Qin Yu did not land directly in the city, but instead, ten miles away, he lightly stepped onto the edge where clouds and earth intertwined. Behind him, the sea of clouds slowly surged, and the magnificent city ahead became increasingly clear in the sunlight, its white-gold walls seemingly forged by time itself.
The lines were ancient and steady, without the slightest sharpness, yet they possessed a calming power. He concealed all his aura, as if he were just an ordinary traveler walking through the world, and then began to walk slowly, step by step, along the long road leading to the city.
With each step he took, the ground beneath his feet responded with a warm, gentle touch. The wind brushed past his clothes from both sides, yet carried no chill, as if silently welcoming his arrival.
The city gate gradually magnified in view, towering and wide, yet without any imposing guards or awe-inspiring array patterns. Above the gate, several ancient and vigorous characters stood silently—"Between Being and Nonbeing and Non-existence: The Ancient City of Eternal Stillness." The characters were not dazzling, but they seemed to blend into the breath of the entire city, appearing exceptionally serene amidst the flowing clouds.
Qin Yu stopped at the city gate, his gaze sweeping over the scene inside and outside the city. Crowds flowed endlessly; some carried loads out, others returned with their families. Laughter and conversation mingled inside and outside the city gate, yet there was no chaos, only a calm and tranquility honed by the passage of time. There was no strife, no fear; every person entering and leaving carried a sense of certainty and trust in life on their face.
The moment he stepped through the city gate, it was as if he had entered another world. The sounds within the city suddenly became three-dimensional and rich, the streets were wide and bright, the stone pavement gleamed softly in the sunlight, and the pavilions on both sides were arranged in a staggered manner, with white walls and golden roofs reflecting flowing light and shadow as the clouds swept by.
The calls of vendors rose and fell, yet they were not jarring; rather, they resembled a carefully choreographed symphony: "Newly brewed Hundred Flowers Wine—" "Freshly baked hot cakes, have a bite while they're hot—" "Handmade jade ornaments, wear them for good luck—" "Freshly baked sesame cakes, delicious sesame cakes..." The voices carried laughter and the warmth of life. The air was filled with the aroma of food, the freshness of wood, and the sweetness of flowers and herbs, making one unconsciously slow down their breathing.
The streets were bustling with people yet orderly. Children chased each other through the stalls, their steps light and their laughter crisp. Young people walked side by side, talking in hushed tones, occasionally exchanging a smile. The elderly sat on the stone steps by the street, squinting in the warm sunlight, their faces radiating the tranquility that comes with the passage of time.
Music drifted from a distant high platform, the sounds of strings and drums intertwining, the melody lingering, as if accompanying every ordinary moment in this city. Qin Yu walked among them, and everywhere he looked, he saw the most authentic aspects of human life, without the indifference of cultivators or the oppressive aura of the powerful, only a warm torrent formed by the convergence of countless ordinary lives.
At that moment, he had a vague feeling that he was not in a trial, but had stepped into an old dream treasured by time.
But he also knew that this peace and happiness was not an illusion, but rather the very way in which the Ancient City of Eternal Stillness "Between Being and Nonbeing and Non-existence" existed—maintaining tranquility amidst the noise and finding peace of mind amidst the prosperity.
Qin Yu was walking in the middle of the street, his gaze still lingering on the dust and laughter kicked up by children running in the distance, but at this moment, his mind relaxed in an unusually rare way. Just as his breathing gradually synchronized with the rhythm of the city, a strange phenomenon quietly occurred.
There was no thunder, no cracking of the sky, and no sign of any violent surge of power. He himself did not even notice it at first—a very subtle sense of "dislocation" flashed by in the world, as if some invisible thread of the world had been gently plucked.
The first thing to change was the sound. The once layered and distinctly three-dimensional hustle and bustle of the city suddenly became "distant" in the blink of an eye. It didn't disappear, but rather seemed as if an invisible veil had been draped over it, and all the sounds were gently smoothed and flattened. Next came the light.
The streets were still bright, but they had lost that sense of spatial depth that made people instinctively wary; the sunlight no longer had any "layers," it simply illuminated everything.
Qin Yu was slightly taken aback, and subconsciously wanted to look inward at himself.
In the instant that thought arose—"emptiness."
It wasn't a ban, nor a suppression, but rather an utterly thorough and natural "emptiness." All the vast and boundless cognition, perception, judgment, deduction, and transcendent dimensions within him vanished in an instant, without any possibility of resistance or warning.
Just as the tide recedes imperceptibly, leaving only a smooth, damp beach, he felt no horror, because the superhuman ego upon which "horror" rested also vanished.
The next moment, the world gently turned.
When Qin Yu opened his eyes again, he was standing in a completely unfamiliar yet incredibly natural corner. Under his feet were slightly cracked bluestone slabs, his palms felt rough to the touch, and he could smell the mixture of rice porridge and charcoal fire.
He looked down and saw a pair of slightly rough hands, the knuckles no longer possessing any extraordinary strength, and there were even a few small calluses on the skin. He was wearing faded cloth clothes, and his shoulders were slightly slumped, as if it were a habit left by long-term heavy lifting.
There was no pain of broken memories, no confusion of "who am I?" He knew his name was Qin Yu.
But apart from that, all concepts related to "cultivation," "realm," "Silent Profundity," "chaos," and "supreme treasure" seem to have never existed, leaving not even a trace. It wasn't that they were forgotten, but rather that their "current existence" was completely and precisely stripped away.
He was just an ordinary person in the city.
The morning light spread across the Ancient City of Eternal Stillness of Changji once again, but this time, he was no longer an observer, but an insignificant point among the billions of ordinary people.
Someone hurried past him, brushing his shoulder lightly. He subconsciously apologized, and the other person smiled and nodded in response. The owner of a breakfast stall on the street invited him to sit down, and he took out a few copper coins to exchange for a bowl of steaming porridge. In the distance, shouts came from afar, some people were arguing over prices, and some were happy for small gains. Everything was so real that there was no flaw in it.
And so life began.
Spring comes and autumn goes, seasons change, he works, walks, talks, gets tired, and rests in the city. He would worry about his meager income, lose sleep over the illness of his loved ones, and stare blankly at the moonlight outside his window in the dead of night, unable to say what he was thinking.
He had loved and lost; he had been angry and compromised; he had personally seen his elders off and watched children grow up crying in his arms. Time, like a lukewarm but irresistible river, pushed him little by little toward old age.
His back gradually hunched, his vision began to blur, his hands lost their dexterity in the cold winter, and many faces in his memory slowly faded into the distance. He had coughed his heart out on his sickbed, and he had sat alone in front of his door on rainy nights, listening to the city's ceaseless clamor, and for the first time truly understood what "all living beings" meant.
However, even amidst this seemingly utter descent into the mundane, in the deepest recesses of his being, unnoticed by himself, there remained an extremely faint yet ever-present stillness. It was not power, not cognition, but a sense of existence that could not be erased by the mundane—not "I am strong,"
Rather, it is "I am still me". No matter how life, old age, sickness and death cycle, no matter how emotions tear each other apart, that certainty of "I am here" has never been taken away by a single day of mundane time.
When the snow of the twenty-second winter fell on the eaves of the Ancient City of Eternal Stillness, and when he peacefully closed his eyes one morning, the world did not end there.
Time stood still at this moment. The city, the pedestrians, the wind and snow, even breathing—everything was frozen in time.
In that absolute stillness, a silent and invisible echo slowly rippled out from between "Between Being and Nonbeing"—the first trial, the Prison of the Ordinary, the myriad faces of all beings, was now complete. It was not because he had broken free from the mundane world, but because in his twenty-two years of completely ordinary life, he had never lost that original knowledge belonging to "Silent Profundity".
The instant time began to flow again, there was no roar, nor any sign of the world collapsing.
Just one breath. Qin Yu opened his eyes during that breath.
In an instant, the world seemed to be gently lifted from the "mundane" layer by an invisible hand. Light no longer merely illuminated, but regained its depth; sound was no longer just noise, but brought back the depth of space; and what returned first was himself—that long-lost yet never truly vanished "self-awareness."
Cognitive reflow; perceptual resetting.
He still stood in the middle of the street in the Ancient City of Eternal Stillness. The bluestone had not changed, the pedestrians had not dispersed, and the cries of vendors still rose and fell. But at this moment, everything seemed so... fragile. Not false, but fragile.
Like a thin dream built on an extremely intricate structure, if you look back from a higher dimension, you can see the abyss hidden beneath the calm, a depth that can devour everything.
Qin Yu did not immediately use any power. He simply stood there, slowly closed his eyes, and then slowly opened them again.
Twenty-two years of ordinary life have flowed back like the tide, yet they have not broken his spirit. Birth, aging, sickness, and death; love, hate, separation, weariness, and warmth—all have returned to their rightful place, quietly settling in the position of "experience," rather than "definition."
At that moment, he finally understood the truly terrifying aspect of this city—it didn't want to destroy him, but rather to make him willingly stay.
If it weren't for that lingering sense of "I am here," if it weren't for not completely surrendering himself to the role, the identity, and life itself even in the most ordinary, powerless, and mundane moments, then he wouldn't have "awakened" when the mundane years came to an end.
He will finish. Finish becoming a part of this.
Qin Yu's gaze slowly swept across the street. Looking at them now, the smiles, arguments, weariness, and anticipation on the faces of the pedestrians all carried a chilling weight. Hundreds of millions of residents—this number was no longer just a number, but hundreds of millions of life trajectories frozen in the space Between Being and Nonbeing. Here, there was no cultivation, no transcendence, no earth-shattering danger, only the gentlest, most reasonable, and most fitting path to "living."
That is precisely why it is the most fatal.
Because once you truly accept "this is everything" on this path, once you regard ordinary life as your final destination, then even if you once stood at a higher level, you will be accepted, absorbed, and assimilated by this city without realizing it. It's not imprisonment, but belonging; not suppression, but allowing you to continue living.
At this moment, Qin Yu clearly realized that if, for even a single moment during those thirty years, he had equated "who Qin Yu is" with "someone in the city," then when his life naturally came to an end, he would not awaken, but would be like the old man on the street corner, covered by the new morning light and shrouded by the new smoke from cooking fires, becoming the background of the next mundane daily life.
To remain forever in this city, becoming a quiet and complete cog in this "Ancient City of Eternal Stillness, Between Being and Nonbeing."
This was unlike any test he had ever experienced before. There was no pressure, no life-or-death struggle, no confrontation or outburst, yet it was sharper than any blade. Because it wasn't forcing you to fail, but waiting for you to give up on transcending itself.
Qin Yu slowly exhaled, his eyes clearer than ever before. "I see..."
He finally understood that this was not a space piled with checkpoints, but a kind of selection—selecting those who could still remember where they came from amidst absolute ordinariness.
He has been allowed to continue.
The instant this thought settled, the outline of the city trembled slightly in his perception. It didn't collapse, but rather "made way." The Ancient City of Eternal Stillness remained, but it no longer enveloped him at its center; it was as if a deeper layer of "the Realm of Being and Nonbeing" was slowly unfolding before him.