Golden ichor sprayed as the spear found its mark, carving deep wounds across Wukong's ribs and shoulders. Each cut blazed, the wounds refusing to heal as cosmic law itself forbade the chaos of regeneration.
"You fight well," Erlang Shen acknowledged, pressing his advantage with mechanical precision. "But you fight like someone who still believes rules can be broken. I am the rule that cannot be broken."
His third eye pulsed, and suddenly Wukong found his transformations failing. The seventy-two changes that had always been his greatest strength stuttered and collapsed as the divine organ imposed the law of consistency—the rule that said a thing must be what it is, nothing more, nothing less.
"No more tricks," Erlang Shen declared, his spear weaving patterns that cut through possibility itself. "No more illusions. Face me as you are, not as you pretend to be."
