Chapter 159 : Magic of Kamar-Taj, Alisem appears!
In the Kamar-Taj library, faint golden spatial runes swirled in Li Yu's palm.
He had just completed the reverse deduction of the seventh layer of Space Folding Technique, transforming a secret art that would take ordinary Kamar-Taj sorcerers a century to master into an attack method capable of tearing through dimensional barriers.
The hovering runes suddenly collapsed, dissipating into countless golden particles in the air. Strange stood beside him, his blue eyes slightly narrowed in shock, his voice filled with incredulous emotion.
"Your learning speed… it's practically a blasphemy against magic."
Li Yu smiled faintly, saying nothing. Saints were taught from a young age to focus all their power on offense.
This was especially true for an Aquarius Saint, who could freeze molecular motion.
And magic, in essence, was the precise control of power and the borrowing of a God's strength.
These two points were precisely what Li Yu excelled at.
Learning Kamar-Taj mystic arts was not difficult for a Gold Saint who had awakened the Eighth Sense.
"As a Guardian, learning to this extent is enough, isn't it?"
Li Yu said indifferently.
Strange smiled and shook his head. It was more than enough; if Li Yu studied for a few more days, he could become a mentor. Thus, he had fulfilled his promise to Ancient One.
He bowed slightly to Li Yu.
"Greetings, Guardian. Strange salutes you!"
Li Yu smiled. This indicated that he had already become a Kamar-Taj Guardian.
Just then, Wang's communication spell on his waist suddenly lit up, its dazzling golden light illuminating his tense face.
"Found them! It's the Eternal's energy signature. They're hiding in the Arctic Circle, in a crustal fissure in Svalbard!"
"Wait, I've been discovered, help… help… ah!"
The three of them didn't hesitate for a moment. Strange raised his hand to open a portal. On the other side of the golden portal was the snow-swept Greenland ice sheet.
Li Yu was the first to step through the portal. A biting cold wind, carrying ice shards, rushed at him. The ice layer beneath his feet was hundreds of meters thick. The environment here made Li Yu feel a bit nostalgic, as if he had returned to his own Ice Temple.
Before his eyes, an alien spacecraft was hidden beneath a thick glacier.
It must have been the Eternal's mode of transport when they arrived on Earth millions of years ago.
On the ice sheet not far away, the Eternal were battling Kamar-Taj sorcerers.
As a Kamar-Taj Guardian, Li Yu, of course, wouldn't stand by idly. The current situation was like Specters attacking Bronze and Silver Saints in front of him.
"How dare you?"
Golden light surged around Li Yu. Boom, an invisible Impact radiated outwards from him.
The next second, the entire ice sheet seemed to have been paused.
Ikaris's heat vision, condensed in his eyes, froze in his eye sockets. Makkari's afterimages, left by her high-speed movement, were suspended in mid-air.
Ajak, the Eternal leader, was raising her hand to heal Gilgamesh, her healing light mere inches from his back.
The faint golden Cosmo materialized into chains, instantly binding Ajak's limbs and torso. Li Yu stepped forward, his right hand pressed lightly on the crown of her head. The power in his palm stiffened Ajak's entire body.
The powerful bodies the Eternal prided themselves on were now completely unable to move, like insects trapped in amber.
Other Eternal members tried to advance but were blocked by an invisible Cosmo barrier, unable to even get their fingertips close.
"Summon Arishem the Judge."
Li Yu's voice pierced through the howling cold wind, shattering the surrounding millennia-old ice crystals.
"Use your communication ritual with the Celestials to summon the one who took the Soul Stone. Otherwise, I will crush your consciousness core right now and completely turn the one in the Earth's core into an ice sculpture."
Ajak's pupils contracted violently, reflecting the surging, powerful Cosmo around Li Yu. That supreme power made her instinctively feel fear.
She nodded, and Li Yu released her restraints.
Ajak trembled as she opened her mouth, ancient creation syllables spilling from her throat. With each note that fell, the energy pulsation beneath the ice grew more intense.
Almost the instant Ajak finished the last syllable, Earth's magnetic field suddenly collapsed!
In space, countless orbital satellites instantly lost power and began to fall towards Earth.
The dark magic within Strange shrieked and curled uncontrollably.
A metallic fatigue-like groan came from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, the oceanic plates began to tremble slightly, and all global satellite signals simultaneously cut out, replaced by monotonous cosmic background radiation and static.
Above the Greenland ice sheet, six massive stellar rings suddenly bloomed in the stratosphere.
In the center of each stellar ring, a giant eye, a kilometer in diameter, opened, its cold gaze locked directly onto the ground.
Arishem the Judge understood the situation instantly.
"Mortal, how dare you!"
A Celestial, entirely red, emerged from a spatial jump.
The Judge - Arishem the Judge
Li Yu's pupils narrowed slightly. It was Arishem the Judge, the leader of the Celestials!
It was said that his power was the sum of all Celestials.
The will of the Celestial Judge pierced through the clouds. The entire ice cap instantly cracked in a spiderweb pattern, and a pure, lawful pressure swept over them like a tsunami.
Wang, standing behind Li Yu, was directly forced to one knee by this pressure. He violently vomited a mouthful of blood, the droplets freezing into ice shards the moment they hit the ice.
This was not a magic attack, but a physiological collapse caused by the difference in life-tier. The channels through which Kamar-Taj magic drew dimensional energy were almost completely frozen by this pressure.
"Wait here."
Li Yu left these words for Wang and Strange, his body surging with golden light, transforming into a golden beam that shot towards the stellar rings.
Almost instantly, Li Yu reached outer space, standing before Arishem the Judge.
Before Arishem the Judge, who was tens of thousands of meters tall, Li Yu was smaller than his pupil, but their powers were almost equal.
The energy turbulence between them tore space, frequently creating tiny black hole horizons in the void.
Li Yu's divine sense, imbued with incredibly powerful energy, directly slammed into the cosmic frequency that the Celestials could perceive.
"Let's make a deal, Arishem the Judge! I need the Soul Stone you took!"
Arishem the Judge did not refuse immediately, merely asking indifferently.
"Why?"
Li Yu threw out his first bargaining chip.
"I can take your offspring to other Worlds, to hatch your offspring in place of this Planet! These Planets are younger, their energy purer, and they will be better nourishment for your offspring!"
As a Hunter, Li Yu could completely find a technology World, like StarCraft, and sacrifice a Zerg Planet to the Celestials.
"Not enough!"
Arishem the Judge showed no emotional fluctuation.
Heh!
Li Yu chuckled, and power mixed with destructive lightning and extreme cold surged out, golden lightning and frost intertwining into a net in the void.
"Then how about this: if you insist on harvesting Earth, I will directly pierce its core with lightning power, causing your offspring to die in the womb, never to be born!"
The spear of longinus emerged from the void. Li Yu raised his hand, the spearhead pointing directly at Arishem the Judge's left eye. The God-slaying spear, sensing the powerful divine power, twisted in Li Yu's palm, seemingly on the verge of breaking free from his control the next second.
As it absorbed more divinity, this fierce spear continuously grew stronger.
"Arishem the Judge, the Celestials are not invincible. If we truly have to go all out, I don't mind letting you taste the might of the God-slaying spear!"
The stellar rings around Arishem the Judge suddenly stagnated. The six giant eyes, for the first time, focused on Li Yu's tiny figure.
Some kind of superluminal quantum deliberation surged in the vacuum. Earth's gravitational field became chaotic, and the snow on the ice sheet was lifted by an invisible force, forming giant pillars of snow.
Li Yu could clearly feel that Arishem the Judge was predicting and evaluating every variable, and making predictions about them.
The unknown Planet of the Main God Space, the threat of Li Yu's powerful strength, the bloodthirsty aura emanating from the God-slaying spear.
Each factor was enough for this Celestial Judge to re-evaluate the cost of harvesting Earth.
Just as Li Yu was preparing to apply further pressure, Arishem the Judge's giant pupil suddenly shot out an indigo blue beam of light.
The beam was not aggressive; instead, it condensed into a contract rune in front of Li Yu. In the center of the rune, an irregular gem emitting an orange-red glow hovered.
The Soul Stone!
Li Yu's pupils contracted slightly.
Although Arishem the Judge did not speak, his meaning was clear: he was willing to hand over the gem, but he clearly also had his own conditions!
Li Yu had originally expected a major battle, but it seemed Arishem the Judge had a better solution.