Jie Ming's Dharma Aspect was squeezing into the planar barrier inch by inch.
Dark golden light clashed violently with the sky-blue patterns on the barrier's surface at the edge of the fissure, sending out large swaths of fine energy sparks, as if two different orders of existence were gnawing at each other in the void.
The Octopus fleet continued to pour out firepower.
Various attacks hammered into him without pause. Aside from the high-compression energy salvos that required tens of thousands of warships to coordinate, which could still push him back a distance, other attacks could hardly shake him at this point.
At this rate, within a few hours, he would completely breach the planar barrier.
But just then, an attack silently came from deep within the warship formation.
This attack was exceptionally abrupt, with no warning or energy fluctuations.
Its form was like a transparent thread pulled to its limit, so thin that the naked eye could not capture it.
Yet wherever it passed, space itself was cleanly split in two.
Jie Ming's True Illusion Void-Breaking Eye caught that thread in the first instant.
But by the time he caught it, it was already right in front of him.
Too fast.
The interval between the attack's launch and impact was compressed by some force to nearly zero, leaving him no time to dodge or mobilize his Dharma Aspect for protection. The next moment, a layer of gray-white light unfolded before him.
It was a crystallized domain woven from countless Law of Agony runes, thin as a cicada's wing, yet it steadily stood directly in the path of that transparent thread.
The transparent thread silently dissolved upon colliding with the gray-white light.
Jie Ming abruptly turned his head.
Viola was standing not far behind him, her right hand spread open, palm facing the direction of that gray-white light.
Her posture was exactly the same as when she had infiltrated the planar barrier earlier.
But now, the smile on her lips, which usually carried a hint of amusement, had completely changed into the satisfied grin of a predator watching its prey fall into a trap.
"Finally done," she said slowly, her voice tinged with barely suppressed pride. "Hard work pays off—I've completed part of the invasion into the plane origin."
Jie Ming's eyes lit up at her words.
At the same moment, the eighth-level Octopus People hidden deep within the warship formation changed expressions drastically.
Jie Ming understood exactly what Viola had done.
The moment they discovered that this plane had been occupied by the Multiracial Alliance in advance, the two had conducted a brief tactical communication through psychic force. The primary issue before them was never the enemy's troop numbers, but the fact that since the enemy had already controlled so many sixth-level combatants, they must have completed preliminary control over the plane origin.
What did a plane fully under an enemy's control mean?
It meant the opponent could manipulate the plane to self-destruct at any moment, dragging all invaders to their doom.
If they forced their way in under such circumstances, even if they ultimately crushed all enemies, they might end up with nothing.
Therefore, the first real task for the two was not to fight, but to seize control of the plane origin.
At the very least, they had to ensure the enemy could not even self-destruct.
Combining Viola's earlier long-range detection results with the current reality, even if this plane had shifted due to time turbulence, the Octopus People could not have occupied it for long.
A short occupation time meant their control over the plane origin was not yet fully consolidated, leaving room for infiltration and takeover. And the timing the two chose was precisely optimal.
Jie Ming and Viola were only just beginning their invasion; they had not yet actually entered the plane's interior.
Even if the enemy was pushed to the brink and attempted a self-destruct, the first to suffer damage would be the enemy units, not the two who had not yet truly penetrated deeply.
So from the start, Jie Ming's seemingly brutal breakthrough was a meticulously designed feint.
The colossal dual Dharma Aspect.
The spectacular tearing of the barrier with bare hands.
Standing firm while enduring all firepower.
All of this was an exaggerated "performance" to firmly fix the Octopus People's attention on him.
The fleet fired at him, the commanders stared at him, and the seventh- and eighth-level beings hidden in the shadows kept vigilant watch on him.
When everyone's gaze was focused on the golden giant splitting the sky above, no one noticed a gray-white Law tendril silently creeping like a vine toward the plane's depths outside the barrier.
Viola had been standing behind him the whole time.
Outwardly, she was just grinning as she watched him get pummeled.
But in reality, her Law-Crystallization Domain had begun extending toward the plane origin during the infiltration phase. The Law of Agony held no natural advantage in contesting control of the plane origin.
It excelled in matters of emotion, perception, pain, and resonance, not in material and energy.
In a direct struggle for the plane's recognition, it was far less straightforward than elemental laws.
But Viola had her own methods.
She leveraged the sense of oppression from Jie Ming's brute-force breakthrough.
The more the Octopus People feared, despaired, and suffered, the more those negative emotions became nourishment for her Law.
She gathered these fears and pains layer by layer, then turned them back to affect the Octopus People's manipulation of the plane origin.
Emotional fluctuations affected their psychic force.
Psychic force fluctuations affected control precision.
And once control precision dropped, vulnerabilities appeared.
Until the moment when the eighth-level Octopus finally couldn't hold back and struck, Viola seized the opportunity.
That attack came extremely fast, fierce, and precise, but it also meant that the attacker had concentrated too much attention on it. Consequently, all the Octopus People's focus shifted to that transparent thread in that instant—including those maintaining control over the plane origin.
With their attention diverted, their control over the plane origin experienced a faint, almost imperceptible slackening.
That was the moment.
Viola released all the accumulated fear and pain in one go, leveraging the force to strike back, directly breaking part of the enemy's control authority, and drove her Law-Crystallization Domain like a wedge deep into the plane origin.
This sliver of authority might be insignificant for the entire plane origin.
But it was enough to cripple the control the Octopus People held.
At the very least, it was enough to prevent them from triggering the plane's self-destruct.
Watching the gradually shrinking planar barrier before him, a cold smile crept onto Jie Ming's lips.
Then, with a sneer, he dismissed his dual Dharma Aspect.
The five-hundred-kilometer-tall golden projection silently dissipated in the void, revealing his true body, which was only a kilometer in size.
The Octopus fleet's detectors screamed warnings simultaneously: "Warning! Warning! Enemy energy readings rising rapidly!"
Seeing this, the Octopus commander's eyes bulged.
On the sensors, the target's volume shrank sharply, but its energy density not only didn't drop but rose instead, becoming more condensed and thus more dangerous. Jie Ming stretched his body comfortably; he no longer needed to act.
Earlier, deploying such an exaggerated Dharma Aspect and tearing such a wide rift was purely to attract attention, not to actually "squeeze" through there.
His true body was only about a kilometer in diameter, and even with the Return to Ruins Armor's protective layer, it was just a few kilometers. There was no need to tear a continent-spanning gash in the planar barrier.
All that was to make the Octopus People believe a monster so massive it blocked out the sky was trying to break through the shell.
Now that the threat of the plane's self-destruct was eliminated, there was naturally no need to maintain that absurdly oversized form to draw fire.
The next moment, Jie Ming's kilometer-sized true body charged directly into the planar fissure.
The golden figure cut through the crazily firing fleet of warships like a red-hot knife through butter, landing steadily inside the atmosphere.
Then, he re-deployed his dual Dharma Aspect.
A five-hundred-kilometer-tall golden projection rose from the very center of the Octopus warship formation, manifesting directly above their entire fleet array.
All warship detectors emitted piercing alarms simultaneously.
The moment Jie Ming no longer concealed his energy fluctuations, the target parameters on the scanning interface instantly broke through the fifth-level ceiling, surging toward the seventh-level energy tier.
Inside the command cabin of the flagship "Iron Curtain," the Octopus commander stood frozen before the command console, staring at the golden giant so close on the screen, his facial tentacles drained of all color.