The Rubik's Cube slowly rotated in the sky above the center of the battlefield, its six sides resembling six inverted Origin Heaven. Each rotation stirred up folds in space and echoes of time, weaving the shattered sea of fire and collapsing void back into terrifying "battlefield rules."
Dozens of ancient divine beasts circled and roared beneath it, the ethereal stillness of the Mystic Void Realm washing over them like waves, making everyone feel as if they were swallowing blades. Qin Yu raised his eyes, his pupils reflecting the swirling stardust and array of light patterns within the Rubik's Cube, his voice low and resolute. "Miss Ju, we must destroy this Rubik's Cube, otherwise these ancient divine beasts will Annihilation us."
Ju Anran's gaze passed over the flames and saw the white-robed ruler's afterimage walking step by step from the crack in the sky. There was no light or shadow beneath his feet, yet he seemed to press down on the "presence" of the entire world. His Adam's apple bobbed, and he said in a low, urgent voice, "Senior Sister, that ruler's afterimage is coming this way."
Ju Wanning gripped the massive gray-black umbrella tightly. The annihilation patterns on its surface continued to pulsate, and the aura of the True Annihilation Realm · Peak condensed like a sea of clouds pressing down on a city. She glanced at Qin Yu, her eyes calm enough to cut through firelight. "Young Master Qin, do you have any good ideas?"
Qin Yu paused for a moment, as if mentally dissecting and reassembling every possible thread of cause and effect. He slowly exhaled, "There is a way, but I don't know if it will succeed." Ju Wanning showed no sign of backing down, simply pausing with the tip of her umbrella, silently silencing the surrounding rubble and ashes. "No matter what, we have to try."
Qin Yu nodded, his gaze fixed on the Rubik's Cube, then sweeping over the approaching afterimage of the Dominator, and whispered, "This method only has one chance. We can't break it because the rules here aren't on our side. But since it's an illusion, it must have 'self-consistency,' and self-consistency is vulnerable to 'contradiction.' We're not powerful enough, so let the illusion break itself—let the Dominator's judgment sever its core."
Ju Wanning's brows twitched slightly. "You want to induce the afterimages of the Dominator to attack the Cube?" Qin Yu didn't answer directly, but instead, as if weaving an invisible net, his fingertip traced a line in the void, and in an instant, an extremely fine Karma Ripple spread out. The ripple emitted no light or sound, only reflecting the fragments of ruins beneath their feet and the swirling flames around them.
And the trajectory of the ancient divine beasts circling below the Rubik's Cube was quietly "marked" as usable nodes. He whispered, "The divine power to control the afterimages is to erase the 'true coordinates' and to burn the 'definition' along the cause and effect. The target it attacks must be able to be judged by it as a 'threat' or 'disobedience'."
What we need to do is not let it cause collateral damage, but to make it 'must' be destroyed. The first step is to temporarily disguise the Rubik's Cube from the 'core' as an 'escaping' alien object, making it appear as if it wants to break free from control and rewrite the battlefield's memory; the second step is to remove ourselves from its decision-making priority, making it believe that 'destroying the Rubik's Cube first' is the only way to maintain the era's memory.
The third step is to create an extremely short 'rule fracture' the instant it strikes, causing the Rubik's Cube's protection to lose its self-consistency for even a moment." Upon hearing this, Ju Wanning's eyes suddenly sharpened: "You want to alter its self-consistency?"Qin Yu nodded, his voice even lower: "I need you to help me create a 'discernible' section of True Annihilation, but only for a moment. It cannot engulf our own anchor points, otherwise we will also be judged as 'nothingness'."
Without hesitation, Ju Wanning slowly unfurled her umbrella, and the gray-black annihilation spread out like a tide, yet she compressed it into a thin, almost transparent curtain. Within this curtain, reality and illusion began to interlock, the colors of heaven and earth seemed to have been wiped away, even the sea of fire became blurred, as if only the concept of "about to burn" remained; at the same time...
Shangguan Lingxiao kept his eyes glued to the Rubik's Cube. He clearly understood Qin Yu's intention, but remained silent. His spear, "Silent Void," trembled slightly, the Return to the Ruins energy dripping from its tip carving cracks in the ground, as if preparing to deliver a fatal blow at any moment. After all, he knew that if he didn't escape, he would die either way.
Qin Yu raised his hand from within the thin veil held up by Ju Wanning. A faint glimmer of light between his fingers was pressed into a line, the end of which quietly wrapped around the array patterns on the bottom of the Rubik's Cube. It wasn't a direct confrontation, but rather like writing a highly concealed "misspelling" into a chapter of the illusion.
The rhythm of the Rubik's Cube's six-sided rotation was accelerated by an extremely subtle half-beat, so fast that it was almost imperceptible to onlookers. Yet, it was enough to cause the stardust inside to form an unexpected backflow in an instant. This backflow, like time flowing backward, gave the Rubik's Cube's surface a very unstable "escape" sensation. Immediately afterward, Qin Yu reversed his grip and snapped the cube shut.
The sense of escape was channeled along the beam of light emanating from the Rubik's Cube into the surrounding sea of fire and the trajectory of the divine beasts. Instantly, the roars of dozens of ancient divine beasts became even sharper. They seemed to be torn apart by some kind of "command conflict," and their swirling formation experienced a brief disruption. The white-robed ruler's afterimage also paused slightly at this moment, as if it had "seen" for the first time a variable that shouldn't have appeared.
The Rubik's Cube seemed poised to break free of its judgment and rewrite the palace's historical memory. Qin Yu seized this fleeting moment and suddenly shouted at Ju Anran, "Brother Anran, lend me your Mystic Void Ji—to shield me from this breath!" Though startled, Ju Anran's battlefield instincts compelled him to instantly raise his palm.
The Mystic Void Realm · Supreme transformed into an invisible veil, shrouding Qin Yu and Ju Wanning's "real-world coordinates" and causing them to briefly fade from their initial judgment of dominating the afterimages. Meanwhile, within the veil, Qin Yu raised his hand and pointed out the second "mistake" to the Rubik's Cube.
Instead of attacking its surface, he touched the most hidden line of control between it and the Dominator's afterimage, allowing that line to briefly reveal its outline amidst the indistinctness of Ju Wanning True Annihilation. The outline resembled an invisible rope piercing the sky, its other end bound to the core of the Rubik's Cube. The Dominator's afterimage finally moved; it raised its hand.
With a flick of the fingertip, without a ripple or a flash of light, the heavens and earth emitted a low, mournful groan, as if the very rules themselves were being forcibly erased. The next instant, a "Formless Slash" swept across the sky, not striking the people, not the divine beasts, but aiming directly at the Rubik's Cube.
As the slash landed, the pillars of light surrounding the Rubik's Cube suddenly became transparent, and then even the concept of "transparency" was erased. The six-sided sky, like an ancient painting soaked in water, began to blur, and the array patterns flickered wildly, attempting to self-consistently fill in the gaps. But just as it began to fill in the gaps...
Ju Wanning suddenly pressed down on the umbrella, the True Annihilation · Peak like a thin layer of frost covering the space between the Rubik's Cube's protection and its backfilling, causing a half-breath delay in the backfilling process. Qin Yu had been waiting for this half-breath. He stomped his foot, his figure instantly rising from within the Mystic Void curtain, like a cold blade emerging from a sea of fire, his power independent of any external force.
Using only that one "self-consistent fault line," he finished the job on the crack created by the afterimage strike on the Rubik's Cube— Qin Yu used the Divine Power of Three Forms of Fate Construction: Existence Erasure. This wasn't a brute-force erasure of the entire Rubik's Cube, but rather a precise judgment on the "core self-consistent point" at the crack: This point exists, but never occurred. The moment the judgment fell...
The stardust inside the Rubik's Cube seemed to have had its reason for "why it could still rotate" removed. All six sides of the celestial dome simultaneously lost weight, and the rhythm of rotation abruptly collapsed, first emitting an extremely faint cracking sound, like a universe splitting open at a fingertip.
Then countless cracks spread from that point. These cracks weren't light, but white lines of conceptual fracture, spreading along all six sides to every array pattern, every grain of stardust, every dominator line. The next moment, the Rubik's Cube shattered with a deafening roar, but there was no explosion of fire. Instead, a deluge of "memory fragments" and "rule debris" fell like an avalanche.
The entire Epoch Battlefield, filled with flames, divine beasts, and the outlines of the rulers' afterimages, trembled violently at the same time, as if a torn scroll could no longer be kept whole. A clearer sigh echoed through the heavens and earth; it was not a human voice, but the collapsing lament of the illusion itself as it lost its core. Then, all light and shadow reversed, space folded, and time surged back.
The ancient divine beast's body rapidly became transparent from claws to wings; the white robes that commanded the afterimages vanished like ashes scattered by the wind. Every roar on the battlefield was absorbed into a silent tremor. Qin Yu only had time to grab Ju Wanning's umbrella handle; Ju Anran's figure was enveloped in the annihilation and intertwined streams of light in his Mystic Void vision.
The next instant, the world completely flipped—the illusion collapsed, and everyone's feet sank, as if falling from the sky back into the ruins of a real tomb. The air regained its weight, the sea of fire disappeared, the divine beast vanished, and only dust slowly settled in the huge tomb-like space. Above their heads, the once-spinning Rubik's Cube had turned into a silent rain of fragments, which extinguished and dissipated one by one in mid-air, as if they had never existed.
Before the light fragments from the shattered Rubik's Cube had completely dissipated, the entire Thoughtless Burial Domain suddenly fell into an extremely eerie silence, and dust slowly settled.
The collapsed illusionary barriers around them vanished, leaving only the enormous vertical coffin that had stood in the center from the beginning. Now, it began to truly "revive."
The coffin was entirely a dark bronze color, covered with dense, ancient patterns. These patterns were not simple runes, but rather "wrinkles of time" etched by the passage of years and eras.
As the illusion completely collapsed, the coffin lid trembled slowly without a rumble. There were no fluctuations of spiritual energy.
Only a very low, faint friction sound echoed slowly throughout the entire tomb area.
"Click--" The coffin lid slid open on its own, and a pale purple halo slowly emanated from inside the coffin.
The light was not dazzling, but it carried an extremely profound aura, as if it came from an era even more distant than the illusion itself.
Everyone involuntarily held their breath; a purple gourd floated silently inside the coffin.
The gourd was only about a foot long, yet it gave people an indescribable sense of weight.
Its entire body is a deep purple, like a crystal formed from compressed twilight.
The gourd's surface is not smooth, but has fine, galaxy-like veins. These veins are faintly visible beneath the dark purple surface, like countless lines of sealed time and space.
A thin, silvery-white rope was tied to the mouth of the gourd. The knot was not an ordinary object, but rather resembled the pivot of some kind of seal, with extremely ancient markings engraved on it.
The space around the gourd slightly collapsed.
It's as if the power hidden within it is silently oppressing reality.
No one doubted it.
This is a true treasure of unparalleled value. At this moment, Shangguan Lingxiao gave Qin Yu a cold look.
There was no anger in his eyes, only cold calculation.
He knew very well that Ju Anran Mystic Void Realm · Supreme, Ju Wanning at the True Annihilation Realm · Peak, and with Qin Yu added to the mix, they had no chance of winning if they attacked now.
He slowly holstered his gun, his voice as cold as if it came from beneath layers of ice.
"The Qin family, the Ju Lineage —I will remember every single debt we owe them."
As soon as he finished speaking, he didn't linger. In a flash, he became a blur and headed towards the exit.
Only Qin Yu, Ju Wanning, and Ju Anran remained in the burial domain, their purple gourds still silently floating.
Ju Wanning slowly walked to Qin Yu's side. She looked at the gourd, then turned her gaze to Qin Yu.
His voice was gentle, but without the slightest hesitation.
"Young Master Qin, you can have this treasure. If it weren't for you, we'd probably be trapped in the Rubik's Cube forever."
Ju Anran laughed heartily. "Yes, Senior Sister is right. Young Master Qin, this treasured gourd should rightfully be yours."
Qin Yu pondered for a moment, his gaze falling on the purple gourd. If he hadn't devised a plan to control the afterimages to attack the magic cube, the illusion would not have been able to be broken.
"This gourd did indeed appear because of him," he nodded slightly. "Very well, then I shall respectfully accept your offer. I will accept this treasure."
He raised his hand, and the purple gourd slowly fell into his palm. Its touch was warm and smooth, yet it felt as if he were holding a compressed era.
Ju Wanning smiled slightly.
"Young Master Qin, now that Shangguan Lingxiao has departed, Shangguan Xuanchen has been Annihilation by the ancient divine beast, and ten of our clan's disciples have perished, we will no longer pursue this matter."
Her gaze was deep
"During this time in the Thoughtless Burial Domain, we have obtained many inheritances and treasures. Now that the Lineage assembly is drawing near, we are preparing to return to the Lineage to report back."
She paused.
"Young Master Qin, you must participate in the Eternal Nonexistence Limitless Domain's Lineage Grand Competition. All Lineage will be present, and we will accompany the elders. I will definitely recommend Young Master Qin to my Lineage upon my return. With Young Master Qin strength, you will surely stand out in the Hundred-Day Selection Competition."
Ju Anran smiled and said, "Yes, Young Master Qin, you will definitely win the favor of my clan elders."
Qin Yu clasped his hands in thanks. "Thank you both for your kindness. I will certainly not disappoint you."
Ju Wanning nodded slightly. "Young Master Qin, farewell." Ju Anran cheerfully clasped his hands in a fist salute. "Brother Qin, farewell."
As soon as they finished speaking, the two figures rose up simultaneously, transforming into two streaks of light and heading towards the exit of the burial domain.
In the vast Thoughtless Burial Domain, only Qin Yu remained. The purple gourd in his palm emitted a faint glow.
It was as if some real opportunity had just begun.