Although Xiao Meng had survived the Tribulation Lightning, it had left behind severe Dao injuries. He slept in the Netherworld Realm for more than ten years before waking, then spent another twenty-odd years recovering.
During this time, he went fishing hundreds of times and caught quite a few divine treasures. With the Taishi Tree's help, his Dao injuries finally improved. As for the Taixu Divine Lotus within him, after helping him survive the Tribulation Lightning, it seemed to have fallen into deep slumber. He still could not communicate with it.
On a mountain range north of the Black-Corner Region, Xiao Meng sat cross-legged with his eyes shut. Powerful energy fluctuations enveloped everything within a hundred li around him, while runic patterns flickered in and out of sight, half-real and half-illusory.
Suddenly, Xiao Meng's hands, which had rested lazily on his knees, clenched tightly. The energy fluctuations around him trembled, and an astonishing scene appeared the next instant.
All vegetation covered by that energy suddenly vanished. There was no trace of how it happened; it was mysterious and strange. It had not been ground into dust and scattered through heaven and earth. Rather, it was as if the vegetation had never existed at all. Everything had vanished without a trace, even the marks they had left in this world disappearing along with them.
Xiao Meng opened his eyes. After a long while, he murmured, "The Void Law, the eternal supreme Dao... it really is terrifying to the extreme. Not only can it return all things to nothingness, even the Great Dao cannot escape its crushing force. Fate, Chaos, karma, the five elements, yin and yang—none can contend against it."
Nothingness was the beginning and also the end. There was no true eternal immortality in this world, no everlasting life or indestructibility.