Qin Yu ventured deeper and deeper, stepping over one solidified Sound Wall after another. The myriad sound images, frozen for eternity, were piled up like undulating mountains and staggered rocks; beneath his feet, countless fragmented sound patterns, not yet fully Return to Emanation, flowed and stretched endlessly in the void.
He continued walking silently, without responding, clinging, or arguing. Time here had lost its measure, with no distinction between day and night, past and present, or fast and slow. After countless years, Qin Yu suddenly stopped. In the void ahead, an Ultimate unique soundscape appeared.
It neither called by name, nor showed sorrow or joy, nor anger or sigh; it offered no demands, no questions, no expectations, merely trembling for a fleeting, extremely slight moment within Ultimate Annihilation. Qin Yu's eyes flickered, and a thought instantly formed in his mind. "Fragment."
The thought had barely formed when the entire silent Ear Faculty Emanation Domain suddenly erupted into a frenzy of activity. "I'm here!" The first voice boomed into existence. "Qin Yu, I'm here!" The second followed immediately. "You're looking for me!" The third voice swept across the entire domain, and in the next instant...
Rumble!!! The entire ancient Sound Wall exploded and roared simultaneously, billions of sound images appeared in the world at once, surging forth. "I am the fragment!" "Listen to me!" "Qin Yu!" "Here!" "You've found it!" "Come here!"
Countless echoes of the same origin surged in from all directions, each carrying an ancient echo that was Ultimate similar to the "Name of Primal Evolution". Some of these echoes could even produce a faint original resonance with the "Seeing Stillness Return to Evolution" preserved in the eye root.
Deep within Qin Yu's pupils, the colorless "glimpse" Dao Source the Eye Faculty Emanation Domain trembled incessantly. The original resonances intertwined, and the ancient sounds overlapped, completely blurring the lines between truth and falsehood, making it increasingly impossible to distinguish. Ten, a thousand, ten thousand, a billion... each sound image claimed to be a true fragment of the Ear Root.
Qin Yu's mind was clear and unconfused. If he deliberately tried to analyze and compare, the comparison itself would be an obsession with hearing. If he painstakingly tried to distinguish between truth and falsehood, the judgment itself would be an additional constraint. If he waited for the true fragments to respond on their own initiative, the obsession with expecting a response would already trap him in the cage of "Hearing Attachment".
Qin Yu neither discerned, accepted, believed, nor waited. He silently strode forward, calmly traversing the center of countless fragments of sound, a tapestry of illusion and reality. "Qin Yu!" "I'm here!" "Did you hear me?" "Stop!" "You've already missed me!"
As the final, anxious call faded, Qin Yu did not falter or turn his head. His obsession dissipated, and the sound faded away. The first illusory sound slowly vanished. The second and third followed suit, and the countless fragments of sound all sank back into the source of the Sound Wall.
Whether the real fragments were hidden within, Qin Yu made no attempt to confirm. At this point, the act of confirmation and the search itself had lost their meaning, and he continued to venture deeper. Stepping past the first layer of the Sound Wall, he found himself in a place where the magnificent chants of the Wanyan Ancient Clan, at the height of their prosperity, were sealed.
Beyond the second level, the Ultimate lament of billions of lives remains, a testament to the destruction of heaven and earth and the extinction of humankind.
Deeper still, the ancient bell tolls with the weight of mountains, the sighs of ages stretch into an endless river, and the whispers of the ancient past unfold into a boundless, desolate plain.
In the Ultimate depths, the Sound Wall gradually loses its concrete texture, becoming increasingly ethereal and primordial. The remaining sound images become increasingly ancient and desolate, some predating the birth of language, some predating the birth of living beings, and some even predating the concept of "hearing." Qin Yu heard the initial vibrations of the primordial flow before the creation of heaven and earth and the birth of the first long wind.
We hear the primordial echoes of all things touching the earth when the first drop of water was first formed and had no name; we hear the nascent, unformed, and primitive rhythms of perception when life was first born and first became aware of the outside world.
All the ancient sounds and phenomena passed through him one after another. Qin Yu heard them all, but he did not cling to them, hold onto them, yearn for them, distinguish them, name them, or define them. From beginning to end, he was enveloped and understood by the omnipresent "listening" of this world.
Hearing-Derivation Beast, and hearing its every thought, every pause, every unformed judgment, and every hidden, deep-seated obsession, Qin Yu no longer resisted, no longer avoided, and no longer struggled to break free.
Once he was heard, he was heard. He no longer deliberately altered his state of being because of the Hearing-Derivation Beast's prying and listening, nor did he obsessively wait for any judgment, any response, or any answer. The act of listening and being listened to gradually shed its opposition, its shackles, and its fetters, returning to the natural origin.
The thick, ancient Sound Wall gradually became thinner and more transparent. As countless years passed, all the sounds ahead suddenly vanished and returned to complete silence. Qin Yu stopped in his tracks. This was the Ultimate depth of the Sound Wall, where there was no chiming of bells, no weeping, no chanting, no roaring, no breathing, no whispering, no fragmented calls, and no self-reflection.
In the Ultimate silence, something quietly appeared, formless, Formless, Nameless, and without origin. It could not be seen with the eyes, detected by the mind, or touched by the senses. Yet Qin Yu heard it clearly. To be precise, he heard this thing "listening." At this moment, the profound mystery and the ultimate truth were fully revealed. There were no sound waves, no primal vibrations, and no unusual movements.
Qin Yu, however, was acutely aware that something was listening to him. In the next instant, a deeper level of recursive awareness quietly emerged. Qin Yu heard—he was hearing this thing listening to him.
The original echo of the Hearing-Derivation Beast has finally reappeared in the world, but this time, it is speechless and thoughtless, only listening in the purest way, existing since ancient times. Without purpose, without seeking, without judgment, without obsession, and without expecting a response.
Does Not Exist even a concrete "it" standing on the other side of hearing; hearing itself is everything, existing before the listener, born before what is heard. Qin Yu stood there, and all the confusion, all the constraints, all the obsessions he had come through suddenly became clear and understood.
Why is the Hearing-Derivation Beast formless and Formless? Why is it an ancient echo without source Endless? Why do all sounds and phenomena in the world cling to seeking a response? Why does the more a person desires to be heard, the more they become an echo of heaven and earth, trapped from beginning to end by countless illusory sounds and phenomena?
Rather, it is the duality arising from the human mind. "I am listening, and it is being listened to by me." "It is listening to me, and I am being listened to by it." As long as such oppositions and distinctions exist, the listener and the heard, the perceiver and the perceived, become self-imposed shackles and self-binding chains.
Once the chains were formed, the echoes would never cease, the cycle would never end. Qin Yu's eyes returned to a state of utter calm, clarity, and Space Silence.
He never activated the "Silent Beginning - Ring Master Soul Diagram", never used the "Book of Fate Law - Realm Severing Origin Brush" to trace the boundary, never activated the "Heavenly Cause Judgment Sequence - Six Severances Seal" to forcibly sever the law, and never summoned the "No-Thought Absolute Silence Sword" to extinguish his thoughts and obsessions.
At this moment, if even a thought arises that "I want to break free from the shackles and transcend reincarnation," the binary opposition between "self" and "shackles" will be re-established, and one will return to the shackles of hearing.
Qin Yu stood still, letting things take their natural course and returning to their origin.
He no longer deliberately listened. This was not a deliberate act of sealing his ears or rejecting sound. Sound came naturally. He no longer actively sought to listen, no longer deliberately tried to distinguish, no longer persistently sought answers, no longer waited for the truth to emerge, no longer waited for the fragments to respond, and no longer waited for the trial conclusion of the Hearing-Derivation Beast.
He no longer responded deliberately, nor did he passively answer. Even as the familiar call of "Qin Yu" echoed again from the depths of the Sound Wall, he showed no resistance, no response, and no obsession. The sound passed through him, naturally dissipating and returning to nothingness. Then another sound rang out.
"Did you hear that?" Qin Yu remained standing still, his mind clear and untroubled. He had heard, and that was all. There was no obsession with "I need to prove I heard," nor any deliberate attempt to "let it know I didn't respond."
In the end, even the awareness that "I am remaining silent" naturally faded away and returned to nothingness, leaving Qin Yu with only pure existence. Existence does not require a response to prove its presence to heaven and earth; existence does not require external responses to confirm its authenticity.
No one needs to prove that they have been heard, nor does anyone need to prove that they are hearing. This duality dissolves, and the very ability to hear gradually fades away. What is heard gradually disappears.
The pure hearing principle of the Hearing-Derivation Beast still exists, and Qin Yu's original existence has not been annihilated. However, the recurring, intertwined chain between the two has been completely broken and can no longer be maintained.
The entire ancient Sound Wall suddenly froze. A tiny crack quietly spread and bloomed at the deepest part of the Sound Wall. Crack! Before Qin Yu could even raise his eyes to examine it, before he could even probe it, a second crack spread and intertwined on its own. Crack...
The third, the fourth... In an instant, billions of cracks crisscrossed, covering the entire boundless ancient Sound Wall. The bells, cries, chants, roars, breaths, heartbeats, and whispers that had been frozen for eternity and carried countless years all crumbled and disintegrated with the cracks.
Without a deafening roar, without any explosive shock, everything Annihilation in absolute silence. Finally, the entire ancient Sound Wall completely disintegrated and dissolved. Countless tiny sound waves drifted through the air, dissipating into the void, without explosion, without roar, without aftershocks.
They have simply lost the obsessive meaning of "must be heard, must seek a response," transforming into rootless and unbound remnants of the origin, slowly dissipating into the entire Ear Faculty Emanation Domain. What has collapsed this time is neither the myriad sounds nor the ancient Sound Wall.
What is truly broken is the binary distinction between "the ability to hear" and "the heard," the endless chain that binds hearing and being heard, speaking and responding, self and all things. When the chain breaks, both ends are empty.
The Hearing-Derivation Beast remained Formless and intangible, and Qin Yu did not deliberately pursue or forcibly explore it. However, at the very moment the last trace of the Sound Wall dissipated, that Endless, timeless echo ceased to return and reincarnate for the first time.
It broke away from Qin Yu's source of hearing, slowly dissipating and drifting away layer by layer into the deepest part of the boundless Ear Faculty Emanation Domain, once, twice, going further and further away. Finally, it completely disappeared without a trace, without a sound, and without a return. The shackles of "Hearing Attachment" were completely severed.