The Boundless Realm Heavenly Palace's Origin Trial

The world was oppressive. The torn sky had not yet healed. Black wings covered half a valley. The otherworldly being slowly raised its head.

A crimson core throbbed in his chest. With each pulsation, the air vibrated. He spoke. The sound did not come from his throat.

Instead, it exploded directly deep within everyone's consciousness—a low, cold echo, as if from the remnants of an ancient battlefield.

"Listen up!" The voice boomed like thunder, yet was utterly cold. "You are not to leave." All of you, enter the temple in turn.

As the last few words fell, space seemed to be locked by an invisible iron lock, and the lines of cause and effect between heaven and earth suddenly tightened.

He slowly raised the scarlet longsword in his hand. The blade extended several feet into a crimson light, leaving a scorching trail in the air.

The sword tip pointed at all the cultivators present. "Those who disobey—" "Behead." As the voice fell, the temperature in the entire valley plummeted.

Just then, a cultivator at the Realm Breaking Realm · Supreme suddenly erupted. He formed hand seals, and the Wheel of Cause and Effect appeared behind him. "Reverse the causal escape!"

He attempted to escape the barrier by using a method of causal displacement. However, the otherworldly being merely glanced at him, and the red sword twitched slightly, a blade of light as thin as a hair flashing past.

There was no earth-shattering collision, no explosion. The causal wheel behind the cultivator at the Realm Breaking Realm suddenly collapsed, and a sword beam swept across his brow.

The next instant—his body, along with the causal lines, snapped simultaneously. His Fate Soul essence shattered into red dust. He was reduced to two pieces.

Then vanish into nothingness. Utterly annihilated. The otherworldly being's gaze was icy. "Fleeer—Slay." The voice was low and devoid of any emotion.

Ju Wanning a deep breath and whispered to the disciple beside her, "Stay calm and don't act rashly. This being's cultivation level is probably at the Eternal Silence Realm."

"Do not attempt to escape." Her gaze was icy. Her opponent's strength far surpassed that of the True Annihilation Realm. Forcing a confrontation would only lead to death.

The otherworldly being slowly raised its sword. The blade fell towards the crowd, finally stopping on a cultivator at the Mystic Void Realm Initial Stage.

"You—" "Enter the temple." The cultivator trembled, yet dared not disobey. He slowly rose into the air.

Under everyone's watchful eyes, it flew towards the golden temple gates. The air was deathly silent.

He approached step by step. Everyone waited for the golden light to strike again.

However—as he approached the gate, no golden light shot out, no array patterns erupted, and the gate itself shimmered with golden light.

As if tacitly approving, the Mystic Void Realm cultivator Anran entered the temple and disappeared into the depths of the golden light, leaving the valley deathly silent.

The otherworldly being raised its sword once more, its blade pointing at the ten people in turn. "You." "You." "You all—enter." The ten cultivators who were pointed at...

Their cultivation levels ranged from the highest level of the Severed Thought Realm · Supreme the Mystic Void Realm High Stage. No one dared to resist.

One by one, they rose into the air and slowly flew towards the golden temple. Golden light surged like a tide, engulfing their figures.

No one was killed. No one was refused entry. Everyone entered safely. The otherworldly beings stood in place, swords in hand.

His wings were slightly spread. The crimson sword light had not yet dissipated. He said nothing more, only coldly looking down upon all living beings.

As if selecting the next batch of sacrifices, deep within the golden temple, the light grew ever stronger. In the valley...

The golden temple remained majestic. Its gilded doors stood open, radiating light like a surging tide. The time it takes for an incense stick to burn quietly passed.

All the cultivators in the valley wore solemn expressions. No one dared to make a rash move. Suddenly, a burst of light and shadow rippled from the depths of the golden gate.

Two figures stumbled and flew out from inside the palace gate. When they landed, blood splattered on the stone steps. One was at the Severed Thought Realm · Supreme, and the other Realm Breaking Realm High Stage.

Their robes were tattered, and their bodies were covered in cracks. Their Fate Soul force was weak and unstable. Clearly, they had just gone through a trial on the brink of death.

However, their faces were filled with barely suppressed ecstasy. The cultivator at the Severed Thought Realm · Supreme held an ancient painting in his hands.

The scroll slowly unfurled. The world within the painting was silent, the mountains and rivers were upside down, and an ancient, ethereal figure sat cross-legged upon it. The scroll remained still.

Yet a terrifying aura emanated from it, causing the surrounding air to collapse automatically.

The cultivators who were watching from afar felt their sea of consciousness tremble after just one glance.

It was a divine object containing the essence of a realm. Meanwhile, another Realm Breaking Realm High Stage held a bronze ancient lamp in his hand.

The lamp was not lit, yet a dark red glow flickered slowly within its wick. The flame seemed to possess a power that Realm Breaking.

The oppressive force was immense, even causing ripples in the valley. Everyone's eyes suddenly burned with fervor; the opportunity truly existed.

Just then, the otherworldly being slowly spoke, its deep voice resonating through the void. "Pass." "Permission granted."

As soon as the words were spoken, the two cultivators dared not say another word. Clutching their treasures, they swiftly passed through the light barrier filled with runes.

The light barrier did not stop them, allowing the two to leave. The valley fell silent once more. Of the dozen or so people who went in, only two came out.

Everyone understood that this golden temple was indeed an opportunity, but at the cost of lives. Whispers rippled through the crowd.

"The losers... all died inside." "This is a selection process." "Only those who have truly grasped the essence can emerge alive."

The otherworldly being raised its sword again. The blade slowly swept across the crowd. "You." "You." "Enter the hall." Several cultivators at the Mystic Void Realm and Realm Breaking Realm were targeted.

Their faces were pale, yet none dared to resist. One by one, they flew towards the gate.

The light engulfed their figures. Just then, the sword suddenly paused, stopping on Ju Wanning. "You—enter."

Ju Anran's heart tightened suddenly. "Senior Sister--!" Ju Wanning's gaze was calm. She smiled gently. "It's nothing. Wait for me to come out."

Her robes billowed as she rose into the air and flew towards the golden gate. Light engulfed her figure.

Inside the temple, the light faded, and the world suddenly expanded. It was no longer an ordinary palace, but a boundless void.

There is no ground beneath one's feet, no sky above one's head, and a colossal celestial palace floats in the center.

Majestic, vast, and unbound by time and space, it seems to exist outside of "existence." Its name is: Boundless Realm Heavenly Palace - Origin Trial.

In the void, thirteen figures stood apart: those at the Severed Thought Realm, the Realm Breaking Realm, the Mystic Void Realm, and even—newcomers to the True Annihilation Realm.

They were isolated from each other and did not interfere with one another. In the center of the hall, a stick of "Uninterrupted Incense" was burning.

The incense burns without smoke, yet with each burning, time truly flows by, and an ancient will descends.

There was no sound, yet it resounded directly throughout my mind. "The Origin Trial —Initiated."

"Use your realm as a mirror." "Use your structure as proof." "When the incense burns out—determine life and death." Before each cultivator, runes corresponding to their realm slowly appear.

Runes rotated, transforming into an independent illusion. The trial began. Ju Wanning in the void.

Before her, a gray-white field of light unfolded. Truth was annihilated; reality ceased to exist; there was neither truth nor falsehood, neither birth nor death.

The trial barrier slowly condensed before her. The void collapsed, and the energy of annihilation circulated.

She stood before the True Annihilation Realm trial barrier, her gaze calm. The incense was already lit.

The moment Ju Wanning stepped into the barrier, the clamor of the outside world seemed to be pressed into the deep sea by an invisible hand, leaving only a silence as quiet as her own heartbeat. There were no steps beneath her feet.

Yet it felt as if she were stepping on an extremely thin layer of "existence," which was then instantly stripped away. The world abruptly turned upside down, and she landed at the beginning of a long corridor without a dome. The surroundings were as white as snow, yet even emptier than snow. There was no light, no shadow; all colors seemed to have been swallowed up by "True Annihilation," leaving only indistinguishable embers.

Two corridors unfolded before me, stretching to the horizon with no end in sight. One corridor's lintel bore the inscription "Reality," the characters seeming to grow from the very bones of the space, heavy and oppressive. The other lintel bore the inscription "Illusion."

The handwriting was as light as a sigh, as if it might slip away from the world at any moment. However, when she looked closely, the brick patterns, beams, wind sounds, and even the dust floating in the air of the two corridors were exactly the same. Only those two words, like two knives, nailed the word "separation" right in front of her eyes.

She didn't take a step immediately; the aura of the True Annihilation Realm had already surged in. It wasn't oppression, but a more terrifying kind of "flattening," making all your judgments and obsessions seem like words written on water.

It would be erased in the next instant. Ju Wanning slowly raised her hand, a wisp of extremely thin spiritual light condensing at her fingertips. The light was immediately swallowed by the gray-white light, leaving only half an inch. She looked down at the faint light, which seemed to be swallowed into the abyss as if it were "indiscernible," and a chill suddenly rose in her heart: If even light cannot prove itself, then what makes "truth" and "illusion" self-evident? She took a step forward, and the ground beneath her feet made no sound.

But the moment her heel touched the ground, the entire corridor seemed to come alive. The beams and pillars receded inch by inch, and the forks in the road split silently, as if every step was a pair of scissors, cutting open countless possibilities.

She chose "truth".

A sudden gust of wind swept in from the end of the corridor, as cold as a night that had never existed. When the first fork in the road appeared, the wall on the left was inscribed with "You once practiced here," and the wall on the right was inscribed with "You never came." The two statements were both true and false at the same time, like two invisible forces twisting her consciousness.

Ju Wanning remained unchanged. She raised her hand and pressed it against the left wall, and instantly a scene from her past cultivation appeared on the wall: the azure sky, the temple, the laughter of her fellow disciples, and her master's guidance—so realistic that even the texture of her robes was clearly visible. She then pressed the right wall, but the image Emptiness.

All the images of people were like dust scattered by the wind, and even she herself was only a blurry outline. The two scenes were juxtaposed, like two mirrors reflecting each other, revealing endless contradictions. The brick patterns in the corridor began to distort, and grayish-white "annihilation" seeped from the cracks. With a gentle lick, the warmth on her fingertips disappeared.

She continued forward.

With each step she took, the number of forks in the road multiplied, and countless pieces of "evidence" appeared on the wall, proving that every choice she made was right, and every choice she made was wrong: she had seen someone in Pond Fire City, but the next moment she appeared to have never left her clan's territory; she had used a certain killing technique in a life-or-death battle, but the next moment she appeared to have never learned any supernatural powers; she had shed tears for her clansmen, but the next moment she appeared to have been ruthless and heartless from beginning to end.

Countless images crashed into her mind like a tidal wave. An ordinary cultivator would have long since lost themselves in the web of "truth and falsehood," unable to distinguish which scene truly represented "me." Ju Wanning, however, stood firm at the heart of that turbulent tide. Her breathing remained steady, like a needle thrust into the eye of a storm; the needle's unmoved tip only amplified the storm's fury. Suddenly, the corridor roared, and two enormous shadows simultaneously illuminated at opposite ends of the distance.

On one side is the self draped in the crown of "truth," with a clear light between its brows, holding a scroll of "the Book of Dao Attainment"; on the other side is the self draped in the cloak of "illusion," with empty eyes, clutching a "Seal of Nameless" in its palm. The two figures speak simultaneously, their voices overlapping yet canceling each other out. "Choose me, for this is the right path."

Ju Wanning suddenly smiled, a faint smile, like a blade slicing through water, leaving only an invisible, chilling mark. She stopped walking in either direction, gently closing her eyes, silencing all the "testimonies" around her. In her heart, she uttered a silent phrase: When truth vanishes, reality ceases to exist. She understood.

The trap of this corridor is not in making you choose the wrong thing, but in forcing you to admit that "choosing" itself has meaning; as long as you are still attached to discrimination, even if you choose the "truth" correctly, you are still being led by "discrimination".

The moment she opened her eyes, the light of "discrimination" was gone, replaced by an extremely cold clarity. She raised her hand, and instead of gathering immense power in her palm, a ring of grayish-white ripples spread from the depths of her palm lines. The ripples were like a drop of ink falling into clear water, but instead of staining, they absorbed the color.

Every brick, every beam, every inscription on every side of the corridor was gently brushed by the ripples, then faded, shattered, and vanished like lines erased from a painting. She wasn't destroying "reality" or "illusion," but rather erasing the labels of "reality/illusion" themselves from the world.

Both corridors trembled simultaneously.

The lintel of "truth" began to crumble, the cracks not filled with stone chips, but with wisps of "meaning" being ripped away; the lintel of "illusion" shattered similarly, fragments flying up and turning to ash in mid-air, not even worthy of landing. The crossroads seemed to be squeezed together by an invisible giant hand, countless forks converging into a single line in the same instant.

But in the next instant, even that "line" began to collapse. She stepped forward, but the place beneath her feet was no longer a road, but a void after annihilation. That void was not nothingness, but an ineffable realm after swallowing up both existence and non-existence.

However, the final backlash from the corridor then arrived.

The instant she smoothed out the distinction between "truth and falsehood," a huge, invisible mirror suddenly appeared in front of her. The mirror did not reflect anything external, but only "annihilation" itself—grayish-white ripples were magnified into a sea in the mirror, and a word floated in the sea: Annihilation.

The words were like a nail, pinning her actions to the spot: You are annihilating everything, but "annihilation" remains; you use "annihilation" as a means, and you still acknowledge that "annihilation" is a path that can be upheld. The mirror suddenly pressed down, and the surrounding gray-white energy transformed into countless chains, chains that did not bind hands or feet.

Bound only by "cognition," each one etched a sentence into her mind: Since annihilation is the way, it is still within the way.

Ju Wanning slightly.

In that instant, if she tried to destroy the mirror wall with greater force, it would be tantamount to admitting "I can break it with force," and they would still be separated; if she went back and chose again, she would fall back into the cycle of the True and False Labyrinthine Corridor. Looking at the word "annihilation," she suddenly understood that the final test of this trial was to force you to let go of even the self-satisfaction of "annihilation."

She slowly raised her hand, her fingertips gently touching her brow. The movement was as gentle as brushing away a speck of dust, but the instant the finger touched her brow, the entire void seemed to have a nail removed from its center—her aura began to disintegrate on its own. It wasn't from injury or self-destruction, but rather from her actively removing that barely perceptible obsession with "I am passing the trial."

Her figure faded. The patterns on her robes disappeared first, and her hair turned into grayish-white dust that drifted away.

The skin, bones, and flesh did not shatter; instead, they were gently erased as if by an eraser. In the end, even the name "Ju Wanning" began to become unimportant in this illusion.

The character "Annihilation" on the mirror wall suddenly trembled, as if it had lost its opponent. It tried to suppress it, but found that the object it was suppressing was no longer within the scope of "suppressible". The chains tightened frantically, but only grasped a Does Not Exist wind.

Just then, a faint realization rose in Ju Wanning's almost vanished consciousness: True Annihilation is not the violent World Extinguisher, but rather leaving no place for even the "destroyer". She no longer "does" annihilation; she simply makes everything—including her own understanding of annihilation—become indistinguishable at the same time.

Boom—there was no sound. But the entire True and False Labyrinthine Corridor collapsed at the same instant.

The two corridors seemed to have been stripped of their logical support, turning into countless gray and white fragments, which were then swallowed by an even deeper Emptiness. When the mirror wall collapsed, no fragments scattered; it simply faded from the edges until, in the end, even the fact that "the mirror wall once existed" could no longer be established.

Suddenly, a door appeared amidst the gray and white light. The door had no frame and no doors.

It is merely a "gap" that swallows nothingness, within which surges the profound aura of the Realm of True Annihilation, like a silent sea that can swallow both reality and illusion at the same time.

Ju Wanning's figure re-emerged in front of the door.

But the moment she reunited, her eyes were different—no longer sharp, no longer stubborn, but possessed an "unfathomable" calmness, as if she would only glance at any conflict with indifference. She stepped into the gap, Gate of True Annihilation closed silently behind her.

The instant the door closed, the illusion of the outside world completely collapsed, and where she landed was the empty platform of the Boundless Realm Heavenly Palace, where the gray incense was still burning. Only a moment had passed, just like the endless forks in the maze she had experienced, all of which were swallowed up by True Annihilation into "nothingness".

She slowly exhaled. The breath was cold, as if it had never existed.

When she raised her hand, a faint True Annihilation Mark appeared in her palm. The mark didn't emit light, yet it kept the surrounding light at bay, as if it weren't a power at all.

Rather, it is a qualification—a threshold that can engulf all existence and non-existence, and touch upon chaos.

In the distant void, the remaining trial illusions continued to unfold. Some roared, some laughed wildly, and some were turned to ashes by the backlash of their own cultivation levels. Those sounds came through layers of illusions, like echoes leaking in from another world.

Ju Wanning lowered her gaze slightly, quietly glancing at the length of the incense sticks burning in the Uninterrupted Incense, before looking up into the deeper shadows of the Heavenly Palace, as if awaiting the arrival of an even more cruel test.