Severing the Replication Trunk and Building the Heavenly Cause Mirror Net

Qin Yu's figure completely stabilized within the concealed realm. Ling Liangyan, Liu Xu, and the other elders of the Chaos First Palace remained highly vigilant, but when the familiar yet reassuring pressure of his presence finally subsided, everyone's tense nerves involuntarily relaxed for a moment. Ling Liangyan spoke first, her voice extremely low, yet unable to conceal her fluctuating emotions, "Young Master Young Master Qin." Liu Xu and the other elders bowed simultaneously, "Guest Elder Qin." Qin Yu returned the bow in kind, without the slightest hint of arrogance, "Esteemed Elders."

Ling Liangyan raised her hand, pointing ahead to the Ancient Mausoleum of Shadowy Remains, completely covered in gray and distorted logic. Qin Yu followed her gaze, and for a moment, even he couldn't help but be momentarily stunned. The original outline of the tomb city had long been smoothed out, replaced by an undulating ocean of existence, writhing like living veins. Countless Logic Remnants Lord overlapped, extended, and split, as if forcibly glued together by some same narrative. Their sheer number far exceeded that of any previous war zone. Wan He stood beside Qin Yu, her gaze slightly tense, and whispered, "Young Master, this number... it's on a completely different level from the areas we Annihilation before."

Qin Yu didn't respond immediately. Instead, he took a deep look at the area before slowly turning his gaze back. "Elder Ling, Elder Liu, please recount everything you know in detail." Ling Liangyan didn't hide anything. From the sudden attack of the Azure Nether Immortal Sect to how the Logic Remnants Lord didn't simply Annihilation after killing the cultivator, but forcibly seized the Fate Soul and karma, replicating it into a new Logic Remnants Lord, she recounted it word for word. The more Qin Yu listened, the more somber his expression became, until even his breathing became extremely light. "It can be like this... When you transmitted your voice to me earlier, I only thought it was erosion and transformation, but I didn't expect it to have evolved to this extent." He looked up at the Ancient Mausoleum of Shadowy Remains again. "If it continues to develop, this place will soon become a self-expanding logic graveyard, and anyone who steps in will become their 'material'."

Liu Xu couldn't help but speak, his voice filled with suppressed anxiety, "Guest Elder Qin, is there any way to directly stop them from invading the causal logic chain? Otherwise, no matter how many people come, they're just giving them empty shells." Qin Yu didn't answer immediately, but his brows slowly furrowed. "Let me think about it."

The next instant, his consciousness sank into his sea of consciousness. The Void Divine Tree still stood there, its branches and leaves drooping with a faint, Silent Origin glow. Azure Ring was curled up on a thick branch, her small frame draped over her shoulders, her long, dark blue hair falling loosely around her, the translucent blue flames at the ends swaying gently, as if breathing even in her sleep. Her bare feet dangled from the branch, the extremely thin blue chain around her ankles making a barely audible tinkling sound with each breath. The cracked broken bell swayed gently, making a soft, quiet "clang."

Qin Yu gently tapped her forehead, the touch extremely light. "Azure Ring, wake up, don't sleep anymore, there's a big problem." Azure Ring's eyelashes trembled, and her light blue, ring-shaped pupils slowly opened. She first groggily turned over, then stretched, raising her slender arms high, her blue-flame hair stretching out and then retracting, making her look like a small animal disturbed from its afternoon nap. She squinted at Qin Yu, her voice soft with the lingering warmth of someone just waking up, "What's wrong, Little Qinzi? This is the first time you've come all the way to my sea of consciousness to wake me."

Qin Yu pointed to the image of the Ancient Mausoleum of Shadowy Remains projected into his sea of consciousness, "Look outside, those Logic Remnants Lords." Azure Ring glanced at it, then suddenly sat up straight, her light Azure Ring pupils darting around, revealing an almost excited expression, "Wow, it's actually this kind of thing... Logic Remnants Lord that can forcibly copy the Fate Soul of the dead, interesting, very interesting." Qin Yu was taken aback, "Copy?"

"Yes." Azure Ring swung her legs, and the cracked bell rang softly. "The Logic Remnants Lord in this area inherently carry a rule of 'reproducible causal narrative.' As soon as they kill their target, they can immediately seize everything about it—rules, logic, narrative symbols, language, power, ideology, time, history, subject, self, space, place—all are taken away and directly pieced together to form a new Logic Remnants Lord. So what you see is not expansion, but 'in-situ replication.'"

Qin Yu's expression turned completely serious. "Then... is there any way to stop them?" Azure Ring tilted her head, revealing a sly smile. "Of course there is. Although they can replicate, replication doesn't happen out of thin air. They must connect the deceased's narrative with their own through a fixed causal logic channel." Qin Yu immediately pressed, "But there are too many of them; I can't possibly cut them off one by one."

Azure Ring yawned slightly, but her tone was confident. "Don't worry, I'll help you. You don't need to deal with them one by one; just block their 'replication causal channels' entirely. Just like when you sealed the Void Emanation Realm Annihilation Realm-Breaking Pearl, the Logic Remnants Lord's attempt to forcibly replicate the dead is essentially following a causal path. Once this channel is sealed, they can only kill, not multiply, no matter how many people they kill."

Qin Yu's eyes lit up instantly. "Okay. Tell me exactly what to do."

The moment Qin Yu withdrew his divine sense from his sea of consciousness, the coldness in his eyes seemed to be replaced by a sharper will. He raised his hand to stop the hushed discussions among the crowd. His voice was not loud, but it was like a nail firmly anchoring all the panic in place, "Elders, I have a plan."

As soon as he finished speaking, Ling Liangyan and Liu Xu took half a step forward almost simultaneously. All the elders' auras tightened and focused at the same moment, as if afraid of extinguishing this glimmer of hope. Ling Liangyan asked urgently, "Really?" Qin Yu nodded, "Really." Liu Xu couldn't contain himself any longer; the blood in his chest seemed to ignite. His laughter, though low, still carried a trembling sense of triumph. "Hahaha! As expected of the only guest elder of my Chaos First Palace! Well done, Qin Yu— " Before he could finish speaking, Qin Yu raised his eyes, his gaze sweeping over everyone. "Alright, elders, protect me! Any leak of aura, any probing attack, must be blocked. Once I begin writing, no one can disturb me."

The elders responded simultaneously, their auras spreading out like a myriad of dark currents, only to vanish into nothingness with a single gesture from Ling Liangyan. The void ten miles outside the Ancient Mausoleum of Shadowy Remains seemed to be slowly flattened by a giant hand, all the sounds of wind, sand, and spiritual tides being suppressed into an eerie silence. Only the densely packed Logic Remnants Lord within the Ancient Mausoleum of Shadowy Remains continued to writhe silently. They resembled a gray-white sea covering the sky, sometimes rising into peaks, sometimes collapsing into valleys, with countless unseen narrative lines intertwined and pulling them together, as if waiting for a new "container" to be delivered.

Qin Yu stepped out of the hidden realm. The void beneath his feet did not tremble, but a ring of extremely fine Annihilation Structure patterns spread along his toes, like ripples on water, yet colder than water and harder than steel. He raised his hand, Book of Fate Law - Realm Severing Origin Brush appeared from nothingness. The pages did not turn, but a heavy "book intent" landed between heaven and earth first, as if the naming rights of the entire region had been temporarily borrowed. Immediately afterward, the Silent Origin Stainless Sword was drawn. The sword rang silently, but the moment it was drawn, the blade drew an extremely faint, Stainless silver line. The silver line glided along the void, and wherever it passed, the space was so clean that it was chilling.

Azure Ring's voice gently echoed from the depths of her consciousness, carrying a lazy yet precise guidance, "Little Qinzi, don't rush to seal the 'outer shell,' first find the 'main artery' of their replication passage. Each time they occupy a dead body, they don't act independently, but share a common narrative thread, hidden in their most inconspicuous place—in the void folds between ten and twelve miles outside the Ancient Mausoleum of Shadowy Remains, there is a 'meaningless blank space,' that is the throat of the passage."

Qin Yu's eyes darkened, and he suddenly sheathed his sword. With a backhand motion, he lightly touched the void with the spine of the blade, as if striking an invisible drumhead. The next moment, a very faint gray-white pattern appeared in the void. The pattern was neither light nor mist, but more like "creases left after a narrative has been compressed." Between the creases was a dark line so thin that it was almost invisible. The dark line did not emit light or attract spiritual tides, but it was constantly "absorbing" the residual warmth of the surrounding cultivators and living beings, like a parasitic blood vessel hidden in the crevices of bones, silently extracting the qualification to be "replicated after being killed."

Qin Yu whispered, "Found it."

He raised his hand, and the Book of Fate Law's Realm Severing Origin Brush swept through the air. The pages turned on their own without wind, revealing not words, but a vast matrix of cold light composed of "naming." The matrix resembled countless overlapping writing marks, layered upon layered on the dark lines. Qin Yu pointed his fingertip and uttered in a deep voice. "Heavenly Cause Judgment Sequence - Six Severances Seal - Fate Cause Sealing Mirror - Logic Abyss Core."

The moment it was printed, a tiny "mirror core" first appeared in the void. The mirror core was like a crystal point that was Ultimate black. Then, countless fine mirror patterns expanded out from the crystal point, like a spider web, covering all the folds where the dark line was located. The mirror did not reflect light, but reflected "cause". Any intention to copy, occupy, or splice narratives that came from the direction of the Ancient Mausoleum of Shadowy Remains would be forcibly turned back once it touched the mirror, as if it were tripped up by its own shadow.

But this was only the first layer. Qin Yu did not stop. He held a pen in his left hand and a sword in his right. The sword's edge gently swept across the edge of the mirror net, not creating cracks, but rather extremely narrow "flow-breaking grooves." In each groove, he pressed an extremely fine character into it with the tip of his pen—the character was not a common word, but a fragment of naming rights, like breaking down the concepts of "copying," "occupying," "continuing," and "inheriting" into pieces, and then stuffing them one by one into the flow-breaking grooves to make a fence.

Azure Ring chuckled softly in her mind's eye, "Yes, that's it. Turn the path they most want to take into a path that requires cutting every time they walk it."

Qin Yu's aura suddenly deepened, as if he were pressing the weight of the entire world into his palm. He formed another seal, his voice even colder than before. "Heavenly Cause Judgment Sequence - Six Severances Seal - Master Book Seal Severance - Naming Reconstruction." As this seal fell, the intent of the Book of Fate Law suddenly spread. The void ten miles outside the Ancient Mausoleum of Shadowy Remains experienced a brief "loss of name" phenomenon. The wind was no longer called wind, the fog was no longer called fog, and even the dark line seemed to have been stripped of its name, showing a momentary sluggishness—

It wanted to continue swallowing and connecting, but found itself at this moment "unable to be defined as a channel." In that instant of sluggishness, Qin Yu suddenly activated the third level, pressing his palm downwards. "Three Forms of Fate Construction — Cause and Effect Deconstruction."

There was no roar, no explosion, only a chilling "structural fracture" spreading through the void. The dark line seemed to be torn apart from the inside. It wasn't severed, but rather broken into countless "invalid causes" and "invalid effects." Each segment was forced to stop under the attack of the mirror net and the flow interruption channel, like a blood vessel being divided into hundreds of broken pieces, but not a single drop of blood could flow through.

The gray-white ocean in the direction of the Ancient Mausoleum of Shadowy Remains instantly showed extremely subtle ripples. The movements of countless Logic Remnants Lord paused at the same time, like a herd of beasts smelling their most secret instincts being choked at the same moment. They did not understand what was happening, but instinctively emitted a silent restlessness. The narrative lines trembled wildly on their bodies, as if they were trying to find a new way.

Ling Liangyan and Liu Xu suppressed their auras. They could clearly feel a "reverse probing" force surging within the Ancient Mausoleum of Shadowy Remains, as if it wanted to extend tentacles to probe the boundaries of Qin Yu's blockade. However, each time the tentacles reached the outer edge of ten miles, they collided with the mirror net and the flow interruption channel, instantly being deflected, torn apart, and stripped of their meaning. It was like reaching into an invisible gear, and when they came out, only fragmented pieces of meaning remained.

Qin Yu didn't give them a second chance to adapt. He raised his pen and wrote two extremely short naming sentences in the air, like two prohibitions stretching across the heavens and earth. As the words fell, they transformed into two dark "sealing chains," one locking "copying" and the other locking "inheritance." The chains had no form, yet they could crush any related narrative impulse that came near. He whispered, "Logic Severance. Success."

Almost the instant the seal closed completely, the first "verification" of the illusion occurred inside the Ancient Mausoleum of Shadowy Remains. In that gray-white sea, a group of Rogue Cultivator were being hunted by the Logic Remnants Lord. One of them was pierced through the chest by a gray-white claw; his Fate Soul trembled, and his body collapsed. According to previous patterns, he would immediately be possessed and transformed, becoming the new Logic Remnants Lord. But this time, the moment the claw tore him apart, a very fine crack appeared on his gray-white body. The crack wasn't light; it was feedback that the "intention to copy had been forcibly severed." Immediately afterward...

A wisp of gray-white light, attempting to penetrate the Fate Soul of the deceased, was suddenly bounced back as if hitting an invisible dam. In the instant it bounced back, it was scraped by the interrupted flow channel, shattering the narrative into powder. The powder was deflected back to its source by the mirror core, and the Logic Remnants Lord emitted a silent convulsion, as if it had ingested a deadly poison. Its body became briefly transparent, and the remaining "fragments of causal relationships" within it were forced out, dissipating into a meaningless cloud of gray smoke.

The dead were not occupied, nor did they become new Logic Remnants Lord; they simply returned to silence cleanly—a near-luxurious act of mercy for the battlefield.

Liu Xu's pupils contracted sharply, his breath almost stopped, and then he squeezed out a low growl that was suppressed to the Ultimate, "It's done... it really is done!" Ling Liangyan's fingertips trembled slightly. She saw it more clearly than anyone else—it was not a simple blockage, but rather that "occupation" had turned into a backlash, and "copying" had turned into self-harm. From now on, if the Logic Remnants Lord in the Ancient Mausoleum of Shadowy Remains wanted to expand, it would be like using its own narrative to run into a knife's edge.

Qin Yu slowly put down his brush, the essence of the Book of Fate Law returning to its original form, and the Silent Origin Stainless Sword returned to its sheath. There was no sweat on his brow, but the Ultimate concentration made the light in his eyes even colder and deeper. He turned to the elders, his voice as steady as iron, "The blockade is complete, but this is only the first step. With the replication channels blocked, they will immediately change their tactics, and the true 'source' deep within the Ancient Mausoleum of Shadowy Remains is likely to be awakened. The real battle is yet to come."