Qin Yu did not take a step immediately.
When the first layer of mortal life ended and his cognition returned, he thought that the Ancient City of Eternal Stillness would reveal its cracks and bare its fangs like other trials, or at least shed its gentle shell. But the opposite was true—the city was still warm, lively, and full of life, even more real than before.
It was at this moment that he sensed something was wrong. Not "danger," but an extremely eerie sense of unease.
He stood on the side of the street, looking at a breakfast stall not far away. Steam rose, and fried dough sticks sizzled on the griddle. The middle-aged man in charge of the wok moved with practiced and steady movements, a satisfied smile on his face.
A child tiptoes to hand over a copper coin, while his mother whispers instructions beside him, her voice soft and gentle. Everything is so perfect, so perfect that there is not a trace of the randomness of the flow of life.
Qin Yu's gaze slowly darkened. He began to "see" more deeply.
It wasn't through cultivation or strength, but through the innate knowledge that came from having just emerged from the mortal world yet hadn't been swallowed up by it. He discovered that every person in this city seemed to be meticulously placed at a node in a causal structure.
They laugh, they get angry, they grieve, they rejoice, but they never stray from their own path. Children will grow up, the elderly will grow old, couples will quarrel and reconcile, merchants will make money and lose money—everything seems full of change, but in reality, it is all closed.
What's even more terrifying is that they lack "life force." At least, not independent life force.
Qin Yu clearly sensed that these people were not inanimate objects, but their existence did not emanate any life fluctuations that truly belonged to "individuals". Instead, there was a grand aura covering the entire city - infinite, gentle, inclusive, and endless, like a boundless sea.
It possesses boundless vitality, yet it belongs to no one.
In that instant, Qin Yu finally understood the true hidden test of the first level.
This is not an ordinary prison, but a prison of happiness.
The city does not imprison the trial-takers with pain, fear, and death, but with a "good enough" life.
There is no extreme despair here, no unbearable tragedy. Every life is carefully tuned to a range that is "tolerable" and "worth continuing." You will lose, but you will surely gain; you will be hurt, but you will surely be comforted; you will be tired, but you will always find a reason to keep living.
And once you've chosen "This is fine too," then you no longer need to leave.
Qin Yu slowly walked into the crowd.
He didn't avoid or resist, but actively integrated himself into the group. He helped an old woman lift a heavy bucket of water.
He listened to her rambling stories of her youth; he helped prop up a collapsed stall after the rain and was given a warm pastry by a vendor; he sat under the city wall at dusk, watching the sunset paint the bricks red, listening to a few teenagers talk about the future, their eyes full of undiminished anticipation.
These scenes were so real they were heartbreaking. At that moment, the city began to respond to him.
The life force that permeated the entire city quietly tightened, like a gentle hand softly supporting his consciousness. There was no coercion, no pressure, only a low and enduring invitation—stay. Here, you don't need to prove anything, you don't need to bear the price of transcendence.
For the first time, Qin Yu's heart wavered slightly.
It wasn't because I coveted power, but because this place felt so much like a place where I could stop and relax.
But it was in that instant that he saw a deeper truth.
He "saw" the old woman's eyes go blank during the brief pause after she finished telling her story; he saw that behind the vendor's smile, the emotion did not originate from his heart, but was gently pushed forward by the cause and effect of the city; he saw that when the boys talked about the future, the future itself had already been limited to the scope allowed by the city.
Happiness is real, but the choice Does Not Exist.
At this moment, Qin Yu finally understood—this city wasn't taking lives, but rather offering "happiness without the need for thought."
It erases the possibility of "becoming yourself". As long as you choose happiness itself, you are handing over the right to define "who I am" to this city.
Qin Yu slowly raised his head, his gaze passing over the streets, eaves, and cooking smoke, looking directly at the invisible causal structure that enveloped everything.
Then, he made his choice.
He did not destroy the city, awaken any power, or deny the beauty of this place.
He simply said one sentence to himself with absolute clarity, "Happiness is a choice, but I am not defined by happiness."
At that moment, there was no thunder, no light. Yet the entire Ancient City of Eternal Stillness trembled slightly in silence.
For the first time, the life force permeating the entire city became disordered. Not because it was destroyed, but because it discovered—
The being before us neither rejects happiness nor depends on it. It can experience happiness, cherish it, and let it go, but it will not be absorbed by it.
This is an answer that it has never filtered.
The next instant, the people on the street were still walking, hawking their wares, and chatting, but Qin Yu was now clearly standing "outside the city." It wasn't a spatial departure, but a detachment from the causal level. That gentle hand slowly withdrew, as if carrying a trace of incomprehensible hesitation.
The first layer of warmth hadn't disappeared; it had simply been turned over. Qin Yu stood in the heart of the Ancient City of Eternal Stillness of Changji, surrounded by the sounds of vendors hawking their wares, footsteps, and laughter. But the instant his words, "Happiness is a choice, but I am not defined by happiness," were uttered, the entire city seemed to be suddenly lifted from the bottom by an invisible hand—a thunderous tremor. The morning light remained, the fireworks still lingered, but the air had changed, like a pot of soup boiled to a boil.
All the calm surface churned, bubbled, and shattered in the same instant. The sound of the wind ceased to be the sound of the wind, transforming into transparent lines that stretched rapidly from the eaves to the end of the alley, like threads threaded through a needle; every conversation was like gears ground into tiny metal fragments, meshing in mid-air and emitting a dense buzzing sound; fallen leaves drifted down from the treetops, no longer in swirling arcs, but as leaps of cause and effect, with countless tiny runes emerging from the veins of the leaves.
It was as if someone had written down the reason for its inevitable fall the moment it was born. Qin Yu's eardrums seemed to be suddenly ripped open, and the "sound" of the city wall bricks surged from all directions—not a roar, but a heavy murmur that numbed his bones: the ambition of a city builder who pressed his palm onto the soil a thousand years ago, the pain of a bluestone worn smooth by countless footsteps, the longing of a child crying out for his mother for the first time.
Even the crackling of burning firewood is stretched into a complete cause-and-effect narrative: why the fire was lit, who reached out first, whose face was illuminated by the firelight, and how that face will betray or protect years later. Even more terrifying is humanity—
The thoughts of hundreds of millions of people surged forth like a tide, "speaking" in every instant. Their joys and sorrows were no longer merely emotions, but branches of a rapidly flowing river within a causal network, colliding, intertwining, splitting, and merging, like countless transparent pythons coiling in the sky, their scales shimmering with fragments of the past and future. Qin Yu stood at the center of the clamor, his robes fluttering in the invisible storm of cause and effect.
His gaze grew increasingly calm, for he knew that this ordeal was not about letting him "hear," but about forcing him to remain "undistracted" even after hearing it, and to make an action "without cause and effect" while fully aware of the consequences.
Qin Yu didn't move. He first let his breathing become as shallow as possible, as if pressing his heartbeat into the deepest part of the sea. His consciousness didn't expand outward, but instead flowed back along the hustle and bustle of the city, searching for that initial "cause". He saw countless threads, like the starting point of billions of threads of fate tied together in the same place, yet overlapping and converging at different times, as if someone had repeatedly written down the same thought in different eras and different states of mind.
Qin Yu closed his eyes, letting the "sound" pass by him. He didn't try to grasp each line, but let them reveal their common texture—it wasn't hatred, desire, or compassion, but a smaller, more hidden primordial thought that could give birth to all cities: an ancient being in an extremely long void, casually uttering the words, "If only there were a place to settle down."
That thought was as light as a sigh, so light that even the being itself might have forgotten it. Yet, when it fell into the sea of cause and effect, it was like a silent pebble thrown in, the ripples expanding into the Ancient City of Eternal Stillness, into a cage of happiness for billions of beings. The moment Qin Yu opened his eyes, it was as if he could see through the skeleton of the entire city's clamor. He heard that sigh repeating behind every chain of cause and effect, "Peace, peace, peace..." So he followed this sigh to trace the "effect"—the city's ultimate end was not destruction, but "utter oblivion."
It wasn't erased by the enemy, but rather by the simultaneous belief of all beings at some point: such a city no longer needed to be remembered. Memories slowly evaporated in collective satisfaction, the chain of cause and effect lost its meaning, and finally, the city and its people turned into a blank space that no one mentioned, like a gentle dissipation. Qin Yu's fingertips tightened slightly; he understood the true ruthlessness of this trial: it used clamor to prevent you from being calm, and omniscience to force you to dare not act.
Because once you take a step, you will "hear" what each step will cause—you help a fallen child up, and the child's laughter will evoke a general's memory three hundred years later, causing that general to change his marching route and lead to the fall of a city; you throw away a copper coin, and the coin rolls into a crevice in the stone, where it is picked up by someone else.
That person bought an extra bowl of noodles, thus continuing a bloodline and causing a tyrant to be born into a Lineage in the future. The Sea of Causal Clamor forces you to become a "prisoner of cause and effect": the more you know, the less you dare to act. Qin Yu slowly raised his hand, his gaze falling on a beggar on the street corner. The beggar was huddled against the wall, his body wrapped in tattered clothes, his breathing so faint as to be almost Does Not Exist. Every time the clamorous chain of cause and effect swept past him, a brief "void" would appear.
Like waves crashing against a reef, creating a still area, Qin Yu didn't immediately approach. He knew that approaching was also cause and effect, as was giving alms; even a simple greeting would cause ripples. He needed an action "without cause and effect," an act that wouldn't leave any trace in the web of cause and effect. So he did something seemingly ordinary, yet in this situation, the most incredible thing: he stopped "choosing."
It's not inaction, but rather withdrawing one's actions from "thought-driven." He doesn't think about getting closer, avoiding, or what outcome to expect. He lets his body be guided by a thin thread, following the most inconspicuous backflow in the Sea of Clamor —that backflow isn't "thought," but the natural inertia of "what is happening," like a drop of water falling under gravity.
As Qin Yu took a step forward, the city's causal network trembled violently. Billions of transparent causal chains vibrated like taut strings, trying to capture his "motives" and label his actions with causes and consequences. But there was no motive in Qin Yu's eyes. His mind was as clear as a mirror. His actions were like the wind blowing a curtain. It was not the curtain that moved, nor the wind that moved, but the "movement" itself that had no master.
The web of cause and effect found no hooks on him; it pounced and then slipped away, like countless hands trying to grasp the light. When Qin Yu reached the beggar's side, the surrounding clamor was still boiling; the vendors' shouts stretched into a long river, and children's laughter weaved like silver threads. But in that one dreamless breath of the beggar, Qin Yu suddenly heard a still point, "about to fall, yet not quite":
It wasn't the disappearance of sound, but the absolute neutralization that emerged from the chorus of voices—that breath contained no desire, no fear, no supplication, not even the obsession of "I" breathing; it simply happened. Qin Yu's fingertips hovered lightly an inch in front of the beggar; he didn't touch him, didn't even disturb the air, he was simply there in that single breath.
It "attached" its existence into the scene—like gently placing a tiny speck of stardust onto a still pond, without creating a ripple. In an instant, time seemed to be pierced through the entire city by an invisible needle, all causal chains stretched to their Limit simultaneously, and then a chilling scene unfolded:
In the same instant, billions of transparent threads lost their tension, like severed spiderwebs, suspended in mid-air; the vendor's hand paused in the act of handing over the fried dough, the steam from the dough condensing into still white mist; the child's toes stopped at the highest point of his jump, his laughter turning into a string of frozen specks of light;
The fallen leaves hovered a finger's width above the ground, their veins still flashing with runes, yet they could find no reason to fall. All things suspended in a state of limbo, the clamor forcibly folded into a silent scroll, and in the very center of that scroll...
The beggar's breath became a "Formless Well"—the well's opening Does Not Exist on the ground, but rather in the void, forming an extremely thin circle. The circle was so deep that it seemed capable of containing all the clamor of the entire city, yet the well water was eerily still, like a drop of water that would never fall.
Qin Yu's eyes narrowed slightly. He knew he had grasped the threshold of this challenge: the key to breaking through the Source of Clamor and Movement, the Sea of Causal Clamor, was not to forcibly Sever Karma, but to find a neutral point within the most violent symphony of cause and effect through the method of "extreme movement giving rise to stillness."
He entered that absolute stillness with a mindless movement, causing the city's time to become knotted and Causal Severance, thus stepping into the next level. But he also clearly sensed that the well did not truly belong to him—the well water had not yet been drawn, and the stillness was still testing his final step of "taking without cause and effect."
He slowly raised his hand, his palm aimed at the Formless Well. Before his fingertips even touched it, the drop of water in the well, about to fall, trembled slightly. It was as if the moment he had the thought of "I want to take it," the Sea of Causal Clamor would reignite instantly, sweeping him and the entire city back into endless ripples.
Qin Yu stood silently amidst the frozen landscape, as if standing in the eye of an Ultimate storm, waiting to see if he could truly achieve "taking without taking" in the next moment.