High Martial: I Grind Professions

Meanwhile, at Arclight University, in a pavilion on the rear mountain of Enlightenment Peak.

The headmaster, dressed in a simple, elegant robe with hair as white as snow, sat upright before a stone table.

Several translucent screens floated before him, scrolling in real-time with battle reports, resource allocation information, and anomalous energy monitoring data from all across Blue Star.

A cup of clear tea rested at his side, its fragrance wafting gently, yet his expression was as tranquil as an abyss.

Suddenly, one of the screens flashed with a piercing red light. A top-level, encrypted emergency message from Mountain Rain Pass popped up, bearing just a few short words:

"Ten Kings attacking, seven hidden! Urgent aid required!"

The pupils of the white-haired headmaster, who had been as calm as still water, suddenly contracted.

The next second, tiny ripples appeared on the surface of his tea, and the liquid instantly froze solid.

He shot to his feet.

There was no earth-shattering display of power, but the light around everything in the pavilion—the stone table, the light screens, the teacup, even the drifting fallen leaves—began to distort in an extremely subtle way.

It was as if space itself had become unstable.

In the next instant, the air inside the pavilion emitted a short, faint hum, like an illusion being popped.

The white-haired headmaster, his teacup, and the patch of air around them vanished in an instant without a trace, leaving only a slightly blurry afterimage that was quickly smoothed over by the natural airflow.

This was a rule-level translocation, a jump that transcended the very concept of speed.

「Thirty seconds later, above Mountain Rain Pass.」

In the center of the chaotic and violent Energy Field, the Mountain Rain King was still dominating the battlefield, suppressing three Great Demon Kings who, though covered in wounds, continued to resist stubbornly.

Suddenly, in the sky not far from the battlefield, a patch of space rippled as if a stone had been tossed into a calm pond, sending out colorless, visible waves.

Then, at the center of the ripples, a white-haired figure in a robe solidified from nothingness—the headmaster of Arclight University stepped out of thin air.

His arrival was not accompanied by any violent release of energy; in fact, the chaotic battlefield seemed to freeze for an instant.

"Mountain Rain." The headmaster’s voice echoed directly in the mind of the Mountain Rain King, who had also sensed the arrival. The voice was calm, yet it carried an immense amount of information, instantly relaying the current situation.

At that moment, across the entirety of Mountain Rain Pass, the only battle left in sight was the one between the Mountain Rain King and the three Great Demon Kings: Shi Yao, Profound Python, and Steel Skull.

However, the very instant the headmaster appeared, Shi Yao and the other two demons seemed to receive an order, almost simultaneously erupting with the last of their Demon Power.

They took a heavy blow from the Mountain Rain King head-on and used the momentum to break away from the fight, retreating recklessly toward the Star Gate like three blurred afterimages shot from a bow.

They retreated right up to the edge of the Stargate.

Just then, the deep blue light on the Star Gate’s surface—a remnant from the forced expansion of the spatial channel—flashed intensely. The "cooldown period" after its forced activation had just ended.

Without a moment’s hesitation.

Shi Yao and the other two demons, knowing full well the terrifying power of the white-haired elder, turned and charged frantically into the newly stabilized portal of the Star Gate.

’Trying to leave?’ The headmaster’s expression was calm, but his eyes were as deep as the starry cosmos.

He made no move to pursue them. Instead, he simply stood his ground and raised his right hand—long-fingered and seemingly no different from that of an ordinary old man—and, from thousands of meters away, made a gentle pressing motion downwards in the direction of the Star Gate!

HUMMM!

There was no cataclysmic flash of light, but centered on the three demons, the very rules of space within a radius of several hundred meters were instantly and forcibly twisted and rewritten!

The air grew as viscous and heavy as a swamp of lead and mercury, and even the path of light began to bend strangely.

More terrifying still, what formed high above their heads was not a physical palm, but something that seemed to be the very will of heaven and earth, extracted and condensed into a single force.

This force took the form of a colossal, invisible hand that spanned the heavens, wielding the power of rules that could imprison space and shatter all existence. It descended with overwhelming might, moving far faster than the three demons could ever hope to flee.

An invisible pressure descended abruptly.

Shi Yao roared, his muscles bulging like iron as he tried to break free of the restraint.

Profound Python desperately activated his last resort, an innate tortoise shell Divine Technique, causing a cyan-black light to flash wildly.

Steel Skull roared, bending low and slamming his massive elephant trunk to the ground, attempting to prop up the falling "sky."

But it was all in vain!

Under the power of that rule-based hand, their powerful demonic bodies, once a source of pride, felt as if they were trapped in solidifying amber. Even turning their heads was an immense struggle.

They could only watch helplessly as the invisible, destructive force descended, despair flooding their consciousness like an icy tide.

"Talisman Emperor, save us—!" The three demons were scared out of their wits, embedding a final, desperate roar from their Primordial Spirits into their very bloodlines, a cry that pierced the interstellar barrier.

Just as the giant hand was about to touch the crowns of their heads, at the very last second, when the destructive field of pure-rule energy had already shattered their Demon Essence shields and begun to crack their very bodies—

BOOM!

In the Demon Realm, the Talisman Emperor had been observing with Focused Spirit. Now, from across the massive interstellar barrier, he made his move!

He seemed to have anticipated this very moment, and he pointed a single finger.

An unimaginably vast wellspring of Demon Power surged forth, using the residual energy from the Starry Sky Stones—energy on the Mountain Rain Pass side that had yet to fully dissipate after expanding the channel—as a bridge.

It pierced through the Star Gate and forcibly condensed within the space on Blue Star’s side, forming the phantom image of a giant finger. The finger was translucent, a thousand feet long, and covered in profound, mystical patterns.

This colossal, phantom finger, carrying a sharpness that could pierce space itself, struck with unerring precision at the very center of the palm of the headmaster’s descending, invisible hand of rules.

TSSS... BOOM!!!

The soundless collision of rules erupted, like a billion spatial fissures shattering all at once!