"Plop."
Half of a shriveled, yellowed, utterly unremarkable mantou rolled into the corner by the load-bearing wall on the eastern side of the living room, landing on the soft, expensive wool carpet like discarded trash.
Su Wanqing stood frozen in place, holding the Purple Clay Teapot she had just filled with hot water, its faint hum still lingering. Her mind had gone completely blank.
He... threw a... mantou?
Half of one?!
It looked like a mantou that had been sitting overnight for ten days or half a month?!
Right beneath that pillar, which had just been radiating an aura that made her soul tremble, with what appeared to be fragments of a world-ending weapon buried beneath it?!
What... what kind of divine maneuver was this?! Some new form of performance art?!
A tremendous sense of absurdity, along with the fatigue of having her worldview kneaded over and over until it had gone completely numb, flooded over Su Wanqing like a cold tide. She looked at the shriveled half-mantou in the corner, then at Ling Ye on the sofa, wearing that flat "done and dusted" expression, and felt that her intelligence had once again suffered an unprecedented insult.
Using a mantou... to suppress a spatial rift? Or... making an offering to the great expert beneath the ground?!
This was ten thousand times more outrageous than using tea leaves to pay the rent!
However, just as Su Wanqing's thoughts stalled under the impact of this absurd maneuver—
An indescribable, even deeper and heavier sense of "stillness," like an invisible iron curtain, descended with a thunderous crash!
This time, it was no longer the "stillness" that suppressed space and time whenever Ling Ye slept. This was a kind of... "anchoring," as though all things had fallen silent and all laws had turned to nothingness!
Centered on that shriveled half-mantou in the corner, a terrifying force carrying an absolutely "constant" will, impossible to describe in words, plunged through the floor like a Sea Calming Needle sunk into the depths of the sea. Ignoring the thick layers of rock, it struck with pinpoint accuracy against the restless Primordial Anchor Fragment deep underground, the one radiating a sense of spatial rupture!
"Vmmm...!"
A muffled, terrifying tremor, seemingly originating from the planet's core and perceptible only to the soul, suddenly erupted from deep underground! It was no longer a roar or hum like before, but a mournful cry, as though its throat had been forcibly strangled and it had been suffocated in an instant!
The Primordial Aura underground, which had just been activated by the Purple Clay Teapot and surged like an awakened giant beast, instantly solidified under the crushing force of "constancy," as though a divine mountain weighing billions of tons had been slammed down upon it! Every spatial ripple, every disturbance in the laws, every leaking energy fluctuation—all of it was pinned firmly, absolutely, in place, as though someone had pressed the pause button!
The Primordial pressure that had made Su Wanqing's soul tremble was roughly wiped away by an invisible hand and vanished without a trace! The faint trembling beneath her feet instantly subsided! The distortion and suffocating feeling of some primordial behemoth peering into the villa rapidly receded like the tide! The light outside the windows returned to its normal brightness!
Everything returned to calm.
A deathly calm.
It was as though the earth-shaking roar and spatial tremors from below had merely been an illusion.
Only the shriveled mantou in the corner lay quietly on the carpet, still utterly inconspicuous, even seeming a little... shabby.
Su Wanqing stood there holding the Purple Clay Teapot, frozen as though struck by a binding spell. Her eyes, sharpened to an extraordinary degree by her epiphany, clearly "saw"—or rather, sensed—everything that had just happened!
She "saw" a chaotic-colored force of "constancy," so heavy it seemed capable of crushing the myriad heavens and worlds, erupt from that half-mantou! Like an invisible divine mountain, it pierced through the earth's crust in an instant!
She "saw" the fragment underground, radiating a terrifying aura, brutally and unreasonably pinned in place by that force, all its struggles and tremors suppressed and soothed in an instant!
She "saw" the Primordial Aura that had made even her soul wail extinguished like a snuffed candle, vanishing in an instant!
This... this was no overnight mantou!
This was clearly... an unparalleled divine artifact capable of suppressing spatial rifts and anchoring the earth's veins! And he had simply broken off half of it?!
Su Wanqing felt as though her heart had stopped beating and her blood had solidified. Her gaze toward the half-mantou in the corner was filled with extreme awe and... indescribable absurdity! The enormous contrast nearly drove her insane!
Ling Ye, however, acted as though he had merely done something trivial. He dusted off the nonexistent dirt on his hands—the mantou was so clean that not even a speck of flour had fallen off—then found a comfortable position on the sofa and sat down again. He looked up at Su Wanqing, who was still holding the Purple Clay Teapot like a petrified statue, and frowned slightly, showing a hint of irritation at being disturbed.
"Tea," he reminded her concisely. "It's gone cold."
"Huh?! Oh! Oh, right!" Su Wanqing came back to herself as if from a dream and hurriedly set the Purple Clay Teapot on the coffee table. Her movements had grown extremely stiff from shock and awe, and she was terrified that one careless motion might make her drop this primordial wonder that had resonated with the fragment underground.
She carefully picked up an ordinary white mug—the one she had licked the night before—and prepared to pour the tea. Yet her gaze involuntarily drifted back toward the shriveled half-mantou in the corner, as though drawn by a magnet.
That thing... was just being left there?!
Su Wanqing felt her heart bleed! That was an unparalleled divine artifact capable of suppressing spatial rifts! And it had simply been thrown onto the carpet?! What if... what if the robot vacuum sucked it up as trash?! Or... what if she accidentally stepped on it?!
A powerful impulse to rush over, pick up the half-mantou, and enshrine it fiercely assaulted her reason!
Ling Ye seemed to notice her wandering gaze and her internal struggle. He picked up the tea Su Wanqing had poured and took a slurp, his eyes casually sweeping over the half-mantou in the corner. His tone was as calm as though he were discussing the weather:
"Ah, that." He jerked his chin toward the corner. "Use it to prop up a table leg, or... take a bite if you get hungry." He paused, then added with a casual air of "do whatever you want," "Just don't throw it away. It'd be... troublesome."
Prop up a table leg?! Take a bite?!
Su Wanqing's hand holding the teapot suddenly shook, and the scalding tea nearly splashed out! She felt her worldview get brutally crushed all over again by those two offhand remarks!
He wanted her to use a divine artifact capable of suppressing spatial rifts... to prop up a table leg?!
Or... take a bite if she got hungry?!
Did she dare?!
She was afraid that one bite would make her explode on the spot and send her soul ascending to heaven!
"N-no! I won't throw it away! Absolutely not!" Su Wanqing practically shrieked her answer, her voice warping slightly from agitation. She immediately swore to herself that she would have the highest-grade bulletproof, shockproof, temperature-controlled, humidity-controlled display cabinet made later. No! A shrine! She would enshrine that half-mantou and offer incense to it every day!
Ling Ye made no comment on her reaction and continued sipping his tea at his leisure, as though he had merely thrown away a piece of garbage.
Meanwhile, at the temporary command post three kilometers from Yunqi Mountain.
Inside the command vehicle, the atmosphere could no longer be described as tense. It was... a deathly, bewildered silence.
On the enormous monitoring screen, the graph representing the energy field beneath the villa had just gone through a heart-stopping roller coaster ride. It had first surged abnormally as hot water was poured into the Purple Clay Teapot, instantly breaking through the high end of Stellar Level and approaching the threshold of Galactic Level! That erupting Primordial Aura, carrying a sense of spatial rupture, had made everyone inside the command vehicle feel suffocated on a soul-deep level, even through the screen!
Just as Thunderstorm's face turned ashen and he prepared to activate the highest-level emergency protocol, even considering whether half the city might need to be evacuated—
"Beep beep beep—!!!"
The ear-piercing alarm abruptly cut off, as though someone had strangled it by the throat!
On the screen, the crimson, glaring energy curve that had been shooting upward wildly seemed to crash into an invisible wall of sighs. At its peak, just before touching the Galactic Level threshold, it was suddenly... severed in half!
It had not fallen back. It had been severed!
Every energy reading—intensity, fluctuation frequency, spatial disturbance coefficient, every last datum—instantly returned to zero in less than 0.01 seconds! It had not been concealed! It had not merely settled down! It had been completely erased from the physical level by an invisible hand! From the height of its violent peak, it had plunged directly into... a deathly, energyless "zero"!
The curve representing energy intensity became a perfectly straight line, without the slightest rise or ripple, like a cold dead snake stretched across the center of the screen!
The entire command vehicle fell silent enough to hear a pin drop. Everyone stared wide-eyed at the bizarre straight line, their faces filled with extreme shock and... incomprehension.
What had happened?!
That terrifying energy source, which had been on the verge of erupting and seemed capable of tearing space apart... had disappeared?!
Just like that... it was gone?!
"Report... the target's underground energy source... signal... has completely disappeared!" The technician's voice was dry and hoarse, carrying a dreamlike daze. "Unable to detect! Unable to lock on! It's as if... it never existed!"
"The energy field around the villa... has returned to a... 'mild' state? Intensity... still exceeds the upper limit... but... stable?" another analyst responsible for monitoring Ling Ye's own energy field said, his voice likewise filled with uncertainty.
Thunderstorm stared fixedly at the deathly straight line on the screen, then looked at the still towering curve monitoring Ling Ye's energy field. His brows knitted into a tight knot. He suddenly turned toward the optical surveillance feed inside the villa. Although it was severely distorted, they could barely make out the silhouettes.
On the screen, Su Wanqing was hurriedly setting down the teapot. The target, Ling Ye, was holding a cup and drinking tea. Everything... appeared to be calm?
But where had that absolutely "constant" force come from—the force that had erased the underground energy source in an instant?!
Could it be... the target had acted?!
But he was clearly just sitting there drinking tea! There had been no movement whatsoever, nor any sign of energy leaking out!
"Investigate! Pull up all data from that 0.01-second interval! Energy form! Fluctuation frequency! Residual information! Don't miss a single detail!" Thunderstorm's voice rumbled like an injured beast. The unknown was more terrifying than the known, and it made one's heart tremble!
"Report!... There's no residue! No record of any energy form!" The technician raised his head in despair. "The level of that erasing force... was too high! Our instruments... simply couldn't capture its form of existence! It was like... like an eraser from a higher dimension... wiping it away directly!"
A higher-dimensional... eraser...
Thunderstorm felt a chill shoot from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. He looked at the blurry figure holding a teacup on the screen and, for the first time, felt a soul-deep sense of... powerlessness and indescribable awe toward the target code-named "Calamity."
This was no longer Stellar Level...
That method... was clearly... erasure at the level of the laws!
Inside the villa's living room.
Su Wanqing finally forced herself to tear her gaze away from the "divine artifact" mantou in the corner. She took a deep breath and struggled to calm her turbulent emotions. Then she picked up the ordinary mug Ling Ye had placed on the coffee table, preparing to pour herself a cup of tea to calm her nerves. After everything she had experienced, she desperately needed something to soothe her soul.
Yet the instant she picked up the mug—
"Thump! Thump!"
Her heart began pounding violently without warning, like a war drum! An indescribable, icy terror, as though countless eyes filled with greed and malice had locked onto her at once, coiled around her heart like a cold venomous snake!
Her gaze instinctively shot toward the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, filled with alarm!
Outside, the morning after the rain was bright. Sunlight pierced through the clouds and spilled across the damp courtyard. The grass and trees were lush and glistening, while the Ancient Orchid, revived by the spirit tea and blooming with white flowers, shimmered brilliantly beneath the sun.
Everything looked peaceful and beautiful.
But Su Wanqing's spiritual perception, strengthened by Chaos Origin Qi, clearly "sensed" several extremely concealed gazes in the shadows of the distant mountains bathed in sunlight. They carried cold scrutiny and... naked greed, like invisible probes piercing through space as they locked firmly onto the Purple Clay Teapot in her hand!
What made her scalp tingle even more was that the source of greed behind one of those gazes seemed to have split off a thread that secretly swept toward the shriveled mantou lying quietly in the corner?!
Before you continue