The lights inside seemed exceptionally gentle at this moment. The light emitted by the warm crystal was no longer cold, but rather like a soft veil, enveloping the entire room. Zhou Wanning was able to sit up on her own, her shoulders and back straight, her breathing long and steady. The long-lost color on her face made her feel as if she had returned to this world.
The mother, her hands trembling, stepped forward. She hesitated for a moment, as if afraid it was all a dream, before suddenly pulling her daughter into her arms, tears streaming down her face. "Wanning... Wanning, you're finally alright..."
Zhou Wanning leaned against her mother's chest, a lump forming in her throat, but she managed a very light yet genuine smile. "Mother, Wanning to have troubled you."
The father stood to one side, his eyes red-rimmed, yet he tried his best to maintain his composure. He placed his hands on the shoulders of the mother and daughter, his voice low and deep, "Child, don't say those things. We are family. As long as you are here, as long as you live, everything is worth it."
At that moment, the shadow that had been hanging over this family for many years seemed to be completely dispelled.
Zhou Yujin stood to the side, watching this scene. His chest felt slowly filling with emotion. He wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes, stepped forward, and embraced all three of them. His voice held a rare lightness and amusement, "Yes, sister, Father is right, we are family. Now that you've fully recovered, this is a day that should be celebrated."
The father nodded vigorously, replying repeatedly, "Yes, yes, yes, yes. Jin'er, take good care of your sister. Your mother and I will go prepare dinner. Tonight, our family will celebrate properly."
His mother stopped crying and smiled, gently patted Zhou Wanning's back, whispered a few words of advice, and then went out of the house with his father. The curtain fell, shutting out the cold wind outside, leaving only this quiet and warm little world inside.
Zhou Wanning leaned against the headboard, his gaze fixed on Zhou Yujin, and after a long while, he spoke softly, "Brother, you've worked hard."
Her voice was soft, yet unusually earnest, "You must have suffered a lot for me. That miraculous medicinal herb... Brother must have gone through many hardships to bring it back."
Zhou Yujin was slightly taken aback, then scratched her head and gave a slightly childish smile, "Hehe, it's not that exaggerated. Your brother is extremely smart and a powerful expert in the Silent Mystery Realm. I won't suffer any losses wherever I go, so why would I suffer any great hardship?"
He spoke casually, but a deep, deliberately concealed glint flashed in his eyes. "Besides, the most important thing is that you're fully recovered now. Nothing else matters."
Zhou Wanning looked at him, her eyes slightly warm, but she didn't say anything more, only nodded gently. At that moment, all the unspoken gratitude and dependence in her heart turned into silent trust.
Outside, as night deepened, wisps of smoke rose slowly in the cold wind. For the first time, this small family home on the edge of the Desolate Abyss Ice Field was no longer shrouded in illness and anxiety, but truly welcomed a long-awaited reunion.
At this time, in a mysterious cave in the Southern Region the Void Obliteration Domain...
The depths of the cave were eerily silent, as if forgotten by heaven and earth. The rock walls were not ordinary stone, but rather a "shell of void patterns" repeatedly crushed by some ancient Annihilation-Construct Logic. Each crack resembled a torn black vein, faintly emanating a pale gray-blue cold light, as if even light dared not linger there. The crystal clusters hanging from the cave ceiling were like frozen star waterfalls, subtly refracting the eerie light of a distant underground spring. The surface of the spring was undisturbed, yet it reflected Qin Yu's seated figure—very faintly, as if his "presence" could be erased at any moment. He raised his hand and patted his clothes, his expression lazy yet sharp. Then, he slowly spread his five fingers, and the moment he took the [Beginningless Single Thought] from the Annihilation Devil Pupil · Final Spirit Core, the temperature of the cave seemed to be drawn away by some "earlier cold." The cold was not bone-chilling, but rather gave one an absurd illusion: that one had never been warm before.
It had no fixed shape, yet in the instant it was "seen," it revealed its only tangible appearance—a thin, silver-black crack so fine that even the concept of a "line" seemed about to shatter on the spot. At the center of this crack hung a "dot" indescribable in size. This "dot" silently cycled between three mutually devouring states: pitch black, pure white, and transparency. The cycle was so fast that time couldn't insert even a single frame, leaving only a paradoxical flash of light forever frozen in a state of "Unborn born, not yet destroyed," like a needle hanging at the edge of one's vision, capable of piercing a silent fissure in one's soul with the slightest tremor. Qin Yu's eyes darkened. He lightly tapped his fingertips in the void, first using the logic of his Fate Soul to fold and compress the causality surrounding the cave—not the kind of "enclosure" a barrier would create, but rather pressing the possibility of "this place being discovered" into a deeper, Nameless crevice—before speaking in a low voice, as if declaring to himself and to this Wedge of Paradox: "With this, I can directly break through to the Annihilation Dawn Realm · Supreme and advance to the Void Emanation Realm."
As soon as he finished speaking, he didn't rush to absorb the energy. Instead, he first allowed his own energy to sink to its deepest point. The Nine-Wheel True Evolution Dharma Wheel slowly rotated within his body. The wheel shadows were no longer light, but rather like nine layers of extremely dark star rings appearing and disappearing behind his spine. As they rotated, they produced a subtle rumbling sound. This rumbling was not a sound, but a tremor caused by the "world's default acceptance of its operation" being forcibly manipulated. In the next instant, the Limitless Evolving True Flow was drawn into his body, like a Profound Limitless Radiance river of light hanging down from the heavens. In the river, billions of light points intertwined with the Dark Evolving Undercurrent. As soon as they touched the meridians, they were tamed and rearranged by the Nine-Wheel Dharma Wheel, transforming into more precise primal pulses that spread inch by inch along the meridians. The essence of the Annihilation Dawn Realm emerged around him: unconcealable, unwritten, unpredictable—he was as if he had been placed inside an invisible "final curtain." Anyone outside who wanted to understand him was as if they were looking through an impenetrable black veil.
Qin Yu raised his hand and slowly pushed [The Beginningless Single Thought] to his brow. The moment that paradoxical "point" approached, the sea of consciousness in his brow felt as if an invisible hand was gently pressing down, causing a brief blank pause: certain scenes in his memory seemed to have frames removed, and even the thought of "what I am doing right now" was almost erased. Qin Yu's eyes turned cold, and the logic of his Fate Soul instantly reverted. The Nine-Wheel Dharma Wheel accelerated suddenly, like nine dark rings striking simultaneously, forcefully suppressing the illusion that "the self will be revoked." He no longer hesitated, and with a flick of his finger, he pressed [The Beginningless Single Thought] into the "source interface" of his Fate Soul's trajectory—not an acupoint, not a meridian, but the silent "beginning stroke" of the very first line in his narrative of existence.
Boom--
The cave didn't explode, but it felt as if the "starting point" of the entire space was being dragged backward. The luster of the crystal clusters on the rock walls instantly reversed, the reflection of the dark spring shattered and then reformed, and even the dust seemed to be forced back to its suspended state before it fell. The Annihilation Dawn Curtain surrounding Qin Yu was torn open by [Beginningless Single Thought] with an extremely fine slit. That slit wasn't a crack, but rather the interface through which the "zeroth order" was inserted into reality—there was no light in the slit, only a kind of "emptiness" that made one's scalp tingle, so empty that even the word "emptiness" seemed superfluous. At the same time, the Annihilation Dawn Realm origin within his body began to experience an unprecedented misalignment: the final curtain, which was originally unpropositional, was forcibly nailed into a "rewritable zero point" by the Wedge of Paradox. The Nine-Wheel True Evolution Dharma Wheel suddenly deformed, the wheel shadows were no longer perfect, but were stretched into nine ring-shaped arcs, the arcs interlocking to form a colder, thinner, and more unstable structure, like the skeleton of a universe being stripped into a transparent wireframe.
At this moment, the "end" of the Annihilation Dawn Realm was forced to loosen. Qin Yu could clearly feel that the final curtain was not broken, but rather "asked in advance: Where did you come from?" -- This question caused the foundation of the final curtain to shake, revealing an even more ancient background beneath: Flow of Void Emanation that was neither existence nor non-existence, a fusion of reality and illusion. It was not simply a matter of stronger power, but rather that the algorithm for existence had been changed. Faint silver-black patterns appeared on the surface of Qin Yu's skin, like countless tiny cracks wandering across his body, but instead of bleeding, they flowed out a kind of almost transparent "nothingness". His breathing continued, but it seemed to echo across a thousand layers of time and space. With each exhale, he directly "returned to the Unborn" the few wisps of light dust in the cave, and those light dusts did not even dissipate -- as if they had never been lit at all.
He gritted his teeth and forcefully pushed the Limitless Evolving True Flow towards that "zero point." The instant the primordial energy flow collided with the Wedge of Paradox, the crystal clusters above the cave emitted a series of fine cracking sounds, only to spontaneously recover in the next instant, as if forced to undergo a cycle of "shattering and rebirth." An indescribable scene appeared in Qin Yu's sea of consciousness: countless timelines, as if drawn into thin threads, wrapped around that zero point, with every choice he had ever made, every killing intent, every silence hanging on them—but these "past" moments were being thinned by the Flow of Void Emanation, becoming a semi-transparent possibility. If he lost control even slightly, he would become a floating state that "could exist or Does Not Exist," forever unable to return to a definite "self."
In that instant, Qin Yu raised his eyes, his gaze like an Ultimate cold blade, directly nailing into his core conviction—not based on emotion, nor on obsession, but on a harder assertion of his Fate Soul: I am here, now, with this body as my anchor. The Nine-Wheel True Evolution Dharma Wheel then emitted an extremely deep resonance, like nine dark bells ringing simultaneously, the echo passing through his meridians, bone marrow, and Fate Soul, finally landing on that zero point. The zero point was "fed" with certainty by this assertion, and the silver-black crack of the Wedge of Paradox suddenly contracted, transforming into an extremely fine Void Evolution pattern that nailed into the deepest part of his Fate Soul structure—this nail rewrote the way heaven and earth "observed" him: looking at Qin Yu again, he was still sitting in the cave, yet it was as if he were separated by an invisible layer of mist, clearly present, yet impossible to grasp any coordinates that could be locked onto.
The gate to the Void Emanation Realm opened silently within him. There was no grand entrance, but a more terrifying silence: his aura was no longer outwardly oppressive, but became "invisible and undetectable," as if the flow of existence around him had turned around on its own, bypassing all traceable and nameable paths. Immediately afterwards, that Flow of Void Emanation began to rapidly settle and solidify—not into a physical entity, but into a more stable "non-physical entity." Qin Yu's realm was as if he had stepped over a torn staircase, directly bypassing the Void Emanation Realm · Initial Stage Void Emanation Realm landing steadily at the intermediate level: the past and future were no longer two ends, but more like a piece of paper held in his palm that could be folded at any time; distance was no longer near or far, but a concept that could be thinned; even the "cause and effect of skill activation" could be removed in a single thought, so that even if the opponent clearly saw him make a move, they could never catch up with the next frame.
When everything returned to calm, the crystal clusters in the cave glowed faintly again, and the reflection of the dark spring was restored to its full glory, as if the transformation that had torn apart the very foundations of reality had never happened. Qin Yu slowly exhaled, the breath landing silently, yet causing a small patch of shadow in the deepest part of the cave to fade quietly, as if its "traces of existence" had been gently wiped away by the Flow of Void Emanation. He raised his hand and clenched it; the paradoxical flash of [Beginningless Single Thought] in his palm no longer overflowed, but transformed into an extremely fine silver-black line, disappearing into the depths of his Fate Soul structure, becoming the most secretive "Primordial Wedge" after he stepped into the Void Emanation Realm. Qin Yu looked up towards the cave entrance, his expression calm, yet like the cold light of a blade sheathed: From this moment on, anyone who tries to suppress him with a difference in realm will be swallowed first by the rule of "fusion of the real and the unreal."