Flames surged and torrents rushed.
Qin Yu before the precipice, gazing at the Obsidian Soul City, which slumbered at the edge of the sea of fire.
He attempted to soar through the air, summoning fluctuations in his soul consciousness to create an aerial gliding current, but the next moment—
His body suddenly froze.
There was no response; it was just emptiness.
He frowned slightly, attempting to use teleportation to compose the image, mentally drawing the Fate-Cause of "position shift"—
But the moment it was evoked, the entire space, like an "undefined variable," completely swallowed up the concept itself!
"... Failed?"
Qin Yu's eyes deepened, and a chill ran through him.
Not only flight, but also all technical actions related to "spatial authority," such as spatial jumps, location shifts, and teleportation, are possible here—
All banned.
He paused for a moment, then stretched out his hand, a wisp of pale gray soul light extending from his fingertips, touching the ground—
Sure enough, the underlying textures of the void presented an extremely strange state:
It's not that it's "unusable," but rather that it has been "redefined as a state where it cannot be used outside its bounds."
"... It's 'space component lockdown'."
"The space here no longer allows any interference from higher-dimensional logic... Even flight has been sealed as a 'Does Not Exist form of action'."
This setting is almost equivalent to forcibly depriving cultivators of any control over the underlying logic of the world.
This is not a combat lockdown, but rather an "absolute logical restriction" actively written by the world-builder.
Once you enter this boundary, you can only move forward step by step along the original physical path.
Qin Yu calmly withdrew his hand, a sharp glint appearing in his eyes instead:
"... That's interesting."
The next moment, he lifted his foot and took his first step.
Scorching hot rock fragments exploded beneath my feet, and my soul surged like a river of fire.
Without hesitation or looking back, he walked step by step along the floating stone bridge that meandered like a serpent of flames toward the silent Obsidian Soul City, which resembled the remains of a god.
Behind him, flames surged skyward; before him, deathly silence remained shrouded in mystery.
He knew he was stepping into a boundary of Annihilation Structure that had never been written by history.
And hidden within that black city...
It's far more than just a seal.
The bridge collapsed, casting its shadow; flames surged and roared.
Qin Yu walked slowly along the floating island stone path, carved by the raging torrent and riddled with fissures in the volcanic rock. Each step was steady as a bell, yet he always felt that... the world was quietly slowing down.
At first, he thought it was just a hallucination caused by exhaustion.
But after walking several hundred feet, his mind began to lag behind his steps, and the feedback from his externalized spiritual sense also became sluggish.
He sensed something was wrong.
"... Time Flow."
He stopped in his tracks, his eyes slightly narrowed.
The "Fate-Cause Trajectory" slowly unfolded in his sea of consciousness, but it seemed to have encountered some kind of "structural-level freeze." The speed of every thought was being delayed layer by layer, and even "thought afterimages" and "disjointed actions" appeared.
It was as if the whole world had forgotten his existence.
Dragged inch by inch into the abyss of time.
He slightly raised his finger and gently drew a line in the air, sending out a faint test wave of life chain. The result was exceptionally clear:
"Spatial dimension locked, right to flow in temporal logic... has been stripped away by the main domain."
This is not simply "time slowing down," but rather Obsidian Soul City itself—
It completely reclaims the "subjective time right" of those who are nearby.
If he continues forward now, he might even be nailed to a moment of "being slowly written".
However, just as he was preparing to try to resist this time suppression with his own Fate Soul—
"Call--"
An indescribable aura quietly wafted over.
It wasn't the wind, yet it carried a cutting sensation that seemed to pierce through everything.
Qin Yu's body tensed instinctively, his entire soul senses feeling that "structural impact" that belonged neither to wind, space, nor physical form.
Annihilation Wind.
His expression darkened slightly. "... Time Logic Annihilation Wind?!"
This is a rule echo that can only form within a boundary where the "temporal sovereignty layer has been modified".
Wherever it blows, it not only slows down thinking and obliterates language, but even the "future intention of the action to take place" is completely erased before it arrives!
"Call--!"
The Annihilation Wind struck again.
Qin Yu's robes were lifted, and the rocks beside him shattered, turning into meaningless fragments of light that dissipated in the wind.
He paused slightly, his right hand resting on his sword.
The Source-Extinguishing Divine Sword trembled slightly, but did not respond proactively.
This is an absolute weakening force of cause and effect flowing from the Constructionless Wind Domain, an undefined wind in the Annihilation Epoch Realm, which even the sword spirit could not predict.
But Qin Yu did not back down.
His gaze remained calm and serene.
He knew that as long as he walked this path again and passed through the Obsidian Soul Gate that held flames and lost divine essence, he would be able to uncover the true secrets of this lost realm.
Then--
He stepped into the place where the Annihilation Wind flowed, and walked toward the city gate, which bore the inscription of divine bones and stood silently at the end of the fire abyss.
Boom--
Accompanied by a heavy, resonant sound like the turning of a life axis, the gate to the soul, as dark as a frozen night sky, slowly opened.
Qin Yu stepped inside, and the Annihilation Wind ceased.
The scene before my eyes has completely changed.
Qin Yu stepped into the city gate, and the wind in his soul suddenly stopped. All sounds seemed to be sucked away at that moment, leaving only him and the slumbering ancient city in the world.
This was not the world logic he was familiar with, nor did it belong to any epochal space within the Annihilation Epoch Realm.
This place... seems like a fragment left behind by some "Nameless constructor" on their deathbed.
The obsidian ground is not made of stone, but is forged from intricately interwoven dark gray soul patterns, interspersed with ancient metal imprints and fragments of spirit bones. Faint light rises from its gaps, like the lingering breath of memories that have not been extinguished by the passage of time.
With each step, faint ripples spread across the ground, as if the entire castle were gently "breathing."
The dome hangs high, devoid of sun and moon, with only an inverted "gray sun" embedded in the center of the sky, surrounded by millions of long-extinguished gray star remnants. They do not turn or move, yet they orbit each other in some invisible orbit, as if simulating a celestial rhythm that can never be restarted.
Qin Yu walked through a straight main corridor, with mottled statues standing on both sides.
These statues are tall and broken, their shapes indistinct. The only thing they have in common is that their faces have all been carved off by human hands, as if they were once beings with "names" that have been completely erased from memory and logic.
Some of the statues still hold broken writing brushes, tattered books of light, and half-extinguished keystones, resembling some kind of long-abandoned "defining propositions."
They stood at the end of the long corridor, facing a huge circular hall, their expressions neither sad nor angry, as if they were waiting for—someone who would never return.
In the center of the hall was a huge collapsed circular platform, with a cracked piece of black crystal embedded in its center.
Faint inscriptions appeared on the stone, reading:
"Before all destinies were thrown into disarray, this was God's writing table."
Now, the place Emptiness.
Only desolation, smoldering embers, and inverted light wander silently through this desolate, ruined place.
The entire Obsidian Soul City was like a "dead definition of existence"—magnificent and tranquil, yet devoid of any warmth.
Even the air itself is no longer filled with scents, but rather with the "remnants of old world logic" whose concepts have long since solidified.
Qin Yu slowly walked into the depths, his footsteps silent. Only behind him, the layers of soul patterns and imprints shimmered with a faint light, as if the entire city... had remembered a true name that had been forcibly erased because of his arrival.
The further in you go into the castle, the quieter it becomes.
The soul light has long since faded, only the silent echoes of the composition wander across the ground, as if countless namers who once existed here are carrying out a narrative that can no longer continue.
Just as Qin Yu stepped into the central circular hall and looked up at the dome—
He looked up.
The next moment, his pupils contracted sharply.
--That's a corpse.
A colossal being, defying description as either a "god" or a "creature," hangs upside down above the dome, stretching across the city's Star Abyss- like sky.
Its entire body is shaped like stars and flesh intertwined, with dozens of giant limbs dragging broken chains hanging in the air like twisted star trails. Each limb is wrapped with abandoned chains of destiny, as if the rules that were once used to suppress the world are now all broken and hanging like dying branches.
Its body is not made of skin, but is pieced together from countless twisted and fused fragments of soul remains and crystals of light and flame, resembling a high-dimensional shell forged from "destruction itself".
Its body was so large that it almost covered the entire dome of Obsidian Soul City. Gray-black fragments occasionally fell from its intertwined limbs. These fragments turned into dust the moment they hit the ground, like blank thoughts after a concept has been recycled.
The most terrifying thing was that face.
If that can be called a face.
Its face was forcibly peeled off, shattered, and then covered with a layer of star-marked bone plates, densely covered with hundreds of sealed "soul language seals," each like a nail piercing into the skull, as if it would never again be allowed to utter the "words of existence" in this lifetime.
Its eye sockets were long since dried up, but embers still flickered in the remaining warmth.
Qin Yu remained completely still, a cold glint flashing in his eyes.
"... He is not dead."
This is not just a corpse.
This is a destiny master whose right to exist has been completely revoked—his essence has not yet been completely erased by the world, but his "subjective meaning" has long been sealed, severed, and locked by the entire epoch.
He is hung upside down here, like an ancient chapter of revelation that must never be turned again, used to intimidate future generations, or... warn those who come after.
At this moment, the dome of Obsidian Soul City resembled a palace in the night, and the enormous corpse hung high like a symbol of denial.
He seemed to be gazing upon the entire history of the world's failures, while he himself—
It's failure itself.
A drop of pitch-black soul liquid slid off his body and landed silently at Qin Yu's feet.
There was no echo on the ground.
But deep within his soul, he heard a whisper so low it was almost inaudible—
"... Do you remember your 'name'?"
That single drop of soul fluid, falling silently from the corpse on the dome, struck the ground like a tear in the surface of the world.
In that very instant—
The entire Obsidian Soul City trembled suddenly, the laws of light and darkness deep within the space were disrupted, the flow of fire patterns ceased, and the remains of all the statues on the Soul Wall trembled slightly.
Then, an extremely subtle qualitative change occurred in the air.
It wasn't murderous intent, nor was it the power of a spirit.
Rather, it is the arrival of a phenomenon where "existence itself is the limit."
Qin Yu looked up alertly.
Inside the Soul Hall, a halo of light suddenly condensed before the previously Emptiness obsidian throne.
That was not ordinary light, but rather a confluence of thousands of "annihilated starlight," as if the "once-existing" was flowing backward into a future that was "not allowed to appear."
The light slowly took on a human shape.
It was a woman.
She stood silently in the void, her silver hair falling down and swaying slightly with the rhythm of the space. Her skin was snow-white and slightly cold, yet it did not lack the warmth of life.
Her eyes were slightly closed, and there seemed to be an ancient, serene light between her brows. Her eyelashes were like starlight projections, and her lips were lightly pursed as if making a silent vow.
Most striking were the star-like streaks of light that appeared on her brow, shoulders, neck, and under her eyes.
They do not appear sacred, but rather like remnants forcibly stripped from divine status.
Above her head, a "Annihilation Radiance Halo" was entwined with fragments of light and lightning from a Realm Splitting, like a broken divine halo or some kind of broken shackles of destiny.
She made no sound, yet the entire Soul City fell silent the moment she arrived.
It was as if she wasn't "entering this place," but rather—
It is "remembered" from within this Silent Realm itself.
Qin Yu looked at her, and a serious expression that he had never shown before finally appeared in his eyes.
She is neither a spirit nor a lingering remnant of a divine corpse.
She is the only being in this Obsidian Soul City that hasn't been "deleted".
The woman slowly opened her eyes, and the light swirled in her pupils like fragments of time reflected in the sunlight.
She looked at Qin Yu without hostility or emotion.
He spoke softly, his voice like a solitary echo rising from the depths of a broken abyss:
"You... shouldn't have come."