Tangyi's consciousness hovered above the Waveless Sea for a moment. She could clearly "see" that the sea was not water, but a plane formed by diluting the primordial chaos to almost nothing but its "base color" and blending it with Annihilation; it was as calm as a mirror that never blinked, yet beneath its surface, extremely fine gray-white ripples constantly swept across it—
That wasn't a wave, but the breath of "erasure," each breath aimed at her life imprint, like an invisible carving knife slowly thinning the thickness of her existence. She was still a small dragon, coiled in the void, the cracks from the battle of the Sea of Heavenly Emanation remaining between her scales, and a few charred spots burned by the purifying light on her grayish-white "remains of thought" scales, like cooled star ash;
Although the crimson in the dragon's eyes had long since faded, a shadow still lingered beneath them—an old trace of the lingering embers of Absolute Thoughtlessness. She could feel the sea "inviting" her; if she drew just an inch closer, her scales, bones, soul, and thoughts would be silently diluted into the same tranquility, until even the fact that "a dragon once came here" would be forgotten.
She didn't retreat; she merely raised her head slightly, as if paying homage to some unseen heaven, or perhaps silently responding to Qin Yu's Fate Soul Anchor Point. The next instant, Tangyi's dragon body suddenly stretched out, as if a long-suppressed breath was finally exhaled. The joints of her spine unlocked one by one, extending outwards, and her scales erupted along her spine in rings of fine, grayish-white light, which was then swallowed by a deeper darkness—
Her figure rose, expanded, and meandered in the void. In just a few breaths, the dragon's body was over ten thousand feet long, its torso as thick as a mountain range. The fireflies of thought overflowing from the cut surfaces of the dragon's horns were forcibly suppressed by her, turning into circles of pale gray shadows that wrapped around the base of the horns. The dragon's whiskers extended like White Frost ribbons, and when they fell, they did not stir any "wind," but instead left thin, blank trails in the void.
She used her towering dragon body to suppress her "existence weight" to the maximum—because she understood that what was being taken away here was not power, but "definition." If she made herself as light as dust, she would be easily sucked away by the sea; if she forged herself into a mountain, even if it was thinned, she could endure for much longer.
As she swooped down, the instant her dragon head touched the mirror-like surface, the entire Waveless Sea suddenly lit up, as if someone had lit an invisible lamp in the darkness. That lamp was not light, but a kind of "proofreading": proofreading who she was, where she came from, and what right she had to exist there.
Immediately, the sea opened silently. Tangyi's dragon claws didn't shatter any water droplets, but rather felt as if they stepped into a soft yet icy membrane. Beneath the membrane lay endless emptiness, within which countless extremely fine gray lines moved. The moment those gray lines touched her scales, they began to peel them away "conceptually"—
The scales are still there, but their "hardness" has been removed; the scales are still there, but their "protection" has been smoothed out. She can feel the edges of her enormous dragon body fading, like ink slowly spreading in a painting.
Tangyi did not resist it, because resistance here was itself a kind of "obsession". She slowly sank the dragon's body down, like throwing a huge star into the deep sky, letting the gray lines wrap around, wash away, and dilute it.
The breath of Annihilation seeped into her bones and soul from all directions. At first, it was cold, so cold that even the concept of "pain" was frozen; then came emptiness, so empty that cracks appeared at the edges of her memory, and certain details that should not have been forgotten began to fade.
Then came an extremely slow process of deprivation—depriving her of the perception that "I am persisting," depriving her of the thought that "I am enduring," as if to deprive her even of the right to struggle, leaving her only with the passive return to calm.
At that very moment, a faint, almost invisible pattern suddenly appeared deep within Tangyi's dragon eyes— the Coexistence Anchor with Qin Yu after their soul bond. The pattern, like an extremely fine needle, gently anchored her from the boundless void, allowing her to retain a sliver of primal self-affirmation even in the tide of "selflessness": not "Who am I?", but "I am still here."
Following that thread of self-affirmation, she gathered all her scattered essences into a single line, extremely thin yet resilient enough. She didn't think about resisting, nor about victory or defeat; she simply kept that line continuous, inextinguishable, and unbroken.
The gray lines of the Waveless Sea swept across her dragon soul time and again, like an invisible knife repeatedly scraping away at her scales. The cracks in her scales widened, and several charred spots on her dragon back were even scraped away to reveal deeper void bone patterns, like exposed star remains.
A section of the blank trail of the dragon's whiskers was erased, as if someone had severed her connection with the world; a semi-transparent blur appeared at the edge of her dragon tail, and when it swayed, it dragged out circles of pale gray ripples like bubbles. Where the ripples passed, even the idea of "spatial stability" was dismantled, revealing a deeper void.
But her thread didn't break.
Time loses its meaning here, yet Tangyi can sense the layers of "consumption": layer by layer, her life's imprint is peeled away, layer by layer, her underlying power is diluted. Her dragon body, initially towering ten thousand feet thick, is gradually worn down into a gigantic, almost transparent silhouette, as if it would dissipate with the slightest breeze—
But the Waveless Sea and wind, could only erase. At a certain point, the sea suddenly intensified its force, as if confirming that she was not of ordinary blood, and began to unleash a deeper aura of Annihilation, directly eroding her dragon soul core. In that instant, Tangyi's consciousness went black, as if pressed into the folds of Void of Thought Severance, all thoughts flattened, even the motivation to "persevere" was erased, leaving only silence.
In that silence, she made the only correct choice—not to rely on thoughts to sustain her, but to rely on her "instinctive existence" to hold up that thread. She returned herself to the state she was in at birth: without thoughts, without intention, without self, but not in the sense of dissipation. She condensed the dragon soul into an extremely small core, a core without language, without emotions, only the purest "inertia of living."
The wiping force of the Waveless Sea surged forth, as if to flatten the core as well. But suddenly, a faint dark pattern flashed across the surface of the core. The dark pattern did not retaliate, but instead "directed" the force of each wiping to the outer edge of the dragon's body, diluting the outer edge first, while the core remained intact within a very small area.
Then, a strange phenomenon began to appear on Tangyi's enormous dragon body: the grayish-white scales on the outer layer of the dragon's body were washed away piece by piece into dust, which drifted away silently, like billions of annihilated thoughts returning to zero; but whenever the outer layer was thinned to its Limit,
The inner layer will then "grow" a deeper and heavier layer of scales. These scales are no longer the cracks of the remains, but rather like tempered star iron, grayish-white with a hint of extremely cold silver-black, as if the very essence of Annihilation has been forged into its very bones and blood.
For the first time, a "wave" appeared in the Waveless Sea. It was not a wave, but an invisible pressure rising from the heart of the sea, like an unseen eye opening on the seabed, watching Tangyi's dragon soul core.
In that instant of gaze, the edges of Tangyi's dragon body almost completely vanished, even the fireflies at the broken ends of her dragon horns were extinguished, as if the void was about to fold her into a speck of dust. But Tangyi was not folded, because her core remained stable under the pull of that Coexistence Anchor. She even slowly raised her dragon head in that gaze, the silhouette of her head forming an extremely oppressive outline in the blank space, like a deity crawling out of Annihilation, quiet, indifferent, yet unwilling to return to zero.
The next moment, Hai Xin's gaze abruptly shifted, as if confirming: this dragon could be kept.
The Waveless Sea began to recede. Not to bestow energy, but to cease its erasure. In that instant, Tangyi's ten-thousand-foot-long dragon body seemed to be pulled back to reality from an extremely deep abyss. Its transparent edges solidified again, its remaining scales stopped peeling off, and the dark patterns of its dragon bones sank beneath the scales, becoming a new base color.
In her dragon eyes, the last wisp of shadow was washed away by the seawater, making the clarity at the bottom of her pupils even deeper, like two purified deep wells. She slowly rose from the sea, her dragon body not raising water mist, but swirling circles of extremely faint grayish-white dust. The dust spun around her, eventually condensing into a tiny star-shaped mark, branded beneath the dragon scales on her chest—the mark was not a reward, but more like a badge of qualification: if you can remain in the erasure, you are worthy to enter the deeper depths.
Tangyi circled once in mid-air, her ten-thousand-foot-long dragon body stretching to its Ultimate. The blank trails left by her dragon whiskers reappeared, but were more stable and sharper than before. She let out a low dragon roar, which, though lacking the usual sonic boom, stirred up waves of "echoes of Annihilation" in the void. Wherever the echoes reached, the darkness of the star field was gently smoothed, as if being recalibrated by her presence. She hadn't become noisier by growing stronger, but rather more "difficult to erase." She had passed the first hurdle.
The core space of the Crabapple Shadow Star Palace did not immediately undergo drastic changes after the first trial. Instead, it fell into an extremely quiet state, as if the entire palace was holding its breath briefly for the return of that ten-thousand-foot-long true dragon. The starlight suspended within the palace flowed slowly, like time itself being stretched out. Light and shadow intertwined under the dome, forming layers of translucent star curtains.
Qin Yu sat cross-legged in the center of the star-patterned array, his breathing gradually synchronizing with the rhythm of the star palace. His Fate Soul was calm and restrained. He did not deliberately try to sense Tangyi's changes, but simply kept himself in a state where he could respond at any time. Azure Ring, on the other hand, seemed particularly relaxed. She nestled against Qin Yu's right shoulder, her legs swinging gently. A tiny starlight fruit pit appeared in her hand from somewhere, and she crushed it with a crunch, her expression as if she were watching a good show whose ending she already knew.
At this moment, in the sky above the center of the palace, the three ancient characters of starlight suddenly appeared strange. The word "star" in the three characters "Tangyingxing" first trembled imperceptibly, as if it was touched by some invisible echo. Then, the star pattern inside the glyph began to flicker brightly and darkly. The frequency of the flickering was not rapid, but it carried an extremely ancient rhythm.
As if responding to a breath from a distant star system, Azure Ring stopped chewing. She tilted her head, squinted at the sky, and a cryptic smile appeared on her lips. At that moment, Qin Yu also opened his eyes. He did not get up, but simply looked up, his gaze calm yet extremely focused.
In the next instant, the light within the character "star" abruptly receded, as if all the starlight had been clenched tightly by an invisible hand, then silently collapsed. The ancient character did not shatter, nor did it dissipate into fragments of light; rather, it was as if it had been directly erased from the pages of the world's book, leaving only a brief, almost perfect blank outline. The blankness existed for no more than a single breath, yet within that breath...
Qin Yu and Azure Ring simultaneously captured an extremely blurry image—in the very center of that blank space, there seemed to be a tiny crystal suspended. The crystal was incomplete, its edges shrouded in mist, revealing only a rough outline. It possessed a texture somewhere between bone and starlight, with faint flowing light swirling within, yet it seemed as if it might shatter at any moment, as if it had not yet been allowed to truly manifest itself.
The image vanished in an instant; the character "star" disappeared completely, and the other ancient characters stabilized again. The palace returned to its previous tranquility, as if nothing had ever happened. Azure Ring then softly uttered an "Oh," the last syllable lingering. She swung her feet, turned her head to look at Qin Yu, and said in a light yet confident tone, "It seems she passed the first test quite well, otherwise this thing wouldn't have shown itself."
Qin Yu did not respond to her teasing, but slowly closed his eyes. He already understood that the blurry crystal was not a real manifestation, but a confirmation mark from the "Dragon Tamer's Supreme Treasure" that Tangyi had passed the first trial. It did not belong to the present, nor should it be touched by the present. It was just a clue that was briefly projected before their eyes.
He sank back into meditation, his Fate Soul fluctuations once again aligning with the core rhythm of the Crabapple Shadow Star Palace, as if making the most secure preparation for the upcoming second trial. Azure Ring said nothing more, simply adjusting to a more comfortable position, sitting on his right shoulder, her back against his aura.
Her gaze still occasionally swept towards the depths of the palace, a hint of expectation hidden in her eyes that only she herself understood. The Star Palace operated quietly, and Tangyi, far away in another star field, was walking step by step toward the second barrier. The true outline of the Dragon Tamer's Supreme Treasure was also gradually approaching reality as she moved forward.