Jackie was no wizard.
He was merely an "ordinary man" with cheats enabled.
With a brief scan, Shendu dismantled their long-conceived plan in a single sentence. Right now, the shock in Jackie's heart was impossible to conceal, his stunned gaze fixed on the amusement-filled depths of Shendu's eyes.
Didn't Uncle say he had prepared a spell on the resurrected Lo Pei that would block Shendu's perception? When it came to spells targeting Shendu, or demons in general, Uncle had never missed before.
Yet Shendu had shattered that perception-blocking spell with effortless ease, even instantly calling out precisely whose body the stolen Rat Talisman had been used on.
Lo Pei.
Shendu had even sensed who had been resurrected!
Was this the true power of an ancient Shendu?
"Don't mention it, it's just what I do," Jackie offered a strained, awkward smile as his deception was laid bare.
Shendu was an arrogant guy who always lost because of it; Jackie didn't mind playing along a little more to stall him here. Lo Pei was one of the two enemies Shendu hated most. As for the other, he had already been packed off by Shendu to that marvelous funhouse for demons and immortals known as the Netherworld.
By doing this, Jackie was essentially delivering Shendu's nemesis right to his doorstep on a silver platter, presenting him with a golden opportunity for personal vengeance. From that perspective, even Shendu himself hadn't anticipated this.
"Um..." Jackie struggled in Shendu's grasp. The sheer disparity in strength and size made him feel like a mere doll, imprisoned within the cage of Shendu's palm. "If it's all right with you, maybe you could put me down?"
He might be a super-powered protagonist with plot armor. But the truly despairing part was that the cheat codes on this Fire Demon right before him were permanently left on.
"Jackie, you want to deal with me, but you people are simply too weak."
Shendu continued to hold Jackie enclosed within his palm, ruthlessly laying bare their feebleness.
"You actually think Lo Pei can defeat me?" Shendu scoffed with disdain.
A long, long time ago, Shendu had indeed been sealed away by Lo Pei once. But back then, he hadn't been at full strength either. At that time, Shendu had just escaped from the Netherworld and reconquered the world, yet he had already suffered the erosion of the nether realm for a period; he was far from his prime.
Therefore, Jackie's act of stealing the Rat Talisman to resurrect Lo Pei looked utterly laughable in Shendu's eyes. An ant waking up a slightly huskier ant, attempting to make that slightly huskier ant take on a lion.
"Absurd," Shendu evaluated.
With his purpose exposed, Jackie didn't know how to respond to Shendu's mockery. To be honest, even he wasn't entirely sure if it would work; he simply trusted Uncle's words and his own instincts. After all, that was how they had always done things before.
It always felt as though they just needed to do something to strike at Shendu's weakness, it had always been that way. Even when they were suppressed, they always won in the end, and the process was never all that difficult.
The forces of righteousness always defeated evil. The story took countless twists and turns, but the ending was always the same, unchanging.
So Jackie had done it without a moment's hesitation: stole the Rat Talisman, resurrected Lo Pei, and waited for Shendu's defeat.
Until now.
Only when Shendu effortlessly pointed out his weakness and insignificance did a sliver of doubt finally creep into Jackie's heart.
Was Lo Pei really a match for Shendu?
Was the current Shendu truly so unfathomably powerful that he could afford to watch everything Jackie did today with the detached amusement of a spectator looking down from above?
Just like watching a show.
Jackie wasn't entirely sure.
Suddenly, however, he felt the pressure crushing down on his body tighten sharply. Shendu seemed to have thought of something, his wrist snapping shut with a sudden burst of force that wrung a gasp of pain from Jackie.
"The Syllables of Time?" Shendu blurted out suddenly. "It has to be that!"
"What Syllables of Time?" Confusion washed over Jackie's face; he genuinely had no idea what Lo Pei and Uncle were plotting.
"Idiots." Shendu tossed Jackie aside casually, leaving him to scramble on the ground and rub himself to ease the pain.
"The power of the Syllables of Time can rewrite everything. You're plotting to use that thing, you must be!"
Shendu's eyes suddenly blazed with a frightening intensity as deep thought took hold of him.
Jackie was no wizard; of course he knew nothing of this. He could only stare at Shendu in bewilderment, racking his brain to figure out what possible function the Syllables of Time could have that even Shendu couldn't help showing shock over.
A moment later, he watched as Shendu vanished right before his eyes, teleporting off to god knows where.
Jackie scrambled back to his feet, his mind a complete mess of tangled thoughts.
Shendu's reaction was different from what he had expected. There was no panic, nor any anxiety, only astonishment.
It was a strange emotional response. Logically speaking, if the Syllables of Time truly was a weakness capable of defeating Shendu, Shendu's reaction at that moment should have been one of panic. At the very least, he should have interrogated them fiercely.
Yet Shendu had done no such thing.
Just as Jackie prepared to make a move, he suddenly noticed a dark silhouette rapidly expanding at the edge of his vision.
Shendu had reappeared before him.
This time, he brought two people back with him.
"Uncle, Jade!" Jackie cried out in immediate alarm.
"Hmph!" Shendu tossed Uncle and Jade down beside Jackie, his gaze fixed piercingly upon them.
"Aiya, Shendu defeated Uncle! Uncle's Chi magic has no effect on him," Uncle grumbled, groaning in complaint.
Just moments before, Uncle had practically defeated all of Shendu's rushing servants who had responded to the vault's alarm. But Shendu had materialized out of thin air, shattered Uncle's full-power Chi magic with a single grab, and bundled both him and Jade up to take them along.
The Uncle of today was different from the one during the Moon Demon's prison break; the gaze of righteous favor that once rested upon him had long since faded. He was simply a powerful wizard now, still not enough to contend with Shendu. Faced with a serious Shendu, he couldn't even hold out for a single breath.
"Fools!" Shendu rebuked the three of them. "Did you really think you could rewrite current history with the Syllables of Time?"
"Uncle, Shendu's calling you an idiot." Jade whistled guiltily as she looked left and right.
Jackie scratched his head, looking at Uncle in utter incomprehension: "What are the Syllables of Time?"
"It's a very important thing," Uncle explained simply. "The Syllables of Time can rewrite history. Everything that has happened from the dawn of creation down to the future is recorded within it."
"The history rewritten by the Syllables of Time will simply be corrected by it," Shendu sneered coldly. "So your struggles are completely futile."
As a demonic sorcerer, Shendu knew far more about the Syllables of Time than they did.
It was an existence that practically transcended the rules of reality itself, possessing a supreme might that surpassed everything. Yet, even with an item capable of reversing absolutely everything, Shendu had never once attempted to tamper with the course of history through the Syllables of Time, not even during his most down-and-out days.
As long as there was even a sliver of a chance remaining, Shendu would never casually resort to using it, even though he had known its location from the very beginning.
That was a true resort of last desperation, something factored into Shendu's calculations only when all other contests were exhausted and nothing else was left to fight for.
And that was precisely what astonished Shendu.
Jackie and his crew had actually chosen this very path straight out of the gate.
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