Abyssal Shadow Tribulation and the Punishment of Returning to Stillness

As Tangyi passed through the last waveless, gray-white interface of the Annihilation Sea, her ten-thousand-foot-tall dragon body was suddenly drawn by an even more primal and profound force. This wasn't a force tearing at flesh and blood, but rather a direct impact on the echo of the "Dragon's Origin," as if some being at the very end of ancient time had gently tapped the bones of its kind. The next instant, space itself ripped apart.

Her dragon body was completely "projected" into another world. The world suddenly opened up, but there was no light to speak of. The Abyss of Origin Echoes was like a deep abyss dome that had been torn apart and forcibly solidified after countless battles. The surroundings were not rock walls, but layers upon layers of dark golden fragments of laws, like battle roars and wills frozen in the void, slowly rotating and rubbing against each other, emitting a low but not piercing rumble. The entire space seemed to be pieced together from the "echoes" of countless ancient dragon battles.

Tangyi's towering dragon form appeared exceptionally clear here. Her scales shimmered with a calm and restrained luster in the void. Each dragon scale resembled a polished rune of Thought Severance. Wherever her dragon form passed, the silent aura of the Realm of the Severed Thought Realm automatically spread out, smoothing out the chaotic echoes that attempted to intrude upon her existence.

However, she quickly realized that this abyss did not allow "quiet" to continue. In the instant her dragon eyes slightly contracted, three intertwined shadows slowly emerged from the deepest part of the abyss. The shadows were not physical entities, but outlines woven together by the power of Annihilation and the origin of the dragon path. The next moment, they suddenly merged into one, and a dragon-shaped battle shadow, similar in size to Tangyi but with a texture of dark gold and gray-white, was completely manifested.

That was the Innate Primordial Dragon Battle Shadow.

It had no complete face; its dragon head seemed to have been sliced apart by a concept, retaining only the sharpest, most oppressive lines. Its eyes held no emotion, only a pure echo of "battle is existence." The moment it took shape, the entire Abyss of Origin Echoes trembled, and fragments of dark gold laws simultaneously lit up.

As if making way for the ancient dragon path, Tangyi didn't even have time to let out a dragon's roar before the battle shadow moved. There was no preparatory movement, no gathering of power; existence itself seemed to be merely a parameter that could be modified before it.

A dark blue dragon breath silently spewed out from Zhan Ying's throat. It was neither airflow nor energy, but an area whose "qualification for existence" had been erased. Wherever the dragon breath passed, space directly lost its ability to be perceived, like a pen mark erased by an eraser.

Tangyi's dragon body trembled instinctively, and the essence of the Severed Thought Realm instantly unfolded. She did not attempt to clash with supernatural powers, but instead forcibly shifted her own coordinates using her dragon intuition. Her ten-thousand-foot-long dragon body made a sideways shift in the void that was completely inconsistent with its size.

The dragon's breath grazed her dragon horn, directly "thinning" the scales on its surface. It wasn't that the scales were damaged, but rather that their density was diluted. She clearly felt that if she had been even a moment slower, the entire dragon head would have been wiped out from the world level.

Before she could even steady her dragon body, the battle shadow had already closed in. The Primordial Dragon Claw descended from the sky, the claw not touching any physical object, yet embedding the very concept of "grabbing" into space as it fell. The dragon laws surrounding Tangyi emitted a low hum, her instincts screaming, telling her she couldn't use her usual defenses to receive this attack. Thus, for the first time in the second trial...

She actively released her Absolute Thoughtlessness Divine Power, and the gray-white patterns deep in her dragon eyes suddenly lit up. With "No Intention - Emptiness" as the core, she actively weakened a part of her "self-awareness". The edges of her dragon body instantly became blurred, and her dragon claws tore down, but only grabbed a piece of the dissolving "emptiness". The aftershocks of the concept tearing exploded around her, and a large area of the original echo shattered into dust.

However, this was not the end. Zhan Ying's dragon tail swept across at almost the same time. The dragon tail did not move space, but causality itself. Tangyi clearly sensed that her "successful evasion of the attack" was being forcibly disrupted. The causal lines began to reverse, and her existence seemed to be dragged back to a state of "not yet having made a response."

She suddenly let out a deep but unassuming dragon roar, a response from the very essence of the Thoughtless Stillness Dragon. She activated "Thought Has No Root, Blind to Cause and Effect," not to affect the battle shadow, but to affect herself, instantly reducing her dependence on causal outcomes to a minimum. With a sweep of her dragon tail, her dragon body was heavily knocked away, large patches of scales shattered, but she successfully preserved the core of her existence, preventing it from being directly rewritten by cause and effect.

In the time that followed, the Abyss of Abyss of Origin Echoes transformed into a relentless, ancient carnage. The Vast Sea Dragon Breath repeatedly erased the very edges of her existence, its claws tore apart her understanding of herself, and its tail constantly distorted the course of her actions.

Tangyi's towering dragon body was constantly being damaged, reassembled, and damaged again in the void. Blood did not flow, but turned into wisps of diluted dragon-path light. However, she did not retreat. She gradually stopped "resisting" and turned to "feeling". With each attack, she would sink her attention into the deepest layer of the battle shadow law fluctuations, using her own dragon-path origin to fit and imitate that way of operation.

As she was being erased by the Vast Sea Dragon Breath, she proactively adjusted the "thickness" of her own existence, rendering certain concepts dispensable before the dragon's claws tore them apart. When the dragon's tail disrupted cause and effect, she used the silence of Absolute Thoughtlessness to weaken the constraints the consequences placed on her.

Time lost its meaning here; only the echoes left by the collision of laws piled up layer upon layer in the abyss, until at a certain moment, the battle shadow's movements paused for an extremely brief moment.

It wasn't a failure, but a resonance.

Tangyi's dragon body hovered steadily for a moment. Her scales no longer cracked, but instead revealed dark gold patterns similar to Zhan Ying's, which were neutralized by Absolute Thoughtlessness's gray-white. Zhan Ying swung his dragon claws again. This time, she did not dodge. Her dragon body met the attack head-on. The concept tearing landed on her, but only caused a low tremor. She clearly "heard" that the Dragon Dao Laws had completed an alignment within her body. The Abyss of Origin Echoes trembled, and dark gold fragments fell like rain, but transformed into soft light before falling.

The battle shadow slowly retreated, without roaring or showing any resentment. Its outline gradually faded in the resonance, eventually transforming into a complete ripple of dragon law, which merged into Tangyi's dragon body. Her ten-thousand-foot-tall dragon form stretched out in the void.

Her damaged scales were completely rebuilt, and her dragon body was more solid than before she entered the trial. Her aura had also changed from an Absolute Thoughtlessness, silent stillness to a deep and ancient fighting spirit. She exhaled a low breath, not as a declaration of victory, but as a confirmation—she had learned to survive within the laws.

The second trial, "Primordial Dragon Battle Shadow Tribulation," has now been passed.

Within the core space of the Crabapple Shadow Star Palace, the last two characters suspended on the dome slowly rotated, flickering like breaths, leaving only the two characters "Tangying" hanging. The light within the palace then abruptly dimmed, as if the entire star palace was holding its breath in preparation for an Ultimate moment.

Qin Yu and Azure Ring looked up at the same time. The next moment, the character "Shadow" suddenly trembled, as if the strokes were being erased stroke by stroke by an invisible hand. When it disappeared, there was no explosion or roar, only a kind of cruel silence, as if "existence" itself was being gently but irresistibly denied. The instant the character "Shadow" disappeared, a bottomless dark vortex unfolded in the place where Tangyi had disappeared. The entrance to the third trial had already opened.

Tangyi's consciousness was completely drawn in that instant. Before she could even stretch her dragon body, her entire being was pulled into an absolute abyss—the deepest part of the Abyss of Annihilation, the Hall of Dragon Remains Returning to Stillness.

There is no sense of spatial boundaries, no up, down, left, or right. The towering dragon body floats in a seemingly frozen "emptiness." The surroundings are not dark, but a gray-white that has been emptied of all meaning.

In the distance, the outline of a huge and broken dragon skeleton could be vaguely seen, embedded in the void. It was not a corpse, but a "traces of existence" left by the Innate Primordial Dragon when it sacrificed itself and condensed its marrow crystal. Each trace exuded a pressure that made the dragon soul tremble instinctively. The entire hall was silent and without echo, and even the sense of time was completely erased.

The next moment, the fundamental laws of the myelin crystal began to operate in reverse.

Without announcement or warning, an irresistible "stripping" began from the outermost layer of Tangyi's being. First to dissipate were all the supernatural abilities she had acquired later in life—those once freely manipulated laws of Absolute Thoughtlessness and mental killing techniques—which, at this moment, were as if they had never existed, gently drawn away.

Before she could even feel lost, the dissection continued to deepen, her understanding of the rules of heaven and earth began to collapse, and her perception of space, time, and cause and effect quickly became blurred, like a distant view swallowed by fog. Then came the Dragon Clan secret techniques inherited in her bloodline, and the memory patterns imprinted deep in the dragon soul were peeled off, turning into gray-white dust, slowly dissipating into the void of the hall.

For the first time, Tangyi felt real fear. Not fear of death, but fear of "who am I?"

Her emotions began to fade; her dependence on Qin Yu, her awe of Azure Ring, and her yearning for freedom grew distant, like reflections viewed through countless layers of water. Then, the memories themselves began to crumble.

She couldn't even fully recall her own name. Her enormous dragon body still existed, but it was like an empty shell devoid of meaning. In the Hall of Dragon Remains Returning to Stillness, the remaining traces of the Innate Primordial Dragon began to glow faintly, as if calmly examining whether she would be completely lost here.

The disintegration continued, and even the concept of "dragon" itself began to waver. Her perception of her own form became unstable. Scales were no longer scales, and the dragon body was no longer a dragon body. Only a blurry and fragile outline of life remained. At this moment, Tangyi seemed to be standing on an edge deeper than death—losing everything, yet still forced to exist.

Just as consciousness was about to completely dissolve, a tiny, yet incredibly resilient "thing" steadily lit up in the void.

That's not supernatural power, not law, not memory.

It was a most primal, raw sense of the dragon's presence.

It didn't come from inheritance, but from within herself—from her very origin as the spirit of "Void of Thought Severance," from that stubborn refusal to dissipate even after all thoughts had been erased.

She didn't "think" about what it was, but let that source unfold naturally, without will or language, simply "being". At this moment, she no longer resisted dissection, but allowed it to continue. As long as that true self remained, everything else could be discarded.

The Hall of Dragon Remains Returning to Stillness suddenly underwent a change.

In the gray-white void, extremely fine golden cracks began to emerge, as if some ancient seal had been reactivated. The traces of existence left by the Innate Primordial Dragon resonated one by one. Those huge and broken outlines did not revive, but silently opened the echo of the "source" to Tangyi. When the power of disintegration touched her original true self, it hesitated for the first time, and then began to flow back in reverse.

It's not about restoring the old rules, but about reconstructing them.

The lost supernatural powers did not return, and the dissipated memories were not restored, but above that point of true self, a purer and more primal source of the Dragon Dao began to slowly condense. Tangyi's existence no longer depended on any external "Dao," but rather, it re-established stability based on itself as the source.

However, this process was not gentle, and backlash was inevitable. The remaining power of Annihilation in the Hall of Dragon Remains Returning to Stillness surged back at the moment of reconstruction, fiercely eroding her dragon soul core. A tiny but real crack appeared in her origin, and the pain exploded in the depths of her consciousness like a silent thunderbolt.

Tangyi let out a very low, very short dragon roar. It was not a wail, but a confirmation that she had endured it.

When the final layer of disintegration ceased, the hall returned to deathly silence. Tangyi's towering dragon body reappeared, slightly dimmer than before, yet more solid. Its scales no longer shimmered with intricate laws of light, but instead possessed an almost plain, dark texture.

As if all her sharpness had been concealed, when her dragon eyes opened, the scarlet had long since faded, leaving only a calm and profound clarity. Her dragon body trembled slightly, a lingering effect of her injuries, but also a mark of having passed the trial.

The third trial, "The Punishment of Myriad Dao Stripping," has been passed.

Tangyi floated silently in the void, bearing a trace of an unhealed primordial crack, yet she truly stood at a "new starting point."