriers, pressing directly onto Lin Fan's nascent Godhead.

He felt as if his consciousness was about to be crushed and scattered again by this unreasonable "Truth."

He could feel the countless components forming the Rock Giant wailing, and the link with the world's Origin was becoming unstable.

The Fusion was interrupted.

'Going head-to-head really is something only a fool would do.'

'This guy is too strong; my shell isn't hard enough.'

Lin Fan's thoughts whirled in a flash.

'Even though I won't die, if this shell is smashed, Linger and the others will be finished.'

'I need a different approach.'

'An idea I just came up with.'

Just as the hearts of Li Hanyue, Zhao Linger, and the others leapt into their throats, thinking Lin Fan wouldn't be able to hold on.

Lin Fan made a move that no one could understand.

He suddenly dispelled all of the Rock Giant's defenses.

The arm that was shattering inch by inch completely gave up resistance, allowing the giant hand of Order to drive straight in, striking towards the giant's head—towards the very core of the Ark.

Deep within the Chaos, a flicker of disdain flashed through the consciousness of the Elder on the throne.

Giving up?

Ants are ants, after all.

However, at the very moment the giant hand of Order was about to touch the Ark's core.

Lin Fan detonated the rule trap he had laid long ago.

At the core, his will instantly wove together two completely opposite yet identically sourced concepts.

One was the power of "Protection" he had devoured and analyzed from the [Bishop Puppet], then reversed and reshaped through the Godhead Furnace. Its essence was still derived from "Purification."

The other was a sliver of "Karmic Nothingness" that cut through everything, transcending conventional rules, which he had comprehended when his True Self burned and neared extinction.

A rule attempting to purify everything and return all "anomalies" to "Order."

How does one purify a point that, by definition, has no "karmic connection" to anything?

It was like a programmed machine suddenly encountering an unrecognizable and unprocessable paradoxical instruction.

Buzz—

That giant hand, made of pure Order runes, came to a halt without warning, just hairbreadths away from the Ark's core.

The billions of runes composing it began to flash frantically, falling into a logical infinite loop.

Just a tenth of a second.

For a god, it was insignificant.

But for Lin Fan, it was enough.

"Now!"

His will and his Godhead burned to the limit at this moment!

The golden sea of faith, gathered from hundreds of thousands of survivors, was instantly drained by him!

That fist-sized clump of the world's Origin, which had just begun to fuse, erupted at this moment with all the energy of an epoch's final stand!

This power did not condense into the form of a Rock Giant again.

They were forged by Lin Fan's Godhead Furnace into an invisible Sword of Conviction that pierced through heaven and earth!

Conviction as the blade, Origin as the edge!

This sword had no physical form, but its sharpness was enough to sever rules.

Slashing upward!

A golden stream of light, invisible to the naked eye, flashed past along the trajectory where the giant hand of Order had stalled.

Pfft.

A very faint sound, like a sharp blade cutting through silk, rang out in the Chaos of the Void Realm.

That giant hand of Order, representing supreme majesty, was cleanly severed at the wrist.

The severed hand did not explode or collapse.

The billions of Order runes that composed it seemed to lose their unified command, instantly turning into the most primitive and chaotic rule fragments, dissipating into nothingness.

"Ugh..."

A muffled groan, suppressed with pain and shock, came from across an infinite distance at the end of that space-time rift.

Deep within the Chaos, atop the Throne of Order.

On the right arm of that perpetually expressionless Elder, a smooth cut appeared out of thin air.

A drop of golden divine blood, containing infinite Laws, seeped from the wound and fell.

That drop of blood fell into the Chaos below, instantly evolving into a Small World that lived and died, before returning to nothingness.

He was wounded.

Wounded in his true form by what he saw as an ant, a newly born anomaly, across the dimensional barrier.

Those eyes, burning with shock and anger, stared fixedly in the direction of the Tomb of the Epoch.

Meanwhile, Lin Fan had no mind to savor the joy of victory.

His will, like a greedy sponge, frantically absorbed those fragments of Order rules that had just been severed and had not yet completely dissipated.

The familiar System interface refreshed rapidly in his mind.

[Warning! Godhead energy severely overdrawn!]

[Absorbing unowned rule fragments, replenishing Godhead Origin...]

[Analyzing 'Order' rule fragments...]

[Analyzing...]

[Fragmented high-dimensional data packet discovered... Reassembling...]

A new line of golden text suddenly jumped out.

[Data reassembly successful: Intercepted high-dimensional coordinate string fragment.]

[Analysis model construction... Comparing with known star charts...]

[Preliminary conclusion: Coordinates point to—'Anomaly Elimination Alliance'... Central Command Node.]

Lin Fan's will, which was nearly scattering due to overexertion, suddenly tightened.

His mouth, or rather, the mouth of that massive Rock Giant, curled upward in a silent grin.

He looked up at the space-time rift that was beginning to destabilize and close because its owner was wounded.

'Found you.'