The deepest part of the cave had completely transformed into a world of "nothingness." The surrounding rock walls were slowly becoming transparent, as if being peeled away from reality bit by bit by some incomprehensible force. Qin Yu sat cross-legged in the center of the black rock, his gray-white True Annihilation aura continuously spreading outwards. His Fate Soul, origin, cause and effect, and traces of existence were all beginning to blur.
The Primordial Profound Nothingness True Annihilation Tribulation Disc hovered quietly above his head. The deep blackness within the disc had completely cracked open, and an extremely tiny "Stillness Seed" was slowly appearing. It was so small that it could not even be truly seen, but the moment it appeared, the entire cave suddenly emitted a low rumble, as if the whole world was collapsing at that moment.
Qin Yu finally stepped into the second stage of True Annihilation. At this moment, he suddenly realized that Does Not Exist such thing as a path between the Mystic Void Realm and the True Annihilation Realm. Regardless of how difficult the path was or how profound the realm was, there was no concept of breakthrough in the world. The end of the Mystic Void Realm was beyond nothingness.
But True Annihilation requires even the complete negation of "transcendence" itself. Just as humans can never reach awakening through deeper sleep, awakening, a continuation of non-sleep, is a complete denial of "sleep." The very instant this thought truly arose, hum—the True Annihilation Tribulation Disc suddenly unfolded on its own. There was no flowing light, no unusual sound, Does Not Exist even any unfolding process; it simply "grew larger."
The entire dark world suddenly began to collapse inward, and countless cosmic remnants emerged wildly from the depths of the disk. Starfields, rivers of time, and worlds of cause and effect were constantly collapsing and reforming within the disk. Qin Yu even saw countless "selves" slowly dissipating in different timelines. Some were swallowed by fate, some were crushed by the Great Dao, some stood alone at the ends of the heavens, and many more began to have even their "existence" gradually become blurred.
The next instant, the "Stillness Seed" trembled slightly. Boom!! Qin Yu's entire consciousness was instantly drawn into the depths of the disc. There was no traversal, no teleportation, no stepping in. "Entering" is an action in itself, but this place had long since stripped away all definitions of action. Qin Yu only felt himself slowly dissolving, unrelated to his physical body, his very essence fading away. His memories blurred inch by inch, and even the name Qin Yu gradually felt unfamiliar.
Past experiences, future obsessions Chi Ninghua Ju Wanning, the Hua Jingmeng the Southern Sea Annihilation Turtle, even the Silent Beginning - Ring Master Soul Diagram, all began to gradually lose their meaning.
An unprecedented emptiness was slowly enveloping his consciousness; there was no pain, no fear, and even the thought that "I am disappearing" was beginning to crumble.
The frame of reference "I" had lost all meaning. In this instant, Qin Yu truly glimpsed the full extent of True Annihilation, devoid of any deeper power. A state utterly indescribable manifested here; life and death vanished together, existence and Does Not Exist- existence became ineffective, and even the definition of what annihilation carried was slowly peeling away. As Qin Yu's consciousness continued to sink, the entire cave finally erupted with the true phenomena of True Annihilation. Rumble—the earth outside the cave suddenly cracked open!
The entire mountain range trembled violently, countless rocks slowly floated into the air, and without any external force to support them, the concept of weight was gradually dissolving. The sky suddenly lost its color in large swathes, white clouds condensed into transparent afterimages, distant mountains and rivers became hazy in layers, and light tore through layers one after another. Gray-white cracks stretched across the sky and earth, and the whole world was being slowly erased by some unfathomable entity.
Even more terrifying was that the entire area began to fall into an eerie, deathly silence. Birds and beasts stopped chirping, rivers stopped flowing, and even the wind stopped. The whole world seemed to be dragged into some kind of "unborn" state. Just then, Chi Ninghua finally returned to this area. She had been searching for several days. Her eyes were bloodshot, her long hair was messy, and her white clothes even had the cracks left by the previous battle. She even suspected that the old tortoise was deceiving her.
She stood in mid-air, her chest heaving, traces of her earlier tears still lingering in her red-rimmed eyes. She bit her lip tightly, her divine sense scanning the entire mountain range again and again, "Qin Yu... where are you...?"
She didn't want to believe that Qin Yu had perished. She was even more unwilling to believe that the person who had come through so many desperate situations would disappear so silently. Suddenly, Chi Ninghua stopped abruptly. She slowly turned her head and looked at an extremely ordinary black mountain in the distance.
It was so quiet it seemed unreal. She frowned and slowly extended her divine sense to investigate. The next instant... Boom!!! An indescribable backlash suddenly erupted from the depths of the mountain!
Chi Ninghua groaned and staggered back dozens of steps, blood instantly spilling from the corner of her mouth. She clutched her chest with her right hand, her pupils contracting violently. In that instant, she felt as if her divine sense had collided with an "Ultimate void," all her probes being completely annihilated the moment they touched the mountain.
But at that very moment, she suddenly smiled. Her smile was filled with intense excitement, even an overwhelming joy. "Qin Yu..."
She stared intently at the mountain, and a light finally returned to her reddened eyes. "So you were here..." She finally understood. The backlash from that divine sense had just occurred.
This turmoil did not originate from the mountain itself, but from a magic array that Qin Yu had already set up. Chi Ninghua slowly raised her eyes, gazing at the True Annihilation Phenomenon that kept appearing between heaven and earth, and her heart suddenly trembled violently. She knew very well what kind of situation this phenomenon meant; within the array, Qin Yu's unique aura was already lingering.
--Qin Yu was attempting to break through to the True Annihilation Realm. Thinking of this, Chi Ninghua didn't hesitate at all. She slowly landed outside the mountain and then gently waved her right hand.
With a whoosh, the Divine Sword of Silent Void suddenly appeared, its gray-white sword light instantly spreading out, and an Eternal Silence Sword Domain covering the entire outer perimeter of the mountain range slowly unfolded. Chi Ninghua stood quietly outside the mountain.
Her long hair swayed gently, and her eyes, which had been filled with worry and panic, finally regained their firmness. She slowly gripped the Divine Sword of Silent Void, looked up at the distant void, and said in a soft but extremely serious voice, "Qin Yu... this time, I will protect you." At this moment, no one outside the entire mountain range could approach her even half a step.
Deep within the cave, Qin Yu's figure was almost impossible to detect with the naked eye. Where he sat cross-legged, only a mass of dark light and shadow continued to collapse inward. The Primordial Profound Nothingness True Annihilation Tribulation Disc hovered above his head, and the "Stillness Seed" at the center of the disc fully unfolded, like a black embryo that could not be recognized by the world, slowly devouring Qin Yu's Fate Soul, aura, karma, and all traces that could be called "Qin Yu".
The first layer of annihilation began with his name. Suddenly, countless scenes from the past appeared on the four walls of the cave: a young man standing on a blood-red battlefield, wielding a sword to slay enemies; he traversed countless secret realms, crushing many powerful foes; he saved people, fought, remained silent, and made decisive decisions. Every title, identity, achievement, and grudge that had once defined him transformed into ancient, interwoven gold and black runes floating in the air.
The runes were originally as bright as stars, reflecting all the outlines that the name "Qin Yu" had left in the River of Fate Soul. But when the True Annihilation Tribulation Disc trembled slightly, all the runes began to lose their direction at the same time. They no longer pointed to anyone, nor did they carry any meaning. The two characters "Qin Yu" appeared in the void again and again, and then dispersed again and again. In the end, even the characters themselves lost their power of connection.
At that moment, Qin Yu's past identity was like a towering building having its foundation silently ripped away. All the memories remained intact, but they could no longer prove that the person was him; the glory of battle, the bloodstains of slaughter, the gazes of those he saved, the dying curses of his enemies—all were slowly peeled away in the dark light, like billions of burning starpapers drifting into the abyss. Terrifying phenomena also appeared in the world outside the cave.
The magic array that originally covered the mountain suddenly expanded, and countless huge wordless steles appeared in the sky. Each stele had faintly shown traces of Qin Yu's Fate Soul, but as soon as the stele surface lit up, it was smoothed out by an invisible force. The entire mountain range was as if it had been dragged into a silent naming funeral. Everything was still there, but it could no longer accurately call out the person who was breaking through.
Immediately afterward, the second annihilation descended, Mystic Void Realm · Supreme Qin Yu's profound perception of nothingness, which was at the pinnacle of the Xuan Kong realm, began to crumble. Originally, he could clearly feel the boundary between "existence" and "non-existence," distinguish where the world was solid and where it was faint, and capture the flow of nothingness in an instant. But at this moment, this awareness seemed to be torn apart from the root by an invisible hand.
Inside the cave, the azure lake suddenly rose upside down, and countless eyes belonging to Qin Yu appeared on the surface. These eyes had witnessed the collapse of space, the Causal Severance, and the passing of Fate Soul. Now, one by one, they closed, and as the eyelids fell, the entire lake surface turned pure gray-white.
In the depths of Qin Yu's consciousness, there was no longer a fulcrum for "I am perceiving nothingness," and even nothingness itself no longer existed as something to be perceived. He was as if he had been pushed into a deep black realm without inside or outside, without distance or mutuality, where there was no mind that could perceive, nor anything that was perceived, and all relationships of observation and being observed were extinguished at the same time.
Outside the mountain, Chi Ninghua stood guard at the edge of the magic array. Suddenly, she felt as if the entire world had lost its right to be "seen." The mountain before her briefly became transparent, then in the next instant, it became even heavier than an abyss. She gripped the Divine Sword of Silent Void tightly, her eyes trembled slightly, and her lips turned pale, yet she still stood there without taking a step back, whispering, "Qin Yu, you must hold on..."
As her voice fell, gray-white light flakes drifted around her like snowflakes, each flake reflecting a pair of closed eyes. It was as if the observation of countless worlds had simultaneously Entering Stillness, and she could only rely on her own Eternal Silence Sword Intent to forcibly stabilize her mind and prevent that terrifying phenomenon from dragging her perception into the depths as well.
When the third annihilation arrived, the entire cave completely disappeared from external perception. The mountain was still there, but the space inside the mountain began to detach from the "process". Qin Yu no longer experienced the change from one breath to the next, and the True Annihilation Tribulation Disc no longer rotated, because "rotation" requires a succession of before and after, but at this moment, before and after no longer existed.
Qin Yu's last thought, "I am being annihilated," was like a spark at the bottom of the deep sea, which was gently covered by darkness as soon as it lit up, and then even the change of "covering" lost its support.
An unprecedentedly grand scene emerged in the cave: billions of galaxies rolled back from their birthplace, the unburnt sun transformed back into unconceived dust, the laws of the myriad worlds loosened one by one like countless golden threads, the river of time ceased to flow, space ceased to expand, cause and effect ceased to pull, and all the foundations that supported "occurrence" sank into the Stillness Seed of the core.
Qin Yu's physical body remained seated, but his outline had faded to the point of being like a wisp of smoke about to dissipate. His bones, meridians, flesh, Fate Soul were all constantly being rewritten and disappearing in the True Annihilation Light Tide. The Silent Origin Stainless Sword hovered beside him, its blade humming as if trying to protect its master, but was forcibly suppressed into silence by that power of realm.
Suddenly, a tiny black dot appeared deep between Qin Yu's brows. This colorless dot caused all the light in the entire cave to simultaneously vanish. The three rings of light from the Primordial Profound Nothingness True Annihilation Tribulation Disc collapsed one after another, the outermost layer, "containing lingering echoes," transforming into a silvery-white rain curtain that fell into the lake.
The middle layer of "Vibration of Nothingness" shattered into a transparent mist, and the innermost layer of darkness finally unfolded completely, like a black door slowly opening to the threshold of true True Annihilation. Above the outer mountains, the phenomena of True Annihilation also erupted completely, and a huge, dark disc appeared in the sky.
Beneath the disc, the projections of the sun, moon, and stars were all upside down, countless images of mountains and rivers appeared and disappeared in the air, and even the remaining cracks from the great battle nearby were forcibly smoothed into a gray plane, as if the whole world was briefly learning how to "Annihilation even Annihilation."
Standing outside the mountains, Chi Ninghua watched as the dark disc slowly rose into the sky. Her face turned deathly pale. She clearly sensed that Qin Yu was not experiencing an ordinary breakthrough, but rather an Ultimate tribulation of his Fate Soul that would completely obliterate him if he made the slightest mistake.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she gripped the sword, her eyes still red-rimmed, yet she forcefully suppressed all her panic, slowly raising the Divine Sword of Silent Void and spreading her Eternal Silence Sword Intent across the entire outer perimeter of the mountain range. She didn't shout again, for she knew that any disturbance at this moment could become a distraction in Qin Yu 'Fate Soul. She simply stood there quietly, her gaze resolute to the point of stubbornness, her robes fluttering in the gray-white storm, and softly said, "Focus on your breakthrough; leave the outside to me."
His voice was soft, yet it transformed into a long, greyish-white river within the sword domain, encircling the mountain and shielding Qin Yu from all outside prying eyes. Deep within the mountains, Qin Yu's last trace of self had Entering Stillness, and he seemed to have completely slipped out of the definition of "Qin Yu." But in the deepest part where all meaning was about to disappear, an extremely faint wisp of Fate Soul light did not struggle or resist; it simply calmed down slowly in absolute silence.
At that moment, he finally touched the threshold of True Annihilation. It was not about control, arrival, or the perfection of breakthrough, but about him truly abandoning the use of "self" to prove his own existence.
The entire cave trembled violently. The black rocks, the dark lake, the stalactites, and the Void Origin Magic Array all collapsed inward, eventually condensing into a gray-white dot that hovered in front of Qin Yu's brow. The dot gently pulsated for a moment, and all the myriad phenomena in the world suddenly froze, as if waiting for a brand new transformation to arrive.