Chapter 103 – The Sovereign's Wall and the Gunting(Scissor) of Fate, The Sea God's Rage and Lakan's Mockery
The tides of destiny were no longer flowing toward the Sea God's Island; they were being forcibly redirected by the hand of the Sovereign. As the Agila reached the western coastline of the Douluo Continent, the horizon was choked with the sails of the Old Guard. Thousands of ships, carrying the last vestiges of the Heaven Dou nobility and the warrior-clans of the Five Shield Alliance, sat precariously upon the waves.
The air was thick with the scent of salt, fear, and the metallic tang of impending judgment.
Lakan Diwa stood at the very tip of the Agila's prow, his Ten-Headed Sovereign Wings unfurled to their full, terrifying span. Below him, the coastal waters were a chaotic mess of boarding planks and frantic shouting. The Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect and the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan were attempting to push their fleet into the deep sea, desperate to reach the protection of the Sea God's light.
"They run as if the ocean is their mother," Lakan said, his voice dropping into the low, resonant frequency of the Seven-Tone Genesis Chant. "Let's show them that even the mother of life must obey the Phoenix Sovereign's tuning."
While he plan to let them go, but he thought it would be a waste to just let them go. So ge decided to give them a little something and mess with the Sea God a little.
Lakan didn't release an explosion of fire. Instead, he hummed.
The sound wave traveled down from the ship, hitting the water's surface like a physical hammer. Instantly, the Law of the ocean changed. The water didn't freeze into ice, it De-tuned into a thick, translucent gel. It became so viscous that the massive galleons, mid-sail, were jerked to a violent halt. Propellers stalled, oars snapped against the solidified liquid, and the ships remained anchored in a sea of unyielding slime.
"Neutrality was your choice," Lakan's voice boomed over the trapped fleet, amplified by his 9th Soul Ring. "Fear is your punishment. I will not take your lives today—I have no interest in the blood of the desperate. But you will stay here, and you will watch as the world you knew is dismantled."
On the deck of the lead ship, Sword Douluo Chen Xin and Bone Douluo Gu Rong stood in a state of shock. Chen Xin's Seven Kill Sword hummed in his hand, but he felt no target to strike. The ocean itself had become the enemy. Beside them, Yu Yuanzhen, his body crackling with blue lightning, roared at the sky, but even his thunder felt muted in the face of Lakan's absolute frequency.
••••••••••••••••••
While the fleet sat trapped in the gelid sea, the interior of the Agila became the staging ground for a much deeper conflict. Zhu Zhuqing had entered the Hall of Infinite Reflection, a sub-dimension crafted by Lakan to facilitate her second trial.
The Task: Gunting (The Scissor): She must use the Dark Demonic Evil God Tiger's space time attribute to scissor through 1,000 parallel version of herself that the trial manifests to stop her.
It could be an infinite version of her, but an infinite would be too much and hence, it was toned down into 1,000 versions only.
Zhuqing stood in a room of a thousand mirrors. As she activated the Demonic Nyx Core, the mirrors didn't just show her reflection—they fractured the timeline. From the glass stepped a thousand Versions of herself.
There was the Shackled Zhuqing, the one who never left the Zhu Clan and was executed by her sister, there was the Beast-Zhuqing, a humanoid soul beast with no human heart, and most jarringly, there was the Original Timeline Zhuqing—a woman wearing the Shrek Seven uniforms, her destiny inextricably tied to Tang San's group.
"Find the thread," Lakan's mental voice echoed. "A thousand paths exist, but only one is the Real you. The rest are anchors designed to drag you into the abyss of what if. Use the Scissor of Time-Space to cut the falsity."
Lakan has split himself into two, one for the outside, and the other is for helping Zhuqing when he can.
The trial began in a blur of Bullet-Time speed. The thousand reflections attacked simultaneously. It was a cacophony of Abyssal Shadow skills. The Shrek Zhuqing lunged with a speed powered by the original Hellcat spirit, while the Beast version tore through the space with raw, demonic lightning.
Zhuqing's perception slowed to a crawl. She saw the threads of fate connecting each version to a different Source. She realized that this wasn't a fight of strength, but of Identity. She began to move, her fingers glowing with the grey-violet light of the DDEGT's Space-Time attribute.
Snip.
She cut the thread of the Shrek-Zhuqing, and the reflection dissolved into stardust.
Snip. She cut the thread of the Noble-Zhuqing, the one who lived for the pride of a dying clan.
She moved through the chaos like a ghost, her Scissor separating her true self from the echoes of destiny. With every cut, her Umbral Sight sharpened. She wasn't just killing shadows; she was claiming her own existence as a singular, independent Sovereign of the Night.
Far across the Great Sea, on the peaks of Sea God Island, the Sea God Poseidon felt the De-tuning of his domain. The gelid water at the continent's coast was a personal insult to his divinity.
"Insolent mortal!" Poseidon's voice shook the Divine Realm. "You dare to mock the tides?"
Bypassing the restrictions of the God Realm once more, Poseidon channeled a massive surge of divine power into the ocean. From the deep trenches of the sea, a Divine Tsunami rose. It was a wall of water five hundred meters high, glowing with a sapphire light and carrying the weight of an entire ocean's wrath. It roared toward the coastline, intended to wash away the Agila and the Sovereign's Wall in one stroke.
On the trapped fleet, the refugees saw the horizon turn dark blue. The sheer pressure of the incoming wave caused the gelid water to groan and crack.
"The Sea God! He has answered us!" Ning Fengzhi cried, falling to his knees.
Lakan Diwa didn't flinch. He watched the tsunami approach with the clinical detachment of a scientist observing a chemical reaction.
"Dong'er, watch this," Lakan said, his 9th Soul Ring flaring into a blinding obsidian-gold sun. "The Sea God thinks his Weight is absolute. He forgets that weight is just a variable."
Lakan raised both hands. In his left, a spectral, semi-divine Clear Sky Hammer appeared, vibrating with the force of a collapsing star. In his right, a perfect, semi-divine Sea God's Trident manifested, siphoning the very frequency of the incoming wave.
"Skill 2: Sovereign's Mirror: Absolute Simulation!"
Lakan didn't block the tsunami. He Mirrored it. Using the Trident's frequency, he projected a massive, inverted reflection of the wave.
When the two forces met, there was no explosion. There was a Cancellation. The Sovereign's Mirror absorbed the kinetic energy and the divine intent of Poseidon's wave, neutralized it, and then—at 150% power—fired the Reflected Intent back across the ocean.
The massive sapphire wave didn't just stop; it turned around. It became a Counter-Tsunami of prismatic fire and salt, roaring back toward Sea God Island with the combined power of Poseidon's rage and Lakan's Chaos Qi.
"Return to sender," Lakan whispered.
As the counter-wave vanished into the distance, Lakan looked down at the fleet. To shatter their last shred of hope, he descended from the Agila, hovering just above the masts of the Seven Treasure ships.
He held the semi-divine Hammer and Trident in his hands—the two symbols of the Old Guard's salvation—and he crushed them together. The divine light of the simulated tools shattered into harmless sparks that rained down on the Titled Douluos.
"Your gods are frequencies I have already mastered," Lakan said, his silver eyes landing on Chen Xin and Yu Yuanzhen. "Your Hope is just a weapon I can reflect back at you or destroy anytime I want. Stay in your gelid cage. When I am done with my Queens trials, I will come for the Island. Tell Tang San to enjoy his brittle crown while it still rests on his head."
With a flick of his wings, Lakan returned to the Agila. He had crushed their morale without spilling a drop of blood. He had simulated the divine and found it wanting.
Inside the ship, Zhuqing emerged from the Hall of Infinite Reflection. She looked different. Her skin seemed to absorb the light around her, and her eyes were now twin wells of vertical darkness.
"Trial 2 is complete, Lakan," she said, her voice now carrying a rhythmic, Gunting click of temporal authority. "I have cut the threads of the past. I am the only Zhu Zhuqing left in existence."
Lakan smiled, placing a hand on her shoulder. He could feel the Demonic Nyx Core humming in perfect sync with her soul. "Good. Then prepare yourself. Trial 3 is where the real hunger begins. You must Relive the pain, and then you must eat it."
Lakan turned to the horizon, where the reflected tsunami was likely hitting the Sea God's barriers. He felt his spirit sea tightening, the pressure building toward the Nirvana Spirit Core.
"The Garden is almost ready for the harvest," Lakan mused. "One more Queen to crown, and then we claim the Heavens."