Since the sky was covered, the heavens began to show their holiness

"This Hex Core is truly magical."

Zhou Xian's eyes were fixed on the Hextech core in his palm, and his eyes were shining with excitement. This seemingly cold technological creation had a strange luster on its surface, and countless profound laws seemed to be sealed under the metal shell. Every pattern was silently telling of wisdom beyond existing cognition.

"Jace and Viktor are truly outstanding geniuses." Zhou Xian's eyes were filled with amazement, and his fingertips stroked the lines of the Hextech core. "With their mortal bodies, they can understand the laws of the world and cast the mysterious laws into gears and electricity. This ability to forge abstract laws into real technology is like snatching the power of creation from the gods."

Zhou Xian tapped the Hex core with his fingertips, his eyes suddenly sharp. "We are mortals after all." He looked at the faint light flowing inside the core, and a faint arc appeared at the corner of his lips. "It is an amazing talent to be able to pick up a few scales from the long river of laws, but the 'true meaning' sleeping deep in this core..."

His fingertips brushed over an unactivated pattern, and a tiny electric current suddenly appeared on the metal surface. "They probably don't even understand the mysteries of the law - now they just treat it as a glowing energy block, just like using a heirloom celadon as a chamber pot."

Compared to the Hextech core in his hand, he was more interested in the gears he had obtained accidentally. There was a mysterious aura flowing on them, as if they had been deposited in the long river of time.

Zhou Xian's fingertips slowly stroked the edge of the gear, and the mysterious aura seeped into the texture along his fingertips, as if carrying the weight of time. Compared to the glittering Hextech core in his palm, this gear was more like an ancient token fished out from the depths of the long river of time - the dark golden lines condensed the obscure rhythm of the years, and each ravine seemed to be a trace repeatedly caressed by countless twilight lines, and there seemed to be star track fragments flickering in the gaps in the faint tremor.

The obscure atmosphere was like a candlelight through a curtain of mist, or the shadow of the moon sinking at the bottom of a pond. When Zhou Xian's fingertips rubbed the gear pattern, he felt countless mysteries floating in his palm but difficult to grasp. Although he had not yet figured out the true meaning, he could hear a subtle resonance in his heart - this gear condensed with the fragments of time might be the key to unlocking his future destiny. In the gear set of fate, it would eventually mesh precisely with his trajectory.

Zhou Xian, who has understood the rules of fate, will not act on impulse for no reason. At this moment, the rubbing of the gears with his fingertips is more like a kind of time and space resonance between the future and the present - this metal creation that condenses the code of time may have already marked the coordinates on the causal chain of fate, waiting for him to take this moment as the starting point, follow the lines of the law, and piece together his own destiny map step by step.

"After all, it's not enough strength."

Zhou Xian held the gear with an ancient charm on his fingertips, and the metal rope was wrapped around his fingers twice before it was barely passed through the shaft hole. When he tried to push the gear into the space ring, tiny blue light ripples appeared on the surface of the ring, like an angry pool of water.

In the end, he had no choice but to hang this artifact with the rhythm of time around his neck. The metal rope hung down along his collarbone, and the gears fell right on his heart. A faint warm touch came through the metal, like some kind of silent response.

Zhou Xian had just hooked his fingertips around the end of the metal rope, and before his knuckles loosened, a sudden knock on the door broke the silence of the laboratory. He looked up at the door, which opened automatically, and the knocking stopped abruptly.

When Zhou Xian looked up, he met the gaze of the person at the door. The person was wearing a neat Piltover police uniform, and her boots made a crisp sound when they collided with the metal corridor. She took off her leather gloves and pinched them casually between her fingers, revealing the faint Hextech pattern on her wrist. The tall figure was cut into a distinct silhouette by the corridor lights, and her cold white skin made her lips look particularly bright, like berries suddenly blooming on the ice.

"Piltover Policewoman, Caitlyn."

Zhou Xian's fingertips stroked the gears on his chest, and his eyes briefly lingered on the other party's police badge. Caitlin in front of him stood straight like a sword drawn from its sheath, with the reflection of the Hex leather wristband faintly visible under her police uniform. Her long light blonde hair was neatly tied up by a discipline buckle, and the upward curve at the end of her eyes was as sharp as a hunter.

"Outsider, you are under arrest. Please come with me." Caitlin took out the sniper behind her and pointed it directly at Zhou Xian. Her eyes were full of determination. Zhou Xian raised his eyebrows slightly. The moment the Hextech sniper rifle in Caitlin's hand was unfolded, he smelled the residual elemental breath in the barrel.

That was the unique smell of Hextech overload. The leather corset under the police uniform showed a cold and hard line. Her finger on the trigger was steadier than the scope. Zhou Xian's figure was reflected in her pupils, like a silver eagle that finally locked onto its prey.

"Are all the people in Piltover like this? First it was the law enforcer, and now it's you, a little policewoman."

Zhou Xian raised the corner of his mouth slightly and said jokingly.

"The iron fist of the law enforcer and the muzzle of the policewoman's gun are both Piltover's way of hospitality." Caitlyn lowered the barrel of the gun half an inch, but the crosshairs were still locked on his throat, and the Hextech patterns on the wrist guard lit up with an ice-blue light.

"But compared to Councillor Jace's soft approach, I am better at sending ill-intentioned outsiders to taste 'hospitable desserts' behind bars in the base city - now, do you want to leave by yourself, or do you want me to use bullets to help you remember etiquette?"

"Didn't Wei tell you how she lost?"

Zhou Xian raised the corner of his mouth slightly, raised his hand and snapped his fingers, and suddenly an earth cage rose from the ground above Caitlin, trapping her tightly inside.

The moment Caitlin's pupils shrank, the metal plate on the sole of her boots had sunk into the suddenly raised rock vein. The earthy yellow energy cage wrapped in the smell of rotten leaves rose from the ground, and the blue light of the sniper rifle in her hand suddenly dimmed, like a star being pressed into a quagmire.

A khaki light flashed at Zhou Xian's fingertips, and the mud and sand seeping from the ground was slowly wrapping around her tactical boots. Those Hextech components that should have been indestructible were as ineffective as damp gunpowder in the face of this ancient power.

Zhou Xian slowly approached the cage. The gears on the metal ropes swayed gently, casting spider-web-like shadows on the stone wall. "You use gears to measure the world, and I—" His fingertips slid across the stone railing. What came out of the cracks was not soil, but a dark red fluid with a smell of rust. "I am harvesting scales that you cannot understand."

"Since this is our first meeting, I will confiscate this thing. I hope you people from Piltover will not bother me again, otherwise I don't mind razing this place to the ground."

After saying that, Zhou Xian reached out and snatched the sniper rifle from Caitlin's hand. The warning in Caitlin's throat was stuck in her vocal cords, and she watched the hand covered with mud patterns pass over her fingertips. The sniper rifle made an unwilling hum in Zhou Xian's palm, and the blue light of the Hex crystal was swallowed by Zhou Xian.

"Next time you come, it won't be as simple as putting away your guns." Zhou Xian flicked his fingertips, and dark golden fluid oozed out from the cracks in the earthen cage, hooking out a complex rune array on the ground. "Go back and tell Jace - don't use mortal standards to measure areas that don't belong to you."

(End of this chapter)