False Dao Patterns, True Divine Artifacts!

Deep within the void, the originally dead and silent chaos suddenly rippled violently.

The white bone lotus that had spanned across eternity trembled slightly at this moment.

Vast Void Dao Ancestor sat cross-legged on the lotus platform. The greed and fervor in his single eye instantly turned into extreme coldness.

He felt it.

The new Cultivation Method, which had been flowing gently within his body, suddenly turned into a giant suction cup.

A force so immense it made him palpably uneasy was frantically drawing on his origin-level magic power along the veins of that rune.

This was not normal consumption.

This was plunder.

"How dare you, you brat."

Vast Void Dao Ancestor let out a cold snort, the sound shattering the turbulent void for thousands of miles around.

He was not panicked.

As an old ancestor who played with reality and illusion, he had long guarded against this.

Before swallowing that rune, he had already constructed a virtual sea of energy called "Mirror Flower Water Moon" outside his origin core.

Although the rune was within his body, it was actually parasitic within this virtual sea of energy.

It had severed all real karma.

"I knew you young scoundrels were never honest."

"You planted a trap in this rune, intending to backfire on this venerable one?"

The corners of Vast Void Dao Ancestor's mouth curved into a mocking arc.

He clasped his withered hands together, and a pale, annihilating light shot from his single eye.

"Annihilate."

With a low cry.

The layer of virtual sea of energy within his body instantly collapsed.

The gray rune, which was frantically devouring magic power, along with the virtual space, was thoroughly shredded into nothingness in that instant.

All connection was severed.

The annoying suction force also disappeared.

Vast Void Dao Ancestor released his hands and lightly flicked away non-existent dust from his sleeves.

"A mere trick."

"Do you think I've lived these hundreds of thousands of years for nothing?"

"Trying to trick me? You're still too young."

He began to laugh triumphantly, his laughter echoing in the vast void, carrying the contempt of a superior being for an ant.

Not only had he resolved the crisis, but he had also reverse-engineered Li Yan's sneak attack method, which made him even more confident in his judgment.

However.

Just as his laughter reached its peak.

The laughter was suddenly choked off as if by an invisible hand, coming to an abrupt halt.

Vast Void Dao Ancestor abruptly lowered his head, staring intently at the location of his origin core.

His face turned ashen at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Deep within his true origin core, which should have been free of impurities, a speck of gray light flickered to life without any warning.

The light spread rapidly, transforming into a familiar rune with a twisted beauty.

It was the very rune he had just "crushed" with his own hands.

It had not invaded from the outside, nor had it passed through any meridians.

It appeared out of nowhere, as if it had grown there from the beginning.

And this time, it had taken root even deeper.

The suction force returned, more ferocious and more greedy than before.

"How is this possible..."

A tremor entered Vast Void Dao Ancestor's voice.

He had clearly annihilated the virtual sea of energy completely.

Karma was severed, matter was gone.

How could this thing possibly return?

A chill he had never felt before crawled up his spine to the roots of his hair.

He dared not delay, his ten fingers shifting rapidly as he cast ancient and complex restrictions.

"Void Triple Realm, Severance."

The first layer: severing space.

Around his core origin, he laid down tens of thousands of layers of spatial folds, impossible for any matter to traverse.

The second layer: severing time.

He completely froze the flow of time in the core region, attempting to fix the growth of that rune.

The third layer: severing cognition.

He employed the highest profundity of the Yao Jue Dao Patterns, forcibly altering reality and defining the rune as "non-existent."

After completing all this, the Vast Void Dao Ancestor was drenched in sweat.

Even for an Ancient God, mobilizing such a vast amount of law power in an instant was an immense strain.

He nervously observed his own origin.

Under those three layers of absolute severance, the gray rune finally dimmed, then slowly vanished.

The sensation of his power being drained also ceased.

Hoo.

The Vast Void Dao Ancestor exhaled a heavy breath.

"That was close..."

"What in the hell is this thing? It's so damn troublesome."

He wiped the cold sweat from his brow, still feeling a lingering dread.

Fortunately, his methods were peerless, and he had managed to suppress it in the end.

But just as he hadn't fully exhaled that breath.

His pupils suddenly contracted to the size of needle tips.

In the very center of his origin core, which was layered with defenses and even had its time frozen.

That gray rune.

Glowed again.

This time, it didn't appear quietly.

Instead, with a mocking, dazzling radiance, it took root and sprouted directly within his origin mana.

It even split into a second, then a third.

Those spatial folds, temporal freezes, and cognitive alterations were completely ineffective against it.

It ignored all rules.

It was there.

So real it was despair-inducing.

"No... this is impossible!"

The Vast Void Dao Ancestor let out a terrified scream.

He had never encountered such a situation.

He felt like a person scrubbing their hands frantically, having already rubbed off the skin, only to find the stain was still embedded in their flesh.

No matter how he tried to shake it off, it wouldn't budge.

It was like a patch of psoriasis stuck to his soul.

The more he scratched, the more bloodied it became, yet it only grew more vigorously.

The suction erupted again.

This time, it wasn't just mana.

It was his origin essence, even his proud Ancient God status, being madly devoured by this rune.

His power was flowing through invisible conduits, pouring unceasingly into the Canglan Realm.

"Stop! Stop it now!"

The Vast Void Dao Ancestor frantically mobilized his divine power to assault the rune.

But with every assault, every attempt to erase it.

After the rune regenerated, it would only become stronger, its roots more stable.

The more he resisted, the deeper he sank.

Deep beneath the Central Province, at the formation's core.

Li Yan watched the torrent of white divine power surging from above, several times thicker than before.

He nodded in satisfaction.

"Impatient."

"He's starting to fight back."

Li Yan's hand seals changed, guiding the torrent toward the divine arm that was about to take shape.

The Vast Void Dao Ancestor would never understand, even in death.

He lost because he believed too much in his own laws.

The core of the Yao Jue Dao Patterns is "truth-falsehood conversion."

While Li Yan's Side Effect Law's core is "causality reversal."

When these two combined, they formed an unsolvable logical closed loop.

That rune was half true, half false.

When the Vast Void Dao Ancestor recognized it as "true" and threatened to erase it, the Side Effect Law activated, reversing it to "false" and thus evading annihilation.

When the Vast Void Dao Ancestor attempted to define it as "false" through cognitive modification, the Yao Jue Dao Patterns activated, transforming it into "true" and directly manifesting within his origin.

Cultivating falsehood into truth.

No matter what he did, no matter how he defined it.

That rune would use his own power to be reborn in the place he least wanted to see it.

Every erasure was actually fueling the rune.

He was using his own laws to feed Li Yan's trap.

"Thank you for the hospitality."

Li Yan chuckled softly.

Vast origin power poured into the furnace.

The divine arm, suspended in mid-air, finally completed its transformation.

All the death qi, bad luck, and impurities completely dissipated under the scouring of this Ancient God origin.

A suffocating fluctuation emanated from beneath the intertwined gray-green and dark red skin.

The fingers of the divine arm twitched slightly.

Just this single movement.

The sturdy rock walls of the underground space instantly filled with spiderweb-like cracks.

Even space itself let out a mournful cry of unbearable burden, unable to withstand this weight.

The Divine Artifact was complete.