The darkness had not yet subsided, but the entire Dark Court had already been stirred once again by a deeper "will to write".
The True Annihilation Pen Lord did not pause.
Its brow rune suddenly expanded, and the dark gold and black interwoven patterns exploded in the void. Invisible ripples spread out instantly, and wherever they passed, the space did not shatter and the rules did not collapse, but an extremely strange "deviation" appeared - as if all of this was how it should be, or as if it was written wrong from the beginning.
It raised the pen's blade, and the nib slowly traced a line in the air. There was no light, no trace, yet "words" were being created.
Those words were not runes, not language, but projections of cognition itself. With each stroke, a complete "fragment of the world" was written out. Those fragments of the world floated in the Dark Court, rapidly expanding, overlapping, and intruding upon each other, like countless layers of reality unfolding at the same moment.
"True Annihilation Illusion: Cognitive Collapse." The first layer of illusion descended directly, and Qin Yu's vision suddenly changed. The darkness vanished, and the battlefield disappeared.
He stood in an extremely quiet world, where the sky and earth were clear and everything was stable, and a familiar presence was approaching in the distance. The ground beneath his feet was without cracks, without collapse, and Does Not Exist even a trace of chaos.
Someone was calling his name; the voice was gentle and genuine, carrying a pull he couldn't ignore.
The moment he turned his head, all the shattered structures within his sea of consciousness trembled simultaneously, and countless figures were slowly approaching him.
They were complete, clear, and contained the most authentic version of him from his memory, every detail flawless, even their breaths perfectly matched. The world was not distorted, the logic was not misaligned, and everything was self-consistent.
But just as they drew near, their shadows began to slow down, their footsteps and shadows becoming out of sync, their voices and lip movements misaligned.
As the aura drew closer, it seemed to emanate from afar; the slight discrepancy, like a tiny crack, was embedded in the entire scene.
Qin Yu did not move. There was no confusion in his eyes. Deep within his consciousness, the newly formed "pen-holding cognition" trembled slightly.
The illusion deepened, a second layer descended, and the world was no longer peaceful.
He stood in a higher realm, the rules of heaven and earth revolved around him, countless orders converged upon him, and everything responded to his will. He reached out, and the rules were rearranged; he stepped down, and the world was reconstructed.
That is the "author's" position, the endpoint he is pursuing, where everything is true, everything is real, even more real than reality itself.
But deep within that perfect structure, an extremely slight "delay" reappeared, and the rules responded half a breath slower.
After the world was reconstructed, there was a brief moment of blankness, a moment so short that Qin Yu seized it and crushed down the third layer of illusion.
All the images began to overlap, the figures in front of them began to disintegrate and turn into remnant souls, and the world of rules began to distort, turning into countless pen marks.
Reality and illusion completely merged, and the sea of consciousness began to tear apart. A voice fell simultaneously from all directions.
Give up, stop, you're done, you don't need to write anymore. The voice was emotionless, yet it carried an absolute "reasonableness," as if all deductions pointed to the same conclusion.
Qin Yu's breathing became slightly erratic for the first time at this moment, not because his mind wavered, but because he was slightly disturbed.
That kind of interference isn't an attack; rather, it turns the "judgment" itself into an untenable proposition, right in that instant.
A tiny hand landed in the deepest part of his consciousness. Xiao Yue did not appear in the outside world; she stood directly in the core of his cognition.
She didn't fight against the illusions; instead, she raised her hand and gently touched the "delay" mark.
"Look here." Her voice was extremely soft, yet it amplified that slight deviation infinitely.
Qin Yu's sea of consciousness suddenly contracted, and all the illusions were no longer viewed as a whole. He began to dissect them point by point, and the first deviation was locked in.
Instead of dispelling the illusion, he directly put pen to paper. That stroke landed on the point where the shadow and the original body were misaligned, and the shadow vanished instantly.
It wasn't erased, but "redefined as Does Not Exist." The first layer of illusion collapsed directly, and at the second deviation, it was caught.
Instead of resisting that perfect world of rules, he directly focused on the "response delay" of that instant. With that stroke, the entire realm of rules instantly froze.
All responses fell silent, not because they were suppressed, but because the logic behind them had been completely rewritten. The second layer of illusion began to crumble.
The third deviation has emerged; the voice is still there, the conclusion is still there, and the reasoning that "giving up is the only reasonable course of action" continues.
Qin Yu did not deny it. He raised his hand, and this stroke was slower and more steady than before, with the tip of the pen landing on the source point of "conclusion generation".
Without uttering a single word of rebuttal, it simply rewrote the premise upon which the deduction was valid. The sound abruptly broke off, not completely dissipating, but rather becoming unable to continue existing.
The entire illusion collapsed completely at that moment.
Countless remnant souls were forcibly ripped from those images, emitting a tearing shriek, while the pen marks vibrated wildly, attempting to piece themselves back together.
The immense body of the True Annihilation Pen Lord trembled in the distance, and for the first time, it exhibited a noticeable "pause."
Qin Yu stood still, the cracks all over his body still visible, his soul still wracked with pain, but there was no longer any trace of distortion in his eyes.
He didn't break free from the illusion; he "wrote" the illusion into oblivion.
In that instant, darkness seemed to be completely overturned by an invisible hand. The entire Dark Court was no longer an extension of space, but a page of an old world repeatedly written and then utterly negated. The towering body of the True Annihilation Pen Lord merged completely with the Heaven-Reaching Fountain Pen, its body piercing through nothingness and the deep roots of the old order. Dark gold and pitch-black interwoven patterns slowly writhed on its surface.
Like billions of crushed histories being pieced back together only to fail repeatedly, the moment the giant pen blade was raised high, the entire secret realm began to collapse irreversibly. The darkness was no longer uniform, and space was torn into countless overlapping and misaligned sections. Fragments of rules tumbled in the air but could not land, each carrying the weight of being erased, as if everything that had ever existed was forcibly dragged back to its origin at this moment.
The pen falls.
There was no roar, no explosion, only a deeper "end" taking shape. The dark golden blade pierced through heaven and earth, slashing down from the top of the void. What it passed through was not destruction, but the gradual deconstruction of the "logic of existence." The moment the blade touched Qin Yu, his figure began to waver. Fine cracks appeared on the edges of his limbs. What overflowed from those cracks was not blood, but fragments of rules being peeled away.
That was the foundation of his path, the Soul Seal, and the causal structure he had built up. This stroke forcibly extracted, dismantled, and rewritten everything. Even the traces of his "existence in the first five layers of the secret realm" gradually disintegrated after appearing in the void, as if none of it had ever happened. His thoughts were dismantled the moment they were formed, and his will was split the instant it was born. Even the obsession with "I want to continue" was directly severed by that stroke.
At the same time, the Ultimate annihilation power of the True Annihilation Pen Lord was fully unleashed. The entire Dark Court was plunged into an abyss of no return. Countless illusory pen nibs surged out from all levels of darkness, forming a annihilation storm that covered everything, mixed with the mournful cries of incomplete, lingering souls.
Those sounds were torn apart and dissipated the moment they were born. The pen tip pierced Qin Yu's body like a torrential rain, his Dao foundation was penetrated layer by layer, his soul was frantically torn apart by the remnant soul threads, his cognition began to break down, and the world was completely erasing him from "existence". This was not the edge of defeat and death, but the conclusion after the ending had been written.
Just as everything was about to completely collapse, Xiao Yue's figure stepped out from the deepest part of his sea of consciousness. She did not resist the all-encompassing power of destruction, nor did she touch the Ultimate stroke that had already fallen. Her fingers gently landed on Qin Yu's collapsing core of cognition. In that instant...
All the scattered thoughts suddenly converged into one point. The "self" that was about to completely dissipate was forcibly solidified into a mark that could no longer be deconstructed. She didn't say anything more, but firmly fixed the center of that existence, and then turned her gaze to the pen blade that was pressing down.
Qin Yu's breathing returned to Ultimate calm at this moment. All the pain was still tearing at his soul, all the rules were still stripping away his existence, but his hand had already risen, and the World Creation Writing Pen appeared in his palm. It was no longer an object, but a definition itself in the process of being generated. He did not retreat a single step.
The moment the brush tip fell into the void, he wrote that stroke on the point of his own collapse. That stroke did not make the crack disappear, but it stopped the crack from spreading. The fragments of rules that had been dragged away hovered around him, neither returning nor dissipating, as if they had been given a new state of "not yet completed".
As he made his second stroke, he directly touched the dark golden blade that pierced the heavens and earth. The brush tip neither collided with it nor blocked it, but instead rewrote the "method of its formation."
That Ultimate stroke of the pen, which should have erased everything, deviated by an extremely slight deviation under his stroke. The pen blade was still there, and it still fell, but it could not continue to complete the original erasure process, as if it had been written into another rule that could not be executed.
The third stroke, Xiao Yue's fingertips and his brush tip overlapped at the same instant. In that instant, the two wills converged at the same point. That stroke landed directly on the core of the True Annihilation Pen Lord, not on its form, not on its power, but on the "old order obsession" that supported its existence. The moment the brush tip fell, the entire annihilation storm abruptly stopped.
All the illusory images of pen nibs froze in mid-air, and the remnant soul threads fell down after losing their pull. At that moment, there was no sound of explosion between heaven and earth, only an extremely subtle misalignment that slowly spread from the center of the True Annihilation Rune. The rune began to break, but not shatter; rather, it could no longer be written on.
Qin Yu took a step forward, all the pain still churning within him, yet he did not stop. The World Creation Writing Pen fell once more, this time without correction or dismantling. He wrote a new "Establishment" in the void, and at that moment, the darkness of the entire Dark Court suddenly reversed, and the storm of slaughter began to flow backward.
All the illusory pen images converged back to their source, and the towering, dark gold pen began to disintegrate from its root. The runes fell off piece by piece, transforming into their initial undefined state in the air. The obsession of the old world was forcibly extracted, and it could no longer maintain its own existence structure.
Xiao Yue's figure blurred slightly at this moment. She raised her hand for the last time, and her stroke fell at the same time as Qin Yu's. That stroke was directly written into the very foundation of the True Annihilation Pen Lord's existence. There was no conflict, no struggle. The ten-thousand-foot-tall body never exploded or resisted from beginning to end; it was simply "rewritten."
The old order vanished, the runes returned to nothing, the remnant soul returned to Nameless, and the entire Dark Court was completely bound together at this moment. The darkness no longer tore apart, the space closed again, and the storm completely subsided.
The Heaven-Reaching Fountain Pen slowly fell, hovering in the void. Everything around him began to revolve around Qin Yu again. He stood there, his body covered in cracks, his soul still in excruciating pain, yet he had become the sole "writer" of the entire Dark Court. The True Annihilation Pen Lord, who once ruled over everything, had been completely Annihilation by this stroke.