Swish.

The man ignited the explosives without hesitation.

A blinding flash of fire burst out in the dim room.

He was like a moth as he stepped on the chair, jumped over the long table, and pounced at Gu Shen. At this moment, the Solemn Stone Sculpture’s evil ghost released mental ripples that lulled people into dreams.

It was a crude trap.

But it was effective.

A mental-type transcendent could resist the Solemn Stone Sculpture, but they couldn’t stop the explosives from exploding.

An assault-type and nature-type transcendent might be able to prevent the detonation.

But the Solemn Stone Sculpture would significantly reduce their efficiency.

Gu Shen looked at the man jumping toward him, occupying his entire field of vision.

A shadow pressed down on him.

But his thoughts were extremely calm.

At this moment, time seemed to freeze in his eyes, and everything around him became extremely slow. Every item—the papers rustled by the wind in the room, the tilting and wobbling storage cabinets, the pens rolling and flying in the air—was stopped in this frame, frozen into a painting.

In Gu Shen’s vision, the main character of this frozen painting was the fanatical believer lunging at him with ignited explosives.

In a vision overlooking the entire room, the main character of the painting was the young man gripping a ruler with a blazing fire appearing between his eyebrows.

One-point-five seconds. Gu Shen was unprecedentedly focused, his eyes concentrated on the fuse at the enemy’s waist. At this moment, his mind seemed to have converged into a single point.

He recognized the explosives the man was carrying.

This high-yield explosive was made primarily with trinitrotoluene (TNT). It was portable, easy to carry, and stable. Once ignited with a detonator, the explosive power was enough to flatten the entire building. Although this crude and outdated method of making explosives had been eliminated by the times, it was still powerful. However, the flaw was the slight delay in detonation.

It required approximately 1.5 seconds for the explosives to ignite and detonate.

This… was the delay.

And it was the time Gu Shen had left in the real world.

The moment the 1.5-second countdown began, the evil ghost stone sculpture on the table bared its fangs.

Instantly, a mental wave faster than the burning fuse spread out and enveloped Gu Shen. The paper, the cabinets, the pens, and even the curtains at the end of his peripheral vision were all replaced by black garbled characters.

He was dragged into the dream of the Solemn Stone Sculpture.

To Gu Shen, this wasn’t a bad thing.

The flow of time in the dream of the sealed object differed from the real world… Perhaps time could only extend by a few seconds, but these few seconds could often be life-saving.

Gu Shen stood in the familiar darkness of a dream.

His thoughts rapidly spread.

Although the Eternal Foundation’s ambush was crude, it was highly effective. With the Solemn Stone Sculpture and explosives, this simple and crude method could easily eliminate almost any unprepared novice transcendent.

The only flaw in their plan was that they had underestimated his Dream Decipher ability.

He had once dealt with the Cage of Ghosts, a former Class S sealed object with a dream several levels stronger than the Solemn Stone Sculpture’s.

It had only taken him one minute to complete the Dream Decipher.

The dream, rather than a threat, provided Gu Shen with precious time to think calmly. What he really felt was troublesome was the ignited explosives with a delayed fuse.

If it were a mental-type transcendent at Senior Sister Luo’s level facing this ambush, she would probably directly and unreasonably ‘reverse the rules’.

The ignition would become extinguished, and the explosives would not explode at all.

In fact, even if the explosives really detonated, Senior Sister Luo had the ability to ‘revoke’ them personally.

But Gu Shen couldn’t use the Ruler of Truth to mimic such a feat because he still couldn’t understand the principles behind it. The Ruler of Truth could condense mental power, but it couldn’t directly affect causality.

If he wanted to achieve a miracle like restoring a broken mirror with the Ruler of Truth, he needed to concentrate his mental power and reassemble the broken mirror fragments back into the frame. Each piece would have to be meticulously glued back, a cumbersome and complex process.

Similarly, using the Ruler of Truth to change the established fact that the explosives had been ignited was impossible for him.

If I let it detonate, the entire building will be blown apart. Gu Shen took a deep breath. Calm down… Calm down… There must be a solution…

Can my transcendental ability save the situation…? Blazing Fire… creation… barrier…

Got it!

At the critical moment, a ray of inspiration appeared in Gu Shen’s mind, and his eyes lit up.

He raised his arm and tore fiercely.

The dark nightmare was instantly torn apart, and the ferocious evil ghost in the sky let out a miserable wail.

As Gu Shen raised his hand, the Blazing Fire was like a long lance piercing through the evil ghost.

It only took a moment for the Solemn Stone Sculpture Dream to shatter!

Gu Shen opened his eyes. In reality, it had only taken less than a second for him to enter the nightmare and complete the Dream Decipher.

The black shadow leaping over the table was about to hit him. The two of them were less than a meter apart. He saw the burning flame and fierce eyes of the Foundation member that were even brighter than the flame.

“Phew…”

In the 0.5 seconds of silence, Gu Shen heard himself exhale a long breath.

The dim scales on the surface of the silver ruler lit up bit by bit.

A burst of dazzling light ignited and enveloped him.

In the frozen painting, the young man sitting on a chair seemed to be the king who ruled the rules of the world.

Gu Shen gazed calmly at the man pouncing toward him.

He heard his own voice in his mind. Insignificant ant…

The ruler raised.

The ruler pointed.

A surging burst of flames suddenly exploded. An explosion capable of razing the entire building to the ground stopped half a meter in front of Gu Shen, and the flames seemed to splash against an invisible wall.

It wasn’t just one side.

Front, back, left, right, above, below.

The large amount of trinitrotoluene in the detonator detonated violently upon impact, but these explosives were like a tide imprisoned in a cage, suppressed to the extreme. The boundless tongues of flames clashed against the walls of the cage like waves hitting a ten-thousand-foot-high cliff, but they could only recede. The six-sided barrier surged with countless pale lights, and the dim and narrow room seemed to have encountered a star explosion. For a moment, it was as dazzling as a bright day.

Holding the silver ruler, Gu Shen watched this scene calmly.

After using the Ruler of Truth, he seemed to have truly become a god, calmly overlooking everything with detachment.

His expression was serene, as though he were appreciating a painting.

The paper swept up by the wind fluttered back into place, the tilting cabinets stopped their wobbling, the pens returned to the table, and the curtains ceased their swaying. Everything in the room returned to tranquil stillness.

Only the small Blazing Fire cage remained.

The intense explosion couldn’t breach the barrier in the slightest, let alone there being any worry that someone outside would hear.

Blood and bones were obliterated the moment the explosion began. The crimson color only appeared for a fleeting moment before it was replaced by pale hues. Blood was incinerated by the scorching heat of thousands of degrees, and bones were reduced to ashes.

It was like a pantomime.

A moth embraced the Blazing Fire and rushed toward the sun.

And then, all that remained… was a fleeing flash of brilliance.

Light enveloped him.

… Like a cocoon.