Lord of the Rending Stars

The left flank: a test of strength.

The moment King Jiuyu stepped onto the road, the surrounding scenery changed drastically. He found himself in an ancient battlefield, the sky blood-red, the earth cracked, and littered with debris. In the distance, a towering rock giant, tens of thousands of meters tall, slowly rose, each step causing the earth to tremble violently.

"A phantom of a 'Lava Troll' at the pinnacle of the King-level," the database of the King of Killing quickly identified, "but its combat power simulation reaches the level of an invincible King."

Before the words were even finished, the rock giant had already thrown a punch. Before the fist even arrived, the wind from the punch tore through space, bringing with it a rain of lava and fire.

"Well done!"

King Jiuyu roared, and nine heavy swords flew out from their scabbards, forming the Jiuyu Sword Formation. The sword formation spun, transforming into a storm of sword blades that collided with the giant fist.

With a deafening boom, the shockwave swept across the battlefield, carving a trench ten thousand meters deep into the ground. King Jiuyu staggered back three steps, his fighting spirit intensifying: "That was exhilarating! Let's go again!"

He took the initiative, combining his nine swords into a single, thousand-meter-long giant sword that slashed towards the giant's neck. This strike contained his lifelong understanding of the laws of space; as the sword passed, space folded and overlapped, causing the giant sword's speed to increase a hundredfold in an instant.

"Sizzle!"

The giant's rocky head was severed, but instead of bleeding, more lava gushed out. The headless giant not only did not die, but its aura surged, its body shrank to a thousand meters, but became more solid, and its speed increased tenfold.

"Second Form," King Killer calmly analyzed, "Combat power tripled. I suggest using a combined attack tactic."

Sixty mechanical puppets simultaneously transformed, disintegrating into countless silver parts that reassembled in mid-air, forming an 800-meter-tall silver mechanical giant. The body of the King of Death was embedded in the control core on the giant's chest.

"Mechanical Fusion, War Lord!"

The silver giant sprang two massive cannons from its arms, their muzzles gleaming with blinding white light. These were highly compressed torrents of particles, each strike equivalent to the full power of a peak-level King-ranking expert.

The ten high-ranking Zerg warriors merged together, transforming into a ferocious, centipede-like giant insect. The insect opened its mouthparts, spewing out a dark green, corrosive mist that created voids in the very space it passed through.

For the first time, the three parties joined forces against the enemy. King Jiuyu's sword was the main weapon, each strike hitting the weak points of the giants' laws; the mechanical giants' artillery fire suppressed the giants' movements; and the Zerg's poisonous fog corroded and continuously weakened the giants' defenses.

The battle lasted a full three hours. When the lava giant finally collapsed, turning into rubble, King Jiuyu gasped for breath, his divine body weakened by over 3%. The mechanical giant disintegrated, and twelve of its sixty puppets were completely destroyed. The insectoid giant worms split again, leaving only six of the ten high warriors. All three sides suffered losses, but the trial was passed.

At the end of the road, three stone platforms appeared. Each platform held a treasure: the first was a sword-shaped jade pendant, the second a silver metal core, and the third a drop of dark green insect egg.

The Nine Heavens King obtained the 'Sword Soul Jade,' which can increase his sword comprehension by 30%; the Machine Race obtained the 'Eternal Core,' which can allow one of their puppets to advance to the limit of becoming a King; the Zerg Race obtained the 'Queen's Egg,' which, upon hatching, can create an avatar.

As King Jiuyu grasped the Sword Soul Jade, he immediately felt countless insights into the Dao of Sword flooding into his mind. Several bottlenecks in his swordsmanship loosened simultaneously, and if he were to seclude himself for a hundred years, his swordsmanship would surely reach a new level.

He glanced at the other two sides and thought to himself, "Cooperation for now is indeed more worthwhile than a fight to the death... But once the trial is over, we still have to fight for what we need to fight for."

The middle lane is a testing ground for skill.

The moment Bingfeng stepped onto the crystal path, he found himself in a labyrinth of laws. Everywhere he looked—up, down, left, right, front, and back—were transparent walls of laws. Flowing across these walls were threads of laws of different colors: fiery red, aquamarine, earthy yellow, wind blue… Each wall was a manifestation of a fundamental law.

"Analyze the maze structure and find the exit," Bingfeng figured out how to break the deadlock. But Bingfeng noticed something was wrong. These walls of law were moving slowly! And the movement was completely erratic; one second the fire wall was on the left, the next it might be above.

"The Law of Water: Condensation!"

The ice peak attempted to freeze a wall of water, but the moment the icy air touched the wall, the entire wall suddenly transformed into a wall of fire, instantly evaporating the cold air. Worse still, this triggered a chain reaction, causing more than a dozen surrounding walls to change color simultaneously, and the conflict of laws caused explosions.

"Boom!" The ice peak was blasted away, and the surface of the Frost Abyss Armor dimmed.

"The laws of nature are mutually reinforcing and mutually restraining; they cannot be forcibly broken." The voice of the Soul-Slaying King's clone came from the mechanical puppet. "It is recommended to simultaneously analyze the patterns of change in all walls and calculate the optimal path."

Twenty mechanical puppets dispersed, each locking onto a wall, and began recording the frequency, sequence, and intensity of the changes in the laws. The data was aggregated in real time to the Soul Killer King's avatar, which performed thirty million simulations in one ten-thousandth of a second.

"We've found the pattern," the clone of the King of Killing Spirits said three minutes later. "The changes in the walls follow the principle of the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams, with a cycle every eighty-one seconds. The exit is at the Kan water level, but it requires passing through three nodes in succession: 'Water and Fire in Harmony,' 'Wind and Thunder in Interaction,' and 'Mountain and Lake in Communication.'"

The Zerg Queen, Soul Hunter, grew impatient: "Too slow! Watch my moves!"

It manipulated three hundred Law-Devouring Insects to swarm towards an earthen wall. These insects opened their mouthparts and began to gnaw at the threads of law! The earthen wall thinned at a visible rate, but the Law-Devouring Insects paid a price. For every thread they gnawed, several insects exploded and died because they could not withstand the backlash from the law.

"The Zerg are so stupid!"

Bingfeng shouted, "What you're doing will trigger a chaos in the laws of nature..."

Before he could finish speaking, the eroded earthen wall suddenly collapsed, but the resulting turbulent flow of laws swept through the labyrinth like a tsunami. Dozens of walls shattered simultaneously, and the violent power of the laws swept everything away.

Ice Peak activated the Frost Abyss Armor with all its might, transforming it into an iceberg to protect itself. The mechanical golems activated their energy shields, but seven were still torn apart by the turbulent currents. The Zerg suffered even greater losses, with over a hundred Devouring Slugs instantly annihilated.

Once the turbulence subsided, the maze had changed drastically. A third of the walls had disappeared, but the remaining walls moved three times faster and their patterns became even more chaotic.

"Now look what happened," Ice Peak said coldly to the Zerg Queen, "your recklessness has tripled the difficulty."

The Queen Mother remained silent, but her mental fluctuations betrayed her annoyance. Just then, Ice Peak suddenly had a flash of inspiration: "Wait... after the walls disappeared, I think I saw..."

He closed his eyes, and the fluctuations of the laws spread out from him. This time, he wasn't trying to freeze the walls, but rather to sense the gaps between them—the voids revealed by the disappearance of the walls, spaces not yet filled with the laws.

"I see!"

Bingfeng opened his eyes. "The true exit of this maze isn't somewhere in any particular location, but in a blank space! We need to find the blank spot in the laws!"

As soon as he finished speaking, Bingfeng unleashed the laws of space like a spiderweb, sensing the density of laws in every inch of space. A minute later, he pointed in a certain direction: "There! The density of laws there is only one-thousandth of the surrounding area!"

The three rushed towards that spot. Sure enough, there appeared to be a wall of fire there, but when Ice Peak's water magic touched it, the wall vanished like bubbles; it was just an illusion. Beyond the illusion was a passage. Passing through the passage, they arrived at the end of the maze.

Similarly, three stone platforms appeared. The first was an ice-blue crystal core, the second a data chip, and the third a Zerg tentacle. The Ice Peak obtained the 'Ice Soul Source Core,' which can enhance the essence of the Law of Water; the Machine Race obtained the 'Law Algorithm Chip,' which can greatly enhance the ability to analyze laws; and the Zerg obtained the 'Void Tentacle,' which allows the Queen to master the ability to tear space.

As Bingfeng grasped the Ice Soul Source Core, he immediately felt that his understanding of the Law of Water had reached a whole new level. If before he was "using" the Law of Water, now he felt that he was beginning to "understand" a deeper essence of the Law of Water.

He looked at the Zerg Queen and noticed that after she fused with the Void Tentacles, the space around her began to fluctuate unstablely. This Queen was already skilled in the laws of space, and now she had taken it a step further.

Each of the three parties gained something, but their wariness of each other deepened.