Chapter : 1115

Spectral, translucent versions of Lloyd’s Steel Blood chains erupted from its palms. They were not solid steel but constructs of solidified shadow and starlight, yet they cracked through the air with the same lethal authority. The Doppelganger used them not for a direct assault, but as whips, lashing out to shatter the layers of ice Bingyu had formed on the trees, creating showers of glittering shards and forcing the trees to expend energy regenerating their frozen carapaces.

Two minutes in.

The trees adapted. One of them, its roots fighting against the grasping mud, tore a ten-ton boulder from the earth. With a heave, it launched the massive projectile in a high arc, aiming it directly at the still, meditating form of Lloyd. It had identified the true heart of the operation.

"Fang Fairy, intercept!" came Lloyd's mental command, calm and focused despite his physical paralysis.

The lightning goddess moved in a flash, a streak of pure azure energy. She met the boulder in mid-air with a full-power Thousand Chirp Strike. The shriek of a thousand birds tore through the air as the rock was vaporized into a cloud of harmless dust and pebbles, which then swirled away in Bingyu's blizzard.

Four minutes in.

The Doppelganger escalated its assault. As a tree lunged with a dozen branches at Iffrit, the spectral Lloyd's eyes glowed with a faint, bluish-white light. It had activated the Black Ring Eyes. An invisible, conceptual seal settled over the tree. It wasn’t a powerful seal, just a "Seal of Minor Disorientation." For a split second, the tree’s perfect coordination faltered. Its attack became clumsy, unfocused. It was the only opening Iffrit needed. The demon king's flaming sword swept forward in a punishing counter-attack, lopping off three of the branches in a spray of black sap and frozen splinters.

The battle became a grueling, magnificent stalemate. Bingyu controlled the weather, Abyss controlled the ground, and the Doppelganger acted as a master tactician, using its spectral chains and subtle seals to create openings and disrupt the enemy's attacks. Iffrit and Fang Fairy were the glorious, unbreakable shields, a storm of fire and lightning that held the line against an unceasing tide of death.

Seven minutes in.

But the line was beginning to bend. The constant, passive life-drain of the orchard was taking its toll. Abyss's quagmire was thinning. Iffrit's armor was now a spiderweb of black, energy-sapping cracks. Fang Fairy's movements, while still impossibly fast, lacked their initial explosive fury. They were all tiring, their spiritual reserves being bled dry by the cursed ground they fought on.

A branch, moving with a speed that seemed to defy the freezing cold, finally broke through. It shot past Iffrit's guard, a black spear aimed directly at the heart of the still, meditating Lloyd.

The Doppelganger, which had been engaged with another tree across the clearing, reacted with inhuman speed. It couldn't physically block the blow. Instead, it poured its borrowed Void power into a single, desperate defensive maneuver. A dozen spectral, heavy-duty chains erupted from the ground in front of Lloyd, forming an intersecting, lattice-like shield an instant before the branch struck.

The necrotic tip slammed into the spectral steel. The sound was a deep, groaning toll, a funeral bell for a failing defense. The chains held, but only just. They flickered violently, the point of impact glowing with a corrupt, sickly light as the branch's life-draining power warred with the phantom steel. The shield was about to break.

Nine minutes in.

The spirits were faltering. The Doppelganger was pouring all its focus into maintaining the fragile shield. The trees, sensing victory, redoubled their assault. The line was collapsing. It was a race against the clock, and they were losing.

In his meditative trance, Lloyd felt the strain on his spirits, the imminent failure of the Doppelganger's defense. He felt the cold touch of the necrotic branch, now only inches from his own chest, pressing against the failing shield. But he also felt something else. A deep, resonant, and terrifying well of power building within him. The river of the Lazy Sage's art was about to become a tsunami. The final, agonizing seconds ticked by.

Ten minutes.

The aura around Lloyd's physical body didn't just brighten; it exploded. A silent, concussive wave of pure, white-gold light washed over the battlefield. The power was ready.

In the still, silent center of his mind, Lloyd's eyes opened. His long, agonizing wait was over. It was time for the mountain-breaker to take the stage.

Chapter : 1116

The power didn't flow into him; it awakened from within. The ten minutes of absolute stillness had not been a process of gathering external energy, but of unlocking the floodgates of his own potential, quadrupling the very foundation of his physical being.

It felt like a star had been born in the center of his soul.

A tidal wave of pure, unadulterated physical force surged through every fiber of his being. His muscles, his bones, his very cells screamed under the strain of containing a power they were never meant to hold. He felt less like a man and more like a god, a being whose very gesture could reshape landscapes. The accumulated power of the [Lazy Sage] was not just a doubling or quadrupling of his strength; it was a fundamental redefinition of what he was. For this brief, glorious window, he was not a wielder of power. He was power.

"All units, cease engagement. Fall back," he commanded, his voice a low, resonant thing that seemed to shake the very ground.

His spirits, battered and exhausted, obeyed without question. Bingyu's blizzard ceased, the biting cold receding. The Doppelganger's spectral chains shattered, and its form dissolved back into a formless wisp of light and shadow, its purpose served. Iffrit and Fang Fairy disengaged, retreating behind him. The battlefield fell silent, the gnarled, ice-caked trees now focusing their undivided, malevolent attention on the lone figure who had risen from his meditative trance.

Lloyd took a single, slow step forward out of his alcove.

Then, he activated [Void Step].

The world didn't blur; it fractured. From the spirits' perspective, he was there one instant, and the next, he was gone, leaving only a fleeting, glitch-like afterimage of fractured blue-white light. He reappeared instantly, silently, directly in front of the first tree.

He didn't draw a sword. He didn't summon a chain. He simply drew back his right fist. The air around his knuckles compressed, shimmering with a visible distortion of pure kinetic potential.

He punched.

There was no sound of impact, no crack of frozen wood. There was only a boom. A deep, resonant, tectonic sound, as if a mountain had just shrugged its shoulders.

The first tree, a creature that had absorbed Iffrit's inferno and shrugged off Fang Fairy's lightning, did not splinter or break. It exploded. It ceased to be a tree and became a million glittering shards of frozen, necrotic wood, a cloud of debris that was blasted outward in a perfect, conical shockwave.

The other two trees, as if sensing the conceptual, absolute nature of the threat, let out a silent, psychic shriek of pure terror. Their branches, a hundred black vipers, converged on him in a desperate, final attack.

But he was already gone.

Another flicker of azure light. He was now standing before the second tree. This time, it was a simple, rising uppercut.

BOOM.

The second tree was annihilated, its trunk exploding from the base upwards, a geyser of icy splinters shooting into the twilight sky.

Before the debris from the second tree had even begun to fall, he was at the third. He didn't even use his fist. He simply drove the hardened edge of his open hand forward in a simple, brutal chop aimed at the center of its trunk.

BOOM.

The third and final tree was cleaved in two, the top half blasted into oblivion while the frozen stump shattered into a thousand pieces.

The battle was over. In the space of three heartbeats, the Unbeatable Orchard, the frustrating, impossible puzzle that had defeated his army of gods, had been systematically, contemptuously, and absolutely erased from existence.

Lloyd stood in the center of the now-empty clearing, a landscape of glittering, frozen debris. His fist was smoking slightly, not from heat, but from the sheer friction of its passage through reality. The overwhelming, world-breaking power of the Lazy Sage began to recede, flowing out of him as quickly as it had come in, leaving behind a deep, resonant ache in his bones and a profound, exhilarating sense of victory.

He had done it. He hadn't just won; he had dominated. He had found the missing piece, built the perfect engine, and delivered a blow so absolute that it had shaken the foundations of this small, artificial world.

He looked down at his hand, still tingling with the ghost of that impossible power. He had become the mountain-breaker. And he knew, with a certainty that was both thrilling and terrifying, that this was only the beginning.