Shattering the Cauldron, Destroying the Emperor
The body of the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor suddenly erupted with a dark, abyss-like Void of Absolute Thoughtlessness. The ninth level of the Nine Nether Prison Abyss suddenly collapsed.
A vast expanse of black mist surged forth from his body, as if a will suppressed for millions of years was awakening all at once.
For the first time, a true emotion appeared on that eyeless face—anger. "I am not your shadow!"
The sound shattered the stone walls of the abyss.
"I have my own path! My own obsessions! I have devoured countless worlds! I am no longer that wisp of your Dao heart!"
The space behind him twisted wildly, and the Void of Absolute Thoughtlessness transformed into a collapsing projection of the universe. The Realm Wheel floated around him, and existence and concepts crumbled in his roar.
Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable simply raised his eyes slowly, a slight smile playing on his lips.
That was the laugh of someone in absolute control. "Stop struggling."
The voice was calm, yet it crushed time itself. "Now you not only harbor selfish thoughts, but you also dare to defy me."
"This—" "How can I allow this?" As soon as he finished speaking, Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable pointed a single finger at the void.
An invisible mark appeared from the void.
The mark had no shape, no light, and could not even be detected by sight, yet it appeared the instant it fell.
The Heart of Dao Burial within the body of the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor trembled violently. A chain deeper than Absolute Thoughtlessness emerged from the inside of his chest.
The chains are not material; they are the "Dao Source Covenant Seal," the "Return-to-One Anchor" that entered the wisp of the Tao heart at the moment of division.
The Thought Severance Devouring Emperor suddenly screamed in agony. He finally realized that from the moment of his birth, his return path had been predetermined.
Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable's voice was icy. "Your origin originally belonged to me. Your selfish desires are merely deviations."
"Deviance can be corrected." He clenched his five fingers. The surging universe of Absolute Thoughtlessness behind the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor instantly collapsed.
All the Dao traces and obsessions that had been devoured were forcibly stripped away. The Myriad Thoughts Form-Forging Cauldron spun violently.
The Existence Pattern suddenly lit up. The Annihilation Pattern devoured space like a tidal wave.
Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable slowly stepped forward. "Although you harbored selfish motives," "you ultimately followed my obsession and completed my resurrection."
"Very good." "You have not failed in your purpose." He pressed down with his palm.
The Thought Severance Devouring Emperor was forced to kneel beneath the mouth of the cauldron. The Heart of Dao Burial manifested from within his body.
This object is not a physical entity, but rather the Ultimate core of the "Dark Crystal Core" located in the heart of the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor.
It appears as a faint, almost imperceptible "dark glimmer," existing between existence and Does Not Exist. When you gaze at it, it seems like a singularity compressed from the Annihilation remnants of countless universes; when you look away, it dissipates into pure nothingness.
The "strange runes" that constantly appear and disappear on its surface are not any known writing, but rather the "last words" of the collapsing rules of all realms.
Each flash of a rune represents the complete collapse of a parallel dimension, a law of causality, and a foundation of logic.
It was a grayish-white heart, both beating and Annihilation. The Thought Severance Devouring Emperor' pupils contracted violently.
That was the first time he "saw" his own core.
For the first time, I realized I was merely a vessel. "Return to myself."
Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable said coldly. The gray mist at the mouth of the Myriad Thoughts Form-Forging Cauldron surged.
Billions of hands reached out from the mist. They grasped at the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor. Not out of hostility.
It was a summoning. It was a recognition of its master. It was destiny. The Thought Severance Devouring Emperor struggled frantically. "I am not reconciled--!"
He roared, black blood splitting from his eyeless face. "I have devoured nine thousand worlds!"
"I have razed countless temples!" "I am not your shadow!"
The chains tightened suddenly. The Heart of Dao Burial was forcibly pulled away half an inch. In that instant.
He felt a true weakness. Not a loss of power, but a "stripping away of his very being."
For the first time, he experienced the feeling of being rejected. It was something he had done to countless living beings.
Now it was his turn. He looked at Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable, his eyes no longer filled with madness.
Rather, it was despair. The despair of knowing that you've been nothing more than a pawn from beginning to end.
That kind of despair when you realize that all your ambitions are nothing more than stepping stones for others.
That kind of despair, realizing that even "resistance" is just part of fate... Master.
Her voice was hoarse. "Did I... really exist?"
Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable paused for a moment. "Existed." "As my unfinished obsession."
The next instant, the gray mist at the mouth of the cauldron fully expanded, and the boundary between existence and Annihilation shone Ultimate.
Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable raised his hand. "Enter the cauldron." Thought Severance Devouring Emperor was forcibly dragged up.
The hand of countless obsessions pulled him into the gray vortex.
He stopped struggling. He just stared intently at Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable. The last thing remaining in his eyes was resentment.
Anger, and a hint of indescribable sorrow. He knew it.
He must be refined into the complete form of the Heart of Dao Burial, becoming the furnace fire of the Path of Mystic Void.
The cauldron's devouring power erupted. The gray-white vortex tore him apart bit by bit. The Existence Pattern and the Annihilation Pattern ignited simultaneously.
The ninth level of the Nine Nether Prison Abyss has begun to collapse. (From the shadows in the distance.)
Jin Hanyan's fingertips trembled slightly. She knew that if she didn't act now, everything would be beyond repair.
The darkness of the ninth level of the Nine Nether Prison Abyss resembled a torn giant curtain, with layers of infernal flames reflected as a cold, greyish light on the abyss walls. The Myriad Thoughts Form-Forging Cauldron hung upside down at the bottom of the seal, its mouth facing downwards, and grey mist surged like a tide. Billions of hands clawed, twisted, and struggled within the mist, each clawing like pressing a shriek of "I existed" into the void.
It was then swallowed by the Annihilation Pattern into a silent void, while the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor was locked beneath the cauldron's mouth by the invisible Return-to-One Anchor Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable. The Heart of Dao Burial was forcibly pulled away by half an inch, and the chains were pulled from his chest cavity, making a teeth-grinding grinding sound, as if the bones of an entire era were forcibly dragged out of his Fate Soul.
His Void of Absolute Thoughtlessness collapsed into shattered shadows, the Realm Wheel it had devoured stripped away into a rain of ashes that pattered down on his shoulders. He gasped hoarsely, his eyes a mixture of resentment and despair, his lips trembling, but he could no longer utter the complete roar, "I am not a shadow!"
Only the bloody sound of chains tightening deep in his throat remained. Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable raised his hand, his fingertips gently tapping, and the gray mist at the mouth of the cauldron suddenly expanded. The Existence Pattern and the Annihilation Pattern simultaneously shone brightly, like two opposing skies closing together at the same moment.
The body of the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor was lifted up by countless hands of obsession, about to be dragged into the boundary between "existence" and "annihilation"—the moment of entering the cauldron had already been written, and even struggles were like a belated joke.
In that instant, the void in the shadows was shattered by a single footstep. Jin Hanyan suddenly appeared.
Clad in white as snow, yet untouched by the ash of the Nine Nether, she treads barefoot upon the abyss. Beneath her feet, there is no wind, no light, only ripples of chaos spreading outwards from the chaos she shatters.
Wherever the ripples passed, the infernal sea of fire seemed to be pulled back to its primordial state of "unjudgment," the flames losing their right to "burn," transforming into clusters of shapeless, grayish-white bubbles. Her gaze was as cold as an unsheathed blade.
Her gaze passed over Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable and landed directly on the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor being dragged below the cauldron, as if she were severing not a living being, but a pre-written ending.
She didn't hesitate at all.
With a flick of the wrist, an ancient bronze box appeared. The patterns on the box were blurred and indistinct, sometimes resembling cracks from the beginning of chaos, sometimes like marks left by a blade. Collapse and reconstruction intertwined in the same instant.
It seemed to be walking on the boundary between "forming" and "dissipating." A thin, gray broken ring was embedded in the box. The broken ring glowed slightly, and the timeline of the ninth level of the Nine Nether Prison Abyss seemed to be gently pushed back half an inch by an invisible finger.
The dragging motion into the cauldron suddenly froze. Countless hands stopped in mid-air, their fingertips just a hair's breadth away from the body of the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor, yet they could not push it any further.
Jin Hanyan's voice was as faint as a snowflake falling into the void. "Heaven and Earth Undetermined."
She lightly touched the clasp of the box with her fingertips, and the gray broken ring emitted a very faint "ding," like a key turning on a lock with no door. The next moment, the small bronze box opened silently—there was no action of lifting the lid, as if the box itself Does Not Exist the concept of "opening and closing," but rather that her words made the "seal" fall away and the "release" arrive.
The primordial chaos within the box, like Silent Void before creation, was released from its cage. A grayish-white, colorless fluid of Silent Void surged forth, yet it neither spread nor churned. It was like an endless curtain that unfolded in an instant, revealing the swirling gray mist at the mouth of the cauldron, the Existence Pattern on the yang side of the cauldron, the Annihilation Pattern on the yin side, and the purgatory and seal of the ninth level of the Nine Nether Prison Abyss.
All of them were "reflected" as the primordial illusion that had not yet been distinguished. In that instant, the world lost the meaning of "stability". The boundaries of the form seemed to be erased, the sound was wiped into blankness, and even the chain of the Return-to-One Anchor point at the fingertip of Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable seemed to have suddenly forgotten who it was supposed to lock.
The bronze box in Jin Hanyan's palm merged with the shapeless blade and key inside the box the moment it opened and closed. As it was observed, the blade and key continuously disintegrated, reconstructed, burned, froze, and were forgotten, like an ending that could not be described.
Only the gray broken ring hung on the hilt, becoming the only concrete anchor point. She raised the blade key, without any extra movements, and simply turned it gently at the "failure mark of existence and Annihilation" at the junction of the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor and the Myriad Thoughts Form-Forging Cauldron.
There was neither light nor darkness.
Only the concept of "the end" seemed to be removed from the conceptual level. In that instant, the ninth level of the Nine Nether Prison Abyss seemed to be directly cut off by a frame. The body of the Myriad Thoughts Form-Forging Cauldron first lost the definition of "material." The paradox of the Myriad Thoughts Mystic Crystal Pre-Nonbeing the Blade Key. The Existence Pattern on the sunny side seemed to be erased stroke by stroke from the billions of obsessions by an unseen hand.
The Annihilation Pattern on the yin side also collapsed, because "Annihilation" could no longer find "existence" as a reference. The clawing hands in the gray mist at the mouth of the cauldron stopped all at once. In the next instant, they disappeared as if they had never been stretched out. Even the fact of "disappearance" was dissolved in advance. The reverse-time chains wrapped around the cauldron's legs emitted an Ultimate sharp tremor.
Like the sound lines of the future, present, and past breaking simultaneously, straightened and snapped, the chains falling from the intersection of time, turning into Nameless grains of ash, rising, and then being erased before they could rise.
The body of the Thought Severance Devouring Emperor froze abruptly half an inch from entering the cauldron. The resentment and despair in his eyes were about to ignite into a final roar, but the turn of the Blade Key stripped him of his "qualification to be named".
His existence is like a nail pulled from the pages of the book of countless worlds; it is not death, not Annihilation, not dissipation, but rather even the phrase "once here" has been rewritten into blank space. His shadow, his path, his Heart of Dao Burial, the traces and obsessions he devoured over countless epochs—all are gone.
Everything was locked in place at the same moment, as if it had never happened. Even the causal echo of Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable's words "Return to Me" was cut off in his throat, as if those words had never been spoken.
The Myriad Thoughts Form-Forging Cauldron was stripped of its name along with its designations: Furnace of Existence, Cauldron of Dao Reversal, Annihilation Embers Cauldron, Cauldron of All Beings' Obsessions... These titles were like a string of severed threads.
The thread was smoothed out before it even hit the ground. The cauldron did not explode, collapse, or shatter into dust before the blade and key. It was simply "the end," and the "end" itself was locked by the gray broken ring, leaving no trace for remembrance.
The entire ninth floor suddenly became eerily quiet. It wasn't a peaceful silence, but rather a vacuum left after some enormous pillar of cause and effect had been removed.
Jin Hanyan remained expressionless. She slightly retracted the blade key, the bronze patterns returned to their original state, and the blade itself dissolved into Silent Void, returning to the ancient little box in her palm. The light of the gray broken ring dimmed slowly like a heartbeat. She did not turn around to look at the empty space behind her, because there was no longer "Thought Severance Devouring Emperor" or "Myriad Thoughts Form-Forging Cauldron" to be seen there.
All of this happened too fast, as if time itself hadn't anticipated it. Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable slowly raised his eyes.
He raised his eyes very slowly, as if none of this should have happened, but the instant his gaze fell upon them, a faint, crack-like chill flashed deep within his pupils for the first time.
It wasn't fear, but the chilling feeling of having a piece of his plan torn away right before his eyes. His outstretched fingertips were still hanging in mid-air. The path that should have been dragged, Return to One, and refined had been forcibly changed into a blank by Jin Hanyan at the last moment of "entering the cauldron," leaving no place to even begin to fill it in.
The darkness of the ninth level of the Nine Nether Prison Abyss surged again, the aftershocks of the seal rolling like belated thunder in the depths. The aura of the Source-Suppressing Stillnessless Venerable pressed down, and the infernal sea of fire on the abyss wall was ignited once more.
This time, however, an inexplicable tremor appeared within the flames, as if the heavens and earth were realizing for the first time that someone dared to erase his most crucial pawn and key directly from his Fate Soul and karma Realm Breaking Realm · Supreme.