The Evolution-Devouring Beast with a thud, it took a step that landed silently and without any tremor, yet caused the entire Sea of Tastelessness to collapse violently and sink completely. Qin Yu's gaze fell on its lower limbs, his eyes deepening with a profound meaning.
Those were not the feet of a living being, but a gigantic maw that stretched across the heavens and earth. The soles of its feet formed the lower lip, and five thick toes transformed into five curved fangs, firmly gripping the void.
The moment its toes touched the ground, the giant mouth opened and closed, swallowing and erasing all traces of the sea's flavor. The mouth closed, swallowed, and returned to silence. When it lifted its foot, only a deathly emptiness remained, with no trace of the sea left behind.
Its path is not trodden upon, but rather swallowed up.
The entire lower limb has no joints, no flexion or extension; each segment is formed by endless swallowing and stacking. Each muscle layer is covered with swallowing mouths of varying sizes. Thousands of tiny mouths open and close in sync with each step, swallowing up the tiny tastes and lingering flavors splashed up from the sea before they even hit the ground.
Its arms were the same; its palms were gaping maws, each finger a towering fang. Wrists, forearms, elbows, upper arms—layers upon layers of gaping maws. With a casual raise of its arm, a continuous, soft swallowing sound echoed all around: gulp, gulp, gulp...
The lingering flavors vanished and disappeared completely. Those sounds, ultimately trapped in the origin of "tasting," could not be detected by the ears, leaving only a terrifying aura that devoured all things, enveloping heaven and earth.
Qin Yu's gaze slowly moved upwards, finally settling on the giant beast's head. At that moment, his heart tightened slightly. The Evolution-Devouring Beast had no face, no eyes, no nose, and no ears. Its head consisted of only one mouth.
A terrifying vertical slit was forcibly cleaved open from the top of the skull, running straight down through the forehead, eyebrows, nose, and jaw, tearing through the chest cavity and splitting the upper body in half.
The head is the mouth, and the giant mouth is the body.
The mouth is devoid of lips, densely packed with countless chewed-up and swallowed Evolution Name. Thousands of broken characters, fragments of strokes, and broken marks are pressed and stuck together, slowly flowing and wriggling along the edge of the crack.
Some strokes barely connect to form a complete character before being torn apart by internal forces; as the fragmented characters circulate, they leave behind ancient marks of varying depths on the surface.
A faint golden hue seeped from the left rim of his mouth, and in that fleeting moment, Qin Yu glimpsed the magnificent scene of the Wanyan Ancient Clan's golden age, the sweet taste of a prosperous era.
The right side flows with a dark, lingering charm, its Daoist aura somber and piercing, concealing the eternal sorrow of the Ancient Clan's demise and the withering of civilization.
A wisp of colorless and odorless primordial remnant quietly floated, its meaning vast and lonely, causing Qin Yu's eyes to narrow slightly. This wisp was the last flavor left in the world by the Great Ancestor before he ascended to the Silent Form Realm.
The three flavors flowed and merged, intertwining with the lingering essence of countless devoured creatures, etching ancient, crisscrossing marks on the massive body of the Evolution-Devouring Beast.
What was truly chilling was the depths of the gigantic maw, devoid of teeth, tongue, throat, and cavity, only an ancient darkness, bottomless and boundless. Qin Yu glanced intently, and the "Seeing Stillness Return to Evolution" deep within his pupils suddenly trembled slightly.
The depths of darkness are not Emptiness.
Countless beings that were swallowed up never completely Return to Emanation, nor did they completely dissipate. A wisp of remnant "vision" flickers in the depths of darkness, never ceasing.
A wisp of lingering "hearing" echoes endlessly in the deathly silence, never ceasing for eternity; a wisp of lingering "smell" permeates the entire realm of darkness, persisting deep within. Deeper still, remnants of "taste," "touch," and "knowledge" are layered upon layered, firmly imprisoned.
All the beings and Wanyan Ones that were swallowed were trapped in this bottomless darkness, condemned to eternal damnation.
They personally tasted the despair of being swallowed up, the Space Silence of their gradual disappearance, the Annihilation of their own Evolution Name being chewed up inch by inch, and the final outcome of themselves gradually breaking away from the trajectory of Wanyan and returning to nothingness.
And this feeling of utter Annihilation, utter despair, and utter vanishing all turned into nourishment, endlessly nourishing the Evolution-Devouring Beast, making it devour more powerfully, grow larger, and become hungrier.
Qin Yu's gaze turned cold and deep. It devoured all things, and all things gave rise to a sense of desolation, which in turn became something it could devour. A self-sufficient, endless, and Endless cycle of devouring.
The Evolution-Devouring Beast's chest rose and fell slightly, and it breathed—not inhaling air, but rather engulfing the heavens and earth, swallowing the remaining flavors of the entire airspace. As its chest expanded, a few traces of the stale flavors it had swallowed slowly seeped out from the fine cracks on its body surface.
Qin Yu saw it clearly: its chest cavity was not a physical body or organs, but a boundless void. Even if it swallowed all the flavors of the world and absorbed all the remnants of the heavens, it could not be filled or filled.
The more it devours, the emptier it becomes; the wider it takes in, the more intense its hunger. It has devoured Wanyan beings, countless ancient Evolution Name, countless possibilities of destiny, and the remaining flavors of heaven and earth. It has devoured everything in this world that it can consume.
Yet the insatiable hunger in its heart never diminished; on the contrary, it grew ever more intense and profound with the endless devouring. The Evolution-Devouring Beast slowly turned its massive body, revealing its entire back.
Without any ordinary skin or muscle texture, the entire spine is a layer of Space Silence left after endless devouring.
Hundreds of millions of incomplete Evolution Name, densely packed and intertwined, cover the entire spine. Some only have the traces of the beginning stroke, some only have the ending stroke, and some have been completely swallowed up in the middle, with the two ends of the incomplete characters hanging in the air facing each other.
Thousands of fragmented characters are stacked and overlapped, forming a desolate and silent sea of broken names. At the very center of the spine, a huge crack runs across the texture, deep and eerie. The crack is hook-shaped, the upper half of which has completely disappeared without a trace, while the lower half retains broken strokes, faintly flowing with ancient Daoist charm.
This is not a battle wound, nor a rift; it is an ancient question that has been largely swallowed up.
Qin Yu's eyes fell on the remnants, and a vague meaning belonging to Taizu slowly emerged in his heart. "If everything is silent, can it be expanded again?" The whole sentence was questioned, and the last word "Yan" was only half a trace, which was shaky.
The fragmented characters flowed slowly, and each time they were nearly complete, a swallowing mark would appear out of thin air, chewing up and swallowing the newly formed strokes once again. The Ultimate question left by the founding emperor for all eternity was ultimately swallowed up by this behemoth of devouring creatures, forever incomplete and never to be perfected.
Qin Yu's gaze finally fell on the end of the spine, which had no tail, no end, Endless, only a huge crack that extended backward and plunged into the deepest darkness of the Rootless Emanation Domain.
Within the crack, there is no light, no darkness, no taste, no emptiness, transcending all forms that the tongue can perceive, with only the eternal, ceaseless desire to devour remaining.
Every trace of flavor, every lingering aroma, every hint of Dao that seeps out from beyond the realm, as soon as it takes shape, will be instantly swallowed up by the crack and reduced to nothing.
As the Sea of Taste recedes, the layers of Wall of Taste thin, devouring not only tastes and remnants, but the very essence of "taste" itself. Qin Yu's mind became completely focused.
As long as this beast exists here, this Rootless Emanation Domain will be perpetually depleted and dissolved layer by layer. The Sea of Taste, the Wall of Taste, the Mountain of Taste, and the Trace of Taste will be swallowed up one after another until there is no more taste or flavor left in the world.
Even if it swallows all flavors, all traces, and all the ways of "tasting," it will still never be complete, never be satiated, forever hungry, and eternally indestructible.
The Evolution-Devouring Beast turned completely around, facing Qin Yu directly. The ancient graveyard, built from billions of wreckage, stood silently in the center of the tasteless world, its oppressive aura covering thousands of miles and enveloping the surrounding wilderness.
It has no eyes, yet it has already experienced Qin Yu's entire existence and understood his true nature. It has no nose, so it doesn't need to trace a scent to know the origins of a newcomer. It has no ears, so it doesn't need to hear a sound to distinguish friend from foe.
The colossal maw that pierced through the chest slowly opened, then boomed—
The ten-thousand-foot -Sea of Tastelessness suddenly receded completely, collapsing entirely. Countless remnants of flavors, solidified for millennia, and billions of different flavor profiles rose into the air, rushing towards the giant maw like a returning current.
It swallowed everything whole, emptying the entire space. The giant maw closed, Evolution-Devouring Beast took a step forward. With its first step, the giant maw beneath its feet swallowed up a section of the sea and void.
The second step involves the thousands of mouths on the legs opening and closing simultaneously, erasing all remaining traces of flavor along the way. The third step involves the writhing and revival of the remains, dragon bones, Evolution Name, and possible remnants all around, with thousands of swallowing intents rising in sync.
All that it devoured simultaneously tasted the flavors of Annihilation, Return to Emanation, and vanishing, while the Evolution-Devouring Beast itself eternally tasted that unsolvable Endless hunger of eternity.
Having devoured everything yet never being satiated, the Evolution-Devouring Beast suddenly stopped, its enormous body standing firmly between heaven and earth. Its swallowing mouths on its feet, the myriad mouths on its limbs, and the countless tiny mouths all over its body closed and fell silent.
The entire Rootless Emanation Domain then fell into Ultimate stillness and eternal silence.
Only the colossal maw that pierced through the top of the skull and chest slowly opened, its bottomless darkness surging forth. The essence of the Great Dao rose directly from the origin of the "Taste" Dao, transforming into a silent Dao sound that resounded throughout heaven and earth.
"I swallowed everything..." The bottomless void deep within his chest slowly expanded, the terrifying Dao intent that could swallow eternity spreading throughout the entire domain. "Yet I can never swallow 'emptiness'."
The half-broken word "Yan" on the back squirmed slightly, and the rhyme was desolate. "If you can let me swallow 'empty' -" the huge mouth opened again, the millions of miles of air space tilted, and the traces of all kinds of flavors hung in the air.
"You will pass." The world fell into a brief, deathly silence, so quiet you could hear a pin drop. In the next instant, the countless remains, names, and traces surrounding the Evolution-Devouring Beast trembled and writhed in unison, as an endless, boundless hunger-inducing intent swept across the eight wastelands and suppressed the four extremes.
From the depths of darkness, the Ultimate Daoist voice descended, carrying an ancient, icy indifference: "If you cannot—" "then you have never existed. There is no third possibility."
Qin Yu remained silent, standing still on the boundless sea. His robes fluttered gently with the fluctuations in space, his expression calm and undisturbed, devoid of joy, anger, fear, or confusion.
The path ahead is clear, the rules are straightforward and unambiguous. If it is swallowed whole, the Tongue Faculty Trial can be broken. If it cannot be done, then there is only one battle. If it cannot win, it will be endlessly devoured and transformed into another fleeting, Nameless remnant on the body of this ancient, ravenous beast.