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"With a 'ch' sound.

The fuse of the explosive was lit without hesitation by the man.

In the dimly lit room, a dazzling burst of light and fire erupted.

He was like a moth, leaping up from the chair, crossing the long table, and pouncing towards Gu Shen. At this moment, the stone carving of an evil spirit, which was also engraved with a demonic gaze, resonated with a dream-inducing spiritual ripple.

This was a crudely executed assassination plot.

But it was effective.

Transcendents with spiritual abilities could resist the gaze of the stone carving, but they couldn't stop the explosion of the explosive.

If it were an attacker or a naturalist, it might be possible to prevent the detonation of the explosive.

But... the gaze of the stone carving would greatly reduce their efficiency.

Gu Shen looked at the man who was flying towards him, occupying his entire field of vision.

A shadow loomed over him.

But his thoughts were incredibly calm.

At this moment, the world in his eyes seemed to freeze in time. Everything around him became extremely slow, every object... the papers swirling in the room, the tilting and shaking cabinets, the rolling pens, all froze in this frame, forming a splattered painting.

In Gu Shen's field of vision.

The protagonist of this frozen painting was the man who ignited the explosive and pounced towards him.

And in the bird's-eye view of the entire room.

The protagonist of the painting was the young man who had already grabbed a ruler and had flames flickering on his forehead.

"1.5 seconds..."

Gu Shen's attention was unprecedentedly focused. His entire line of sight was concentrated on the fuse around the man's waist. At this moment, his spirit seemed to condense into a point.

He recognized the explosive the man was carrying.

It was a high explosive made primarily from trinitrotoluene, portable and stable. Once ignited by a blasting cap, its power was enough to level an entire building. This crude and ancient method of making explosives had been phased out by the times, but its power was still formidable, although it had a certain delay in detonation.

From ignition to detonation, the explosive would take about 1.5 seconds.

This... was the delay time.

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

In the instant when the 1.5-second countdown began, the stone carving of the evil spirit on the table opened its fangs.

Then, a spiritual fluctuation faster than the burning fuse instantly spread, enveloping Gu Shen. The papers, cabinets, pens, and curtains flying to the edge of his peripheral vision were all replaced by chaotic black code.

He was pulled into the dream of the stone carving.

For Gu Shen, this was not a bad thing.

The flow of time in the dream of the seal was different from the real world... perhaps only a few seconds longer, but these few seconds were often enough to save his life.

Gu Shen stood in the familiar dark dream.

His thoughts spread rapidly.

Although this assassination plot by the Longevity Foundation was crude, it was actually very effective. The stone carving's gaze combined with the high explosive, this simple and brutal method could almost eliminate any unprepared novice transcendent.

The only loophole was that they underestimated their own ability to interpret dreams...

The Ghost Cage, which was once an S-level seal, had a built-in dream that was several levels stronger than the stone carving's gaze.

It only took him one minute to interpret the dream.

The appearance of this dream... actually gave Gu Shen more time to think calmly. What he truly found difficult was the high explosive with the ignited blasting cap.

If it were a mental transcendent like Senior Luo, she would probably directly "reverse the rules" without any reason.

Ignition would turn into extinguishment, and the explosive would not explode at all.

Even... even if the explosive truly detonated, Senior Luo had the ability to "retrieve" it with her own hands.

But Gu Shen couldn't use the "Ruler of Truth" to imitate a similar scene... because he currently couldn't understand the principle behind this method. The Ruler of Truth could condense spiritual power, but it couldn't directly act on causality.

If he used the Ruler of Truth to try to achieve a miracle like reassembling a broken mirror, he would need to condense spiritual power and stick the shattered mirror fragments back into the frame one by one, each time being a tedious and independent process.

Similarly.

It was impossible to directly change the established fact that the explosive had already been detonated using the Ruler of Truth.

"If I let it detonate, the entire building will be blown up."

Gu Shen took a deep breath.

"Calm down... calm down... there must be a solution..."

Could his transcendent ability save the day... the flames... creation... barrier...

"I've got it!"

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

He raised his arm and tore it fiercely.

The pitch-black nightmare was instantly torn apart, and the evil spirit in the dream sky let out a miserable howl.

The bright flames were like a long spear, piercing through the evil spirit in an instant as Gu Shen raised his hand.

In just a moment, the dream of the stone carving's gaze shattered!Gu Shen opened his eyes. In reality, less than a second had passed from the moment he entered the nightmare to the moment he finished interpreting it.

The dark shadow that had leapt towards him from the table was about to crash into him. They were less than a meter apart. He saw the splattering of intense flames and the eyes of the foundation member, which were even more fiery.

"Phew..."

In the silent 0.5 seconds, Gu Shen could hear the sound of his own long sigh.

The surface of the silver ruler began to light up, its dim scales illuminating one by one.

A burst of snow-white light flared up, enveloping him.

In the condensed scroll, the young man sitting in the chair seemed like a king who ruled the world.

Gu Shen calmly stared at the man rushing towards him.

He heard his own voice in his heart.

"Ants..."

The ruler was raised.

Where it pointed.

A surge of fire suddenly exploded, an explosion powerful enough to flatten an entire building, but it stopped half a meter in front of Gu Shen. The splattering flames seemed to hit an invisible wall.

Not just one wall.

Front, back, left, right, up, down.

A large amount of trinitrotoluene in the firecracker detonated completely under the intense impact, but these high explosives were like tides imprisoned in a cage. The suppressed majestic flames hit the cage wall, like waves hitting a cliff, they could only retreat. The six-sided barrier stirred up thousands of strands of pale light, and the dim, narrow room seemed to have encountered a star explosion, dazzling like daylight in an instant.

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

After using the Ruler of Truth, he seemed to have truly become a deity, coldly and detachedly overlooking everything.

His expression was calm, as if he was appreciating a painting.

The paper swept up by the wind gently returned to its place, the tilting cabinet stopped shaking, the recording pen fell back onto the table, the curtains stopped fluttering, everything in the room was quiet.

Except for that small cage of fire.

The intense explosion didn't leak out of the barrier at all, and there was no worry that anyone outside would hear it.

Blood and bones were erased at the moment the explosion began. The crimson color only appeared for a moment, then was covered by paleness. The blood was burned by the high temperature, and the bones were ground into ash.

It was like a silent play.

A moth holding a flame, rushing towards the sun.

So, all that was left was... a brief brilliance.

The light enveloped him.

Like a large cocoon.