Chapter 77 – The Three Seconds of Truth
Lakan stood at the forest's exit, his THE ONE form deactivated for the moment to lure the rats from their holes. Behind him, Dugu Bo stood in the shadows, his green eyes narrowed.
"They are here, Sovereign," Dugu Bo hissed. "The Sword, the Bone, and the Lightning. The Five Shields have sent their very foundation to die today."
From the canopy and the earth itself, three figures materialized, forming a triangle around Lakan.
Sword Douluo, Chen Xin (Rank 97): His Seven-Kill Sword hummed with a cold, lonely killing intent.
Bone Douluo, Gu Rong (Rank 95): The space around him rippled as his skeletal dragon shadows merged with the forest floor.
Yu Yuanzhen (Rank 96): The Patriarch of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan, his body wreathed in crackling, draconic lightning.
"Lakan Diwa," Chen Xin spoke, his voice like steel grinding on stone. "You are a variable that the continent can no longer afford. For the balance of the Three Sects, your light ends here."
Lakan didn't reach for Araw or Buan. He let out a soft, melodic chuckle that made the birds in the trees—already bowing toward him—shiver. "Balance? You three are the anchors of a sinking ship, trying to hold back the tide with toothpicks."
"Seven-Kill Domain!" Chen Xin roared.
"Space-Bone Domain!" Gu Rong echoed.
"Lightning Hell!" Yu Yuanzhen thundered.
The three Titled Douluos unleashed their ultimate suppression. The forest was instantly transformed into a zone of absolute lethality—sword qi, spatial rifts, and lightning converged on Lakan's position.
Lakan's Eyes of the Origin God snapped open. The Radiant Silver Suns in his pupils hummed. To the Douluos, they were inside their domains; to Lakan, he was looking at a poorly written script. He saw the Structural Anchors—the specific points where their soul power knotted together to maintain the reality of the domains.
"Gunting (The Scissor)," Lakan whispered.
He didn't release a skill. He simply walked. As he stepped, his Fist Intent vibrated at the exact frequency of their Anchors. Every time his foot touched the ground, a domain node shattered. To the observers, it looked like the Sword Qi was avoiding him and the Lightning was bowing out of his way. He wasn't breaking the domains; he was dissecting the logic that allowed them to exist.
"Enough games," Lakan calmly said.
He triggered THE ONE form. His hair shifted into that liquid prismatic gradient, and the double-pupils ignited. But he didn't stop there.
"Phoenix Sovereign Avatar!"
Behind Lakan, a thirty-meter manifestation of absolute authority erupted. It was a translucent giant clad in Baybayin-scripted armor, its presence so heavy that the surrounding mountains groaned.
But then, Lakan activated the final piece of his Seven Tone Chaos Nirvana technique: "Ultimate Resonance: One Universal Wing."
Twelve colossal wings erupted from the Avatar's back—each pair representing a different absorbed Phoenix bloodline. Wings of Ice, Fire, Radiant Light, Darkness, Space, and Time fanned out, leaking Chaos Qi.
The environment began to rewrite itself. The forest floor turned to crystalline jade; the rain began to fall upward, frozen in time; and the very air became a Vibrational Singularity.
Yu Yuanzhen, driven by draconic instinct, launched himself at Lakan. "Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon: Ninth Spirit Skill!"
A massive, world-ending dragon claw made of blue lightning descended. Lakan didn't dodge. He reached up with his bare hand, his Bloodline Chaos Core spinning at a trillion revolutions per second.
"Simulation: Blue Lightning," Lakan stated.
The Chaos Qi within him instantly reconfigured. He didn't just copy the lightning; he perfected it. His hand turned into a translucent, silver-blue draconic claw that pulsed with the "Original" lightning of the Phoenix God's era.
CRACK!
Lakan caught the Ninth Spirit Skill with his palm. The impact didn't move him an inch. Instead, he applied Panununtukan (Vibrational Pulse).
"Your lightning is noisy, Patriarch," Lakan said, his voice carrying that confident narcissistic weight. "It's cluttered with impurities. Let me show you what the Idea of Lightning actually feels like."
The vibration traveled up Yu Yuanzhen's arm. The Patriarch screamed as his Martial Soul didn't just break—it regressed. Under the pressure of the Sovereign's Truth, the mighty Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon shrunk, its scales dissolving until it looked like a flickering, terrified hatchling within Yuanzhen's soul sea.
Lakan looked at his glowing hand, a look of bored fascination on his face. "It's a strange feeling, 'owning' your heritage. It feels like... reading a book I wrote in a past life and correcting your spelling mistakes."
With a single flap of the One Universal Wing, the three Titled Douluos were blasted back, their domains shattered like glass. Chen Xin's Seven-Kill Sword was chipped; Gu Rong's bones were brittle; and Yu Yuanzhen lay gasping, his soul numb from the simulation.
Lakan stood over them, the Sovereign Avatar looming like a god of judgment. He used Future Peeking to see their next moves, but he saw nothing but fear.
"I could erase you," Lakan said, his double-pupils locking onto them. "But the Old Era needs witnesses. Go back to Ning Fengzhi. Go back to your sects."
He leaned down, the ᜊ (Ba) on his forehead glowing. "Tell them the Five Shields are no longer protecting anything. They are just walls waiting to be parted. The era of Shields is over. The era of the Sword—my sword—has begun."
He turned his back on them, an ultimate act of disrespect. "And tell the Sea God Island... if they wants to send a child to do a God's work, I'll be waiting at the shoreline."
Dugu Bo stepped out, looking at the three broken pillars of the continent. "Shall I finish them, Sovereign?"
"No," Lakan said, his hair shifting back to its natural state as he exited the form. "A dead man can't spread a legend. Let them tell the world that they fought a God for three seconds... and the God was bored."