Chapter 522: Critical Reaction

At the end of the seventh month,

Aiden rose slowly inside the sealed chamber. His bones cracked like thunder.

He looked inward once more to check his progress.

Law Understanding: 83%.

Vessel Level: 80%.

He had made it, but not completely.

"It stopped at 80%."

Aiden stared at the remaining 20% of empty space inside his Vessel, his expression dark.

He was still 5% short of his original goal of 85%.

And only one month remained before the Heavenly Demons launched their full counterattack.

In the final month, he needed to fill the remaining 20% of his Vessel.

It was a gap that seemed almost impossible to cross.

Crack.

The stone door of the sealed chamber slowly opened.

Leon, dressed in white, was standing quietly outside. No one knew how long he had been waiting there.

A strange light shone in his eyes—the light of calculation and prediction.

"Aiden, the system inside your body has reached its limit."

Leon got straight to the point. His voice was calm, almost cold.

Aiden raised an eyebrow slightly. "What do you mean?"

Leon lifted a hand and tapped the air. A complex formula made of Law energy appeared between them.

"The final month is the fourth stage: the Critical Reaction phase."

"You need to forcefully absorb the last 20% of Law energy within thirty days."

"That means the 10,000x Critical Hit System will enter an extreme overload state it has never experienced before."

"Its absorption speed will rise several times over—possibly even ten times faster."

Aiden’s double-pupiled eyes narrowed.

"You mean the system will turn against me?"

Leon shook his head. The strange light in his eyes grew stronger.

"No. It will be worse than that."

"Before your Vessel reaches 100%, the 10,000x Critical Hit System living inside your body..."

"Will collapse early because it cannot handle such extreme overload."

"And when it collapses, it will take your soul down with it."

...

"Are you afraid of dying?"

Leon’s voice was soft, but it struck through the silence of the sealed chamber like a heavy hammer.

Aiden did not open his eyes. He only slowly breathed out.

"I am. But I am more afraid of being powerless."

He spoke silently in his heart. At that moment, the wheel of All Things Return to Their Source in his mind burst out with a blinding nine-colored light.

The eighth month had begun.

The final sprint, known as the Critical Reaction, began with a roar.

This was the forbidden stage that Yves, an ancestor of the Great Shaw Empire, had marked in red ink in his notes.

The once-silent 10,000x Critical Hit System now became a beast completely out of control.

Its normal multiplier was forcefully boosted by an impossible-to-measure "overdrive factor."

It was a wild pulling force beyond what the laws of Earth could endure.

The final 20% of Law energy had to be forced into Aiden’s body within only thirty days.

The price would be devastating.

The speed at which it absorbed Law essence broke past the safe limit in an instant. Aiden felt as if thousands of suns were exploding inside his mind at the same time.

His spiritual sea was being torn apart from within. Even the Law system he had worked so hard to build inside his body was starting to collapse in some areas.

The first three days.

The absorption speed rose to three times its normal rate.

Inside Aiden’s "Law Garden," the empty space began to twist in strange, uneven shapes.

Crack.

A sharp sound rang out.

Five bottomless black cracks appeared along the edge of the Law Garden.

They were signs that the Laws were beginning to collapse.

Aiden’s face remained calm, but lightning and fire twisted together in his double-pupiled eyes.

"Law of Space, bind!"

Aiden shouted and formed a series of hand signs at lightning speed.

The empty space around him shook. Countless silver threads of space appeared from nowhere, turning into tiny sealing chains that locked tightly around the edges of the five cracks.

He was using the Law of Space to forcefully stitch together a collapsing world of Laws.

It was both incredible control and a desperate, dangerous solution.

On the seventh day,

his Vessel level broke through 90% with a deafening roar.

Boom!

The absorption speed surged again, rising to a terrifying five times its normal rate.

The violent stream of Law energy was no longer gentle. It became golden lava, raging through Aiden’s veins and bones.

Bright golden cracks began to appear across his skin.

They were signs that the power of the Laws was overflowing, while his body could no longer contain it.

Pain crashed over him like a tide. Every bone and every drop of blood felt as if it were being burned again and again in divine fire.

But in the middle of that unbearable pain, Aiden’s mind became clearer than ever.

The Laws collided at extreme speed, creating huge scenes in his mind, like the universe being born for the first time.

Buzz!

In that instant, his understanding of the Laws jumped from 83% to 85%.

Two new Thrones of Law began to form deep within his soul.

On the fourteenth day,

his Vessel level broke through 95%.

But at that moment, the overloaded 10,000x Critical Hit System finally fell into complete chaos and instability.

"Warning! An unknown overflow has occurred in the system’s critical-hit multiplier!"

The cold alert screamed in Aiden’s mind.

The Law of Space inside his body began to amplify at random and beyond his control.

One unconscious use of Spatial Locking went out of control under the combined effects of the 10,000x Critical Hit System and the overdrive factor.

Boom!

Outside Celestial Imperial City, all air within a three-kilometer area was instantly pulled away, turning the area into a dead zone of absolute vacuum.

The entire Golden Great Wall shook violently. Countless soldiers stared at the collapsed space with pale faces and terrified eyes.

At that moment, Aiden’s body was almost like a golden porcelain statue, ready to shatter into pieces at any second.

Then, at the most critical moment, a soft but steady network of Law energy lit up deep inside the Golden Great Wall.

It was Zoey.

She knew that Aiden had reached the most dangerous point between life and death.

Buzz!

Through the Great Wall’s network of Laws, Zoey forced a vast power of stability across space and continuously poured it into Aiden’s sealed chamber.

This rescue came at the cost of burning her own source energy.

Zoey had already recovered a great deal while asleep, but her face immediately turned white as paper.

Her recovery progress dropped by 15% in an instant.

"Hold on, Aiden..."

Her weak but determined whisper seemed to drift through the empty space.

On the night of the fourteenth day, wind and snow howled outside.

A small figure stood quietly in the storm outside the sealed chamber.

Cheryl.

She could not enter the sealed chamber. She knew her limited strength would only get in Aiden’s way.

But she could feel the destructive heat coming from behind the stone door.

It was the heat of Aiden’s inner Law system, close to burning itself apart.

Cheryl took a deep breath and tightly held the freezing crystal pendant against her chest.

It held the purest source of frost from the Primordial Miko legacy.

"Resonance..."

She closed her eyes. The power of the Battle Miko inside her flowed into the pendant without restraint.

The crystal pendant released a bright blue light. It turned into streams of cold Law energy that passed through the heavy stone door.

A silent field of extreme cold formed around Aiden’s body.

She did not go inside.

She simply used everything she could to bring a small trace of coolness to the man inside, who was almost burning himself away.

Inside the sealed chamber, ice and fire mixed together.

Under the layer of frost, the golden cracks gave off a strange but beautiful light.

Frost covered Aiden’s eyelashes. The Law system inside his body was still on the edge of collapse.

But that cold feeling protected the last clear part of his mind.

Inside his thoughts, the Vessel level continued to rise.

96%...

97%...

98%...

Slowly, but without stopping, it moved toward 100%—the final limit.

Inside and outside the sealed chamber, only the violent hum of the Laws remained, along with that quiet, gentle cold that continued to protect him.

...

Day Twenty-One.

Inside the sealed chamber, the temperature had fallen to the edge of absolute zero.

The freezing crystal pendant Cheryl had formed from her own source power had created dark-blue ice flowers across the heavy stone door. They looked beautiful, cold, and almost unnatural.

Beneath those ice flowers, Aiden sat cross-legged. Golden Law patterns flowed wildly across his nearly transparent skin like molten lava.

Deep in his mind, the Vessel level—the number that represented the final limit—was making its last jump.

[99%...]

[99.9%...]

[100%!]

Boom!

There was no earth-shaking explosion. No roar of out-of-control Laws.

The instant the number passed 100%, the terrifying force that had been greedily absorbing Earth’s Laws suddenly stopped.

It did not slow down.

It did not pause.

It stopped completely and instantly, without leaving even the smallest trace behind.

For twenty-one days, a violent storm of Law energy had raged above Celestial Imperial City.

In that single moment, it was as if an invisible god had forced the storm to stop.

Silence.

A deep, absolute silence. So quiet that even a falling needle could be heard.

Aiden slowly opened his eyes.

Lightning and fire flashed within his double pupils. His gaze was as deep as if it held an entire sky of stars.

"Buzz—"

Deep within his soul, the massive Vessel that held the essence of countless Laws suddenly began to spin on its own.

It spun at incredible speed, leaving countless trails of nine-colored light across Aiden’s sea of consciousness.

Click.

A clear locking sound echoed from the deepest part of Aiden’s soul.

At that moment, the darkest and most important part of the system’s core structure was forced open by an invisible key.

This was the final module created by Yves, a great ancestor of the Great Shaw Empire. He spent 32 years of his life building it and completed it in his final moments:

[All Things Return to Their Source]

A small light rose from the deepest part of the Vessel.