Chapter 945 — The Rift in Time and Space

As a Legendary powerhouse, even if he was no mage and could not work their flight spells, he could still, to some degree, briefly suspend himself in the air and slow his descent. And the sea below Metzen was not empty—strange chunks like wreckage drifted nearby, enough to serve as stepping stones on the way down. Gaoyang used them as his path, controlling his direction and speed as he sprang from one piece of wreckage to the next, and in moments he had reached the sea.

He stepped onto the motionless ocean, and at once a wondrous sensation rose underfoot—the surface, which looked as solid as ground, was not as "hard" as he had imagined, yet neither was it liquid as normal seawater should be. It seemed to hold a peculiar "elasticity" underfoot. Gaoyang felt himself sink slightly, but when he planted his feet with force, the sinking sensation vanished.

He felt as steady as though he were standing on solid ground.

"Strange..." Gaoyang murmured to himself. "There really was a moment of sinking, a feeling of elasticity just now..."

There was no one around to answer his murmur.

Gaoyang shook his head, drew another deep breath, and raised his eyes to the distance.

In the vortex-shaped sea, that towering steel construct stood at the center of his vision. Seen from afar it resembled a strangely shaped mountain, bearing obvious marks of artificial construction: its surface was seamless armor plating, and outside the armor were many protruding structures of unknown purpose. When he had looked at this scene from midair earlier, Gaoyang had felt nothing in particular, but now, viewing it from the sea, he realized just how immense the thing was—larger than any ship the Cecil Empire had ever built, taller than any tower humanity had ever raised. Only part of its structure seemed to rise above the sea, and yet even that exposed portion alone was enough to strike one dumb with awe.

He could not help but look toward those vast shapes emerging on the sea and in the air, near and far—toward those "attackers" surrounding them on every side.

Their forms were bizarre beyond measure—grotesque would not even be an exaggeration. Some looked like hideous sea monsters with seven or eight heads; some like giant beasts carved from rock and ice; some like nothing but a searing mass of flame or a cloud of gas whose shape defied description. A little farther from the "battlefield," Gaoyang even glimpsed a faint humanoid outline—it looked like a giant wielding a longsword, clad in battle robes woven of starlight and flowing fire, striding across the waves, blood-red flames blazing along the blade...

Gaoyang had already begun to move, racing across the motionless sea toward that "battlefield ruin" at the vortex's center. A Legendary knight's charge approached the speed of sound; he skimmed like a phantom among those vast shapes and drifting wreckage, all the while keeping his eyes on every detail of this strange "battlefield."

Though the "attackers" besieging the great vortex were grotesque in appearance, every one of them was exceptionally huge. In Gaoyang's memory, only the true forms of the Great Stag Amon or the upper narrator Narytir-Duvalt bore any resemblance to such scale—and once that association surfaced, he could no longer suppress the direction his thoughts were taking—

Who were these colossal "attackers"? Why had they gathered here? Were they attacking that steel construct at the vortex's center? This place looked like a battlefield—but a battlefield from when? Everything here was frozen... How long had it been frozen, and who had frozen it?

Gaoyang drew closer to the vortex's center, where the sea surface now showed a distinct tilt and was strewn with twisted, solidified wreckage and illusory, motionless flames. He had to slow down to find a route forward, and as he did, he raised his eyes to the sky, to those shapes flying above the vortex with wings that blotted out the sun.

Without question, those were dragons—hundreds upon hundreds of them.

They wheeled and circled around the steel construct at the vortex's center, using their mighty breath and all manner of spells and weapons to fight off the assaults of those colossal creatures surrounding them. Yet these dragons clearly held no advantage: the enemy had broken through their lines, and the steel construct they defended with their lives had already suffered severe damage. This was a battle doomed to be lost—though it was frozen here and Gaoyang could see only this single moment in the midst of the standoff, he could already judge from the scene before him how the battle must ultimately end.

...But the crucial question was: was this battle already over? Had the victor already been decided?

Gaosong came to a halt—ahead, enormous obstacles and motionless flames were everywhere, making it very hard to find a way forward. He was no longer in a hurry to press on; instead, he looked around at this frozen battlefield and began to think.

If some force were to intervene and break the stasis on this battlefield, would everything here immediately start moving again? Would this war—no one knew from what era—instantly resume and be fought to a conclusion? Or else... would everything here simply dissipate into smoke and scatter, becoming a wisp of history's mist, forgotten by all...

Gaoheng was certain that everything he saw here was "solid"—he even suspected that this place was merely a "silhouette" left behind by some kind of stagnant space-time, that the timeline to which this war belonged had in fact long since ended, and yet a certain scene on the battlefield had been preserved by the anomalous space-time structure here. What he was witnessing was not the real battlefield, but only an image retained in space and time.

Then... which of these conjectures was the true one?