RPAGF Chapter 438 The aftermath of turbulence
Chapter 438 The aftermath of turbulence
The bronze lotus flower split open its fourth petal beneath their feet, and the chaotic spacetime energy whipped up a gale that tore open Jiang Ye's sleeve.
Ye Shuli pulled Jiang Ye behind her back, and the bronze markings behind her ears suddenly burst out with a dazzling light.
"Is the light coming out now to make me a target?" Jiang Ye covered his bleeding arm, a faint spiritual energy shield glowing at his fingertips.
Before he finished speaking, the reverse-rotating stardust suddenly coalesced into a semi-transparent humanoid creature—a silver-haired boy standing barefoot in the void, his pupils the color of shattered glass.
The Time-Space Elf tilted its head to examine the light spot behind Ye Shuli's ear, then suddenly raised its hand and flicked out three crescent-shaped ripples.
Jiang Ye's shield shattered instantly, and the shockwave sent him flying three zhang away, his back slamming heavily against the bronze lotus base.
"Don't try to withstand it with your spiritual power!" Ye Shuli ran her fingertips across the burning marks behind her ear, and the memory of observing energy fluctuations in the modern laboratory suddenly became clear.
Those seemingly random attack ripples revealed light blue energy trajectories within the bronze halo—resembling the entangled quantum trajectories in a particle collision experiment.
Jiang Ye coughed up blood and propped himself up, his fierce, wolf-like eyes locking onto the Time-Space Elf: "Before each attack, its right ring finger trembles twice." Before he finished speaking, the elf simultaneously condensed hundreds of ripples in both hands, which rained down on the two of them.
Ye Shuli suddenly grabbed Jiang Ye by the back of his collar and lunged to the right front. Ten ripples swept past their heads, shaving off half a petal from the bronze lotus floating behind them.
“It’s not two tremors, it’s 2.3 seconds between each attack.” She stared at the energy afterimages remaining on the elf’s fingertips. “Just like a central processing unit (CPU) needs clock cycles to execute instructions.”
"What central processing unit?" Jiang Ye wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and the spirit sword ignited with a ghostly blue flame in his palm.
The space-time sprite seemed to be enraged, and the entire space began to twist and fold, with countless fragments of memory turning into sharp blades.
Ye Shuli suddenly ripped open her collar, revealing the pulsating bronze patterns below her collarbone: "Attack its left hand! In modern computer architecture, the left hand corresponds to the control unit, and its attack pattern is based on the von Neumann architecture!"
"I don't understand!" Jiang Ye spun around and unleashed seven sword beams, but they were swallowed up by the folded space the moment they touched the Time-Space Elf.
The elf's right ring finger trembled again. Ye Shuli suddenly poured spiritual power into the bronze pattern, and the dazzling light caused the space-time elf's movements to slow down by 0.5 seconds.
It's now!
Ye Shuli dragged Jiang Ye into the center of the bronze lotus, where golden liquid seeped from the broken petals.
The liquids, upon contact with the energy ripples of the Time-Space Spirit, suddenly emitted a high-frequency buzzing sound.
The energy flow throughout the space began to become disordered, and cracks appeared for the first time in the elven's glassy pupils.
"Bronze solution can interfere with spacetime energy!" Ye Shuli pressed her hand, covered in gold liquid, onto the lotus base, and twelve array patterns lit up simultaneously. "Jiang Ye! Use your blood to draw an isolation talisman!"
"You should have said so earlier!" The young man bit his fingertip, and the blood dragged out crooked runes on the lotus petals.
The spacetime sprite emitted a shriek like shattering glass, and the attack ripples melted as soon as they hit the barrier interwoven with gold and blood, just like butter meeting a hot knife.
Suddenly, bronze veins extended from the markings behind Ye Shuli's ears, climbing up her neck and cheeks.
She sensed a resonance between modern knowledge and mystical energy within her body, and the blue trails left by the spacetime spirit's attack gradually wove into a clear energy network in her eyes.
The moment the twelfth isolation talisman was completed, the bronze lotus suddenly bloomed with the phantom images of the twenty-four solar terms.
Ye Shuli stared at the faintly visible energy nodes beneath the elf's feet, suddenly recalling the Tesla coil experiment she had done in college—as long as a reverse pulse was injected at a key node...
The bronze lotus base suddenly trembled, and the bronze veins behind Ye Shuli's ear radiated a scalding heat.
The memory fragments suspended in the air suddenly refracted countless rays of light, illuminating the spacetime spirit within a three-zhang radius with every detail.
"Now!" Ye Shuli dug her ten fingers into the grooves of the lotus petals, and her palms, covered in golden liquid, suddenly burst forth with an electromagnetic attraction.
The scattered spacetime energy, like iron filings attracted by a magnet, formed a swirling silver-blue vortex around her.
The seventy-second ripple that the Time-Space Elf was about to unleash suddenly twisted and deformed.
Ye Shuli stared at the protrusion on the ring finger joint of the other's left hand, and suddenly remembered the control lever for adjusting the particle collider in the laboratory—she abruptly compressed the silver-blue vortex into a palm-sized ball of light and launched it toward the elf's left hand.
The moment the sphere of light collided with the ripples, it produced a crisp sound similar to shattering glass.
The fatal attack, originally intended to strike Jiang Ye, was unexpectedly reversed, exploding into a spacetime rift half a foot wide beside the two of them.
"This is... energy refraction?" Jiang Ye clutched his bleeding ribs, staring dumbfounded at the attack ripples in the air that kept deflecting.
The bronze patterns behind Ye Shuli's ears had spread to her collarbone, and modern physics formulas and bronze inscriptions appeared intertwined on her retina.
The Time-Space Elf's glassy pupils suddenly contracted, and it abruptly spread its five fingers.
The fragments of memory throughout the space poured down like a torrential rain, each fragment carrying a spatial gale powerful enough to cleave even a Spirit King.
Jiang Ye's spirit sword had half of its tip cut off, and blood dripped from his tiger's mouth onto the lotus seat.
"Hold on tight!" Ye Shuli suddenly grabbed Jiang Ye's wrist and dragged him toward the severed lotus petals.
Suddenly, a transparent barrier rose from the bronze cross-section, which was soaked in molten gold. When the rain of fragmented memories crashed against it, it produced a muffled sound like hail hitting a window.
The first sound the Time-Space Elf made was like the shrill whistling of millions of shards of glass rubbing against each other.
Suddenly, spiderweb-like patterns appeared in the void beneath its bare feet, and the entire bronze lotus began to tilt toward the crack.
Jiang Ye thrust the broken sword into the lotus base with a backhand motion, blood gushing from the hilt into the array patterns: "Just how much blood does this thing need to drink?" His pale face still held his usual mocking expression, but the veins on his arm supporting Ye Shuli's waist were bulging.
Ye Shuli suddenly pressed down on his bleeding hand: "It's not about drinking blood, it's about forming a closed circuit." She dipped her fingertips in the blood mixed with gold liquid and drew the symbols of Maxwell's equations on the inside of the barrier. "Remember the secondary resonance of a Tesla coil?"
The Time-Space Sprite's attack suddenly paused for half a second.
Ye Shuli keenly noticed the unnatural twitching of its left little finger—like a computer lags when it encounters a logical infinite loop.
The suspended energy ripples suddenly began to flow in reverse, like a storm being played in reverse.
"Three, two, one!" Ye Shuli suddenly grabbed Jiang Ye and leaped over the barrier.
Just as the Time-Space Spirit was about to unleash a new attack, it was backfired by the reversed energy, and spiderweb-like cracks suddenly appeared on the silver-haired boy's chest.
Jiang Ye's broken sword suddenly burst into a ghostly blue flame, his ultimate Soul-Burning Secret Technique.
The bronze patterns behind Ye Shuli's ears simultaneously lit up with dazzling light, and the two drew entangled light trails in the turbulent flow of spacetime, like a proton beam colliding violently in a particle collider.
"The weakness lies in the Tanzhong acupoint!" Ye Shuli suddenly shouted.
The golden-blue beam of light that she condensed at her fingertips precisely pierced the crack in the elf's chest, and Jiang Ye's broken sword, burning with blood flames, followed closely behind, stabbing into the same spot.
The Time-Space Elf emitted a static sound similar to the snowy screen of an old-fashioned television, and its glassy pupils suddenly shattered into fragments.
The entire space suddenly fell into an eerie silence.
The suspended fragments of memory turned into shimmering white dust and fell down, while the bronze lotus closed up again into a bud shape.
But the burning sensation behind Ye Shuli's ears did not subside; instead, it spread along her spine to her tailbone—those bronze patterns were devouring the remaining spacetime energy.
"Something's not right." Jiang Ye wiped the blood off his face and suddenly grabbed Ye Shuli's wrist.
He ignited a probing flame in his palm, but it abruptly extinguished upon touching the spot where the spacetime spirit had vanished. "The energy aftershocks are reassembling..."
Before he finished speaking, the bronze lotus suddenly emitted a clicking sound as gears turned.
The spacetime turbulence that should have dissipated suddenly condensed into countless crystals, each reflecting the scene of their battle—but the spacetime sprite in the image had no cracks in its chest, and its attack trajectory was completely different.
Ye Shuli suddenly felt a chill on the back of her neck.
The crystal surfaces revealed fine bronze-colored patterns, exactly like the mark behind her ear.
The instant the twelfth crystal took shape, a mechanical female voice suddenly began counting down throughout the space:
[Spacetime calibration failed, initiating the 438th backtracking attempt—]