The leading ancient god, now a demon, slowly took a step forward. The swamp beneath his feet instantly transformed into an endless gray-white death zone. His completely demonized body swelled continuously, twelve tattered demonic wings on his back blotting out the sky. Countless dark demonic runes spread from his chest to his forehead, and deep within his pupils seemed two collapsing universes slowly rotating. He stared intently at Qin Yu.
A ferocious and crazed smile spread across his lips, and a demonic whisper echoed through the heavens and earth, "Boy, our Ancient God Clan's forbidden demonic transformation technique is something even Eternal Silence Realm experts must be extremely wary of. Today you've driven the three of us to this point; you deserve to die!"
Qin Yu stood quietly in place, not even raising the Silent Origin Stainless Sword, and simply smiled faintly, "Perhaps you don't know, but several months ago I slew one of your Ancient God Clan's demon-transformed members."
Upon hearing this, the three ancient demon gods simultaneously erupted in fury. Rolling demonic energy surged into the sky like countless demonic dragons, causing the entire world to tremble violently. The leader abruptly raised his arms, letting out a deafening roar, "Use the power of the demon gods! Annihilate them in one fell Annihilation!" In an instant, all the demonic essence within the three of them ignited simultaneously.
At the summit of the heavens, a colossal gray-white furnace, spanning millions of miles, slowly emerged. This furnace had no physical form; it was purely formed by the intertwining and condensation of the True Annihilation Origin and the Demonic Transformation Origin. It was the furnace of the ultimate laws, fusing two forbidden powers.
Countless scenes, a blend of reality and illusion, flowed across the furnace walls: the birth of starry seas, the destruction of the universe, the reincarnation of all beings, and the collapse of the Great Dao. All truth and falsehood were melted into it. The three ancient demon gods simultaneously raised their hands to form hand seals.
An ancient and chilling demonic voice suddenly resounded between heaven and earth. "The Myriad Phenomena Return to Stillness Tribulation!" Boom—the entire space instantly plunged into a gray-white world of the end. The furnace of existence and non-existence was fully opened. As the furnace door opened wide, countless gray-white chains shot out from it. The chains crisscrossed the sky, not binding the physical body or locking the Fate Soul, but directly piercing through all illusions and firmly penetrating the most fundamental essence of existence of all living beings.
Locking onto the past, present, and future; locking onto cause and effect, memories, destiny, and all traces that could prove Qin Yu's existence, a gigantic gray-white eye slowly opened from the depths of the furnace. The eye had no pupil at its center, only a constantly rotating vortex of True Annihilation, as if all the worlds it had devoured were wailing within it. The next moment...
A beam of grayish-white divine light, covering the heavens and earth, descended with a deafening roar, completely enveloping Qin Yu. Wherever the divine light passed, space began to melt, time began to crumble, and cause and effect began to break. Countless time projections behind Qin Yu were forcibly pulled out, and countless parallel futures transformed into specks of light, flying towards the furnace.
His past and future, like two distorted rivers, slowly collapsed within the divine light. The leading demon god laughed maniacally, "Truth and Falsehood in One Furnace! Existence and Nonexistence Burn Together! Qin Yu, you were nothing but a dream that should never have begun!" Yet, at that very moment, a jet-black sword mark suddenly appeared in the center of the gray-white divine light. The sword mark appeared without warning, yet it seemed to cleave the entire world in two.
Qin Yu slowly raised the Silent Origin Stainless Sword, his eyes terrifyingly calm. "If it were a few months ago, perhaps I could have taken a second look." As soon as he finished speaking, the Silent Origin Stainless Sword suddenly slashed out, countless pitch-black sword patterns spreading out along the sky and earth. Qin Yu directly unleashed the Silent Origin Stainless Sword - Causeless Disillusionment Sword.
With a single sword strike, there was no earth-shattering explosion, no devastating impact, but the entire gray-white furnace suddenly came to a standstill. All the causal sources supporting its operation had been completely severed by this one sword strike. The furnace began to tremble violently, the Eye of True Annihilation began to shatter, and all the gray-white chains exploded one after another.
The leading demon god's expression changed drastically. "Impossible!!!" In that instant of shock, Qin Yu slowly raised his left hand, and the Book of Fate Law unfolded behind him, countless ancient characters filling the sky. Then, a terrifying mark descended upon the world: Heavenly Cause Judgment Sequence · Six Severances Seal · Star Structure Returning Ring · Source Cause Severance. All the sources of demonic transformation within the three were instantly locked, and the demonic seeds hidden deep within their Fate Soul were directly exposed.
Countless black chains erupted from the Book of Fate Law, piercing the Fate Soul Nucleus. The next moment, the three Demonic Seeds shattered, and the three ancient demonic gods simultaneously coughed up black blood. Their demonic energy began to dissipate rapidly. The leader roared in despair, "Stop!!! We are members of the Ancient God Clan!!!" Qin Yu ignored him completely. He slowly raised the Silent Origin Stainless Sword.
Suddenly, the world fell silent, as if the entire universe had stopped turning. Then, an Ultimate dark sword light slowly appeared, and Qin Yu calmly said, "It's over." The next moment, the Silent Origin Stainless Sword - Undefined Destruction Sword descended with a thunderous roar.
The sword light descended, neither slashing at the physical body nor attacking the Fate Soul, but directly targeting the three people's most fundamental definition of existence. The moment the sword light swept across the sky, the three people's bodies began to become transparent from the edges.
They were filled with horror as they watched helplessly as their names, past memories, and Fate Soul structures dissolved one after another, and even the very essence of their existence was being erased bit by bit.
The three struggled desperately and roared, but they were powerless to reverse their fateful demise. Their bodies began to disintegrate from their feet down, eventually turning into nothingness without even a trace of ash.
The swamp returned to its deathly silence, and there was no trace of the Ancient God Clan in the world anymore, as if the three of them had never appeared in the world. Qin Yu slowly sheathed the Silent Origin Stainless Sword, and calmly looked in the direction of the Heart-Questioning Ancient Forest. He took a step forward, and his figure disappeared into the horizon in an instant.
Qin Yu's figure quickly disappeared at the end of the swamp, leaving only the long-dead muddy swamp slowly churning. There wasn't even a trace of Fate Soul fluctuation left at the place where the three Ancient God Clan demon-transformation experts had fallen, as if nothing had ever happened there.
Dozens of breaths passed in the blink of an eye. The void, which had just returned to deathly silence, suddenly cracked open with a thin, dark rift. A masked figure shrouded in black robes slowly stepped out of the rift. He seemed oblivious to the battlefield that had just annihilated everything. His gaze pierced through layers of heaven and earth, fixed on the direction where Qin Yu had left.
Those eyes, hidden in the shadows, were incredibly deep, reflecting the lingering traces of the battle just now. After a long while, he slowly murmured, "This boy is indeed extraordinary... Even with the combined might of the Three Great Vajras of the Ancient God Clan, and even their Demon Transformation Divine Power, he still managed to annihilate them all by himself."
His voice was soft, yet carried an undeniable tremor, "It seems the head manager's judgment was indeed correct." After speaking, he raised his hand and waved it gently, and the space in front of him instantly transformed into a torn page of paper. He stepped into it, and his figure vanished without a trace in the blink of an eye.
Meanwhile, at another location, further and further away, Qin Yu continued to travel according to the map. After several hours of travel, an ancient forest that defied description finally appeared at the edge of his vision.
What lay before him was no ordinary mountain forest, but a vast and alien world straddling the line between reality and illusion. Qin Yu paused, focused his mind, and slowly raised his eyes to look at it. Even though his temperament had long been detached and indifferent, a slight solemnity appeared in his eyes at this moment.
The Heart-Questioning Ancient Forest stretches for three million kilometers, with no end in sight. The sky is not a real sky, but a long, overlapping, gray-white curtain of imagery, sometimes showing the lives of countless beings, sometimes the rise and fall of countless worlds.
Each ancient tree in the forest is tens of thousands of feet tall, its trunk covered with countless human face patterns—some weeping, some laughing wildly, some angry, some desperate—as if countless stripped emotions were forever sealed within. From the depths of the forest, faint whispers constantly emanate, sounds that seem to come from the outside world, more like echoing directly from the depths of Fate Soul.
Qin Yu quickly discovered that there was no truly fixed path in this ancient forest. Just as he was looking ahead, a path suddenly emerged from nothingness. At the instant the path appeared, a figure suddenly appeared in the center of the path. The person slowly raised his head and revealed a face exactly like Qin Yu's.
His eyes were filled with greed and desire. Then, a second Qin Yu slowly emerged from the other side, his face etched with indifference and cruelty. A third, a fourth, a fifth—within a few short breaths, hundreds of different "Qin Yu" appeared along the Heart-Questioning Road.
Some faces were filled with sorrow, some laughed maniacally, some had cold, sinister eyes, some were gentle as jade, some knelt and wept, and some roared to the sky. It was as if all the emotions and personalities that Qin Yu could possibly have ever had had were materialized in this ancient forest. At this moment, Xiao Yue also flew out of Qin Yu's sea of consciousness. She stood on Qin Yu's shoulder, and her relaxed expression slowly disappeared. Her sapphire-like eyes watched the scene before her.
"This is the Heart-Questioning Ancient Forest... Just as rumored." Qin Yu lowered his voice, his expression becoming solemn. He had already sensed the most terrifying secret of this place—the many self-figures appearing before him were not illusions or projections of the void, but rather real fragments of his true self forcibly peeled away from his original Fate Soul structure.
Once you embark on this path, with each self you defeat, the corresponding personality, emotions, obsessions, desires, good and evil, joys and sorrows will be forever stripped from your own Fate Soul structure. The further you go, the closer you get to so-called purity, but at the same time, the closer you get to emptiness. Deep in the ancient forest, a huge white palace, faintly visible, slowly emerges.
The palace floated at the edge of the world, surrounded by countless gray-white mists. Above the palace gate were only three ancient characters. "The No-Self Realm." Qin Yu gazed at those three characters quietly. Suddenly, the entire ancient forest trembled at the same time, and countless faces on the ancient trees opened their eyes simultaneously, with hundreds of millions of eyes falling on Qin Yu.
A voice, seemingly from the end of time, slowly resounded, "Latercomer, will you preserve yourself, or abandon yourself?"