After Yu Hua locked the studio door, Director Ha was left alone in the dance room. It hopped in place a few times, bit a plastic bench to pieces, scattered the pieces of the bench all over the floor of the dance room, then lay down amid the pieces, blinked its big eyes, and slowly closed them.

At some point, it had begun to fear loneliness. 

Had it happened when Yuan Luori had gone to join the show group and there had been no one to keep it company? Or had it been when Huan Zixu had rented an apartment and the studio had become empty at night? Or was it that he couldn’t go out to play with Junjun at night, so it had no way to let off the vigorous energy inside itself? 

Director Ha didn’t know the reason. It only knew that when the studio was empty, it would mess up the clean floor of the dance room so it wouldn’t be so empty. It curled up by the door, quietly waiting for someone to come to the studio the next day. 

If Yu Hua was the first to come in, when he saw the disorder on the floor, he would shut it into its cage. There was a delicious dog treat hanging in the cage that it could see but not eat. It would feel awful all day. 

If Zhen Li came first, he would stroke its head and quickly clean the room so Yu Hua wouldn’t punish it. 

If Lian Yufan came first, he would grumble about whether someone had forgotten to walk the dog yesterday, not giving it a chance to let off all its energy and leading it to destroy things in the studio. 

If Huan Zixu came first, he would tap Director Ha’s forehead and say to himself, “This husky is purebred. When it grows up, we can sell it out for breeding and maybe make up our losses.” 

When someone came in and saw the mess Director Ha had caused, Director Ha would tuck its tail between its legs and hide in a corner, guiltily accepting chastisement, then next time it would do it again. 

It didn’t want to do it. It didn’t really have that much energy to let off. Junjun was still on summer vacation and spent a long time playing with it every day. 

It was just…lonely. It wanted to use these things to demonstrate its existence, make them come to pet its head, even if they slapped it. 

Zhen Li often livestreamed with Director Ha, and he would show the fans the objects Director Ha had destroyed. After several livestreams, Director Ha had quite a lot of fans. People often sent it dog food, nutritional paste, chew toys, rabbit’s ears, beef jerky…and many other fun and tasty things. 

At first Director Ha had resisted them, but now it had given up resisting. It was getting more and more like a dog. 

Sometimes Director Ha even forgot that it had once been the bomb freak leveler. It only wanted to run around cheerfully. 

“Awooooo,” Director Ha called in a low, mournful howl. Yu Hua hadn’t walked it before leaving. How was it going to see Junjun? 

During its unhappiness, a building blew up outside. 

Director Ha leapt to the window and stood up. It saw that about three kilometers away, a building under construction had collapsed. It had vaguely heard Huan Zixu mention that building yesterday. Huan Zixu had been standing by the window. He had narrowed his eyes, looked at the building, and nodded to show satisfaction. 

The building had exploded. Outside, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. Director Ha was terrified of rain and thunder. It still remembered the night it had become a dog. There had been a downpour, the boom of thunder and the flash of lightning. Yu Hua, soaked by the rain, had carried it through the rain for a long time. Then he had dropped it in a corner of the studio. It had been cold, dark, and scary. 

When it heard thunder, Director Ha lay down and covered its ears with its paws, trembling. 

Suddenly, a very subtle feeling arose in its heart. It felt awful, painful, frightening, as though it was about to lose some important person. 

Perhaps it was the sixth sense of a leveler, or perhaps it was the animal instinct of a dog; the image of Junjun appeared in Director Ha’s brain. 

Yes, it was nearly time for it to play with Junjun. Even when it was raining, as long as it wasn’t too heavy, Junjun would still play with it, carrying an umbrella or wearing a raincoat and rain boots. 

Would Junjun be waiting for it in the rain? Director Ha turned circles urgently around the studio. The fretful feeling made it unable to calm down. 

It went to the door and took the door handle between its teeth. It pulled downwards, and the door opened. The door hadn’t been locked from the inside! 

Director Ha quickly ran downstairs. The studio was on the twenty-first floor, but that was all right. It was strong and could run that distance. 

The husky hurtled down to the first floor. Ignoring the building’s security guard blocking its way, it charged out of the office building, flailing its four legs towards the estate. 

Its heart beat wildly. The rain fell on Director Ha’s body, drip, drip, drip. 

It ran into the estate and saw Junjun. Junjun was standing on a scooter with an umbrella in his hand, looking all around as he waited for it. 

He was waiting for it! Director Ha charged towards Junjun. It ran and ran. It seemed to run for a whole century, but it still didn’t reach Junjun. The rain around it became slower and slower. It had been a downpour before. Now it was several seconds between one drop of rain and the next. 

Why would this happen? Director Ha didn’t know, but it wanted to run to Junjun, play sled dog pulling the scooter for Junjun. It wanted to run over there. 

A man dressed in black clothes stood at the estate’s gate, quietly watching the dog running towards the little boy. 

You won’t get there, the man in black thought quietly. Time has been slowed down many times. This distance of a single second will take you a whole year to run. 

As the rain around him slowed to falling at a millimeter per hour, the man in black moved. He walked towards Director Ha. The whole world was still. Only he was moving. 

Director Ha was frantic. It wanted to tell Junjun to hurry home… No, he couldn’t go home, home wasn’t safe, either. It had to find Yu Hua! It had to take Junjun to find Yu Hua! 

But it couldn’t run. Every step it ran was so hard. Why was it so slow? Why couldn’t it reach Junjun? 

“Awoooo!” Under the weight of the time power, Director Ha suddenly let out a husky’s howl. Its speed instantly increased countless times. In the endlessly slow world, it arrived at Junjun’s feet. 

Liu Junjun, meanwhile, still wore his expression of happy surprise from having seen Director Ha. Not even his eyelashes moved. 

Time was still at a standstill. Only Director Ha was moving in this endlessly slow world. 

“Hm?” The man in black raised his eyebrows, gaze falling on Director Ha, which was the only thing moving. He strolled over to the husky and said uncertainly, “Inside my field, everyone’s time has been slowed down thousands of times. Why can you move?” 

“Woo!!” Director Ha guarded Junjun, the hair on its back standing up, four paws planted on the ground, baring its teeth, looking warily at the man in black. 

The man in black seemed very young, but the passage of ages seemed to be written in his eyes. He laughed lightly. “I only came over here for a look because I caught a whiff of my old friend nearby, I didn’t think there would be someone…no, some dog that would be able to move inside my time field. Who is your owner? Is it ‘the Tyrant?’” 

“Awoooo!!” Seeing the man in black approaching, the husky called loudly. 

But sounds also needed time to spread. The world had slowed down so much that not even sound could travel. 

Only the man in black’s voice could spread normally. He considered and said, “You didn’t have any reaction to hearing ‘the Tyrant,’ so that means you don’t know that title. How could that be? Has his nature changed these last few years? If you don’t know his title, then…let me think, what was his name, now?” 

Director Ha couldn’t understand what the man in black was saying. It only knew that if Junjun stayed inside the time field, he would die! 

Time had been slowed down, which meant that the speed of people’s heart rates and blood circulation had also become extremely slow. But Director Ha could see the building far away collapsing at a normal speed. That showed that time hadn’t been slowed down everywhere. It had only been slowed down in this field they were in. 

Outside, time was passing. If Junjun’s life signs slowed to a certain degree, his breathing wouldn’t be able to keep up, his blood circulation wouldn’t be able to keep up, his heart rate and energy transfer wouldn’t be able to keep up. In less than a minute, Junjun would die. 

The man in black didn’t mean to kill anyone. His expression was indifferent. He viewed humans the same way he viewed ants. He wouldn’t deliberately step on an ant like Junjun, but he also wouldn’t get rid of the time field because Junjun was going to die soon. 

“I’ve remembered. I haven’t called him by that name in so long that I nearly thought ‘the Tyrant’ was his name,” the man in black said. “In all the previous worlds, he was called Yu Hua. Do you know where he is?” 

Yu Hua! Hearing this name, all the blood in Director Ha’s body congealed. This was an old friend of Yu Hua’s, someone as powerful as him, someone who held natural law power! 

Run! It couldn’t do anything but run! 

Like before, Director Ha tied its leash to Junjun’s scooter and began to sprint, pulling the scooter. But it couldn’t move. Time was still passing just as slowly for it. It had only sped up the instant it had been running towards Junjun. Why? 

Director Ha slowly raised its head and saw a flash of lightning drawn across the sky. The lightning was like a silver snake scurrying through the black clouds, spreading at a speed the naked eye couldn’t hope to follow. 

Soon after it, there was the thunder. 

Light was faster than sound. First came the lightning, then you heard the thunder. 

Just then, Director Ha heard the cry it had used to menace the man in black. It had taken this long for the sound to reach its ears. 

It was speed. This area’s flow of time had been slowed, but it had only been slowed down to the greatest degree, not entirely stopped. That was why sound would only carry after a very long time, and so it had been able to move just now. 

It had used a speed that surpassed time to come to Junjun. In that instant, why had it been so fast? Director Ha didn’t understand. 

It only needed to think clearly, and then it would be able to escape from the area with Junjun and find Yu Hua. 

Think, think fast. Its dog’s brain moved quickly. Director Ha was frantic enough to go mad. 

“From the reactions of your vital signs, it seems you know where Yu Hua is. Take me to him.” The man in black reached out a hand towards Director Ha. 

Because it was raining, Yu Hua didn’t buy groceries. He was going to go home and take his estate’s elevator to the supermarket in the basement to buy ingredients. It was a little more expensive than the produce market there, but he wouldn’t have to go out in the rain. He could go straight from the underground garage. 

It was nearly time for elementary school to start. Added to the fact that because it was raining, more people had chosen to drive. There was traffic on the road. The flow of cars crawled forward bit by bit. At each intersection, it would take three or four green lights to be able to slowly climb through. After ages, Yu Hua hadn’t gone a hundred meters. He was still near the studio. 

Suddenly, a building not far away collapsed. The drivers sitting in traffic heard the noise and stuck their heads out one after another, looking in the direction of the building. There were even some who got out their phones to film it. There was also someone who thought it was an earthquake and quickly jumped out of their car to hide somewhere spacious. 

Screams rose instantly. Yu Hua sat in his car, watching the constantly moving windshield wipers. He released his energy. 

In only 0.0000001 seconds, an energy probe faster than the speed of light scanned the whole Xuyang District. From just that moment, Yu Hua had a grasp on the current situation and a stratagem. 

He had told Zhen Li that the Xuyang District might soon encounter a large scale attack from Destroyer, but he hadn’t expected that it would come so soon. And there was also a remote and familiar energy mixed in. 

Yu Hua closed his eyes. Combat images he had gathered with the energy probe floated through his mind. 

Yuan Luori had driven to the amusement park that had been turned into a small mountain range. He had seen Luo Huai leading the six members of Lian Yufan’s squad, doing battle with a Destroyer who could control gravity and earth. Luo Huai was assisting with his mental attack. While the Destroyer was immersed in the memories Luo Huai had released, the other six members would attack and then run off. They weren’t being over-zealous. They had pledged to exhaust this Destroyer. Yuan Luori, meanwhile, quietly climbed on the toppled over drop tower, staring fixedly in the direction of the Destroyer. 

At the newly built complex, Lian Yufan was protecting Huan Zixu and Feng Kui, struggling desperately with the wind attribute Destroyer. If he could hide, he hid. The new complex had been utterly destroyed. All the buildings had fallen. But the more destroyed the surroundings became, the more suitable it was for Lian Yufan’s attacks. 

On the outskirts, Director Xiao was battling fiercely with a water type Destroyer. The whole highway had broken. Zhen Li had pulled the wounded into a bunker, trying to minimize losses. 

In the central park, You Zhengping had become an ice sculpture. His first space with its weapons had been shattered. But his second space, which could contain energy, had quietly appeared next to the ice coffin trapping Cen Xiao. 

Also, in the estate next to him…he couldn’t see! The law of time held that area. Yu Hua couldn’t observe what was happening inside that field. 

“Nicely done,” Yu Hua said quietly. 

At present, he had only released 15% of his power. He couldn’t save so many people at once. The System was using the lives of all the citizens in the Xuyang District to force him to undo his seal. Even if he hadn’t cared about the lives of strangers, the System had sent his old friend to force him to undo the seal whether he wanted to or not. 

Yu Hua sat in the car, not getting out. He put his hand on his chest and squeezed as though he wanted to crush it. 

A majestic energy was set free from Yu Hua’s body. It flew into the air and was absorbed by some mysterious power. The System had recovered the power that belonged to it, and Yu Hua had released 50% of his power.

“50% is enough to deal with you.” Yu Hua looked towards the nearby estate. 

With half of his power released, the natural law power Yu Hua had been suppressing awoke now. He spread his hand, and a writing brush appeared in it. 

Yu Hua cut open his palm, dipped the brush in the fresh blood, and wrote in the air—

Rule 1, All “common people” involved in this campaign who bear no ill will towards the “Tyrant” will not be damaged. 

Rule 2, All “soldiers” loyal to the “Tyrant” will come under the sovereign’s control and take up their weapons. 

Rule 3, The Tyrant’s majesty must not be beheld. All “common people” will lower their heads the moment they see the “Tyrant”; they will be unable to see the sovereign’s true face. 

The man in black quietly said, “He’s a friend who went through hundreds of levels with me. His origin ability is ‘Tyrant,’ and his initial item is ‘the rule writer.’ Before him, all natural law power must bend its head. All people must act according to his rules. He is ‘the ultimate controller.’ He bestows ‘life force’ upon all who obey him, and delivers ‘death’ to those who are disobedient.

“He’s an out-and-out lunatic who can do whatever he pleases.”