The dragon maiden's figure suddenly froze in mid-air. The next instant, a massive rift that stretched across the heavens and earth exploded open on her back. Dragon scales rolled out from beneath her skin, her bones expanded wildly within her body, emitting a deep and ancient rumble. Her long hair transformed into a torrent of flames that danced wildly behind her, a purple-gold crack tore open on her forehead, and her pupils became burning abysses.
The dragon shadow coiled behind her was no longer illusory, but had fallen completely from the void into the world, overlapping and merging with her body. Scales grew wildly along her collarbone and shoulder blades, and a dragon tail extending from her spine across the sky stretched outwards. Wing bones tore out from her back, and in the instant they unfolded, they pressed the sky above the entire island down by thousands of feet, compressing the air into layers of visible shockwaves that exploded outwards.
At this moment, her aura completely transcended the realm of human form. The entire space began to tremble as if it could no longer contain her presence. Black cracks were torn open in the void at the edge of the island, as if the entire Trial Domain was being forced to collapse by her second form. She lowered her head, her dragon eyes locking onto Hua Yuening. Her gaze no longer scrutinized, but instead regarded the other party as prey that could be torn apart.
Hua Yuening froze in that instant, her clothes spontaneously combusting without wind, her hair turning gray inch by inch. Her breath ceased completely, and the island beneath her feet stopped trembling, as if suppressed by some deeper force. All fluctuations were forcibly suppressed into silence. She did not retreat, but instead took a step forward. As that step landed...
There was no sound from the ground, yet the island's "presence" was diminished by a layer. Her gaze was no longer fixed on the dragon girl's form, but rather penetrated her aura, Fate Soul, and laws, directly falling upon the underlying logic that underpinned her existence.
She gently raised her hand, palm facing outwards. Her fingertips held neither light nor power, yet they caused all colors around her to rapidly fade, even blurring the air. She spoke, her voice barely audible—"True Annihilation Dao Unraveling." At that moment, the world began to "retreat."
The clouds in the sky first faded, then disappeared layer by layer as if being wiped clean. Space became unstable, the outlines of the distant floating islands began to blur, and even the flow of the wind broke into fragments. The dragon girl's second form experienced an extremely slight pause under that power.
Her dragon scales are still growing, but the "reason" for their growth is being stripped away. The storms stirred up by her flapping dragon wings are still spreading, but the "meaning" of those storms is dissipating. The battles she has experienced, the origins she has devoured, and the causal relationships of the myriad worlds she has traversed are being torn apart piece by piece from the root. Time no longer continues along with her existence, but begins to be pulled away in reverse. Her power remains, but the "inevitability" that supports that power is collapsing.
Her pupils contracted slightly; for the first time, she sensed a threat that wasn't based on physical strength.
She opened her mouth, but before she could utter a dragon's roar, the entire space shattered. Then, she lightly touched the void with her fingertips, and an extremely fine ripple spread out. The ripple had no color or shape, yet in the instant it spread, it smoothed out all "differences." Her voice emanated from that uniform silence—"Myriad Phenomena Return to Stillness."
Ripples swept across the Hua Yuening, lingered over the islands, and swept across the sky.
The boundary between life and death lost its meaning at this moment. The wind stopped in mid-air, the dust hung suspended, the dragon girl's outstretched wings froze at the instant they tore through space, and Hua Yuening's raised hand also froze at that moment. It was as if the world had been paused by an invisible hand.
All differences were smoothed out, all changes were frozen, and even the concept of "what is happening" began to dissipate. The entire space gradually faded from color to gray and white, then to colorless, and then even "colorless" could not be maintained.
But in this absolute stillness— Hua Yuening's palm gently clasped together.
In that instant, her Fate Soul collapsed into an unobservable point. That point did not emit light, yet it swallowed up everything around it. The Domain of Return to Silence cast by the Dragon Girl began to crack around that point, the frozen rules developed cracks, the still space trembled, and the balance of "indiscriminate" was broken. Her voice rang out again, still extremely soft, yet it pierced directly through the entire Domain of Annihilation— "Release."
There were no fluctuations or shocks.
The dragon girl's second form trembled violently at that moment. Her dragon wings began to crumble from the edges, and her scales disintegrated piece by piece. Her aura did not weaken, but she lost the basis for "maintaining her existence." The power within her was still immense, but she could no longer prove "why she existed." She swung her claws, tearing through space, but space no longer responded. She opened her mouth to roar, but the dragon's roar lost the prerequisite of "being heard."
Her past, her battles, her awakening—all the "inevitability" that sustained her to this moment are being peeled away layer by layer, and her figure begins to blur in reality, as if being forgotten by the world little by little.
She forcibly reversed the power, and the dragon shadow condensed again, but that condensation only lasted for a moment before the entire form collapsed.
Her body was thrown hundreds of feet, crashing heavily into the center of the island. The rock layers collapsed, the entire island sank, and cracks in the void spread like a spider web. She rose from the ruins, large pieces of her dragon scales peeling off, blood dripping from her shoulders.
Her breathing became violently erratic, and although her dragon eyes were still burning, the absolute control and pressure from before were gone. She stared intently at Hua Yuening, her chest heaving violently, and a trickle of blood spilled from the corner of her mouth.
She was defeated, but she did not fall. She stood there, her breath ragged, yet her sharpness only intensified, and for the first time, true fighting spirit and solemnity appeared in her eyes.
Hua Yuening stood still, her clothes fluttering slightly, her palms hanging down. The colors of the world around her slowly returned, but there was an indelible sense of emptiness left in that space, as if a part of her existence had been completely dismantled and could never be restored to its original state.
The dragon maiden stood in mid-air, her chest heaving, a wisp of purplish-gold blood mist still lingering from her wound. Suddenly, she chuckled softly, a sound so faint it made the air on the entire floating island tremble. She slowly raised her head, her crimson-gold dragon eyes now devoid of any probing or amusement, only an ancient coldness that regarded all things as dust. "Human, you are quite remarkable."
As her voice faded, the dragon shadow coiled in the void behind her abruptly contracted, transforming into a purple-gold torrent that pierced the heavens and earth, pouring into her body. Her dragon scales rolled back in reverse, bursting forth with an intense, blinding primal light from between them. Her already enormous body, which had been pressing down on the sky, rose even higher, layers of fine, star-like blades sprouting from the edges of her wings. The lightning trails trailing her tail transformed into a real torrent of starfire. The space above the entire island was ripped open by the surging power within her, creating ring-shaped cracks.
Deep within the rift, countless shattered laws churned like a sea. The purple-gold vertical mark on the Dragon Maiden's forehead fully opened, and an Ultimate, primordial vertical pupil slowly opened within it. As that pupil opened, her aura directly shattered its original boundaries. The edge of the True Annihilation Realm · Peak was forcibly crushed in that instant. An even heavier, colder, and more ancient pressure descended, as if the entire Trial Realm was being held down by an invisible giant hand.
The sounds of battle from the other floating islands around her vanished in an instant, and even the distant sea of clouds began to bend and converge in her direction. She raised her arm inch by inch, as if lifting up an Ultimate void without color, shape, or name from the deepest depths of Annihilation. She looked at Hua Yuening, her eyes burning with a near-divine will to destroy, "You will ultimately be Annihilation by me."
The instant her words fell, the primal power within her, surging to the pinnacle of the True Annihilation Realm · Supreme, erupted and spread outwards. The rock layers on the island's surface ceased to crack; instead, they ceased to exist as "rock layers," transforming into a uniform, suffocatingly silent backdrop. The Dragon Girl brought two fingers together and gently pointed forward, "The Dao Pivot Returns to Nothingness." This single touch produced no fluctuations, no light or shadow, no perceptible process whatsoever; the world merely became "abnormal" in the next instant.
The earth beneath Hua Yuening's feet remained, the sky remained, the Dragon Girl remained, yet all judgments were loosening. The boundary between life and death sank into chaos, the edge between existence and Does Not Exist lost its sharpness, and even the three characters "True Annihilation Realm" themselves were fading, like a line of ancient text soaked in water slowly dissipating. The laws circulating within Hua Yuening's body were neither suppressed nor shattered; they simply suddenly ceased to be anything.
A wisp of annihilating gray light that had just appeared before her hovered in mid-air, neither taking shape nor dissipating; it wasn't even "ineffective." All changes in the world had been preemptively canceled. The wind didn't stop, because the act of wind itself was meaningless; time didn't break, because the line of time had lost the right to extend. The world slid into a silence deeper than death, and the Dragon Girl's second form, after this Ultimate divine power was activated, began to transform from its edges into a form that was emptier, paler, and even more unrecognizable than transparency.
Her dragon wings gradually faded from view, the starlight between her scales began to recede, and her entire body seemed to be being carried towards an end where even "disappearance" could not be recorded. Hua Yuening in the center of that increasingly uniform, increasingly gray, increasingly indescribable domain, her eyes turning cold at this moment. That coldness was not anger, nor did it carry a trace of panic, like an ancient blade whose edge had been completely smoothed but could still cleave the universe.
She suddenly laughed, a faint laugh that cracked the otherwise utterly silent void. "Ridiculous." She raised her eyes, her voice ringing out clearly in the otherwise silent space. "Did you really think I was easy to bully?"
The next instant, she ceased channeling any external power, and sat down cross-legged on the spot, her hands gently resting in front of her knees. Her breath, heartbeat, Fate Soul fluctuations, and ripples in her consciousness—all signs belonging to "her"—collapsed inwards on their own. The world behind her did not crumble, but instead began to quietly converge from the edges to the center, like a slowly unrolling scroll. A very thin, grayish-white vertical line appeared between her brows; what emanated from that line was not darkness, but a deeper, more ancient point of Annihilation.
She dragged herself and the True Annihilation Realm into the depths of that origin point, as if compressing the three words "Hua Yuening" and everything they represented into an indivisible absolute source core. She softly uttered, "The End of the Myriad Worlds." The moment these four words fell, the "Dao Pivot Returns to Nothingness" unleashed by the Dragon Girl experienced its first true break. All the judgment logic it covered was neither countered nor clashed; it was completely enveloped by the deeper origin point of Annihilation. The world began to fall further downwards from "a silence where even nothingness is nothing."
Narrative, time, existence, observation, perception, Fate Soul, dragon path, True Annihilation —all the fundamental elements that could be adopted by the world were retracting one by one around that origin point. The Dragon Girl's second form, which was in the process of returning to nothingness, suddenly trembled. The star-like wing blades behind her were the first to shatter into fine, snow-like dust. Before the dust could scatter, it was swallowed by the invisible primordial point in front of Hua Yuening. Immediately afterwards, cracks began to appear in the vertical pupil of her primordial essence on her forehead.
The cracks spread inch by inch to her entire forehead, from which purple-gold light poured forth, yet it illuminated nothing, for the act of "illuminating" had been taken away. She opened her mouth to drink, but the dragon's roar had just risen from her throat when the cause and effect, the definition of the vocal cords, were...
The medium of sound, the prerequisite for hearing—all four collapsed simultaneously. The dragon's roar that should have shattered all realms turned into a deathly silence in her mouth. She frantically raised her hand, attempting to forcefully suppress that primordial point with her surging, True Annihilation Realm · Supreme origin. The instant her arm rose, her shoulder, elbow, wrist, palm, and fingers—all structures—lost the logic of "connection" one after another.
Her entire arm shattered silently, like glass ground by time. For the first time, panic appeared in the crimson flames of her eyes. That panic was fleeting, quickly swallowed by a deeper absurdity. She finally saw that she wasn't being defeated by Hua Yuening's divine power; she was being stripped of her right to be "accepted" by the entire world. All her glory, dragon blood, origin, the shattered sky, the devoured karma, her reforged second form, and her breakthrough to the True Annihilation Realm · Supreme.
Before that Annihilation point, everything turned into meaningless, grayish-white flakes layer by layer. The enormous dragon shadow behind her collapsed entirely, and billions of dragon scales surged toward the point like a galaxy flowing backward. Then, even the word "swirl" ceased to exist; her entire body began to turn to dust from her tail. The dust neither fell to the ground nor floated into the air, but simply melted gently on her surface, like the first snow touching a flame.
Like a piece of history slowly fading away in obscurity, she wanted to retreat, but there was no direction for her to retreat; she wanted to resist, but there was no object to resist within her; she wanted to continue existing, but existence itself had already been dismantled layer by layer at the edge of the origin point before Hua Yuening. In the end, she only had time to look up at Hua Yuening once, and all the sharpness, killing intent, divinity, and pride in that gaze were stripped away at the last moment.
Only a blank space remained after she had been seen through. In the next instant, her body silently disintegrated from her chest in all directions, transforming into an extremely thin and faint gray-white tide. It was gently absorbed by that elemental point and completely annihilated, without even the sound of dragon blood falling to the ground. The entire island suddenly sank the moment she disappeared, as if it had lost the weight that had been suppressing it. Hua Yuening slowly rose, the vertical line between her brows closing.
The absolute end, capable of sweeping away even True Annihilation, began to recede little by little. Colors returned to the sky, the wind returned to the island, and the undulating sea of clouds in the distance gradually returned to normal. The floating island beneath her feet descended slowly and steadily, as if supported by an unseen hand, passing through layers of clouds and mist, falling towards the earth below. She stood in the center of the island, her robes flowing gently, her expression calm.
It was as if the final battle that had completely Annihilation True Annihilation Realm · Supreme was just an insignificant test. The moment the floating island finally touched the ground, the edge of the entire island began to turn into streams of light, dissolving into the air inch by inch. In the end, only she was left, landing safely. A thousand miles ahead, the outline of the ancient palace slowly appeared at the end of the clouds.