After leaving the Annihilation Abyss Epoch, Qin Yu did not immediately return to the Chi Lineage. Instead, he traveled through the Source of Epochless · Middle Layer, stepping through the air. It wasn't until after midnight that he arrived at the depths of a mountain range that very few people ventured into.
Here, the mountains stretch endlessly, the sea of clouds surges, and the towering peaks pierce the sky like swords. Spiritual rivers flow slowly through the valleys, ancient trees reach for the sky, and occasionally, the glow of the Great Dao rises from the mountains, only to quickly dissipate. The world is so quiet that only the rustling of leaves in the breeze can be heard.
Qin Yu slowly spread his divine sense again, taking in everything within a radius of tens of thousands of miles. There were no cultivators, no fluctuations in Fate Soul, and no spatial anomalies. After confirming that everything was alright, he nodded gently and slowly landed on the summit of an ancient mountain. There, there was a huge blue rock that had been eroded by countless years. Qin Yu sat down cross-legged.
His eyes slowly closed, and within his sea of consciousness, the Silent Beginning Ring Master Soul Diagram slowly rotated, with the Nine-Wheel True Evolution Dharma Wheel overlapping each other, emitting a faint gray-white divine light. The Wordless Heavenly Book quietly floated in the depths of his sea of consciousness, with the first to fourth pages flowing with the true meaning of the Great Dao after the Seven Emotions Return to Their Origin, and strands of primordial energy continuously merging into his Fate Soul.
At the same time, Qin Yu's foundation at the Eternal Silence Realm Initial Stage began to slowly stabilize. There were no earth-shattering phenomena, no tremors of heaven and earth, only an almost absolute stillness. Qin Yu seemed to gradually merge with heaven and earth; time stopped flowing, space stopped expanding, existence stopped fluctuating, and his consciousness gradually sank into a boundless sea of silence.
Eternally Silent Void and waveless, timeless and Wuhen. At this moment, the past, present, and future seemed to have lost their meaning. The mountain wind blew, but it couldn't stir the hem of his clothes. Fallen leaves drifted to his side, but before they hit the ground, they slowly stopped in mid-air, as if even the act of falling had been forgotten to continue. The entire world was immersed in an Ultimate tranquility.
While Qin Yu was continuously consolidating his Dao foundation, in the Fourth Multidimensional Universe, the Void Dharma Realm, an ancient giant city suspended 30,000 meters above the ground was quietly floating in the endless void. It had neither sun nor moon.
The entire city is shrouded in a layer of gray-white narrative mist. The ancient floating city of 120,000 square kilometers is like a continent forgotten by time, quietly suspended between heaven and earth.
Here, called the Heavenly Ruins Floating City, there is no past, no future, only the ever-present present. The streets in the city are constantly changing. One moment they are dilapidated ancient alleys, the next they are magnificent palaces. When someone looks up, a towering temple will appear in the sky; when someone is deep in thought, a blue stone avenue flowing with stars will be laid out beneath their feet.
But with each building that appears, a part of the builder's life is silently erased. Some people forget their childhood in order to own a magnificent palace, while others completely forget the name of their most beloved person in order to repair a dilapidated city wall.
In the center of the floating city, a rift crisscrossing the heavens and earth slowly flows with silvery-white liquid light; that is the most dangerous place in the entire Heavenly Ruins Floating City. Narrative Fault. Streams of liquid narrative essence continuously flow from the depths of the rift, like a quietly flowing Milky Way.
Anyone who drinks a single drop will temporarily gain the ability to edit reality, but each time reality is modified, the individual will disappear from reality for a corresponding period of time—perhaps a few days, or hundreds of years, or even... completely forgotten by the world. At that moment, a rapid whooshing sound suddenly echoed throughout the floating city.
Whoosh—A masked figure shrouded in black robes swiftly traversed the streets of the floating city, stepping over one newly formed building after another. With each step, the street beneath his feet instantly transformed; stone bridges became temples, temples became corridors, and at the end of the corridors, a strange new city once more appeared.
The entire space kept reorganizing, as if the entire floating city was hindering his escape. However, right behind him, three figures with terrifying auras were relentlessly pursuing him.
The three moved so fast that they almost tore the narrative apart. With each step they took, the newly formed buildings around them collapsed, turning into countless gray and white characters that scattered across the sky and earth.
The silver-haired man at the forefront traversed thousands of feet in a single step, his cold, sharp voice instantly echoing throughout the entire floating city. "Halt--!"
Another middle-aged man in a dark gold robe swept his spear. Boom! Hundreds of buildings in front of him instantly exploded, and countless narrative words flew everywhere, trying to block the masked man's retreat. The third man stepped into the void and struck out with his palm.
A massive gray-white net, spanning tens of thousands of feet, suddenly appeared in the sky, its countless symbols and characters intertwined, rapidly enveloping the masked man. The entire Heavenly Ruins Floating City was instantly plunged into a breathtaking chase, but the masked man never looked back.
Three figures traversed the entire Heavenly Ruins Floating City, their relentless pursuit shattering the constantly forming and collapsing buildings along their path. Finally, the masked man was the first to break through the city's borders. The last suspended blue stone beneath his feet shattered, and he transformed into a streak of black light, landing steadily on a desolate patch of land outside the city.
A fierce wind howled, and a gray-white mist churned between heaven and earth. The masked man suddenly stopped, and in the next instant, he turned around sharply. A cold glint flashed in his eyes hidden behind the black mask, and his right hand suddenly flipped over.
From within the sleeve, a dark black bead, no bigger than a thumb, quietly slipped into the palm.
The bead was entirely black, devoid of any luster, yet its surface was covered with densely packed, constantly writhing grayish-white narrative symbols. Each line resembled a story abruptly severed, radiating an eerie and unsettling aura. "Go!"
With a low shout from the masked man, whoosh—the black orb didn't shoot towards the three, but instead drew an extremely strange arc in mid-air. Just as it flew to the center of the three, crack—the entire orb suddenly shattered. There was no explosion, no fire, only billions of gray-white narrative fragments that swept across the sky and earth like a blizzard.
Those fragments are not physical objects, but rather pages of shattered stories, each page revealing unfamiliar figures, unfamiliar worlds, and unfamiliar histories. Once touched, one is instantly plunged into fragments of someone else's life, and the entire world is instantly and completely covered by a torrent of gray and white stories.
"Watch out!" The silver-haired man at the head of the group suddenly narrowed his eyes and stomped his foot, his figure instantly retreating thousands of feet. At the same time, he quickly formed hand seals, and layers of silver light screens unfolded around him, blocking all the narrative fragments rushing towards him. The other two reacted just as quickly.
The man in the dark gold robe suddenly flipped over, sweeping his spear horizontally. The spear light transformed into a golden crescent thousands of feet long, shattering all the countless Narrative Fragment that rushed towards him. The last man then unleashed both palms, and a gray-white barrier suddenly appeared, completely enveloping him. The narrative fragments crashed against the barrier, constantly emitting a dull hum, but they could not penetrate even half a step.
In the brief moment the three dodged, the masked man's figure had already retreated ten thousand feet again. The silver-haired man at the head stared at the departing black shadow, his face turning completely gloomy. "Seeking death!" Boom! He took a step forward, and the entire sky suddenly darkened. Countless gray-white runes frantically converged from all directions, rapidly condensing into a phantom ancient spear ten thousand feet long above his head.
The ancient spear was formed entirely from the Law of Narrative. On its shaft, unfinished stories flowed continuously, as if anything pierced by it would forever remain in that "unfinished" moment. The silver-haired man's eyes were icy cold, and his right hand suddenly swung down. "Narrative-Severing Divine Spear!" Boom—the ten-thousand-foot-long ancient spear suddenly pierced through the sky.
It moved so fast that even space itself couldn't distort. Wherever it passed, the earth cracked open with a gray-white fissure stretching tens of thousands of feet, and the narrative symbols in the air shattered continuously, as if the entire world was about to be completely nailed down by this spear.
However, just as the ancient spear was about to pierce the masked man's back, the masked man's body strangely shifted slightly to the left, the movement seemingly slow, yet perfectly precise. The ten-thousand-foot-long ancient spear almost grazed his robe as it swept past with a roar. Boom!! Dozens of floating mountain peaks in the distance were instantly pierced, along with hundreds of miles of sky and earth behind them, exploding into a sky full of gray and white fragments.
The masked man didn't even glance back. In a few flashes, he had already rushed out of the outer perimeter of the Heavenly Ruins Floating City. A dark forest, where no light was ever seen, slowly appeared at the edge of his vision. The entire forest was as black as ink.
The trees were thousands of feet tall, without a single leaf. Each branch resembled a twisted human arm, and countless gray-black wisps of mist swirled within them. Faint, eerie whispers could be heard emanating from the depths of the forest.
Without hesitation, the masked man stepped into the darkness, his figure instantly swallowed up by the boundless darkness. "Damn it!" the man in the dark gold robe cursed. "Even if we chase him to the very end, we can't let him escape!" the silver-haired man sneered, his eyes gleaming with murderous intent.
"Keep chasing!" As soon as the words fell, the three of them transformed into three streaks of light almost simultaneously, following the masked man's aura, and plunged into the dark and desolate forest.