Chapter 29: Dimensional Fracture… Confrontation with the Sword Ancestor
A night unlike any Tian Long had ever known descended upon the city.
The sky was torn apart by black lightning streaking through a deep violet firmament, while crushing spiritual pressure thickened the air until it felt like molten lead. Above the clouds, the Immortal Ancestor sat cross-legged upon a condensed mass of spiritual energy.
He required no physical sword.
Every strand of his white beard alone was enough to cleave a mountain in half.
To him, the world was nothing but flowing currents of Intent, and Tian Long City appeared as a filthy oil stain—something that needed to be wiped clean from the canvas of existence.
"Young one," the Ancestor's voice rang out—though it was not sound, but a vibration that shook the souls of everyone within the city.
"You dared to reduce the Dao of Heaven into rigid numbers and symbols. You slaughtered my disciple and destroyed my sect's vessel. Today… I shall redefine nothingness for you."
Below him, Zhou Fan stood at the center of the Grand Computational Array he had constructed.
He did not tremble.
His golden eye analyzed the Ancestor's spiritual signature with cold precision.
Entity Analysis: Soul Transformation Realm.
Spiritual Density: 4,500 cubic units.
Special Ability: Manipulation of fundamental particles through Intent.
Optimal Solution: Sever consciousness from matter.
"Ancestor," Zhou Fan called out, his voice calm to the point of terror,
"You speak of the Dao of Heaven as if it were poetry or art. But Heaven does not care about emotions. Heaven is a balanced equation—and you, with your excessive energy mass, have become an overload in this region of the continent."
"Your presence here has caused a 12% imbalance in the local spiritual ecosystem. Therefore, as this system's computational consultant, I will now proceed to correct your weight."
"Arrogant brat!" the Ancestor roared.
He raised a finger and pointed toward the city.
"Soul Transformation Art—Heavenly Annihilation Finger!"
Space itself detonated.
From the heavens descended a colossal finger of pure white energy, over a kilometer in length. The attack carried the absolute Intent of annihilation—an assault that could not be blocked by conventional defenses, as it targeted the very concept of existence.
Yet Zhou Fan did not move.
He opened the Lost Ledger of Calculations, and millions of black symbols erupted forth, forming a transparent cube around the city.
"Second Volume: Higher-Dimensional Geometry—Technique (Non-Euclidean Spatial Displacement)!"
When the Annihilation Finger collided with the cube, something occurred that shattered the minds of all who witnessed it.
The finger did not explode.
Nor was it stopped.
Instead… it bent inward, folding into itself.
Zhou Fan had altered the spatial topology inside the array, transforming it into a closed mathematical construct—a Klein Bottle.
The attack meant to obliterate Tian Long instead emerged from the skies of the Northern Continent, crashing directly into the Ancestor's homeland mountains.
"What?!" the Ancestor shouted in shock.
"You redirected my attack across thousands of miles in an instant?!"
"I didn't redirect it," Zhou Fan replied as he rose into the air, symbols blazing behind him like mechanical wings.
"I merely made the output equal the input. To the array, my city does not exist here—it resides within an imaginary dimension, untouchable as long as you obey three-dimensional laws."
Zhou Fan's hand blurred as he began writing formulas directly into the air.
"Now… my turn to calculate.
Chaos Derivation: Convert Matter into Probability!"
Suddenly, the Ancestor felt his body becoming transparent.
It wasn't physical pain—but the horrifying sensation that his particles were losing cohesion. Zhou Fan was decrypting the spiritual linkage that bound the Ancestor's Soul Transformation body together.
"You… you're dismantling my soul?!" the Ancestor screamed, unleashing his full power and turning the sky into a sea of raging spiritual flames in a desperate attempt to stabilize himself.
"The soul is merely a complex code," Zhou Fan said coldly.
"And I've identified the vulnerability in your system. You rely on Sword Intent for structural coherence. What happens if I set the value of 'sword' in your consciousness to zero?"
Using the Second Volume, Zhou Fan released a wave of dark data.
It crashed directly into the Ancestor's mind.
In the next instant—
the Ancestor forgot how to wield a sword.
He forgot the meaning of combat itself.
Zhou Fan had temporarily erased all combat-related concepts from the Ancestor's procedural memory.
The Ancestor fell from his cloud, flailing in midair like a bird with shattered wings. His immense power still existed—but he no longer knew how to use it.
He was like a colossal jet engine that had lost its control system.
"This is the difference between us, Ancestor," Zhou Fan said as he descended beside him in the air, gripping the Ancestor's head with a hand radiating black light.
"You study what power does. I study how and why power exists in the first place."
"You are no longer an Immortal Ancestor…
You are merely an unstable mass of energy I'll be using to charge my array for the next century."
With a final, desperate scream, the Ancestor attempted self-detonation, trying to take the entire continent with him.
Zhou Fan smiled faintly.
"Even an explosion is just a computational process…
and I've already set the outcome to stillness."
He absorbed the Ancestor's energy completely into the Lost Ledger.
The ledger shook violently as a brand-new page appeared—glowing in royal violet:
[Soul Transformation Entity absorbed…
Extracting: Sovereign Processing Core…
Second Volume Completion: 75%]
The Ancestor's empty robe fell from the sky.
Above it all, Zhou Fan stood suspended in the heavens, surrounded by an aura that made even planets seem insignificant.
He glanced down at Ling'er and Zhang Song, then lifted his gaze toward the stars.
"Tian Long is no longer sufficient. This world requires a full-system reprogramming.
The great sects of the Four Continents… prepare yourselves."
"The next calculation won't be for a city—
but for an entire planet."