Qin Yu's mind tightened suddenly. Before he could take another look at the Logic-Extinguishing Divine Phoenix pinned to the void, the void behind him collapsed.
The Eternal Silence Return to the Ruins "forest" seemed to be utterly disturbed. Countless branches, intertwined with gray and dark gold, burst forth from the void. They were not growing, but rather like causal tentacles forcibly "thrown" out, tearing through space without a sound.
There was only a chilling silence. Dense patterns appeared on the surface of the branches, and as the patterns flowed, the surrounding light and darkness were swallowed up inch by inch, and even Qin Yu's shadow was erased in an instant.
Almost as soon as the branches approached, Qin Yu turned around.
He took a step forward, his body sweeping backward, his right fingertips together like a sword, the sword intent of the Silent Origin Stainless Sword erupting within him. There was no roar, no burst of light, only Ultimate condensed, silent white sword light blooming at his fingertips. The moment the sword light slashed out, space was cut into silent fractures, and the attacking branches were precisely hit.
Laugh--
The sword light flashed, causing the annihilation patterns on the branch's surface to vibrate violently. The outer structure was forcefully severed, and the broken branch crumbled into ashes in mid-air. However, in the next instant, Qin Yu's pupils contracted sharply—the severed branch had not truly "died."
The void at the fracture point surged, and new branches grew and extended at a visible speed, even thicker than before.
As Qin Yu retreated, he continued to extend his fingers, the Silent Origin Stainless Sword crisscrossing and weaving a cold sword curtain in front of him. Wherever the sword light touched, the branches shattered, but no matter how many were cut, the void in front of him kept "replenishing" new branches, as if the entire Eternal Silence Return to the Ruins was projecting hostility towards him.
At that very moment, the scene in the middle of the forest became increasingly brutal.
The branches binding the Logic-Extinguishing Divine Phoenix suddenly tightened, and dozens of thick, pillar-like branches simultaneously lit up with gray-white runes, their devouring power surging. Deep within the Divine Phoenix's chest, its primordial core was forcibly drawn out, pulling forth strands of blazing phoenix flame essence.
It transformed into a trailing stream of light, frantically pouring into the branches. Its essence and blood rained down, but were absorbed by the branches in mid-air, without even having the chance to fall.
The mournful cry was no longer sharp, but low and broken, like the howl of a torn Fate Soul. The Logic-Extinguishing Divine Phoenix struggled to raise its head, and finally Qin Yu's figure was reflected in its dim golden flame pupils.
It saw him.
In that instant, a complex mix of emotions flashed in Divine Phoenix's eyes: resentment, the instinct for survival, and a barely perceptible sense of relief.
Before any emotion could take shape, the branches wrapped around its neck and wings suddenly swelled, unleashing a torrent of devouring power that tore apart the last layer of its primal barrier.
Qin Yu clearly saw the pupils of the Logic-Extinguishing Divine Phoenix contract.
It wasn't a blink, but rather the loss of focus as life was gradually ripped away. Those eyes that had once burned away all laws slowly closed in the shadows of countless branches, the last glimmer of light completely swallowed up by Eternal Silence Return to the Ruins.
At the same time, more branches pressed down on Qin Yu from all directions. Their numbers were no longer an "attack" but a blockade. The void was filled with the shadows of branches in front, behind, left, right, and even above and below, as if to bury him and the Divine Phoenix together in this land of the end.
Qin Yu stopped, standing in the narrow gap where sword light and shadows of branches intertwined, his aura extremely calm.
He finally realized that in the Eternal Silence Return to the Ruins, simply severing ties would not solve the problem.
What is being devoured here is not the physical body, but "the qualification for existence to continue to exist".
Qin Yu did not back down.
In that instant, his gaze turned completely somber, all distracting thoughts were suppressed into the deepest part of his mind, leaving only one clear and firm thought Logic-Extinguishing Divine Phoenix cannot die.
The direction Zhou Yujin's sister ultimately fled could not have simply vanished into thin air. She left right before the eyes of the Logic-Extinguishing Divine Phoenix. If this Divine Phoenix were completely devoured by the Eternal Silence Return to the Ruins, that clue would be erased as well, and there would be no longer even the right to pursue it.
Qin Yu took a deep breath and suddenly stepped forward. This step felt as if he were stepping on the spine of the world.
The Power of World Construction within his body was no longer contained, but was forcibly pushed to the external level, and the Domain of Silent Origin deep within his Fate Soul suddenly unfolded.
The sense of "definition" of space rapidly crumbled around him. Light and darkness no longer flowed along their original paths, and the countless branches rushing towards him seemed to be dragged into another order at this moment, with the logic of growth, extension, and entanglement simultaneously becoming disordered.
Qin Yu raised his hand. It was no longer just sword light at his fingertips; the entire realm moved with him.
The sword intent of the Silent Origin Stainless Sword no longer manifests as a single slash, but rather emerges from the depths of the void like countless invisible sword veins.
Each sword vein had no clear form, yet the moment it appeared, it severed the devouring connection between the branch and the Eternal Silence Return to the Ruins.
Boom! Large sections of branches collapsed simultaneously in mid-air.
It wasn't severed, but rather its existence was "denied." The annihilation patterns on their surfaces twisted violently, as if they had lost the foundation for continuing to exist. The entire branch shattered from the middle, turning into countless gray-white fragments, which were directly flattened by the violent dimensional turbulence.
Qin Yu stepped into the collapsed crevice, his figure darting rapidly between the shadows of branches and fragments of void. With each step forward, a patch of the sea of branches behind him was forcibly Annihilation. For the first time, the Eternal Silence Return to the Ruins forest showed signs of being suppressed, and large areas fell into a brief "blank."
But he didn't stop. Ahead, the Logic-Extinguishing Divine Phoenix, nailed to the void, had its aura so weak as to be almost imperceptible.
Qin Yu's gaze sharpened, and his speed suddenly increased again. He headed straight for the Divine Phoenix.
Along the way, many branches still tried to block the path again, but they were torn apart by the Power of World Construction within three zhang of him.
A low, eerie rumble echoed continuously in the void, as if the Eternal Silence Return to the Ruins itself were being provoked, yet unable to immediately repair the forcibly torn rift.
Finally, Qin Yu stood before the Logic-Extinguishing Divine Phoenix. At close range, the scene was even more brutal than what he had just witnessed.
The enormous body of the Divine Phoenix was almost "nailed" into a suspended sacrifice. Countless branches pierced through its wing bones, chest cavity, and spine, and gray-white and dark gold patterns spread wildly within its body, continuously drawing out the last remaining essence and blood. With each extraction, the Divine Phoenix's body twitched slightly, but it no longer had the strength to struggle.
Qin Yu did not hesitate at all.
He raised his right hand, and the sword intent of the Silent Origin Stainless Sword condensed in his palm into an extremely thin and bright beam of silent white light.
"Give me—a break." The voice wasn't loud, but it sounded like a judgment.
The sword light fell, not with a horizontal slash, but precisely cutting into the "interlocking points" between the branches and the Divine Phoenix's body. It was not a simple destruction, but a deconstruction of the devouring structure itself. The first branch shuddered violently the moment it came into contact with the sword light, and then the whole branch turned into ashes, even the process of disintegration was compressed into an extremely short instant.
Then came the second and the third.
Qin Yu's attacks grew faster and faster, sword light flashing densely around the Divine Phoenix, as if peeling away layers of the deathly shell that parasitized its life. Large swathes of branches were successively Annihilation, and the devouring rhythm of Eternal Silence Return to the Ruins was forcibly interrupted for the first time.
The almost closed eyes of the Logic-Extinguishing Divine Phoenix trembled slightly. A wisp of extremely faint, yet real, phoenix flame shone again deep within its pupils.
At this moment, the Eternal Silence Return to the Ruins forest was completely agitated.
Qin Yu's heart almost stopped beating at that moment.
The aura of the Logic-Extinguishing Divine Phoenix was declining at a visible speed. It wasn't just weakness, but rather the Phoenix being gradually dismantled into an "irreparable" state by the devouring logic of Eternal Silence Return to the Ruins. If this dragged on any longer, even if it could sever all the branches, this Divine Phoenix would be completely devoured on a logical level, leaving only a meaningless shell.
We can't hold back any longer.
Qin Yu suddenly looked up, all hesitation vanishing from his eyes, replaced by an almost ruthless decisiveness. He held his sword horizontally in one hand.
At this moment, the Silent Origin Stainless Sword ceased to emit any light. Instead, it seemed as if all "perceptible attributes of existence" had been drained away, and a slight sense of collapse began to appear at the edge of the sword, as if it were not a sword, but a crack in an abyss that was taking shape.
He spoke in a low voice, so soft that it caused the entire Eternal Silence Return to the Ruins in place. --The Soulless Annihilation Abyss Sword.
There was no prelude, no build-up. When the sword was drawn, the world became still.
The next instant, nine chaotic annihilation marks simultaneously split open beneath the sword's edge. These were not Sword Qi, but nine No Definition channels forcibly torn open. They presented eerie dark arcs, crisscrossing and swirling in the void, each seemingly leading to some indescribable depths of the abyss of the soul.
Time seemed to be flattened.
All the branches wrapped around the Logic-Extinguishing Divine Phoenix froze at that moment. The annihilation patterns on their surfaces flickered wildly, trying to continue to extract, to reinforce and devour, but the "foundation of their soul existence" was being directly locked on.
Qin Yu took a step forward, his sword sweeping horizontally.
It wasn't a strike; it was a ruling that failed.
Nine chaotic annihilation marks fell simultaneously, penetrating the core logical nodes of each branch with unparalleled precision. In an instant, those branches ceased to struggle, ceased to crack, and did not even explode; they simply began to decompose.
Let's start from the level of "meaning of existence".
The soul-like structure inside the branches, used for adsorption, parasitism, and extraction of the source, was forcibly dismantled into countless irreparable hyperdimensional fragments. These fragments did not fall or spread, but were directly dragged into the Absolute Soul Abyss at the end of the nine annihilation marks. Even the understanding that "this is part of the soul" was denied on the spot.
A very low, resonant sound echoed in the void, like billions of stardust falling into a bottomless Black Abyss at the same time, but there was no response.
The chaotic lotus light suddenly exploded at the intersection of the nine annihilation marks.
The light was not bright, but rather presented a grayish-white state that could not be defined by color, as if the world had lost its understanding of "color" for a moment. The lotus light spread out, and all the branches it touched—regardless of thickness or whether they were still drawing on the Divine Phoenix's essence—were simultaneously reduced to zero.
It wasn't cut off. It wasn't burned.
Instead, it is erased simultaneously from three levels: "Soul existence," "self-definition," and "observable consciousness structure."
The next instant, the Logic-Extinguishing Divine Phoenix was suddenly shrouded in emptiness.
All the branches vanished completely, leaving not even a trace, ashes, or lingering logical shadows, as if they had never existed in the first place. The once wildly thriving Eternal Silence Return to the Ruins and Ruins fell into a brief "silence" after this sword strike, with large areas plunging into a state of inoperable stillness.
Qin Yu stood holding his sword, his chest rising and falling slightly.
Before him, the enormous body of the Logic-Extinguishing Divine Phoenix was finally completely unleashed.
Its wings drooped limply, and golden-red phoenix blood dripped slowly down the void, only to reignite with a faint flame halfway down. At that moment, its almost extinguished eyes suddenly opened a crack, and a hoarse yet real phoenix cry trembled and echoed in the Eternal Silence Return to the Ruins.