Deep within the main hall of the Silent Nothingness Divine Hall, the doors slowly closed, isolating it from all outside sounds. The light inside was cool and somber, yet not gloomy. A pale gray "Nameless Halo" floated above the dome, not illuminating the space, but causing all distracting thoughts to fall silent the moment one stepped into this place. This was the true inner council of the Silent Nothingness Divine Hall; once words were uttered, they were simultaneously recorded by the Fate Soul and the laws of the Dao, allowing no room for frivolity.
Palace Master Feng Xizhi sat upright in the main seat, her aura gentle yet unfathomable. While she didn't project the overwhelming pressure of her Stainless Realm · Supreme cultivation, it naturally created a sense of "unyielding" order throughout the hall. Her gaze was calm, as if she had already foreseen many outcomes, yet remained willing to patiently listen to every variable. Vice Palace Master Li Yanzi stood to the side, dressed in a plain white robe, her features cold and beautiful. Her Stainless Realm · Ultimate aura was like a carefully restrained blade, silent yet dangerous.
On the other side, the patriarch Feng Muheng stood with his hands behind his back, his white hair falling to his shoulders. His expression was gentle, yet no one dared to be negligent in the slightest. The lingering aura of the Severed Thought Realm was still faintly visible beside him, like a lingering wave of Annihilation.
Jin Hanyan stepped into the hall, her footsteps extremely light, her robes not fluttering. She stopped before the three people, bowed respectfully, her movements clean and restrained, devoid of any superfluous emotion, and said, "Hanyan greets the Ancestor, Hall Master, and Deputy Hall Master."
Li Yanzi flickered, and she spoke first, her tone calm but clearly concerned, "Hanyan, you're back."
Feng Muheng smiled slightly, raised his hand to indicate that she didn't need to be so polite, and said in a gentle but authoritative voice, "Qiu Wenlin said that you went to the Soul-Sealing Abyss with Qin Yu of the Chaos First Palace to search for the Glazed Dao-Extinguishing Zheng. Did you find anything?"
Jin Hanyan straightened up, her expression calm, yet she couldn't hide the lingering fear in her eyes. She slowly shook her head, "Reporting to the Ancestor, we didn't find it. The Glazed Dao-Extinguishing Zheng did not appear in the Soul-Sealing Abyss. On the contrary, Young Master Qin and I stepped into the trap that the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor had set up in advance."
The atmosphere inside the hall suddenly became tense.
She didn't pause, her speech remaining steady, yet each word was like a knife, "That wasn't a spur-of-the-moment plan, but a pre-existing structure of Annihilation. The Thought Severance Devouring Emperor used my deduction as an opportunity to intervene in cause and effect from the opposite direction, luring me and Young Master Qin into the game. In the end, the two of us joined forces to Annihilation a Three Nether Yin Puppets."
Li Yanzi's eyebrows twitched almost imperceptibly, Feng Xizhi's gaze finally changed, and Feng Muheng nodded slowly, his tone lowering, "The Three Nether Yin Puppets... has indeed begun to emerge into the open."
Jin Hanyan continued, her voice even colder than before, "Moreover, it can be confirmed that the true source of this wave of demonic beasts sweeping through the Void Obliteration Domain is not the scattered calamities, but the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor itself. It is using this to seek some kind of 'repair' for itself."
Feng Muheng sighed softly, "Yun Qiusheng of the Chaos First Palace has already informed me of this. The Thought Severance Devouring Emperor is extremely ferocious. Once it completes the repair of the Annihilation Realm-Breaking Pearl, the consequences will be unimaginable. We are currently discussing countermeasures."
Jin Hanyan hesitated for a moment, then spoke again, her tone now tinged with undisguised gravity, "Reporting to the Ancestor, there is one more matter that Hanyan must report. On my way back to the Divine Palace, I detected traces of numerous Void Emanation Realm cultivators being directly Annihilation in multiple areas of the Void Obliteration Domain."
Li Yanzi's gaze instantly turned cold, "Extreme Annihilation?"
"Yes." Jin Hanyan nodded. "It wasn't a severe injury, nor was it the extraction of essence; it was a complete erasure. Existence, causality, and traces of the Fate Soul all disappeared, extremely cleanly, leaving no room for struggle or resistance."
A brief silence fell over the hall.
Feng Muheng spoke slowly, his tone low and restrained, "Initially, the demonic beasts did indeed aim to collect the Void Emanation Realm's essence to repair the Annihilation Realm-Breaking Pearl. However, Yun Qiusheng has confirmed that Qin Yu has blocked that logical cause-and-effect path for repair. Logically speaking, this path is no longer viable."
Feng Xizhi finally spoke, her voice calm yet chilling, "But now, the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor has chosen to erase it directly, rather than collect it."
Li Yanzi narrowed her eyes slightly, her tone cold and sharp, "This means that it no longer needs those origins, or rather... it has found a new alternative."
Feng Muheng slowly raised his head, his gaze seemingly piercing through the palace ceiling, looking into the deeper darkness of the Void Obliteration Domain. "Or perhaps, what it truly needed from the beginning was not the 'origin,' but something of a higher level."
No one spoke.
Inside the main hall, only the Nameless Halo remained, slowly and silently turning, reflecting the four people's different yet equally solemn expressions. Some larger and more dangerous scheme was quietly tightening in a place they had not yet fully discerned.
Inside the main hall of the Silent Nothingness Divine Hall, the rotation of the Nameless Halo slowed down, as if even time itself was listening to what was to come. Feng Muheng stood with his hands behind his back, his gaze no longer gentle, but sinking into a silence that was almost "decisive." It was the aura that a cultivator in the Severed Thought Realm would reveal when they truly made up their mind. Thoughts no longer extended, will no longer hesitated, and all superfluous possibilities were actively abandoned.
"Enough." His voice wasn't loud, but it carried an undeniable weight in the hall. "Whatever the true purpose of the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor's Destruction this time, we must stop it. Now that the repair logic of the Void Emanation Realm has been completely blocked, its path has been cut in half. The more this is the case, the more aggressive and secretive its next actions will become."
He paused briefly between Feng Xizhi and Li Yanzi, then continued, "The first step is to find its true hiding place. Only by pinpointing its location can we completely block all its subsequent repairs and arrangements. Until then, all disciples of our hall at the Void Emanation Realm are strictly prohibited from leaving the premises; all mobilizations, training, and cross-domain operations are suspended."
Feng Xizhi and Li Yanzi turned solemn, and they immediately responded, "We will obey the Ancestor's orders." Then she raised her eyes, her tone still calm, but carrying a hint of suppressed sharpness, "Ancestor, how should we search next?"
Feng Muheng's gaze fell on Jin Hanyan, deep and resolute. "Hanyan, you have now reached the Stainless Realm · Supreme, possessing your natal treasure, the [Nameless Box], whose level is sufficient to resist the external invasion of the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor level. However, the other party has been lurking in the shadows, never revealing themselves. Based solely on our deductions, it is difficult to grasp the complete cause and effect."
He paused slightly, then his tone became resolute, "So here's what we'll do—you will lead the team, accompanied by ten elders of the Stainless Realm · Ultimate, to patrol various key areas of the Void Obliteration Domain in shifts. You only need to do one thing: once you discover any causal traces related to the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor, do not linger in battle, do not pursue, immediately trace back its logical chain and reflect it back to the Divine Palace."
Feng Xizhi nodded slightly, clearly having already approved of the arrangement.
"At that time," Feng Muheng's voice deepened, "I will rush there immediately. No matter where it is hiding, this time, we cannot let it escape from our sight again."
His gaze then swept across the void outside the hall, a hint of coldness in his eyes. "As for the vanished Glazed Dao-Extinguishing Zheng and those tens of thousands of demon spirits... I will personally guard the temple until they truly appear. If they dare to move, I will make even their 'appearance' a mistake."
Jin Hanyan took a deep breath, slowly bowed, her movements solemn and clean, "I will obey the Ancestor's command. Hanyan accepts the order."
Without saying a word or hesitating, she turned and left the main hall.
Outside the Silent Nothingness Divine Hall, the Emptiness, though windless, retreated on its own, as if heaven and earth were making way for some irresistible will. Jin Hanyan stepped out of the temple, her white robes spotless, her bare feet landing on the void. There were no ripples beneath her feet, yet a faint, Silent Void followed her. Behind her, ten auras unfolded simultaneously—not an overbearing pressure, but a "sense of emptiness" that made the world instinctively recede. It was the trace left by a cultivator at the pinnacle of the Stainless Realm · Ultimate, as if they had not stepped into the world, but rather the world had been forced to make room for their existence.
The eleven individuals simultaneously vanished into the deep southeastern space of the Void Obliteration Domain. Their vision was stretched, folded, and stripped away in an instant. Mountains, starry rivers, and boundary lines passed by them like pages of an ancient book being turned, yet no one gave them a second glance. Their destination was not the apparent area inhabited by demonic beasts, but rather those regions marked as "high-risk yet still logically closed" in past records—ancient battlefield ruins, Causal Severance, and remnants of old realms whose narratives still echoed after annihilation.
The initial inspections were all normal. Although the space was dilapidated, it still followed its own causal order. Although the flow of time was disordered, its origin and destination could be clearly perceived. It wasn't until they arrived at a place called "Shattered Balance Plain" on the western side of the Void Obliteration Domain that Jin Hanyan suddenly stopped.
For a moment, everything around us was eerily quiet.
It wasn't that the sound disappeared, but rather that the "occurrence" itself became hesitant. Tens of thousands of fragmented landmasses, varying in size, floated above the Shattered Balance Plain, interlocking with each other in an extremely unstable manner. There should have been causal flow of light moving back and forth among them, but only a nearly blank and dim expanse remained. The shadows of distant mountains were present, but their distance could not be determined; the space nearby was clear, yet it was like a painting without origin.
Jin Hanyan raised her hand, her fingertips lightly touching the void, and the Light of Stainlessness quietly spread out. The light was not dazzling, but it was like an invisible mirror, reflecting the "essence" of all things around. Just as the light touched the center of the Shattered Balance Plain, her pupils shrank almost imperceptibly.
The cause and effect have been severed.
It wasn't severed, nor obscured, but rewritten into a void. It was an extremely unnatural state—not that the event never happened, but that everything that happened had its "cause" and "effect" forcibly erased, leaving only a barely self-consistent present. It was like a piece of history whose beginning and end had been precisely cut off, with that moment in the middle forcibly nailed to reality, neither extending into the past nor spreading into the future.
"This is... Causal Void Zone," an accompanying elder said in a low voice, his tone unusually grave, "And it wasn't formed naturally."
Another elder's gaze swept over the remaining illusory outlines on the ground, and he slowly said, "The causal patterns at the edge of the empty area show signs of 'rebounding,' as if they have been repeatedly corrected by some kind of will to ensure that this place will not be touched by any further deductions."
Jin Hanyan did not respond immediately. She slowly took a step forward, her aura becoming increasingly restrained, as if she were actively "fading out" of the world's perception. The Light of Stainlessness condensed into an extremely thin halo behind her, and her gaze pierced through layers of nothingness, landing on the very core of the Shattered Balance Plain.
There was nothing there.
There were no formations, no energy gathering, and no "nodes" whatsoever. Yet it was precisely this pristine emptiness that sent a chill down her spine. Truly brilliant arrangements never leave obvious traces, but rather let the world lie for them.
"This place has been deliberately altered," Jin Hanyan finally spoke, her voice calm yet chillingly cold. "Not for killing, nor for sealing off, but for... concealment."
She raised her hand, her index finger tracing a faint outline of cause and effect in the air, which was forcibly revealed and then quickly dissipated in the next instant. The outline was incomplete, but it was enough for all the elders to see one fact: this area had once carried a being of "extremely high weight," and that being had been deliberately removed from the causal plane.
"Go back to the records," she said decisively. "Reflect the remaining logical fragments here back into the temple; don't try to dig too deep."
The ten Stainless Realm · Ultimate elders responded simultaneously, their movements synchronized and restrained. The light and shadow of Causal Retracing flashed in the void and were then forcibly sealed away, as if even they themselves did not wish to linger there for even a moment longer.
Jin Hanyan took one last look at this Causal Void Zone, and made a judgment in her heart—this was not an isolated phenomenon, but a preliminary exploration of a larger scheme. Someone was silently hollowing out the world's "memory" in the Void Obliteration Domain, reserving a place for something that had not yet appeared.
She turned around, her white robes billowing into the air, her figure gradually disappearing into the void.
After she left, the blank space at the center of the Shattered Balance Plain rippled very slightly, as if some kind of will confirmed that its arrangements had not been truly seen through.