"Having passed the first trial, you shall proceed to the second." The voice did not come from any particular direction; it seemed to be the very mouthpiece of the Void Abyss Forbidden Domain itself.
It takes shape directly in the "silence," deep and ancient, vibrating the edges of every wisp of black flame and the texture of every wisp of mist.
The lingering shadows of the corridor had not yet completely dissipated when Jin Hanyan stood beside the conceptual ruins in the distance. She had not stepped into the core of the trial, yet it felt as if she had personally experienced that tumultuous storm.
The moment she saw Qin Yu emerge step by step from the surging tide, the tension in her chest finally eased, as if an invisible mountain had been lifted from her heart. The light in her eyes wasn't intense, but it was incredibly steady and bright, carrying a joy and peace that welled up from the depths of her being.
It wasn't the taken-for-granted "You did it!" but the relief of "You're still here, you're safe, you've taken another step forward." Her fingertips tightened and loosened slightly, as if trying to suppress that emotion, but she couldn't, and in the end, she just smiled silently.
Her smile was as faint as a thin mist, yet it truly felt like the softest warmth deep within her Fate Soul. Gazing at Qin Yu's retreating figure, her heart ached with a clarity that bordered on pain: this road should have been Ultimate desolate, but with each step he took, she felt that the silence was illuminated a little more.
Qin Yu didn't turn around, but he seemed to sense that gaze. His shoulder line relaxed slightly, then tightened again, as if hiding all tenderness within a sharper clarity.
Suddenly, a deeper gray-blue hue appeared on the ground of the Void Abyss Forbidden Domain. The thin mist, as if pulled by an invisible tide, began to flow backward and swirl, condensing into a slowly rotating "ring" around Qin Yu's feet.
Inside the ring, there was no light, only layers of fine, ethereal cracks expanding and closing, like a door being silently carved out. Black flame figures stood silently in the distance, their edges converging simultaneously, as if making way for a new trial.
As Qin Yu took his second step, the ring suddenly collapsed downwards, like a deep-sea whirlpool swallowing all sound and color; his figure was elongated and folded, turning into an extremely thin black line that fell into the "door". When he took his third step, the ground beneath his feet was no longer frosted obsidian, but a blinding light that was almost scorching.
The second trial— the Prison of Light and Shadow —is now open.
He stood in the center of a blazing star field, the celestial stars hanging in the near void, so close they seemed within reach, yet so far they appeared separated by countless cosmic membranes. They were not constant stars, but rather the explosive cores of stars engulfed in black flames:
Each explosion spews out billions of dazzling fragments of light, each fragment as sharp as a knife, sweeping across the entire area; each rebirth rapidly coalesces within the black flames, so bright that the act of "seeing" itself becomes painful.
Light pollution is not just about blinding light; it's about polluting consciousness. Strong light forces your mind to fill in the gaps, compelling you to piece together fragmented, flickering images into a "complete picture."
Once you construct a complete image in your mind—even if it's just a subconscious "seeing what it is"—that image will be pulled out of your consciousness, materialized, and become your enemy.
Just as Qin Yu's vision adjusted, a shadow slowly rose from the afterglow of the explosion. It was formed from star ash and residual light, with three legs on the ground. Its body resembled a beast that had been burned through, but it had no fur, only constantly peeling ash and light fragments.
With each movement, it leaves a trail of afterimages behind it. These afterimages are not illusions of speed, but rather remnants of "what you just saw," forcibly imprinted on your retina and in your consciousness.
The Residual Light Thought-Devouring Beast.
It neither roared nor cried out, but suddenly stomped its foot in the intense light of the next starburst, landing on all three legs. The light of the burning field seemed to have been bitten by it, abruptly converging into a spear of light that pierced straight into the sea of consciousness. Qin Yu's vision went white, and he instantly had an instinctive "association": that spear of light was like a gun that pierced through heaven and earth.
The next instant, the "gun" actually appeared.
It was formed from that fleeting image in Qin Yu's consciousness, carrying the sharpness and power he himself had bestowed upon it, and it pierced straight towards his brow.
Qin Yu's heart skipped a beat; he immediately understood that this wasn't a simple flash attack, but rather a forced "understanding," a forced "imagery." The stronger the cultivator,
The more easily one interprets a bright light as a more terrifying weapon, the more easily one is consumed by one's own thoughts.
He forced his vision to defocus, refusing to "see clearly," retaining only a rough perception of light intensity and direction, like trying to discern wind direction in a downpour with his eyes closed. He didn't chase any shape, nor did he give his consciousness any chance to name it—he didn't treat it as a gun, a blade, or anything else, but simply as a meaningless ball of light.
The "light gun" formed from thought began to twist the moment it approached his forehead, as it lost its definition of continued stable existence; the tip shattered into fragments of light, as if crushed by an invisible hand, grazing past his shoulder and slamming into the black flame ground in the distance, exploding into a ring of swirling light and ash.
Taking advantage of this inducement, the Residual Light Thought-Devouring Beast suddenly accelerated, its three legs creating a series of afterimages. Waves of intense light from the burning arena assaulted Qin Yu, and with each blink, Qin Yu instinctively wondered, "What does it look like?"
He forced himself to process information in the coldest way: only remembering brightness, rhythm, and time difference, not images.
He started counting.
The explosions of stars are intermittent, extremely brief, yet they exist. After each explosion, as the afterglow fades, there is a moment of "darkness"—not true darkness, but a relative stillness. The second layer of the mystery lies hidden within these intermittent moments:
The order in which seven specific stars extinguish. The order resets each time, meaning there's no room for luck; one can only catch those seven "extinguishing" moments repeatedly amidst extreme light pollution.
Qin Yu focused all his attention on one line: the timeline.
In the first round, he observed at least a dozen stars extinguishing and reigniting at different rhythms, their light waves mingling into a boiling pot of silvery white. He tried to memorize seven, but was constantly interrupted by the Residual Light Thought-Devouring Beast, and in the end only managed to capture the numbers of three. The rest bounced around in his mind like shards of glass.
In the second round, he changed his strategy.
He no longer tried to "see the seven stars," but instead chose an anchor point—the conceptual remains of the upside-down clock tower on the edge of the incineration field. The clock tower contained frozen colors, which would briefly revive each time a starburst shone upon it; and would suddenly darken each time a star went out. Qin Yu used the changes in the clock tower's colors to determine the moment of extinction, rather than using his eyes to follow the stars themselves.
This time, he grasped the rhythm of the first, second, and third extinctions: they were like three breaths, with intervals of "one short, one long, one short" respectively. He encoded them into non-figurative symbols, engraving them at the shallowest level of consciousness, avoiding visualization.
Residual Light Thought-Devouring Beast sensed his adaptation, it suddenly raised its head, star ash churning in its throat, and spat out a blinding cloud of residual light mist. As the mist dissipated, the entire incineration field seemed to be pulled several times closer, and the exploding starlight almost blew right up to Qin Yu's face. Qin Yu's vision was forced into focus—he could almost see an entire burning sea of stars collapsing before his eyes.
The collapsed "sea of stars" immediately materialized, transforming into a massive light curtain that pressed down on him, carrying with it the fear and grand imagination he had just experienced. The edges of the light curtain even showed the shape of "waves"—all uncontrollably completed by his consciousness.
Qin Yu's heart sank, and he forcefully tore the concept of "sea" from his mind. He would no longer allow himself to regard anything as "sea." He used a more ruthless method to coarsen his consciousness—treating all visual input as "brightness noise."
The light curtain lost its meaning as "sea" and collapsed instantly, turning back into irregular, chaotic light, like a torn curtain scattered in all directions. Taking advantage of this brief moment of respite, Qin Yu began the third round of observation.
He finally discerned the order in which the seven stars extinguished—not by visual observation, but by the "echoes of darkness" in the incinerator. Whenever a particular star extinguished, the black flames of the incinerator would gently contract at a great distance, as if someone were pressing on the pulse of the flames in the darkness.
Qin Yu treated the seven convergences as seven strikes and recorded them in chronological order: one, three, seven, two, six, four, five.
It can be reset sequentially each time.
The next instant, the stars exploded and reborn once again, and the extinction sequence began to refresh. Qin Yu was not in a hurry. He knew that the trigger condition for the "hidden star map" was not to memorize the order of a certain round, but to grasp the seven-star sequence of the "current round" during the interval between explosions and replay it in reverse order in his mind.
He waited until the fourth round.
The seven "dark spot echoes" in this round appeared extremely trickily: the second and third almost overlapped, like two stars going out at the same time but then staggering by half a breath; the sixth one was even covered by the moving afterimage of the Residual Light Thought-Devouring Beast and was almost swallowed up.
With chilling patience, Qin Yu forcibly separated them, as if trying to distinguish the sound of two needles falling to the ground amidst a deafening thunderclap.
Finally, I wrote down this sequence in my mind: four, one, two, seven, three, five, six.
Reverse order -- 6, 5, 3, 7, 2, 1, 4.
He wouldn't allow himself to "imagine the star map," because once it was formed, it would materialize into a new attack. He only used the rhythm to rewind, replaying the seven extinguished "dark spot echoes" in his mind like rewinding time, as if pushing seven doors back to their original positions one by one.
At the very last moment when he finished reversing the order, the intense light from the burning field suddenly seemed to have been drained of its fuel.
All the stars froze simultaneously, and the black flames condensed into a vast, still curtain. Slowly, a star map that should not be "seen" emerged on the curtain—it was not bright, but a pattern composed of seven extremely fine dark lines, as if carved into light with nothingness.
The Residual Light Thought-Devouring Beast let out a silent, hoarse hiss. Its body began to collapse, and starlight ash crumbled from between its three legs. The afterimages extinguished layer by layer, until only a wisp of light dust remained, scattered by the wind.
The burning site was plunged into a brief, bearable darkness.
The second trial has been passed.
Qin Yu stood before the dark star map, his chest heaving only slightly, yet as steady as an unmoving mountain. He felt no relief, for he knew this was just the beginning; but at the edge of the conceptual ruins further away,
Jin Hanyan gazed at the suddenly quiet field of light, the oppressive worry in her heart eased slightly. She didn't dare to interrupt, only silently saying in her heart, "It's good that you're back."