Qin Yu stood in the center of that frozen world painting, where all things were suspended, cause and effect hung like a broken string in the air, and the only thing still "happening" was a single drop of water in that Formless Well, about to fall. That drop of water was not real; it had no weight, no form, and did not even belong to "existence." It was merely the possibility of "taking" itself.
Qin Yu knew very well that as long as he had even the slightest thought of "I want to get it" in his heart, that possibility would immediately fall into the sea of cause and effect, be marked, traced, and woven into a new clamor, and he would fall back into the depths of the second trial's purgatory, and even lose the qualification to touch the still point forever.
He didn't reach out.
It wasn't restraint, nor hesitation, but a complete abandonment of the act of "taking" itself. Qin Yu synchronized his breathing perfectly with the "about to fall" of the drop of water. His thoughts no longer revolved around the well water, but slowly retreated, returning to a more primal position—not "I am here," but "this is happening right now."
Deep within his consciousness, the origin of the world's definer slowly unfolded, yet it did not impose any judgments on the outside. It simply remained open, like a blank sheet of paper without words, allowing everything to pass through without leaving any trace.
At that moment, Qin Yu did something seemingly absurd but the only feasible thing: he let "well water come to fetch him."
The drop of water, about to fall but not yet, suddenly shifted by an extremely small amount without any external force. It didn't move, but rather "returned to its place"—as if Qin Yu's very existence was the true bottom of that well.
The water droplet stopped falling and stopped hovering. It gently unfolded in the void, turning into a nearly invisible ripple. The ripple did not spread, but simply slid along the edge of Qin Yu's consciousness, naturally merging that "causeless stillness" into his origin.
The whole process had no beginning and no end, no moment of "receiving" the water; only one thing was quietly confirmed: this drop of water never belonged to the well; it was meant to be here.
The moment the ripples completely disappeared, the frozen world shuddered violently.
The Sea of Causal Clamor did not resume its flow; instead, it retaliated with even greater violence and out of control. The broken chains of cause and effect did not reconnect; instead, they multiplied wildly in the void, like countless severed yet still convulsing nerves, colliding, overlapping, and tearing at each other. The suspended vendors, children, and fallen leaves were simultaneously pulled back into motion, but no longer following any temporal order—
Some experienced a century of birth and aging in an instant, some were regressed to the blank space before birth, and some were forcibly covered by countless futures, their faces rapidly aging, aging, and disappearing in the light and shadow. The entire Ancient City of Eternal Stillness Changji seemed to be thrown into a huge vortex of cause and effect. The clamor was no longer sound, but transformed into a visible torrent, transparent yet heavy, carrying the thoughts, choices, regrets, and obsessions of billions of beings, pouring madly towards the still point where Qin Yu was located.
The sky was torn into countless layers, each reflecting a different "what if." The bluestone on the ground was overturned, revealing dense causal marks beneath, like a group of tombstones stacked by choices. In this complete chaos, an even more ancient and indifferent will slowly emerged.
It wasn't a concrete form, but rather a "gaze" covering the entire city, like the true guardian of this trial ground, startled by Qin Yu's "causal-free choice." That will had no words, yet in the vibrations of every causal chain, it conveyed the same question: If all choices can be relinquished, what meaning does existence itself hold?
The raging torrent of cause and effect suddenly receded, coalescing into a gigantic, transparent wave capable of engulfing everything, pressing down on Qin Yu head-on. It was not an attack, but an Ultimate test—it was going to drag Qin Yu back into cause and effect, forcing him to react under the weight of countless consequences. As long as he responded, resisted, and judged, even if it was just "I must hold on," cause and effect would take root in him again.
Qin Yu did not retreat.
Deep within his consciousness, a divine power that had long been integrated with his Fate Soul quietly began to operate, displaying no power and causing no disturbance— the Three Forms of Fate Construction: Existence Erasure. This form was not directed at external objects, but rather, for the first time, Qin Yu was applying it in reverse to himself:
He did not erase his own existence, but rather the conditions under which the proposition "I am being subject to causality" was established. At the moment his supernatural power was unleashed, Qin Yu's figure appeared briefly in the torrent of causality, not disappearing, but losing the qualification to be judged, associated with, and subject to consequences.
The transparent giant wave crashed down, but upon touching Qin Yu, it collapsed instantly, like water encountering an absolute vacuum. The causal chain could find no node to attach to, and the guardian will's gaze showed its first noticeable delay—it could not understand why a still existing individual was logically "unaffectable."
The rampaging clamor lost its core support at this moment, and the causal network of the entire city began to collapse on its own. The transparent torrent turned into countless specks of light, flowing back along the path it came from. The sky closed layer by layer, the bluestone returned to its place, and the figures froze and then slowly dispersed.
In the blink of an eye, the Ancient City of Eternal Stillness returned to its original, ordinary state. The morning light remained, the smoke from cooking fires lingered, as if nothing had ever happened. Only Qin Yu knew that the second trial had been completely overcome.
Not only did he obtain the Water Without Causality, but also, amidst the complete rampage of cause and effect, he made himself an "unpropositional concept," causing the guardian will to lose its object of judgment for the first time.
He exhaled slowly, a breath as light as a breeze, which vanished without a trace before landing. Ahead, deep within the city, an invisible path leading to an even more profound realm was quietly unfolding, and the aura of the third trial was already waiting silently at the end of the ordinary streets.
The moment the clamor of cause and effect was completely extinguished, the bluestone street beneath Qin Yu's feet suddenly lost its meaning of "before and after".
It's not a tremor, nor a collapse, but a more thorough dislocation—the very logic of existence has been overturned.
The morning light hadn't disappeared, but it began to flow backward. The steam rising from the street-side tea stall suddenly fell back down to the spout of the teapot, the boiling water inside cooled to icy cold, and the tea leaves curled up into a dry, withered shape again; not far away, an old man leaning on a cane slowly lay down on the ground.
The wrinkles on his face were smoothed out as if by an invisible hand, his white hair turned black inch by inch, and his hunched back straightened. Then, in full view of everyone, he "shrank" and finally turned into a blurry shadow. Against the flow of time in the street, he was sucked into the belly of a woman, without even having time to scream.
Qin Yu's pupils contracted slightly, but he did not take a single step back.
He saw beyond the city walls, a desolate ruin "growing." Broken beams sprouted from the rubble like shoots, stones automatically returned to their original positions, cracks healed themselves, the charred walls regained their whiteness, and finally the entire structure receded into a state of translucent blue lines.
That was a "concept" that existed in the mind of a craftsman before it was built. And that concept itself dissolved after a few breaths, as if it had never been conceived by anyone.
The sound started to sound strange.
Qin Yu heard a child's laughter, but found that the echo of the laughter reverberated through the alley before the original sound. Only after the echo dissipated did the child actually open his mouth, and the laughter belatedly filled in. The causal sequence of time was completely disrupted, and the world was like a scroll of images played in reverse but not entirely the same.
The third stage, the Order of Inversion — the City of Inverted Roots and Branches —has now fully unfolded.
Qin Yu took a step forward. This step directly transported him into the "inside" of the city.
He had clearly passed through the city gate, yet in the next instant, he climbed out of the mouth of the ancient well in the center of the city. The well walls stretched upwards, but when he looked back, he found that the well opening faced the sky outside the city. He pushed open a wooden door, and outside the door was not a street, but another corner of this house.
It's as if space itself is folded, stitched, and entangled into a whole indistinguishable inside from outside. The city walls are no longer boundaries, but a decorative illusion—what truly surrounds everything is "outside the city," while the city itself is merely an inward fold of that infinite exterior.
Qin Yu stopped in his tracks.
He realized that if he continued to understand space through "walking," he would only be endlessly toyed with by the city. So he closed his eyes, stopped trying to confirm "where I am," and began to depict the structure of the city in his mind.
Countless images superimposed on his consciousness: streets connecting end to end, houses reflecting each other inside and out, city gates being both exits and entrances, all paths ultimately returning to the starting point, yet never truly overlapping. This was not a simple maze, but a self-referential spatial topology—like a Klein bottle, or a snake devouring itself.
However, the truly fatal inversion lies not in time, nor in space, but in meaning itself.
Qin Yu suddenly "understood" the underlying logic of this city: there is no real "cause" here, because all causes are defined by effects; there is no real "life," life is just an incomplete form of death; so-called existence is nothing more than an unstable, Does Not Exist, temporary lesion.
Everything in the city seems warm, ordinary, and dependable precisely because they all point to an inevitable outcome—to be recycled, forgotten, and corrected.
At that moment, Qin Yu felt a real sense of danger for the first time.
It doesn't come from the outside, but from a question: if "existence" itself is wrong, then why should "I" insist on existing?
If, according to this logic, "I Does Not Exist" is more real and reasonable, then isn't insisting on "I am here" the greatest obsession?
The city seemed to sense his wavering.
All the distorted scenes pointed at him simultaneously. The reversed flow of time accelerated around him, space folded into countless superimposed images, streets, houses, and figures overlapping, as if trying to dismantle the concept of "Qin Yu" into countless possible versions, and then deny them one by one. It wasn't an attack, but a kind of coercion—forcing him, in this upside-down order, to answer anew, "What am I?"
Qin Yu did not resist. He let all the images pass through him.
In that instant, he did something extremely dangerous, yet extremely pure: he temporarily abandoned his assertion of "my existence."
It's not self-destruction, nor is it disappearance, but rather a return to a more primal state—observation.
He no longer tells the world "I am here," nor does he tell himself "who I am." His consciousness shrinks into an extremely small and stable point, retaining only one function: to see. Not to think, not to judge, but simply and continuously watching how all of this happens, how it goes wrong, how it negates itself.
This point has no temporal attribute, does not participate in spatial nesting, and is not dependent on any causality. It is neither in ascending order nor in Reverse Order, but hovers between the two, like a coordinate origin that is not defined by any direction.
The world suddenly fell silent.
Time, flowing backward, stopped in mid-air; the folding of space lost its reason for continuing recursion; and the concepts of cause and effect began to cancel each other out. The old man no longer moved forward or backward; the building remained in a semi-formed state; and the echo and the original sound overlapped into a single line.
The entire city entered an unprecedented state of suspension—neither positive nor negative, neither alive nor dead, Non-Existence nor Does Not Exist.
Qin Yu slowly opened his eyes.
He did not reaffirm his "presence," but rather quietly confirmed one thing: as long as observation continues, the world cannot completely deny him.
It's not because I'm strong, but because I'm not bound to any particular order.
As this thought arose, a very soft yet very clear cracking sound came from the depths of the city. It was the sound of the core logic of the third trial being recalibrated. The Order of Inversion slowly returned to its original place, but it no longer returned to the original City of Cause and Effect. Instead, it transformed into a blank transitional realm, as if making way for a deeper test.
Qin Yu stood in the middle of the Emptiness street, his breathing steady and his eyes clear.