The pristine white light did not dissolve into a new world; instead, it solidified into an impossible, boundless conceptual space. Markus attempted to take a second step forward, but his limbs instantly locked.
Every muscle fiber, every thread of his early tier-6 mana, and even the air in his lungs became perfectly immobilized, bound by an absolute, primordial authority that overrode his physical autonomy.
Looking down with his eyes alone, Markus realized he was standing ankle-deep in a flawless, transparent river.
It possessed no physical weight, no moisture, and no temperature, yet it rushed forward with an intangible, paradoxical velocity. It was a current constructed not of water, but of pure, unadulterated chronology.
He was standing inside the literal pipeline of existence.
A short distance away, perched casually on an invisible shoreline where the transparent currents pooled, sat a lone man.
He wore simple, unadorned robes that seemed to shift between the colors of dawn and dusk, entirely unbothered by the crushing cosmic weight of the domain. In his hands, he held a rudimentary fishing rod, casting a thin, glittering silver line deep into the rushing river of time.
With a fluid, practiced motion, the mysterious man pulled up his line. Breaking the surface of the transparent river was a shifting, translucent fish—its iridescent scales shimmering with the reflections of alternate pasts, dead timelines, and unwritten futures.
The man turned his head, his gaze meeting Markus's silver-black eyes. His expression held the profound, terrifying depth of a being who had watched empires rise and turn to dust in the blink of an eye. He didn't speak; he merely flashed a knowing, enigmatic smile.
With a casual flick of his wrist, the man tossed the translucent fish straight across the current toward Markus.
The moment the creature touched Markus's chest, the absolute stillness fractured. The transparent river dissolved into a blur of racing light, and Markus was violently—yet seamlessly—ejected backward through the event horizon, tumbling out of the uncharted domain and back into the physical laws of the mortal world.
Markus blinked, finding himself standing firmly back on the snow-laden earth of the Borealis Dominion forest. The blinding white portal behind him flickered once before turning dormant, its pristine radiance retreating into a tightly sealed spatial knot.
The clearing was quiet again, but reality had changed. Resting in Markus's palms was the very same translucent fish, its body pulsing with a rhythmic, sub-audible frequency that made his [Law of Time: 0.05%] core vibrate in sheer, violent ecstasy. Just holding the creature allowed a cascade of pure, raw temporal equations to flood his consciousness.
Suddenly, a deep, resonant voice echoed directly within the architecture of his mind, vibrating with an ancient, undisputed gravity:
"You are not yet ready to traverse the River of Time. Come back when you are at least at a 10% understanding of Time."
Markus's expression remained an unreadable mask of absolute calm. He didn't experience a shred of frustration or disappointment; to an architect, a restriction was simply a clearly defined metric for a future breakthrough.
With a casual flick of his fingers, a localized spatial rift tore open beside him. He slid the translucent temporal fish safely into the deep recesses of his spatial inventory, entirely isolating its volatile aura from the outside world before turning his boots back toward the town.
Moving with a quiet, calculated urgency that bypassed the main living quarters, Markus returned to the absolute privacy of his chambers within the fortified Frost-Anchor estate. The heavy oak door slid shut, its reinforced deadbolts locking into place with a definitive mechanical snap that sealed him off from the rest of the world. He didn't waste a single heartbeat. Stepping onto the low-profile platform bed, he assumed a disciplined, cross-legged meditative stance, centering his gravity as his breathing slowed to a perfectly rhythmic, sub-audible cadence.
With a precise flick of his fingers, a thin, silver-blue rift parted the air directly over his lap. Markus reached into the deep recesses of his spatial inventory and withdrew the translucent temporal fish.
The moment the creature re-entered the physical plane, the atmosphere within the room grew noticeably heavier. The ambient temperature didn't drop, but the air itself felt thick, almost viscous. On the nightstand, the mechanical gears of a local clock began to stutter, its second hand ticking erratically—vibrating forward three seconds before violently jerking backward two—as the ambient chronological flow warped around the creature's iridescent body.
Holding the ethereal specimen across his open palms, Markus lowered his gaze, fixing his piercing eyes upon its shimmering hide. To any ordinary cultivator, the entity would appear as nothing more than a beautiful, glass-like curiosity. But to Markus, whose eyes instantly flared with the twin silver-blue rings of his [Law of Time: 0.05%] perception, the fish's surface transformed into a living, breathing three-dimensional matrix of cosmic equations.
Each individual scale on the translucent fish was an independent temporal container, etched with millions of microscopic, shifting geometric lines. As Markus immersed his consciousness into the lattice, he began the painstaking process of deciphering the complex laws woven into the creature's anatomy.
He observed the outer layer of scales, realizing they mapped the natural deceleration of time. The lines dictated how a localized environment could be compressed until a single second stretched out into an artificial infinity, mimicking the very phenomenon he had witnessed in the stilled forest.
Deep within the subdermal layers of the fish's translucent flesh, a stabilized runic sequence acted as a tether. This specific alignment was what allowed the fish—and the enigmatic angler who caught it—to exist inside the rushing torrent of the River of Time without being instantly erased or scattered across a trillion dead timelines.
Markus traced the tail fins, decoding the exact spatial-temporal pulse that had violently ejected him from the white portal. It wasn't a hostile attack, but a protective defensive mechanism designed to purge any entity whose chronological foundation was too weak to withstand the absolute weight of the river's true current.
As these fundamental truths flooded his mind, Markus's [Formless] core began to churn violently within his chest. The dormant silver-blue embers sparked, consuming the raw conceptual data radiating from his palms and converting it into pure, unadulterated comprehension.
[Law of time: 0.05% > 0.07% > 0.1%]
The sheer volume of information was staggering, threatening to overload a standard mid-Tier 6 energy system. Yet, Markus's mental architecture remained entirely unshakeable. He categorized, filed, and structured the incoming data with the detached efficiency of a master builder laying out a grand blueprint.
Hour after hour dissolved into nothingness as Markus remained locked in his meditative trance, completely divorced from the conventional passage of time occurring outside his windows. He watched as the translucent fish slowly began to dissolve, its physical form converting entirely into gaseous, silver-blue strands of pure conceptual authority that seeped directly through the pores of his hands.
With a final, resounding pulse of his internal energy, Markus absorbed the last remaining thread of the creature. The erratic ticking of the mechanical clock on the nightstand instantly snapped back into perfect, synchronized alignment. The heavy, viscous pressure in the air dissipated, leaving the room entirely normal once more.
[Law of time: 0.5%]