The Sun that had sat proudly on its golden throne high in the sky had been overthrown, it was now replaced with an inky black featureless sky giving off no warmth. Hartley felts chills as the sweat slithered down his back like snakes made of ice, drawing an involuntary shiver from the usually calm and fearless youth. Hartley could see the a dark outline of a person but the only clear features he could make out was the eyes, those two triangular shaped eyes with obsidian-black marbles sitting in the middle of perfectly white sclerae was a sight he would not easily forget in his lifetime.

Hartley was staring through a crack that was hard to explain, it was like looking through a long straight tunnel and seeing a small circle of light at the end of it and your perception would lead you to believe that it was far away. But at the same time it was like there wasn't a tunnel and he was looking directly at the outline of a person stood in that circle of light right there in front of him. Hartley gulped down a mouthful of saliva to relieve his parched throat. On this spring day, at this hour, at this minute, Hartley felt like an ant at the foot of a God, staring up at a being whose power his mind could not understand as something possible.

" I shall Return you to the ninth circle of hell, you Devil Spawn, where you and your kind can stay for eternity, never to re-enter the river of reincarnation," the growl of a voice came again and the black outline of a human sent out a nonchalant, almost friendly punch, those black pupils sitting in the pearly white eyes stared at him fixedly with no emotions, expecting the words spoken to be final law.

Hartley couldn't fathom the power of the person in front of him but he wouldn't just lay down and die, not even for a God. Hartley activated advanced state of focus which he had disengaged subconsciously after his battle, hoping that it would still give him a milisecond of extra time. Without waiting to verify the results of that experiment he activated his time domain. Monochrome was in effect immediately, advanced state of focus had given him just enough time before the punch entered this side of the void. The color bled from the world around him, everything froze and he could see the mind bending details of everything. It was like the black shadow was stretching its hand through a window and peering through that window Hartley could see small details of the background. What he saw through the window behind the dark figure was trees, mountains and greenery.

He couldn't see it very clearly but the little that he could, he knew... He had grown in mountainous environment for most of his life, the dark figure must be many miles away from this coastal province which had next to no mountains and yet still he could just reach out and touch Hartley.

The dark fist which wasn't any different in size from a normal fist entered into Hartley's time domain and came to a sudden halt, frozen like everything else. Hartley's imagination had run wild and he was expecting to see a fist that was as big as the sky, so seeing the normal fist surprised him a bit. All that aside, his immediate problem was that he had used 3 seconds of the time available to him in his time domain already, even though he stopped the fist, that was only temporary. He only had a total of six seconds, another three seconds and his time domain would collapse and he could only reactivate it after a ten second interval. If the man was determined to kill Hartley, which he clearly was, those ten seconds would be like a soldier without a rifle running across an open field attacking a machine gun encampment. There was no hope of surviving such an engagement.

With no other option he could think of, Hartley positioned himself carefully at the very back edges of his thirty meter domain, if he stepped one foot out of it, it would collapse immediately. The rest would be left up to luck and timing, For the first time in his life Hartley closed his eyes and sent a prayer to the Holy Matriarch, the six seconds was coming to an end, it could be the last six seconds he spends on this plane.

Hartley's fate was going to be decided by two factors, one was timing and the other was good old fashion luck. That final second before the time domain collapsed, Hartley had lived a whole other life, in that one second his mind had raced a million miles per hour. He thought about Zhi Ruo, was she alright? What would become of her? Would she find someone else? would she be happy? He thought about Qin Li, about Ryu Hang , the Lou clan, who was the Holy Matriarch? If he had lived differently, what if he was accepted and lived the life of an arrogant young lord bullying the commoners....would he be in this situation now? And many other thoughts of this ilk.

Whoosh! time snapped back to normal and the unassuming, underwhelming punch moved forward 2 meters onto Hartley's side of the crack, small spatial cracks looking like black lightning crackled and hissed around the fist, a catastrophic force was sent forward at Mach 5. To put this into context, Mach 5 was five times the speed of sound, Hartley could make buildings wobble and walls collapse by just moving at Mach 1 his speed was very close to Mach 2 but it wasn't technically Mach 2 yet. So this destructive force that was executed in the most nonchalant way, was almost three times that of Hartley's, one could imagine if the man was to actually put some meaningful effort into his punch, how terrible would that be?

Under the influence of state of focus Hartley could see and react the very instant the fist moved forward and at that moment he executed a standing jump with all the strength he could muster and flew like a scud missile forty meters vertically up in a straight line. Since entering the 6th layer of the xiantian realm, Hartley's 10 meter vertical leap was now a 30 meter vertical leap. The extra effort of a 4th layer xiantian physique accounted for the extra 10 meters in height. His timing was perfect as he managed to rise above the brunt of the force just in the nick of time.

The rest would be up to Lady luck now. Hartley hovered at this height for a split second, the force of the simple dark fist that was devoid of any special technique, uprooted and swept away everything in front of it, the rubble of the destroyed buildings and every building standing up to 200 meters away were all swept away like a tsunami of concrete, rocks, cobble stones , horses, carriage and any and every other solid object that was standing in front of the fist. Hartley looked down and could see the devastation being swept forward before he heard the rumbles and crashes, that means even the rubble of destroyed buildings were moving faster than the speed of sound, but when the sound did arrive, it was like ten volcanoes erupting around him. His bald, naked body was still a bright shade of blue because he hadn't had a chance to leave the crater with boiling hot lava and change his robe.

Even in this state where he was at his peak, there was a line of blood running down his left ear and onto his neck. He went temporarily deaf and could only hear a ringing sound like he was stood under the Great Bell of Dhammazedi and ten people were banging it with giant hammers at the same time. The residual power of the fist flung him forward behind the katamari-style rumbling wave of devastation, when it finally came to a stop Hartley crashed face first into in with an explosion of dust and rocks flying out everywhere, he tunneled about 2 meters down into it before coming to a complete stop. He puked a mouth of blood all over his chest as he climbed out and staggered on the rubble, his blue figure looked extremely dim now. He was punch drunk like a boxer that had fought a brutal 12 rounds and probably had a slight concussion, seeing doubles, he looked around at the dark skies in confusion and when he clocked his surroundings, he was stood on a pile of devastation that was 50 meters high, he looked forward to see a rectangular shape of land that looked like it had been plowed by really dedicated farmers.

"What!" the voice sounded shocked. "You puny ant dare to defy me!" hearing the voice that sounded like rolling thunder brought Hartley back to his senses and the stark reality of his current predicament. Everything happened so quick it was barely five seconds and the man was punching out another of those punches again, this time with way more vigor. He was a a sitting duck. This time winds swelled and roofs as far as 300 meters away were ripped off and sent flying like kites, Hartley started to move to his left as quick as he could in a final futile attempt to dodge his fate.

Then suddenly the black inky sky cracked like a mirror and shattered with a loud bang, the sun was visible again sitting high on its golden throne as it retook jurisdiction over the blue skies, sending warm golden sunlight over the scene, the winds died down and a calm returned. The crack in reality where the dark figure with the haunting eyes stood was becoming translucent. A second more playful voice sounded out as if it was coming from everywhere at once, but this time there was no crack in reality or spacial rifts, the owner of the voice was nowhere to be seen. There was just a cheery voice. "Song Zemin, you need two attempts to kill a mere mortal now? Oh dear!! look how far the mighty have fallen" The voice cackled like a young child seeing a clown at the circus for the first time. "Do you even have any face left to walk among the half-saints and saints of this continent?" asked the voice again in a playful ridiculing tone.The dark figure occupying the crack in reality was now identified as Song Zemin and he fumed in boiling anger "Kang this is our territory, you can't intervene!" And then another playful answer came from Kang, "I can and I am, so let it be known that this young man is under my protection from now on." As Song Zemin was fading away with the crack in reality he shouted "I'll report this matter to Prince Yulan" the words were growled out as if said through gritted teeth, The voice of Kang cackled again like a mischievous child proud of his bad deeds. Then everything was back to normal, maybe normal is not the word to describe the devastation on which he stood but from the predicament Hartley was in just few moments ago, he was so happy to see that crack in reality gone, that he would gladly accept this as normal.

The cheerful voice sounded again, "Not bad, not bad young man"....followed by a giggle. "If you head north 500 kilometers into the province and find where there is a fresh water lake surrounded by willow trees by nightfall tomorrow, I will tell you whats going on. Whether you choose to go there or even find it, is all up to your fate." with another giggle the voice disappeared. Fate? Hartley thought to himself just hearing the voice of the cheery man called Kang was fate.