The formation mind reacted.

  The pool beneath them detonated upward. The water transformed into a spiraling pillar of life-aspected divine essence, surging violently into the air. At the same time, the ground beneath cracked open completely, exposing the formation's core channels, which now glowed with blinding intensity.

  The destruction escalated instantly.

  Entire rows of plants within a one-kilometer radius disintegrated on the spot, their existence converted directly into raw mana and absorbed by the formation. The inner garden was collapsing exactly as it had been designed to do.

  Maelis cried out, "The plants—!"

  Her voice cracked with genuine distress. She reached toward the collapsing garden as though she could physically stop it, her hand trembling in the air.

  Lara did not even turn her head. "Ignore them. It's only the nearby plants, just one kilometer for now. But if we don't stop this formation immediately, the entire garden will be sacrificed."

  If they stopped now, everything would be destroyed and they would gain nothing. If they pushed forward, the loss could still be contained.

  Torvain deflected a massive root construct that burst from the soil beside him. "This formation's gone mad!"

  "Not mad," Marivelle corrected, her spear cutting through binding vines. "It's being desperate. It knows we're winning."

  In that moment, Adrian also realized it. The formation now wanted to destroy them. To fuel that effort, it would gladly consume the entire garden, converting every remaining plant into mana.

  Adrian could not allow that. The Core-Reforging Lotus was important, but the rest of the garden mattered just as much. The only way is to stop the formation entirely.

  He looked down beneath his feet and clearly saw the logic written into the formation. The formation's command structure was not localized to the pool alone. It was distributed throughout the entire garden. Even if he expanded his domain and suppressed the immediate area, the logic nodes elsewhere would still classify them as a threat and continue the preservation protocol, sacrificing plant after plant to defend the lotus.

  The symbols beneath his vision shifted and branched, creating decision pathways that extended far beyond this clearing. Each node communicated with dozens of others, creating a web of coordinated responses. Disable one, and the others compensated. The architect who designed this had been thorough. It could not be bypassed by modifying this single, core part.

  Adrian looked around. The plants nearest had already withered into ash, and the destruction continued spreading outward without slowing. The methodical annihilation advanced metre by metre, consuming everything in its path.

  For a brief moment, he lost his patience. He could not allow this to continue any longer.

  "Fuck it."

  Adrian activated his Source form.

  His body dissolved instantly into white-grey radiance. The transformation granted him access to authority without being confined to the thirty-metre limitation of his domain.

  Adrian issued a single command to reality: Suppress.

  In that instant, the entire garden fell silent.

  The destruction stopped. The extraction of mana ceased. The circular barrier around the Core-Reforging Lotus vanished. The spiraling pillar of divine essence collapsed back into liquid form, returning to normal water and refilling the pool beneath the lotus.

  The formation beneath Adrian continued attempting to execute its logic, but it failed completely. No matter what it did, it was as though the rules themselves no longer existed within the affected space. Even when it detected residual rules, reality simply refused to respond. Nothing acted, nothing moved.

  The formation's functionality became completely meaningless.

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  Adrian tapped against the ground with feet of pure energy and rose into the sky. He ascended until he could see the entire garden beneath him. The energy fog that normally restricted perception no longer affected him in his Source form.

  Below, the four elders stood frozen in the clearing. Their domains remained active, but their attacks had ceased. They simply stared upward at the radiant figure hovering above the garden.

  Adrian extended his perception and swept it across the entire garden. Every logic node became visible, and he read it.

  Thousands upon thousands of symbols revealed themselves. The formation stretched across the entire inner zone, its logic distributed through carefully hidden anchor points. Each node pulsed with residual divine essence, still attempting to execute commands that reality no longer acknowledged.

  Then he began to destroy them.

  One by one, the nodes shattered. Adrian did not use force. He simply willed them to cease, and they obeyed. The white-grey radiance of his form pulsed with each erasure, sending ripples through the surrounding space.

  Without their essential logic nodes, the formation could no longer function at all. One by one, the core structures embedded throughout the garden were erased completely.

  The green-gold glow beneath the soil dimmed. The formation lines carved into stone faded. The defensive constructs that had materialized from water and earth dissolved into nothing, their essence dispersing harmlessly into the air.

  Within seconds, the entire formation network collapsed.

  Below, Lara, Torvain, Maelis, and Marivelle still stood frozen, staring up at Adrian's form in the sky with profound awe. They sensed an overwhelming concept radiating from him. But what shocked them even more was the authority they felt.

  There was no visible domain, yet it felt as though they were standing inside one.

  They understood that Adrian was using an Energy Body Art, but even with such techniques, authority should still be confined within a domain. And yet, here they were, completely enveloped by his authority without a domain. None of them could explain what they were experiencing.

  Adrian slowly reverted to his human form mid-air. The drain hit him immediately. His mana was nearly exhausted, though his willforce had not collapsed entirely, allowing him to maintain flight. He quickly swallowed a mana pill.

  The concentrated sphere dissolved on his tongue, flooding his channels with ten thousand Mana Units. The relief was immediate. He had burned through nearly thirty-five thousand units in seconds.

  He understood why the cost had been so extreme. He had issued a direct command to reality without specifying a particular rule. Reality had suppressed every rule within the targeted area indiscriminately. Even Adrian himself did not fully know how many rules existed throughout the garden. Suppressing all of them simultaneously, even across a relatively small area, had consumed nearly all of his mana within seconds.

  Still, Adrian was satisfied. He looked down. His perception limit had returned, restricting him to only a few kilometers. Within that range, he could see that only about one and a half kilometres of plants around the core had been destroyed. Everything beyond that remained intact. From what he had seen in his Source form, the garden stretched for over a hundred kilometres.

  He had saved it.

  Adrian descended to the ground and calmly grasped the stem of the Core-Reforging Lotus, harvesting it at last. This time, the formation did nothing. Its essential logic had already been destroyed.

  The lotus came free without resistance. The crystalline pool beneath rippled gently, then stilled. No defensive constructs materialized, no green-gold lances erupted from the soil.

  Adrian studied the rules within the Core-Reforging Lotus for a few seconds, comprehending the rules within it. Then he turned and handed the lotus to Lara.

  "Here."

  Lara accepted it almost subconsciously. She was still in a daze, as were the others. They had expected Adrian to handle the formation, but they had also expected chaos, heavy losses, and widespread destruction. That was how things usually went in situations like this.

  Instead, everything had ended almost instantly, and their limited perception had prevented them from fully understanding what had happened. The only thing they had clearly sensed was Adrian entering his energy form and wielding authority without a visible domain.

  Lara looked down at the lotus in her hands. This was the plant they had been searching for. This was the lifeline of her sect.

  Her vision blurred slightly. She blinked rapidly, forcing the moisture back.

  Adrian glanced at the stunned expressions around him. He understood their reaction. Even he found the Source form unbelievable, especially the fact that it allowed him to wield authority without being constrained by domain limits. Still, he had kept the authority value suppressed to seventy percent, even in that state. So whatever authority they had sensed was only seventy percent, simply no longer bound by a domain.

  He did not give them time to question him. "Go," Adrian said calmly. "Return and deliver this to your sect leader."

  Then he turned to Marivelle. "You. Show me where the Everlasting Pill Sect has established their base."

  Marivelle's eyes widened fractionally. Understanding dawned across her features, followed immediately by conflict. She glanced toward the west, where her former sect had fortified their position.

  "You're going to destroy their teleportation formation," she said slowly.

  "Yes."

  The single word carried absolute certainty.

  Marivelle studied Adrian for a long moment, then nodded once. "West. They established their base in what used to be this ancient sect's main hall complex."

  Adrian's intent was clear. He would destroy that base, along with the formation they were using to teleport into this relic. If he did that, the Everlasting Pill Sect would lose all access to this planet.