Qin Yu did not back down.
The sea of mist at the deepest part of the Gloomy Mist Soul-Entangling Swamp was completely still at this moment, as if the entire forbidden zone was holding its breath.
The Thoughtless Stillness Dragon coiled above the void, its ten-thousand-mile-long body tattered and broken, large areas of its gray-white scales peeling away. What overflowed from the cracks in its scales was no longer pure Annihilation, but rather "traces of lingering thoughts" mixed with disorder, fracture, and even conflict. These were the wounds it left after withstanding Chu Xianbing's Ultimate divine power in the Heavenly Emanation Limitless Hall —the closed loop of Absolute Thoughtlessness had been torn open.
Qin Yu could clearly "see" this. Not with his eyes, but with his Fate Soul.
He slowly raised his right hand, without gripping a sword, forming hand seals, or unleashing any offensive techniques. His hand seemed to be reaching towards the eye of a storm.
The next instant, he did something that would be considered insane in any cultivation system—he voluntarily opened the outer layer of his Fate Soul's defenses.
In an instant, it was as if the dome of Qin Yu's sea of consciousness had been lifted.
All traces of his cultivation journey, the causes and effects, his obsessions, his memories, and his choices were exposed under the laws of the Severed Thought Realm.
The Gloomy Mist Soul-Entangling Swamp suddenly surged, as if instinctively trying to stop this action, but stopped halfway—as if hesitating, or as if witnessing it.
Qin Yu's voice wasn't loud, but at that moment it resounded deep within the Fate Soul of the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon.
"I'm not sealing you away." "nor am I commanding you." "I'm giving you a choice."
He took a step forward.
The moment the foot landed, there was no tremor in space, no unusual phenomenon in heaven and earth, but a muffled sound that almost tore apart Qin Yu's soul came from within his body.
--Coexistence Fate Soul Anchor, Established.
This is not a contract. It is not a master-servant relationship. It is not even control.
Instead, it is an extremely cruel Fate Soul structure: embedding a part of its own existence as the "anchor point" of the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon into its Absolute Thoughtlessness Law.
From then on, as long as the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon still "exists," Qin Yu must endure the erosion of his Absolute Thoughtlessness in sync with it.
Conversely, as long as Qin Yu's "existential awareness" remains stable,
The Absolute Thoughtlessness that were constantly sliding towards self-destruction of Thoughtless Stillness Dragon will also be forcibly pulled back.
Coexistence. Not because of safety, but because—there is no other choice.
The moment the Fate Soul Anchor was established, the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon went completely berserk.
Its dragon body suddenly contracted, then expanded wildly in the next instant. The ethereal light on the Horn of Sever Thought shattered into billions of fragments, and the spatial structure of the entire Gloomy Mist Soul-Entangling Swamp began to collapse, displace, and overlap.
The crimson patterns in the dragon's eyes spun wildly, half disintegrating and half backfiring.
Its roar was no longer a "sound," but an impact that directly affected the level of existence.
Absolute Thoughtlessness and instinct tore at each other within the same Fate Soul. Qin Yu's body jolted violently.
He clearly felt an indescribably cold "blankness" flowing back into his sea of consciousness along the Fate Soul Anchor.
Memories begin to fade. Emotions begin to distort.
Even the thought of "I want to tame it" is being slowly worn down.
This is the backlash of Absolute Thoughtlessness. It's not pain, not destruction, but a state more terrifying than death.
You remain conscious, but you gradually lose the reason to "want to be conscious".
The body of the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon tumbled in the void, its claws tearing through space unconsciously, and wherever its tail swept, the "form" of mountains and rivers was erased, turning into vast expanses of shapeless chaos.
It is heading towards self-destruction. And Qin Yu is being dragged down with it.
At that very moment, Qin Yu closed his eyes.
It wasn't escapism, but rather a deliberate descent into humility. He didn't try to solidify his "self."
Instead, deep within his Fate Soul, he made a decision that was almost tantamount to suicide.
--Using one's own Fate Soul as the "sacrificial variable" for the first rewriting.
Within his sea of consciousness, he personally peeled away the most visible, stable, and "Qin Yu's" Fate Soul structure.
In that instant, Qin Yu in reality coughed up a mouthful of blood.
It wasn't red, but rather a dark soul blood mixed with specks of light and fragments of cause and effect.
His aura suddenly diminished; his presence became noticeably weaker.
Even the heavens and earth hesitated briefly in their "confirmation" of him. And it was at this very moment—
The rampage of the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon came to an abrupt end.
The dragon's body froze in mid-air, its vast form no longer expanding or collapsing.
Those eyes, swirling with crimson and emptiness, appeared for the first time—
Delay. Not consciousness. Not thought.
Rather, it was an extremely primal reaction. "Something is taking the brunt of my suffering." The Coexistence Fate Soul Anchor began to take effect.
The rift in the Fate Soul the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon was forcibly filled by the "Fate Soul fragment" from Qin Yu.
It's not a repair, it's a rewrite. The Absolute Thoughtlessness remain. The Annihilation remains.
But within that Emptiness, a very thin, yet undeniably real, line appeared—
A line called "Coexistence." Qin Yu slowly opened his eyes.
A faint, almost imperceptible gray-white tinge appeared deep within his pupils.
The colossal body of the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon slowly coiled down in the gloomy mist. For the first time, its head no longer looked down, nor crushed, but instead—
It stopped at the same level as Qin Yu. The first rewrite was completed. The time it took for the Coexistence Fate Soul Anchor to stabilize was much shorter than Qin Yu had expected.
Almost three breaths after completing the first rewrite, he sensed something was wrong. It wasn't an external anomaly, but rather signs of collapse within himself.
The Absolute Thoughtlessness originating from the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon was not weakened by coexistence; on the contrary, it seemed to have found a true "foothold" and began to seep into Qin Yu's core of existence continuously, slowly, and irresistibly along the Fate Soul Anchor. It was not a violent impact, but an erosion like water dripping on stone.
The first thing to become unbalanced is the sense of time.
Qin Yu clearly "saw" a segment of his memory being stretched into hundreds of fragments, only to be compressed into an unrecognizable gray dot in the next instant; immediately afterward, his predictions of "what will happen next" became sluggish, and his causal observations were no longer completely closed, but rather large, blurry blind spots appeared.
He was still conscious, but the certainty that "I am thinking" was fading little by little.
The Gloomy Mist Soul-Entangling Swamp trembled, as if sensing some forbidden state taking shape, yet it still did not intervene. This was the land of dragon taming, but also a realm of utter isolation and helplessness.
Qin Yu understood that if this imbalance of coexistence was allowed to continue, there would only be one outcome—
Either he would be dragged into the Absolute Thoughtlessness by the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon, becoming the second "Spirit of No Thought";
Either the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon will collapse again, the backlash from Absolute Thoughtlessness will expand, and the Gloomy Mist Soul-Entangling Swamp will be dragged into calamity.
Just then, Thoughtless Stillness Dragon responded to him for the first time.
It was not words, not thoughts, not even emotions. It was an extremely primal, yet immense, "echo of existence" powerful enough to crush the sea of consciousness.
In that instant, the world before Qin Yu's eyes was completely flattened. Up and down, near and far, inside and outside all disappeared, leaving only an endless gray-white void. And in the center of this void, the outline of the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon slowly emerged in a "formless and imageless" way.
It didn't speak, yet it poured a message directly into the depths of Qin Yu's Fate Soul—
That wasn't goodwill, nor was it communication.
Instead, the instinctive response is. "Coexistence = Sharing." The next instant, danger strikes.
The Thoughtless Stillness Dragon did not attack Qin Yu's physical body, nor did it touch his soul structure; instead, it did something far more terrifying—
It amplifies its own collapsing "Absolute Thoughtlessness pressure" in a reverse, synchronous manner through the Coexistence Fate Soul Anchor.
Qin Yu's sea of consciousness exploded instantly. Countless scenes that Does Not Exist in his own experience flooded in like a torrent:
Civilization freezes in an instant, losing its capacity for thought; a cultivator, at the pinnacle of enlightenment, suddenly falls into a blank slump.
The universe was reduced to nothing because "no one understood the meaning of its operation." These are not memories, but the residual waves of thought carried by the existence of the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon itself.
Qin Yu's body trembled violently, his breathing became disordered, and his Fate Soul Anchor vibrated violently, on the verge of breaking. If it broke at this moment, not only would coexistence fail— the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon would completely lose control, but Qin Yu himself would also be torn into two irreparable fragments of his Fate Soul.
He finally understood the crux of the problem. The first rewrite was merely a matter of "access".
What is needed now is not to endure or to resist, but to suppress the structure itself.
Qin Yu suddenly looked up, his eyes regaining an unprecedented clarity.
Instead of trying to solidify his self-esteem or sever the erosion of his Absolute Thoughtlessness, he made a second, equally dangerous but more radical decision.
--Establish a "primary and secondary order" in reverse, taking oneself as the axis.
In an instant, all the existing supernatural abilities within him were suppressed, leaving only the most primal and essential power to be awakened. It wasn't a new supernatural ability, but rather a core power he had long mastered but had never used in this way—
The Three Forms of Fate Construction: Cause and Effect Deconstruction. This form was forcibly pushed into an unprecedented application by Qin Yu.
He neither deconstructed the enemy nor dismantled the laws; instead, he directly applied this divine power to—
The Coexistence Fate Soul Anchor itself. Boom—the entire sea of mist in the Gloomy Mist Soul-Entangling Swamp suddenly collapsed inward.
The space emitted a deep, rumbling sound, as if the bones of the world were being twisted.
From Thoughtless Stillness Dragon's "perspective," a completely new causal sequence is forcibly inserted:
Coexistence remains, but the order has been rewritten.
Qin Yu is no longer a passive recipient.
Instead, it was forcibly defined as the main anchor. The second rewrite officially begins.
This time, the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon let out a truly powerful roar.
The dragon's body writhed wildly in the void, its tattered scales cracking and emitting a blinding gray light. The stream of Absolute Thoughtlessness overflowing from the Horn of Sever Thought was forcibly pulled back into its body; it tried to detonate the Absolute Thoughtlessness again, but found that all the paths that spread outward were firmly locked by that newly formed causal structure.
Qin Yu's body also suffered unimaginable backlash.
His Fate Soul was torn apart once again, and his aura plummeted to a dangerous Threshold point. Even the existence of "Qin Yu" became briefly blurred in the perception of heaven and earth.
But he stood firm, anchored by himself and bound by his Fate Soul.
The roar of the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon abruptly ceased the moment the last causal thread was forcibly nailed shut.
The dragon's body slowly contracted, and the aura of Annihilation ceased its violent outpouring.
After a prolonged period of turmoil, the dragon's originally crimson and chaotic eyes finally began to change.
The crimson pupils gradually faded, and the gray and white began to separate.
Deep within, a faint yet steadily present clear luster emerged. It was not the awakening of consciousness.
Rather, it is a state of equilibrium after the order has been rearranged.
The Thoughtless Stillness Dragon no longer swooped down or went berserk; it simply coiled itself in the dark mist, its breathing becoming calm and regular.
Its attitude also shifted for the first time from "conflict" to "acknowledgment".
Qin Yu slowly exhaled, his body almost unsteady on his feet, yet he still didn't fall. The second rewrite was complete.
The Thoughtless Stillness Dragon has been completely suppressed within a controllable coexistence framework. True dragon taming has already crossed the most dangerous threshold.