Qin Yu's Attachment to Hearing Makes Him a Prisoner
The Sea of Sound continued to surge, layer upon layer, endlessly. Qin Yu abandoned all obsessions, no longer seeking the original sound, no longer distinguishing the myriad differences, letting the myriad sounds pass through him without clinging, without holding on, without stagnation or entanglement.
The Ear Faculty Trial are far more dangerous and difficult to understand than those of the eye. Colors pass through the eyes and vanish without a trace. Sounds, however, endure, naturally possessing continuity, resonance, and the potential for further development.
When a sound fades, it leaves an echo; when an echo lingers, it gives rise to new sounds; when a sound takes shape, it gives rise to a new layer of sound. This cycle repeats endlessly, life goes on forever.
If one cannot decipher the origin of sound or grasp the essence of silence, even without actively discerning and pursuing it, countless sound phenomena can still infinitely generate and be imprisoned through their own echoes.
The Sea of Sound grew ever more vast and magnificent, long surpassing the category of "noise." Countless sound waves overlapped and dissolved one another, high notes drowned out low notes, roars swallowed whispers, thunder drowned out heartbeats, and chanting masked weeping. Billions of different sounds gradually blurred their boundaries and disappeared in the endless stacking.
Until a Threshold moment, all the sounds reached their Ultimate, and then—suddenly vanished into nothingness. Qin Yu stood quietly in the center, his mind clear and unmoved. The entire world fell into an unprecedented absolute silence.
The countless roaring waves just now did not gradually weaken and dissipate, nor did they slowly come to an end. Instead, in the same instant, at the same moment, they were completely severed and reduced to nothing, leaving no lingering sound, no echo, and even the trace and atmosphere of "the sound just disappeared" were completely vanished.
The Sea of Sound was completely depleted. Qin Yu remained motionless and his mind undisturbed. The silence at this moment was far more thorough and profound than when he first entered the Emanation Domain. When he first entered, it was a blank void where sound had not yet been born and Wanyan had not yet emerged.
And at this moment, after countless sounds and images have gone through birth, division, superposition, and prosperity, they have all completed their evolutionary journey and returned to the Ultimate Emptiness. Two kinds of silence, one Unborn, the other completely annihilated.
What they left behind were completely different foundations of the Great Dao. Qin Yu slowly turned around. The void behind him was empty and Formless. But in the instant he turned around, an Ultimate profound and indescribable perception quietly sank into the origin of his Fate Soul.
Something was listening to him, and Qin Yu's gaze suddenly sharpened, his mind tensing.
There was no sound of footsteps, no flow of breath, no spatial tremors, no fluctuations of origin. He had no way of sensing the trajectory of this thing's arrival, no way of capturing any trace of its existence, and he didn't even know when it had lurked here or when it had quietly approached.
Ten feet away in the colorless void, a faint, hazy humanoid silhouette slowly solidified and appeared in the world.
The sides of this creature's head are flat and Space Silence, without ears or hearing organs; its face is empty, without mouth or speech. Since its appearance, it has not moved, uttered a sound, or produced any unusual phenomena.
But Qin Yu was absolutely certain and clear-headed—it was listening. Not to his breathing, not to his heartbeat, not to the movements of his body. In this world, there was no sound to be heard. What it was listening to was something deeper, something more fundamental—the myriad thoughts in Qin Yu's heart that he had never uttered aloud.
The humanoid silhouette stood motionless in the void, and Qin Yu also stopped and Ji Ran, neither advancing nor retreating, Ultimate silence for several breaths. At that moment, a very light and subtle sound quietly arose from the depths of Qin Yu's heart.
"What is it?" Qin Yu's pupils contracted slightly. He didn't speak, nor did he utter a word. It was merely a fleeting question in his mind, a tiny thought that had just begun to emerge and then disappeared. But this silent thought was heard.
Immediately following, a second voice rang out. "Guardian of the Ear Root?" This was his instinctive deduction of the identity of the mysterious being before him. The third and fourth voices appeared in succession.
"When did it appear?" "Why was there no awareness of it at all?" One question after another, layer upon layer, were all hidden thoughts that lay dormant in the heart, yet to take shape and never to be expressed.
Qin Yu's brows furrowed and his mind became more focused. The more he became aware of the existence of these thoughts, the clearer, more solid, and louder they became, accompanied by layers of echoes from the depths of his Fate Soul's origin.
Buzz--
The "Silent Beginning · Ring Master Soul Diagram" had never been actively unfolded or deliberately activated, yet the primal echoes inherent in the Fate Soul had already been firmly captured and fully understood by this Ultimate silent Emanation Domain.
The Nine-Wheel True Evolution Dharma Wheel lay dormant in the sea of consciousness, neither spinning nor exerting any force, yet Qin Yu could clearly "hear" that if they were to operate, the layers of Dao sounds that should have been generated would resonate repeatedly.
One round, two rounds, three rounds... all the way to the ninth round, each sound clear and distinct.
In the blink of an eye, the nine Dharma sounds overlapped and superimposed on each other, once again initiating endless recursion.
The thought of "not chasing after sounds, not clinging to echoes" had just arisen in Qin Yu's mind. "Don't follow these sounds." This thought, once it arose, immediately transformed into a new sound image, echoing in his heart. The next instant, a secondary thought followed closely behind.
"I am reminding myself not to chase after fleeting pleasures." The third layer of recursion is born in response. "I hear myself reminding myself not to chase after fleeting pleasures." Layer upon layer, endlessly repeating, new thoughts flow continuously and endlessly.
This time, there was no external interference from the Sea of Sound, no disturbance from the myriad sounds of heaven and earth; all sounds, all recursions, and all evolutions originated from Qin Yu himself.
Unspoken judgments, unexpressed emotions, lingering echoes of the Fate Soul, hidden thoughts from the past, Unborn, and forcibly suppressed tactical deductions—all these are transformed here into a unique "voice" belonging to the heart.
"Return to Origin and Sever Retracing." A tactical decision silently passed by. "Sword of No-Thought Absolute Silence Sword." The second decision appeared in response. "Heavenly Cause Judgment Sequence of Six Severances Seal."
The third choice is layered upon layer. All the supernatural powers have not been activated or manifested in the world. It is merely a choice of "to use or not to use" in one's heart, yet it has been heard by this silent world and transformed into sound.
The inner thoughts overlap, question each other, negate one another, and endlessly generate. A thought arises, a question arises, and the cycle repeats endlessly.
Strangely, the outside world remained Ultimate Space Silence and still. The humanoid silhouette standing ten feet away remained Ji Ran and unmoved.
It has no ears to hear, no mouth to speak, and Formless to move, yet it holds sway over the entire Ear Faculty Emanation Domain of hearing principles, quietly listening to all the sounds, thoughts, and choices arising from Qin Yu's true nature.
Qin Yu finally realized that this trial was far more profound and dangerous than the Eye Root. In the past, he was bound by external things and constrained by all phenomena. Now, he had created his own prison and generated countless sounds on his own. His opponent did not need to make a move, create a realm, or generate countless phenomena. He only needed to listen quietly, and Qin Yu would generate endless sounds and endless constraints on his own.
Over time, a faint ripple of primordial energy quietly spread behind the humanoid silhouette. The first ripple spread silently, the second spread out Ji Ran. The moment the third ripple spread, all the overlapping and intertwined inner thoughts in Qin Yu's sea of consciousness trembled slightly in sync.
As if a supreme principle were quietly responding and silently understanding behind countless thoughts, Qin Yu slowly turned around to face the mysterious humanoid figure without ears or mouth. The other party remained blank-faced, Formless.
But in the very center of this blank face, a slender, deep crack slowly emerged and quietly spread out. The crack never widened, never opened or closed, and not a sound escaped. Yet, deep within Qin Yu's heart, he clearly "heard"—a long, ancient, and Annihilation breath.
This breath does not exist in heaven and earth, nor does it wander in the void; it falls directly into the origin of the mind and the depths of the Fate Soul.
With the rise and fall of this ancient breath, at the bottom of the now-depleted Sea of Sound, a magnificent and imposing phantom, far exceeding the humanoid outline before us, is silently, slowly rising and falling, gradually awakening.
It has never truly descended into the mortal world, never revealed its true form, and never proclaimed its eternal name, yet Qin Yu has already made it perfectly clear. The Formless humanoid before him is merely a tiny avatar, a faint trace of the Dao, of the second ear root guardian that extends into the Emanation Domain.
The Ultimate being who truly wields the Dharma of the Annihilation of the ear and commands the return of all sounds to stillness—is hidden deep within this Ultimate silent realm, quietly listening to him.
After that thought faded away, Qin Yu did not immediately turn around. The earless humanoid figure that had been standing less than ten feet behind him remained in place, and the thin crack on its face did not continue to extend. The entire Ear Faculty Emanation Domain remained in the Annihilation state after the Sea of Sound had dried up. However, Qin Yu had clearly realized that the real variable had never been born from that illusory figure.
From the moment that wisp of primordial "breath" appeared, the silence that overwhelmed everything in the world deepened layer by layer, sinking deeper and deeper into stillness. Only then did Qin Yu truly grasp the original meaning of these two words in the Ear Faculty Emanation Domain.
It is completely different from ordinary silence, which at least acknowledges the existence of sound. When the wind stops, the water is still, and all living beings are silent, the world Anran; as long as any of the things start to vibrate again, sound will be born again and reappear in the world.
But the boundless silence before me completely severed that possibility. It neither suppressed sound nor swallowed lingering echoes, nor did it deliberately erase anything; it simply emptied a space—the very origin of sound—that could no longer contain it.
"Listen" is Return to Emanation.
Qin Yu stood silently, his robes fluttering in the Emptiness, his breath silent, his heartbeat silent, and his Fate Soul trembling silently. Even the myriad thoughts that had previously intertwined and overlapped within his sea of consciousness had all faded away and returned to stillness.
The once clear and perceptible "I heard my own thoughts," that endless, recursive, and mysterious perception, is rapidly dissipating, annihilating layer by layer, deeper and deeper, until the boundary between "hearing" and "not hearing" becomes completely blurred and indefinable.
This is a state of the Great Dao that is more empty than tranquility, more Nameless than silence, and more fundamental than Annihilation. A boundless "emptiness" is slowly expanding deep within the origin of the Ear Faculty Emanation Domain. This Emptiness is not devoid of anything.
It froze at the primordial Threshold of the fundamental act of "listening," which had neither been born nor disappeared. Qin Yu's gaze suddenly fixed, and in the next instant, the silence of the sky converged and gathered from all directions.
Without any external force restraining his body, and without any spatial distortion or collapse, Qin Yu's entire being and his entire origin slowly sank into this primordial Emptiness in an instant, without any sense of weightlessness or change in distance.
The Formless humanoid silhouette behind him grew fainter and fainter until it completely dissolved and merged into the colorless void, Wuhen. When Qin Yu's figure stabilized again, a vast and boundless barrier silently stood in front of him.