The moment the light from the void dissipated, Qin Yu and Jin Hanyan stopped simultaneously.
Based on their memories, coordinates, and Fate Soul Anchor Points, this should have been the outer defensive line of Soul Reflection Core City. However, when their gazes truly fell upon it, it was as if a piece of the world had been hollowed out from its very foundation—
There were no city walls, no streets, no temples, no array hubs, no Soul Tower, and Does Not Exist.
All that remained before me was an endless wasteland.
The earth was a grayish-brown color, as if it had been completely dried up, like dead soil that had not nourished life for hundreds of millions of years. The surface was covered with fine and twisted cracks, but there were no traces of explosions, impacts or clashes of laws, as if this place had never borne any weight.
The air was eerily still, devoid of wind, Spiritual Qi energy, and even the background noise that usually permeated the Void Obliteration Domain was completely silenced, leaving only a suffocating emptiness between heaven and earth.
Even more strangely, Qin Yu could clearly sense that this place had not been destroyed.
Instead, it was taken away.
The entire Soul Reflection Core City, along with its spatial structure, Fate Soul- bearing layers, and city-domain narrative framework, seemed to have been directly cut from an epochal scroll, leaving only a forcibly "filled-in" empty space. The causal lines around it abruptly ceased as they approached this area.
It was then forcibly stitched together in some extremely brutal way, forming a smooth fault that was almost perfect but lifeless.
Jin Hanyan stood beside Qin Yu, her face unusually devoid of composure. Her divine sense swept across the desolate plain below repeatedly; the more she probed, the deeper the chill in her heart grew. Finally, she couldn't help but speak in a low voice, her tone filled with undisguised shock and unease:
"Oh my god... what on earth happened to Soul Reflection Core City?"
She looked up at Qin Yu, and for the first time, a clear wavering appeared in her eyes.
"How could it be... that even 'existence' itself has disappeared?"
Qin Yu did not answer immediately.
His gaze fell upon the depths of that desolate wasteland, a faint, chaotic light slowly shifting within his pupils. Unlike Jin Hanyan, what he perceived was not "emptiness," but rather an extremely faint, reversed trace remaining after complete erasure—a method that almost negated even the very fact of "erasure."
This is not a simple Annihilation, but a fundamental overhaul of the city's very existence.
Qin Yu's voice finally rang out, deep and calm, yet chilling. "What happened here is far cleaner than what happened in Dragon Origin Ancient Capital. It wasn't the destruction of the city, nor its annihilation... but rather, someone forcibly removed Soul Reflection Core City from the level of 'what should have existed'."
The desolate land stretched silently beneath their feet, like a huge blank page waiting to be turned.
Qin Yu slowly raised his hand, and the moment his five fingers spread open in the void, the entire wasteland seemed to be pulled by an invisible force, and the stillness of heaven and earth was forcibly torn open with a barely perceptible crack.
The Chaos True Aspect within him quietly awakened.
That was not an explosion of energy, but a more primal change—as if a state "not yet defined as what it is" was awakened.
Deep within Qin Yu's pupils, chaotic light and shadow overlapped layer upon layer, light and darkness, existence and non-existence intertwined and negated each other. His aura began to resonate strangely with this erased wasteland, as if the two originated from the same unfinished existence.
The next instant, he took a step forward.
The moment the footsteps landed, the wasteland beneath did not collapse, but rather rippled like a drop of ink being thrown into clear water—the earth's "surface reality" began to ripple. Those originally smooth, lifeless spatial interfaces were forcibly reversed by the Chaos True Aspect time, which no longer flowed forward but was brutally "folded" back.
Countless tiny streaks of light appeared in the air. These streaks were not images, but rather "fragments of deleted possibilities." Like tattered film reels, they flashed frame by frame in the void—the blurry outline of the city wall, the phantom of half a Soul Tower, the array patterns that had not yet fully solidified, and the Fate Soul fluctuations that were cut off before they could even let out a scream.
These images, though silent, possess a chilling and oppressive quality.
Qin Yu's Chaos True Aspect continued to sink.
His consciousness was no longer focused on the "present moment," but was pulled into an extremely dangerous state—retrospection was not about returning to the past, but about attempting to touch "the timeline that should have happened but was denied before it was erased." At this level, any judgment or definition would become an obstacle.
So he chose "no judgment".
The Chaos True Aspect unfolded in full, and all logic, narrative, and causality temporarily lost their meaning beside him. The timeline seemed to be brutally torn apart by an invisible hand, and a gray-white cross-section appeared in the void, which was the last moment of the existence of the Soul Reflection Core City.
Just then—the entire wasteland suddenly sank.
As if something was resisting being remembered, the space itself emitted a low but silent tremor, and the emerging remnants of cities began to be dragged by a reverse force, trying to push them back into the abyss of "never having existed".
Qin Yu groaned, a trickle of blood spilling from the corner of his mouth, but he did not retreat.
His outstretched hand suddenly tightened, the Chaos True Aspect like an invisible nail, driving fiercely into the fractured section of time. In an instant, a reversed star ring seemed to appear in the sky above the wasteland, all light and shadow began to fall in reverse, finally condensing into an extremely brief, yet incredibly clear, image before Qin Yu—
The Soul Reflection Core City was not destroyed in the flames of war.
Instead, at a certain moment, it was completely extracted from the "epochal structure" by a force that transcended the city.
The video ends there, then completely collapses.
At the same time, Jin Hanyan, who was next to Qin Yu, suddenly looked up.
Her expression changed at that moment as well.
Unlike Qin Yu's reversal of existence itself, what she sensed was something more subtle, yet equally dangerous. Jin Hanyan slowly closed her eyes, the Silent Void · Dao of Chaos flowing within her body. She did not look at the "emptiness" of the wasteland, but listened to the echoes remaining beneath that emptiness.
Soon, her fingertips trembled slightly.
Beneath that forcibly smoothed plane of cause and effect, extremely faint ripples still remained, like ashes that, after being crushed, refused to dissipate. These causal remnants were incomplete, merely intermittent "echoes," yet they carried a clear direction—
Those weren't marks left by nature.
Instead, someone deliberately "repaired" the site after erasing it, trying to mislead all those who traced it into believing that nothing unusual had ever happened there.
Jin Hanyan slowly opened her eyes, her gaze cold and solemn. She looked at Qin Yu and said in a low voice, "I sensed the echo of cause and effect... It was very weak, but extremely deliberate. Soul Reflection Core City wasn't simply erased, but rather 'silenced' beforehand."
The wasteland was silent, the wind still, yet heaven and earth seemed to hold their breath at that moment. The erased city was responding to them in another way.
Qin Yu on that wasteland, which had been wiped clean to the point of being almost "blank." Does Not Exist no broken bricks, no dust, and not even the "emptiness that should exist after destruction." It was as if this place had never borne the weight of a main city.
He slowly closed his eyes, and the Chaos True Aspect silently unfolded within his body. The original state of Chaos's First Birth, before the separation of yin and yang and the differentiation of all phenomena, surged forth from the depths of his Fate Soul. Jin Hanyan stepped forward beside him, her white robes fluttering without wind, and the Silent Void · Dao of Chaos quietly unfolded. Her very existence was like a rift leading to the "Domain of Unborn Existence and Nonexistence."
Their auras converged silently, chaos and Silent Void running parallel, beginning to pry open the forcibly sealed timeline in reverse. In an instant, the world lost its color, the desolate land like a mirror turned upside down, light and shadow flowing backward, lines of cause and effect appearing, shattering, and piecing themselves back together in the void, scenes that did not belong to the "present" unfolding before them.
The two were forced to recreate before their eyes—they "saw" the last moments before the Soul Reflection Core City vanished: a frozen twilight, the city unscathed, its defensive array functioning perfectly, thousands of cultivators unaware of the impending disaster, yet the entire main city was instantly engulfed by an aura surpassing annihilation.
The power was "extracted" as a whole, not shattered, not annihilated, but uprooted and stripped from reality. The city walls, streets, the Fate Soul Nucleus, and the causal anchor were all sealed into an invisible migration trajectory. And at that moment, what acted was not a single being, but a superimposed projection of multiple wills— Qin Yu's pupils.
Suddenly contracting, within the overlapping silhouettes of cause and effect, he clearly discerned six cold and imposing outlines of the main souls, all Soul Master of the Stainless Realm · Supreme. They were positioned in different directions, jointly constructing a temporary "migration adjudication field." In the outermost shadows, the remaining six equally terrifying Stainless Realm · Supreme Devil Beast lay prostrate.
In the void, like living anchors suppressing a node, they didn't massacre the city; they merely calmly maintained the stability of the passage that had moved the entire main city away from reality. The timeline abruptly stopped here, as if severed by an invisible hand. The echoes of cause and effect reverberated across the wasteland, ultimately fading into a chilling silence. Qin Yu
Opening his eyes, he spoke in a low, cold voice to Jin Hanyan, "What exactly do they want? They actually moved the entire main city." Jin Hanyan frowned. The Silent Void · Dao of Chaos hadn't fully subsided, and she too felt a chilling, illogical feeling spreading through her heart. She slowly shook her head, saying, "It shouldn't be like this. Logically speaking, they would choose..."
The massacre of the entire Soul Reflection Core City was intended to create panic and harvest Fate Soul, but now... it seems more like a deliberate attempt to preserve the 'city' as a whole."Qin Yu paused for a moment, his gaze...
He gazed at the causal trajectory that hadn't completely dissipated, and the Chaos True Aspect swirled slightly in his eyes before he calmly said, "Never mind it, speculation is pointless."
"Let's follow the trail and see what's going on." As soon as they finished speaking, their figures blurred across the wasteland, disappearing in an unknown direction along the forcibly left trace of cause and effect.
In the far north of the Void Obliteration Domain, space does not extend, but folds layer upon layer into an indescribable arc. Stars do not move here, but merely hover in the endless darkness as "the possibility of being observed." In the center of this secret realm where even cause and effect are unwilling to linger, an ancient and solitary immortal palace silently floats. The palace is not magnificent, yet...
As if bearing the weight of all the destinies of the heavens, the palace gate has no plaque Nameless, only countless star patterns that naturally gather and disperse from the void. This is the only forbidden place in the Void Obliteration Domain one can deduce destiny, fate, and destiny itself— the Star-Net Immortal Hall.
Deep within the celestial palace, the dome soars as if reaching directly to the Unborn heavens. An ancient astrolabe rests serenely on a stone platform in the center of the palace. The astrolabe is not forged from gold, iron, or jade, but rather appears to be pieced together from countless fragments of fate that have been severed. On the surface of the astrolabe, the stars are not static, but rather slowly changing and collapsing in a way that defies the laws of time.
Rebirth—each shift in the position of the stars creates subtle yet unsettling ripples in the void of destiny.
An old man stood silently before the astrolabe. He was thin, his hair and beard were white as frost, and his face was aged but not withered. Instead, it exuded a calm and weariness born from a profound understanding of the ages. His eyes were like two unfathomable seas of stars, reflecting the ever-changing trajectory of fate on the chart. At this moment, his fingers hovered three inches above the astrolabe.
However, it hesitated to land, as if even the slightest touch would trigger an unbearable backlash from the heavens.
Suddenly, the astrolabe shuddered violently, its previously stable orbits abruptly erratic. Several life stars that should have long since extinguished lit up simultaneously, only to be forcibly swallowed up in the next instant by a dark will. The outline of an extremely ancient life pattern, one that should have ceased to exist in this world long ago, appeared on the chart. The outline was incomplete, yet it emanated a soul-stirring power.
A familiar, chilling aura. The old man's pupils contracted sharply, and for the first time, an undisguised tremor appeared on his aged face. He slowly withdrew his hand, as if burned by something invisible, his voice low and heavy, echoing slowly in the empty hall—
"Broken..."
He took a deep breath, his gaze fixed on the faint, lingering trace of the life rune appearing and disappearing in the star chart, his tone unusually grave. "The true purpose of the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor... is not self-interest."
The stars on the astrolabe surged violently once more, as if in response to his judgment. The old man's voice grew even lower and slower, yet each word was like thunder. "It is to revive it."
As soon as the words fell, the entire Star-Net Immortal Hall seemed to fall silent for a moment. For the first time, the once constant starry sky secret domain outside the palace showed an extremely faint but real tilt of fate, as if something that had already been judged to be the "endgame" was being forcibly dragged back onto the chessboard of the heavens.