Above the Shi Lin, the wind was suddenly torn apart. The Blank Dao Scroll in Shen Qingchen's hand was only partially unfurled, but that insignificant line of white seemed to erase a predetermined law from the world. Taking advantage of that momentary gap in the rules that had been erased, Qin Yu shot forward like a phantom that pierced through cause and effect. Each step he took caused the void to collapse slightly, his Fate Soul trembled, and his aura was no longer restrained. Instead, it was like a long-suppressed abyss suddenly cracking open, releasing a heart-palpitating primal fluctuation.
Just as he approached the old man at the Mystic Void Realm · Middle Stage, a chilling light suddenly flashed in Qin Yu's eyes. He did not immediately draw his sword, nor did he write with his pen first. Instead, he directly unleashed his most fundamental martial soul technique— the Silent Beginning Ring Master Soul Diagram.
In that instant, the heavens and earth seemed to be forcibly stopped by some higher-level existence. Behind the old man, above his head, and under his feet, countless vast and endless phantom rings simultaneously cracked open. These phantom rings were not ordinary magic arrays, but rather seemed to be the Origin Framework that existed since the beginning of the Soul Realm, so huge that they seemed to be able to cover the entire Northern Region Shi Lin.
The Nine-Wheel True Evolution Dharma Wheel rotated layer by layer deep within the diagram. With each rotation, the surrounding space emitted a teeth-grinding cracking sound, and the thousands of stone pillars in the Shi Lin simultaneously reflected shattered patterns of Dharma principles.
The Boundless Realm Source Wheel, suspended at the deepest point, resembled a cold, desolate cosmic core, revealing layer by layer the old man's martial soul foundation, Dao principles, and Fate Soul meridians. Meanwhile, the suction force of the Limitless Yuan Absorption Art formed a massive tide at the edge of the ring, forcibly drawing out a ripple of chaotic energy from the old man's violent primordial power.
The old man, who had been grinning maliciously, changed his expression for the first time the moment the ring of images truly enveloped him. He was horrified to discover that the structure of his Fate Soul was being directly overturned by an invisible hand, even the deepest anchor point of his Dao foundation was being pierced by beams of cold light. The legal order upon which he relied when using his supernatural powers was being forcibly rewritten, dismantled, and rearranged. At the same time, Qin Yu had already closed in on him.
The Book of Fate Law's Realm Severing Origin Brush trembled slightly within Qin Yu's sea of consciousness. He didn't actually manifest the brush, but instead used the penetrating power of the Silent Beginning Ring Master Soul Diagram to directly see the crucial break in the old man's flow of origin. Then, the Silent Origin Stainless Sword suddenly appeared in his palm, a cold white sword mark traversing horizontally from nearby, its light not particularly powerful.
Yet it was so sharp it seemed capable of slicing through the very core of existence. The sword didn't aim for a direct attack, but rather precisely struck the weakest point in the old man's protective essence—the seam of his magical principles. Immediately afterward, Qin Yu pressed down with his other hand, fingers pointing together...
The Heavenly Cause Judgment Sequence - Six Severances Seal 'Fate Cause Sealing Mirror - Logic Abyss Core instantly shrank to an extremely small size, directly sealing itself in front of the old man's chest. Mirror-like causal cracks spread wildly along his entire body, like countless ice-blue light chains nailing firmly into his bones and soul.
"Boom--!"
The old man was instantly thrown back dozens of feet, coughing up blood. Half of his protective aura was shattered in that instant. He staggered and crushed dozens of black stone pillars before barely managing to steady himself, his eyes filled with shock, anger, and disbelief.
He never expected that his second Mystic Axe Power would be forcibly erased by Shen Qingchen with Blank Dao Scroll, leaving a gap in the rules. He also never expected that Qin Yu would not retreat but advance instead, seizing that moment to directly close the distance to him and severely injure him with such a strange and domineering Martial Soul Law.
The old man's chest heaved violently, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, his facial scars contorted in rage. He stared intently at Qin Yu, who was inches away, and suddenly let out a near-mad roar, "You all die—!"
He suddenly gripped the axe with both hands and raised the massive battle axe high. But at that moment, the axe began to mysteriously "disappear." It wasn't that it disappeared or became transparent, but rather that it gradually detached itself from the realm of "being visible" and "being perceptible" at the conceptual level.
Standing at a distance, Shen Qingchen felt that although he clearly knew the old man was still holding an axe, when his gaze fell on it, he couldn't confirm whether the axe actually existed, as if even the very act of "seeing the axe" had been erased.
The old man's third supernatural power finally descended, "One Cleave into Emptiness."
There was no light, no shadow, no storm, and no deafening roar, only a silent cleaving. But the instant the axe struck, the small space where Qin Yu was suddenly turned into absolute emptiness.
It was not white, not nothingness, but a blank space that could not be defined by "color," "existence," or "absence." That area was as if it had been completely ripped out of the world, and any legal principles that entered it immediately lost their meaning; even concepts like "death" and "annihilation" could not be attached to it.
The old man grinned maliciously, absolutely confident that this axe strike would be enough to shatter Qin Yu from the boundary between existence and non-existence into a void that would cease to exist in any narrative or cycle of reincarnation.
But what he didn't know was that Qin Yu had deliberately approached this close, even risking serious injury, just to get this close, all for this very moment.
Just before that absolute emptiness was about to touch him, Qin Yu's eyes showed no panic, but instead an Ultimate determination. Because what he truly wanted to kill the old man was never the Silent Origin Stainless Sword, nor the Six Severances Seal, but rather—the Primordial One Thought Primal Emperor Pendant, which he had already planted with the Dao of Cause and Effect.
Qin Yu's mind suddenly turned serious, and the causal supernatural power within his body was suddenly activated. It was not an obvious and powerful spell, but a causal call that had been buried long ago. The causal Dao intent that he had quietly planted deep within the pendant was completely awakened at this moment.
Like a thread that had been lurking in the darkness for a long time, it suddenly tightened, instantly piercing through space, through the storage crystal core, and through the old man's supposedly unbreakable seal, directly binding the pendant's core essence.
At the same time, Qin Yu activated the power of Cause and Effect Reshaping of the Void Source Truth Command, reversing the dormant origin trajectory inside the pendant in an extremely precise way, forcibly reversing the originally stable cycle of divine power flow towards a Zero Realm Point that can only be formed in an extremely short instant.
That was the Threshold the origin had neither erupted nor could it continue to exist stably. Inside the pendant, the slowly flowing blue starry sky suddenly stopped.
The next moment, "click--"
A faint, yet seemingly ethereal, sound, like a crackling echo from the very depths of the universe's earliest thought, suddenly exploded within the storage crystal core at the old man's waist. The old man's fury had not yet subsided, but for the first time, his eyes truly widened in horror.
He clearly felt an incredibly terrifying surge of energy emanating from within something at his waist, a surge that was completely beyond his control and even beyond his comprehension.
Immediately afterwards, the entire storage crystal core began to emanate a deep blue light pattern from within, like countless cracks in a galaxy blooming from its deepest depths. After the pendant was drawn to the Zero Realm Point by Qin Yu's Dao of Cause and Effect, it could no longer suppress the ancient divinity within it, which belonged to the Primordial One Thought Primal Emperor.
The blue starry sea inside, like a miniature universe, suddenly reversed, as if the first thought, dormant for billions of years, had been forcibly detonated. A tiny yet extremely bright star core collapsed from the center of the pendant, and then—exploded.
That wasn't an ordinary explosion; it was a scene of utter destruction where the entire space was instantly engulfed in a moment of nascent thought followed by utter annihilation.
The old man's body was first surrounded by countless overlapping images of himself: the shadow of his youth when he roamed the various realms, the bloody reflection of his first murder, and countless mental images formed from his lifelong greed, evil thoughts, and obsessions, all simultaneously illuminated in the blue light.
Immediately afterwards, all these reflections were swept back into his physical body and Fate Soul, like millions of red-hot needles piercing in from all directions at the same time. The old man let out a shrill scream, but the sound was swallowed up by the exploding blue Thought Sea as soon as it left his mouth.
The pendant's true power erupted completely in the next instant.
A beam of light, almost transparently blue yet intensely bright enough to pierce through multiple dimensions, burst forth from the old man's waist and shot straight into the sky. Within the beam, countless thought wheels, resembling clouds and mist, continuously unfolded and closed, like the first thought of "wanting to exist" before the birth of the universe repeatedly splitting itself.
The old man's body froze at first, then began to crack silently from his chest. What cracked was not flesh and blood, but all the definable layers of his existence throughout his life. His Fate Soul, origin, foundation of the Dao, anchor of cause and effect, traces of cultivation, and even the blank axe domain that he had just created by "One Cleave into Emptiness" were all swept back into the blue Thought Sea and crushed into the finest dust.
Just before the detonation, Qin Yu, with his absolute perception of cause and effect, had already opened Transcendent Five-Dimensional Space fold in advance. His figure flashed suddenly at the edge of the blank axe domain, and he and Shen Qingchen, who was not far away, were pulled into an invisible high-dimensional rift.
The two seemed to briefly retreat against the outer wall of reality. The blue primordial explosion, powerful enough to annihilate Mystic Void Realm · Middle Stage cultivator, swept past them with a deafening roar, but it merely grazed the edge of the higher dimension they were in, creating layers of transparent ripples.
Shen Qingchen was almost stunned for a moment. All he could see in the real world was that the place where the old man was had been completely swallowed up by the blue divine light, like an ancient divine star suddenly rising in the center of the Northern Region Shi Lin.
"Boom--!!!" Several breaths later, the real explosion finally came.
Hundreds of black stone pillars shattered simultaneously, sending rubble and blue stardust soaring into the sky. At the epicenter of the explosion, everything was smoothed out into a massive circular crater. The old man's figure had vanished completely, leaving not even a trace of his remnant soul or causal aftershocks. Only a chilling ancient sentiment lingered in the air, like someone sighing softly at the end of nothingness.
As the light gradually faded, Qin Yu and Shen Qingchen stepped back into reality from the Transcendent Five-Dimensional Space. Shen Qingchen looked at the completely leveled area in front of him, and a layer of cold sweat broke out on his back. Qin Yu, on the other hand, simply raised his eyes and looked at the center of the deep pit, his eyes cold and without any fluctuation.
The old man was completely Annihilation after the source of that supreme treasure was detonated.
Deep within the Shi Lin, the lingering glow of blue stardust still permeated the air. The near-destructive primal explosion from just moments before had not yet completely dissipated, and a chilling aftershock of the Thought Sea still lingered in the air, as if the thoughts of some ancient being had briefly descended and then quickly departed.
Qin Yu stood at the edge of the huge crater, glancing only at the center of the explosion before his gaze lingered for a moment. His divine sense had already spread outwards, like an invisible net spreading across the Shi Lin.
Just a few breaths later, his eyes darkened slightly, and he turned to whisper, "Go quickly." His voice wasn't loud, but it carried an unwavering resolve. "I reckon many cultivators have already been attracted here."
Shen Qingchen also reacted instantly. He also sensed that dozens of auras were rapidly approaching from the outer edge of the Shi Lin in the distance. Some were flying through the air, some were rushing along on pillars, and some were even breaking through space to get there.
Shen Qingchen didn't ask any more questions, he just nodded. The Blank Dao Scroll in his hand had already been put away again. He and Qin Yu took off into the air almost at the same time. The two figures were like two swift afterimages. After a few leaps in the Shi Lin, they disappeared into the darker maze of giant pillars in the depths.
They had only been gone for a dozen or so breaths when suddenly the sky was torn open with cracks. Sizzle--!
The void split open like a tattered cloth, and more than a dozen figures stepped out one after another from the spatial rift. Each of them exuded the powerful aura of the Realm Breaking Realm · Supreme. As soon as they appeared, they all looked down at the huge pit. The blue divine light that remained in the air was still slowly dissipating, like fragments of a galaxy falling among the Shi Lin.
One of the black-robed cultivators landed on the stone pillar, his brow furrowed. "What's going on?"
Another person crouched at the edge of the pit, touching the still slightly trembling ground with their hand, their expression gradually becoming serious. "Such a terrifying explosion... it must have been at least at the Mystic Void Realm level."
The third person looked up at the shattered Shi Lin around him, his tone tinged with disbelief. "A battle between the Mystic Void Realm cultivators definitely took place here just now... but why wasn't even a trace of a Fate Soul left behind?"
Some people speculated in a low voice, "Could it be the emergence of some ancient treasure?" or "Or did someone detonate a forbidden artifact?"
"Or perhaps... the Mystic Void Non-Stillness Seal has already appeared?"
The crowd spoke one after another, their expressions growing increasingly solemn. No one noticed that two auras had quietly vanished among the countless black stone pillars deeper within the Shi Lin.
Meanwhile, outside Stele Forest Imperial City.
The competition array plaza in the center of the imperial city unfolded like a vast starry sea, with the ground pieced together from thousands of ancient array plates, their patterns connecting to each other and extending to the massive observation array core at the center of the plaza.
Above the array core floats a grand screen, which is not a single image, but a three-dimensional star map composed of countless points of light. Each point of light represents the Fate Soul of a cultivator who has entered the Endless Abyss.
Tens of thousands of Fate Soul lights flickered and moved continuously on the screen, like a flowing sea of stars.
Among the points of light, some were bright and some were dim. Whenever a Fate Soul was completely extinguished, that point of light would instantly disappear from the screen, as if a star had fallen from the universe.
The heads of the Lineage families sat atop high platforms around the square.
Chi Family Lineage patriarch Chi Boqian's gaze slowly swept across the screen, his eyes lingering on a single point of Fate Soul light that had just vanished. He raised an eyebrow slightly, his tone tinged with interest. "Oh."
He gently stroked the armrest of his chair and said calmly, "Even a Mystic Void Realm · Middle Stage Fate Soul has perished." "It seems this competition has truly been somewhat unexpected."
Although the screen could display the location of the Fate Soul and cultivation aura of tens of thousands of cultivators, it could not truly pinpoint the specific battle scenes experienced by any one individual. The reason was simple—tens of thousands of cultivators entered the Endless Abyss, and the screen could only simultaneously display the fluctuations of their Fate Soul and their general areas.
If we were to truly track down a specific individual in detail, it would require activating the array formations individually, and the screen itself simply couldn't handle such a massive amount of real-time footage.
Therefore, all that everyone could see at this moment was a single point of light from a Mystic Void Realm · Middle Stage Fate Soul suddenly going out; as for how he died—no one knew.
On the other side of the platform, behind the seats of the Hua Family Lineage.
Hua Jingmeng sat upright on an exquisite jade chair, her fingertips gently holding a celadon teacup. She slowly sipped the spiritual tea, her gaze sweeping lightly over the constantly flashing star map of Fate Soul on the screen.
He said calmly, "I wonder if that little thief Qin Yu is dead yet. Over a hundred Realm Breaking Realm · Middle Stage cultivators have already perished."
A middle-aged cultivator standing beside him bowed slightly, his voice tinged with obsequiousness. "Don't worry."
"I've arranged everything according to your instructions." "He's probably already been killed by those cultivators."
The man chuckled softly, a hint of disdain in his voice. "After all, you've offered one hundred and fifty God-Level Resonance Crystal this time."
"His life—has long been fought over by many cultivators." Hua Jingmeng listened without showing any smugness.
He slowly set down his teacup, his gaze still fixed on the vast star map of Fate Soul reflected on the screen. After a moment of silence, he said calmly, "Don't jump to conclusions so quickly."
"Those scoundrels from the Holy Clan also swore to me the same thing, that they would definitely kill that brat."
He chuckled softly, but his eyes gradually turned cold. "But what happened in the end?" "He still got tricked by that kid."
Hua Jingmeng tapped the table lightly with her fingertips, her tone calm to the point of being indifferent.
"Therefore—" "before we actually see that kid's Fate Soul extinguished," "we absolutely cannot jump to conclusions."
The monk immediately bowed respectfully. "Yes, you are right." And just as he said this...
On the screen, deep within the Shi Lin of the Northern Region, two Fate Soul points at the Realm Breaking Realm · Middle Stage were quietly moving deeper into the area.
Hua Jingmeng could never have guessed that one of those coins was Qin Yu.