After reading that line, Zhou Xuan stood rooted to the spot.
He stared at the dark-gold jade disc, unable to gather his thoughts for a long time.
It had not been a heavenly tribulation, internal strife, or some powerful enemy storming their gates.
It had been something from beyond the boundary—"Nothingness."
The word itself was strange. How could nothingness be a form of existence?
Zhou Xuan reached toward the jade disc, but the instant he lifted his fingers, a force dragged him inside.
Not his body. His consciousness.
His surroundings lurched, and the platform, stone pillars, and nebula vanished.
He found himself suspended in pitch-black darkness. Before him, only the jade disc remained, expanding without limit.
The words on the jade disc began to move.
Those words had not been carved into it. Zhou Xuan could see clearly that every stroke had been branded into the jade with a kind of Dao law.
At the instant each stroke was branded, what seeped from it was not golden light, but an indescribable sorrow.
Every word trembled.
As though whoever had written them had wept blood with every stroke.
Zhou Xuan held his breath and read on.
A new line of text emerged.
"'Nothingness' is neither energy nor matter. It does not attack, destroy, or seize. It merely... erases."
"Whatever it touches, laws return to nothingness, karma returns to nothingness, existence returns to nothingness, and memories return to nothingness."
"What is erased is not dead. Death still leaves remains, still allows reincarnation. But wherever Nothingness passes, even the fact that something 'once existed' vanishes with it."
A chill shot up Zhou Xuan's back.
He had crawled through mountains of corpses and seas of blood. He had seen death, seen souls scattered to the winds, seen utter destruction that shattered even the soul.