Zhou Li. He spat the name mentally. Whenever he thought of that sad excuse for a man, he felt like destroying something beautiful. He was ruining his brother’s good mood at every turn like it was all a game to him. But that was to be expected. Seers were always like this, playing around with people’s lives. Perhaps only Wang Jun was tolerable, but barely so.
The clock, he thought. I should really teach it a lesson. I refuse to believe we can’t win against it. He looked to his friends and shook his head. The clock was part of these wretched walls, connected by both karma and other runic lines. Therefore, he slipped on his goggles and did what Cha Ming should have been doing. He hit them.
He traveled along the walls with frightening speed, carving them up with strokes of his tail. The clock moved to regenerate them, so he continued his work.
You want to fix these walls? Fine. I’m going to break them. I’ll break them repeatedly and force you to remake them. Consider this punishment for interfering in our matters.
The more he broke, the faster the clock ticked. Seeing his efforts were paying off, he split into three clones and tripled down on the destruction. Silverwing, seeing him rip up the surrounding walls, decided to join in. His two other bored friends joined in as well. Gua sliced them with currents of water, and Lei Jiang blasted them with heavenly lightning. The clock ticked faster, and the walls fixed themselves even more quickly. Destroying things also helped everyone feel better. Win, win, win.
You think you can outrepair us? Huxian scoffed. His aura of light and shadow oozed out from him and his three clones. His friends unleashed more and more attacks. The walls crumbled around them, raining down on the humans below. The clock ticked faster, and for a moment, Huxian caught a flicker in his violet lenses.
Brother, attack with us! Huxian yelled.
No reply.
Come, brother, help me! he yelled again.
Cha Ming, who’d been sitting in his tiny blood pool—a strange occurrence, but who was he to judge—looked up. His glazed look faded slightly, and he frowned in reprimand.
Huxian scowled and called again. Help me fight the walls, dammit. I think I see something.
Confused, Cha Ming summoned his staff, which became a sky-scorching halberd and crushed a chunk of wall off.
Huxian rolled his eyes. Faster and more perfectly.
Cha Ming sighed in his usual fashion but decided to play along. He was nice that way. No matter how unreasonable Huxian was, he would eventually give in. Fortunately, Huxian wasn’t being unreasonable. Not this time.
With Cha Ming added to the equation, their destruction mounted. It wasn’t that he was very strong, but his Clear Sky Staff was just really good at destroying things. Or Clear Sky Halberd. Or whatever he called it now.
The destruction mounted, and the ticking intensified. As it did, Huxian saw a distortion out of the corner of his eye. He traced it back to its origins, allowing his eyes to focus as he worked his way toward it.
The destruction continued for a while, and then he saw it. It was a nigh-imperceptible bubble next to the clock tower. The bubble was only an inch thick, clinging closely to the clock face like its life depended on it. Though this invisible bubble didn’t seem like much—he normally wouldn’t have seen a difference without his goggles—he could tell it was far more important than that. It was a result of the clock, a by-product of it. And it was exactly what they needed.
Huxian rushed toward the bubble as he barked at them to not stop destroying. Then, using the spatial power he’d harvested from the spatial fragment and the keen insights into time laws he’d gained on Jade Moon Planet, he connected to the invisible bubble. It didn’t resist.
Overjoyed, he caused it to expand and stepped back as it did. He continued until it expanded a full hundred feet out from the clock. Then, after hitting a snag, he burned his blood essence and forced it out another two hundred feet. Then, another three hundred. Then finally, nine hundred. Yes, that would be more than enough for his needs.
Huxian frowned as he saw black and white strings dancing within the invisible bubble. The clock was ticking quickly as the others destroyed the building. Perhaps five times faster than normal.
Since the ticking increases the regeneration speed of the walls, I should be able to affect this bubble by affecting the ticking. He glared at the needle that represented seconds and willed it to move. And move it did. It ticked faster and faster, until the sound became a constant droning to everyone around it.
Cha Ming was the first to yelp in shock as he almost failed to retrieve his staff in time as the wall fixed itself around it. That didn’t surprise Huxian, as he’d sped up the ticking to thirty times faster than normal. Not nearly enough. Seeing that Cha Ming and the others were no longer attacking the wall, he felt comfortable in accelerating the flow of time. One hundred ticks per second. Two hundred. Three hundred. He kept increasing the flow of time until he could no longer tell how fast it was ticking. Then, satisfied, he summoned Mr. Mountain.
Go in there and cultivate, he instructed. Sit. Stand. He sighed. Just do your
