A pure void, devoid of principles, cause and effect, and origin, slowly spread outwards. Silent, lightless, and formless, wherever it passed, the primordial light points that Qin Yu had just reconstituted through the Silent Origin Return to Truth all came to a standstill. It was not a return to Eternal Silence, but rather a complete loss of home and nothing to cling to.
The first point of light Annihilation, the second, the third... and then they all disappeared in a blur, with a soft rustling sound...
The arena floor revealed strange layers, with countless stone chips peeling off on their own, yet their trajectory and direction were unpredictable. The remaining Dao patterns of the great formation had just lit up when they instantly dimmed and vanished, completely unable to bear the laws of the Great Dao.
Mystic Deconstruction stared intently at the dark crack, his voice heavy. "It is draining the very foundation of all Silent Origin in the world."
Wanyan continued, "Qin Yu's fifth move takes the Silent Origin's as its starting point for returning to the true nature. The 'Hua Jingmeng' move does not strive for returning to the true nature, nor is it trapped in Eternal Silence. Its intention is to completely erase the foundation of all things returning to silence, severing their path to rebirth."
At this moment, Hua Jingmeng's lower body had completely dissipated into mist, leaving only wisps of grayish-white Fate Soul threads connecting her to the Vast Annihilation God-Burying Banner, barely supporting her remaining upper body. Her face was translucent and almost transparent, with only her eyes remaining fixed on Qin Yu with unwavering determination.
His lips parted slightly, and his hoarse, broken voice echoed through the deathly silent arena. This was his first speech since the sacrifice, and also the Ultimate declaration of this World Extinguisher forbidden technique.
"My life is extinguished..." "The Silent Origin is withered." Boom!!! All the remaining Silent Origin around the Rift of Return to the Ruins instantly collapsed inward and withered away. Large vacancies suddenly appeared in the Silent Origin Star Sea behind Qin Yu, and the vitality was broken.
A twisted, Ultimate smile spread across Hua Jingmeng's battered face. "The Return to the Ruins opens..." A chilling killing intent emanated from her remaining eyes. "All phenomena vanish." Buzz!!!
Without any earth-shattering roar or destructive explosion, the entire arena's spatial order was completely altered at this moment. The Rift of Return to the Ruins ceased its expansion and instead opened—the Locking Realm!
Qin Yu's fluttering robes suddenly froze, the floating dust particles stood still, all the light spots in the Silent Origin Star Sea were frozen, and even the outer Dao patterns of the Nine-Wheel True Evolution Dharma Wheel were momentarily stagnant.
The sequence of time has never been interrupted, yet it has completely lost the room for forward evolution; cause and effect have never collapsed, yet they are permanently stagnant in the present moment; space has never collapsed, yet it has completely lost the meaning of the flow of directions.
The vast final arena instantly transformed into a still, frozen, and timeless scroll painting.
Millions of cultivators on the periphery fell silent, filled with Ultimate fear. Even through hundreds of layers of defensive arrays, they could still feel a bone-chilling cold emanating from the depths of their Fate Soul. This kind of duel had long transcended the realm of ordinary arena battles; it was Ultimate death match where lives were at stake and all things were annihilated.
The terrifying phenomena continue to spread.
The edge of the Rift of Return to the Ruins slowly rolled up, and the first layer of locked space collapsed towards the core of the rift, causing all the suspended rubble, remnants, and sword patterns to sink. The moment they touched the dark rift, they did not collapse, annihilate, or turn to ashes, but simply dissolved completely without a trace.
The second, third, and fourth levels of space collapsed and sank in succession.
The entire arena collapsed and dissolved layer by layer towards the central fissure from the outside in, silent and still, yet more despairing than any earth-shattering explosion.
Hua Jingmeng's condition continued to deteriorate rapidly. Strands of grayish-white Fate Soul continued to emerge from around her left arm, and as soon as the strands left her body, they were all absorbed by the Vast Annihilation God-Burying Banner. The outline of the flesh and blood on her shoulder gradually became translucent and faint, and half of her face was covered with a layer of pale gray. Looking through her body, one could even glimpse the churning and surging Rift of Return to the Ruins behind her.
This was not a direct physical decay, but rather the Life Silence Return to the Ruins frantically seizing his Eternal Stillness Dao Foundation and the origin of his Fate Soul, using his Eternal Silence Realm cultivation, which he had painstakingly cultivated throughout his life, as resources to maintain Absolute Pre-Stillness. With each wisp of gray-white Fate Soul being swallowed by the banner body, the Eternal Stillness Dao aura around him dimmed a little, and the Dao Foundation that was rooted deep in his Fate Soul and had reached the Eternal Silence Realm Initial Stage blossomed with shocking cracks.
Crack!!! The first Eternal Stillness Dao Mark shattered with a deafening roar.
Immediately afterward, the second and third layers of energy shattered one after another. The unfathomable, Eternal Silence origin behind Hua Jingmeng trembled violently, and layers of gray-blue, silent tides collapsed inward. His face turned deathly pale in an instant, his teeth clenched tightly, and a trickle of blood slowly flowed from the corner of his lips. His bloodshot eyes remained fixed on Qin Yu. He was clear-headed; although this technique would not immediately take his life, it would forcibly strip away the foundation of his Dao, painstakingly cultivated in the Eternal Silence Realm, using the essence of an entire major realm to sustain the existence of the Rift of Return to the Ruins.
A deafening, muffled shock rippled from the depths of the Dao Abyss, perceptible only to high-level cultivators. Hua Jingmeng's Eternal Silence Realm Initial Stage completely collapsed!
His cultivation aura plummeted like a cliff, the eternal Stillness Dao charm surrounding him dissipated in large swaths, and the power that had drawn all things into slumber slowly receded, replaced by a more chaotic and bewildering primordial torrent. The boundary between truth and illusion dissolved around his Fate Soul, life and death intertwined and overlapped, and the realm barriers he had already crossed were pressed heavily back into his Dao foundation.
In the True Annihilation Realm · Initial Stage, true reality is annihilated, and nothing remains; all truth and all falsehood become indistinguishable in this realm. There is neither truth nor falsehood, neither birth nor death, only True Annihilation swallowing nothingness. Hua Jingmeng forcibly propped up her Life Silence Return to the Ruins at the cost of the fall of an entire major realm.
The drop in realm is not the only price to pay.
His Fate Soul essence had suffered an unprecedented and severe injury. Deep within his Fate Soul, most of the thousands of interwoven primordial veins were dimmed, and several of the most core Fate Soul roots cracked with fine lines.
With each rotation of the Rift of Return to the Ruins, the cracks extend deeper into his Fate Soul, causing his face to momentarily become ethereal, and his arms to continuously scatter gray-white wisps of Fate Soul. If he continues to push it without restraint, even if he manages to leave this arena alive, he will have to pay a price far exceeding the years of hard work he has put in the Eternal Silence Realm in the future.
The Vast Annihilation God-Burying Banner also declined, its surface turning to ashes inch by inch from bottom to top, and the ancient remnants sealed within it falling one after another into the Return to the Ruins of nothingness. It was not that the banner was about to perish, but that Hua Jingmeng was forcibly squeezing out the ancient, Annihilation essence it had accumulated.
The gray-blue banner's luster faded with each passing day, and the deep blue crystal at the top of the banner pole was covered with fine cracks. Each crack shimmered with a faint light, making the Rift of Return to the Ruins a little deeper.
Hua Jingmeng still refused to give up.
His body trembled slightly, his breathing was heavy and labored, and his left hand gripped the banner pole tightly, so tightly that his knuckles turned pale. The enormous drop from the Eternal Silence Realm Initial Stage to the True Annihilation Realm · Initial Stage brought him excruciating pain as if his Dao foundation was being torn apart.
With his Fate Soul essence damaged, every extra breath he maintained his supernatural powers meant enduring a backlash from his Fate Soul core. Yet, the deep-seated resentment and venom directed at Qin Yu in his eyes had not dissipated in the slightest.
He exhausted an entire major realm, and nearly damaged his Fate Soul essence, all for this one desperate gamble—a fatal blow that could kill Qin Yu. In the center of the arena, Qin Yu stood firm.
The newly born Silent Origin Return to Truth faces the most perilous predicament since its inception.
Without the Silent Origin, there is no way to return to the truth; without the origin and root, there is no way to reshape all things; without the passage of time and the evolution of cause and effect, there is no way to trace back to the source. The Rift of Return to the Ruins, which was obtained by exchanging the foundation of eternal Stillness Dao for the collapse of the Hua Jingmeng, is draining the Silent Origin of this world, causing the Silent Origin Return to Truth to lose the foundation on which "returning to the truth from stillness" is based for the first time.
Qin Yu gazed at the Absolute Pre-Stillness that was encroaching step by step. The light of the Nine-Wheel True Evolution Dharma Wheel receded inward layer by layer. The peace that had remained in his eyes during his enlightenment completely dissipated, leaving only an unprecedented solemnity.
Above the sky, the four Source Dao Ultimate Beast Huang all fell silent. Mystic Deconstruction stopped his deduction of the Great Dao, and Wanyan also withdrew all his previous judgments.
Hua Jingmeng did not burn out her life, but at the terrible cost of falling from the Eternal Silence Realm Initial Stage to the True Annihilation Realm · Initial Stage, coupled with the severe damage to her Fate Soul's origin that was almost like a broken bone, she managed to push her Life Silence Return to the Ruins to a point where she could threaten Qin Yu.
Qin Yu had already seen through the Great Dao of Returning to Truth after Annihilation, but what stood in his way was the Absolute Pre-Stillness before the Silent Origin was born and before existence and non-existence were separated.
The Rift of Return to the Ruins had already crossed the center of the arena. There was no wind in any direction, and all sounds were silent. Even the arena's defensive array, which was jointly maintained by the four Void Emanation Realm judges, rippled with strange concave arcs the moment it touched that dark edge.
Beyond the array, millions of spectators watched as the complete arena gradually peeled away: the stone's textures dissolved completely, the ancient Dao traces vanished, and the spatial depths faded layer by layer. There was no ordinary darkness descending upon this place, because darkness still requires light as a reference, but the Absolute Pre-Stillness opened by the Life Silence Return to the Ruins had even emptied the original reference of the opposing forces of heaven and earth, returning it to nothingness.
Qin Yu stood alone in the deepest part of the silence, his robes no longer fluttering, his long black hair completely still. The brilliant light of the Nine-Wheel True Evolution Dharma Wheel was compressed to the Ultimate, leaving only a faint light about ten feet around him.
He clearly sensed that the Silent Origin Return to Truth that he had just painstakingly comprehended was completely losing its foundation. The Silent Origin was utterly depleted, and the essential foundation required for the Return to Truth had completely dissipated. The dark and boundless Rift of Return to the Ruins still approached step by step with the power to devour everything.
Qin Yu's gaze deepened, and he gave up on continuing to activate the Silent Origin Return to Truth. The Void Source of Dream Stillness deep within his Fate Soul silently unfolded, and a faint, dark hue descended from between his brows, retreating along the deepest part of his Fate Soul towards the eternal depths.
This retreat has nothing to do with spatial orientation, simply because the spatial principles of this world have long lost all meaning here.
Qin Yu's goal was not to trace back to the Return to the Ruins, but to completely suppress his own existence into the Ultimate abyss of the Void Source · Dream Stillness, peeling away layer by layer all external traces of his physical body, Fate Soul imprint, causal entanglements, and the sedimentation of time, ultimately landing at the core of origin that had helped him break through the ultimate killing blows several times— the Existence Zero Point.
There is no past, no future here.
There is no trace of Qin Yu's past merits and demerits, nor of Qin Yu future Return Path. All things have evolved and faded away, leaving only a trace of the original root that has not yet been revealed to the world.
Qin Yu's mind and consciousness sank completely into the zero point. The boundless, suffocating Absolute Pre-Stillness Pre-Nonbeing was no longer an empty void beyond comprehension. He traced back to the origin of Existence Zero Point: since the Silent Origin could be born in the eternity, it must have had a primordial foundation that carried the origin before its birth; since Hua Jingmeng could reach the Absolute Pre-Stillness by relying on the void of Life Silence Return to the Ruins, she had already carved out a unique connection between the present world and the eternal void.
Wherever there is a connection, there is a flaw; this slight connection is the root of the problem.
Absolute Pre-Stillness could exist without existence or extinction, without cause or effect, without Silent Void. However, since the Life Silence Return to the Ruins desires to annihilate living beings and overturn the present world, it must guide this power of nothingness that transcends eternity to the mortal arena and apply it to Qin Yu.
From the moment it touched the mortal world, it left behind an extremely obscure and indelible trace of reality. This trace is neither Silent Origin nor a cause and effect, but merely the sole connection between supernatural power and the entry of nothingness into the world.
Qin Yu closed his eyes and focused his mind, letting the Existence Zero Point infinitely approach that faint connection, attempting to follow its veins and return to the initial node where Absolute Pre-Stillness invaded the present world. The surrounding world became increasingly blurred, the outline of his fingertips slowly melted away, the edges of his sleeves became transparent, and his whole being almost merged into this eternal void.
Hua Jingmeng, watching from afar, took in the entire scene. On his deathly pale face, a hint of almost manic pleasure finally bloomed. Blood dripped from the corner of his lips, and his hands gripped the tattered Vast Annihilation God-Burying Banner tightly. The resentment that had accumulated in his eyes had solidified into a chilling substance.
"Qin Yu... keep trying to understand!!... Keep trying!!!"
His voice was hoarse and broken, his chest heaving violently, his True Annihilation Realm · Initial Stage aura chaotic and violent, yet still frantically squeezing out the last remaining essence of his Fate Soul, "Now that the Silent Origin is completely depleted... let's see where you can return to your true self!"
Qin Yu remained silent. At that moment, the long-dormant Silent Beginning Ring Master Soul Diagram behind him suddenly began to vibrate autonomously. Buzz!!! The Nine-Wheel True Evolution Dharma Wheel simultaneously contracted inward!