Lin Yi continued to use Boundless Step as he traversed the Allheaven Expanse, each activation carrying him farther and farther from Cang Yutian. The movent skill did not simply increase his speed; it collapsed distance itself, turning what should have been prolonged traversal into a sequence of near-instant displacents across vast stretches of the expanse.
And yet, even as his position shifted rapidly through layer after layer of drifting islands and dense astral currents, his mind did not slow for even a single beat.
It remained active, precise, and relentlessly focused.
Every variable was being processed in parallel. Every possible scenario involving the storage space token was being broken down, examined, and recalibrated in real ti. He ran through outcos where the dinsional pull succeeded imdiately, where it t resistance, where it failed entirely. He accounted for Spirit Powe disparities, for unknown chanics tied specifically to Deity-class entities.
Nothing was assud. Nothing was left unexamined.
Each conclusion fed into the next, forming a continuously evolving frawork of probability and risk assessnt. Even as Boundless Step carried him further from imdiate danger, Lin Yi understood that distance alone did not resolve the encounter.
Lin Yi then recalled how he had used the token on the cave hunters without being certain it would work. He had used it on the eleven guild mbers without running a theoretical analysis first. He had consistently moved forward when the outco was uncertain and adjusted from the result.
"If I can get close enough," he said. "If I can bring the token within activation range of the Watcher without him ending the engagent before the pull completes..."
He was thinking out loud, using the words to impose clarity on the thoughts moving too quickly to remain abstract.
"Close enough ans getting past whatever he puts in place to stop before I reach that range," he continued, voice low but steady. "Which ans the approach can’t be straightforward. It has to account for interception, not just distance."
A brief pause, his mind already adjusting the variables.
"The entry has to rely the phasing skill I have available and it needs to be paired with a step that doesn’t signal its arrival the way Boundless Step does."
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"Because if he senses the approach even a mont too early, the window closes before it ever opens."
He then thought about the specific combination.
Void Walk. Five seconds of partial spatial phasing, physical attacks passing through him, energy attacks reduced by eighty percent. During Void Walk, he could not attack, but he could move. And movent during Void Walk did not carry the sa spatial distortion signature that movent techniques outside it carried, the phasing state affecting the technique’s environntal reaction the sa way it affected incoming attacks.
Void Walk into the approach. Phantom Void Step during the phasing window. The combination would produce an approach that was physically invisible to conventional perception and spatially quieter than any of his standard movent techniques.
Quiet enough to get inside the token’s activation range.
Maybe.
He was still processing the maybe when the space in front of him compressed.
Cang Yutian appeared.
The watcher had not taken the direct approach this ti. He had let Lin Yi run long enough to put distance between them and had then used Buddha Step to appear not at Lin Yi’s current position but slightly ahead of it, in the path that the current Boundless Step trajectory was carrying him toward.
Lin Yi read the position change in the fraction of a second between spatial arrival and the strike that followed it.
He could not fully clear the blade’s arc.
The strike caught his left leg at the thigh, the cut deep and imdiate, the leg’s function compromised below the threshold that walking unsupported would have required. He activated Phantom Void Step to put distance between them, the spatial transition carrying him clear of the follow-up positioning that the first strike had been designed to create.
He landed and the leg gave under him. He caught himself with his right leg and the Celestial Lord Blade’s contact point with the island surface as a third support point, the blade driven into the stone to provide the stability the injured leg could not.
Cang Yutian appeared at a asured distance. Not close enough to strike from his arrival point. Far enough to observe.
"You run with considerable skill," the watcher said. "That is acknowledged." His dragon eyes looked at the injured leg. "But running requires legs." He paused. "I will cut off the other one next. Then we will see what your movent techniques can do without the physical anchor they require."
The ten Buddha wheels continued their cycle.
Lin Yi looked at the watcher from the position the injured leg had forced him into. His weight was distributed across the right leg, the blade contact point, and whatever core strength he could maintain. The chest cuts, the shoulder cut, the torso cuts, and now the leg, the accumulated damage picture was not improving.
He activated Void Walk.
The partial spatial phasing settled around him, the state’s characteristic alteration of physical interaction with the environnt taking full effect. The air around him seed less resistant, less defined, as if his presence no longer fully registered within it.
He then reached into his inventory with his left hand, the injured leg’s condition entirely irrelevant to what his hands were doing. The storage space token materialized in his palm, solid and steady despite the distortion surrounding him.
He activated Phantom Void Step.
The spatial transition during Void Walk carried him forward, the phasing state affecting the transition’s environntal residue, the approach toward Cang Yutian’s position quieter in its spatial signature than any standard movent technique he had used in the engagent.
He moved toward the watcher.
The token in his left hand began to warm with the activation intent he was building behind it, the dinsional pull preparing to extend outward at the mont of his choosing.
Cang Yutian’s dragon eyes tracked him.
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