The main hall of Obsidian Soul City remained as silent as ever.
As Qin Yu stepped into the high hall, the three Soul Seal warmed slightly in his sea of consciousness. The bone scroll was embedded in the main axis of his soul consciousness, the imprint eyes closed in the side ring of his perception, and the lingering voice sank into the deepest part of his consciousness, like an echo that was never to be spoken.
His soul is recovering, and his wounds have healed.
But he knew that this moment of calm did not equate to safety.
Rather, it is a deeper harbinger.
In the center of the high hall, the woman reappeared.
Her appearance caused no disturbance, as if she had never left, but had simply stood "outside of time" in this city, waiting for the closure of some Fate-Cause.
Her silver hair fell down, her expression remained expressionless, neither sad nor happy, as she simply looked at him indifferently.
"Very good,"
You did a great job.
The voice Kong Ling and completely flat.
Qin Yu stopped in front of her, speaking succinctly:
I've retrieved those three items for you.
As he spoke, he flipped his right hand, and three marks in his soul consciousness lit up slightly in response—there was no dazzling light, nor any resonance with heaven and earth.
He simply put them back into the original logic of this place; what was due has already been returned.
The woman tilted her head slightly and glanced at it.
But they neither reached out nor examined it.
She simply said:
Are you going to see 'He'?
His tone was so soft, as if asking if he wanted to continue walking, as if these three precious artifacts were something he had fought tooth and nail to obtain—
That's not what she truly cares about.
Those three remnants, symbolizing "naming," "perception," and "the voice of composition," seemed to her to be nothing more than three fragments of a ritual initiation.
Qin Yu glanced at her, his expression unchanged.
He didn't press her about what she cared about, nor did he care whether she cared or not.
He merely withdrew his soul light, his tone extremely calm yet resolute:
Please take me to see Him.
The wind stirs, the palace remains still.
The woman slowly turned around, her silver hair falling gently like thoughts, leaving a faint ripple on the obsidian floor tiles.
She said nothing more and walked toward the broken ring gate behind the main hall, which had long been sealed off.
Qin Yu followed closely behind.
The grand hall behind them quietly closed its doors.
The three fragments remained embedded in his consciousness, their faint light still lingering.
And ahead lay the true destination of his journey—
"Where He is."
At the far end of the Obsidian Palace, the woman stood before the sealed, broken doorway.
That door was neither gold nor stone, but was formed by countless overlapping and sealed fragments of Fate-Cause and chains of logic, like an unwritten "final chapter page," forever in a state of being unauthorized to be turned.
She did not use a key, nor did she summon any objects.
He simply raised his hand slightly, his five fingers tracing a line through the air.
That moment--
The structure of the space behind the door suddenly twisted, like a sky whose fulcrum had been removed and instantly collapsed.
"Click."
A very soft snapping sound, like some kind of trans-century logical gear being forcibly disengaged.
Qin Yu had not yet had a chance to speak.
The next second, his mind jolted violently!
It wasn't an external attack, but rather the entire structure of the soul seemed to be instantly reversed and folded by the "spatial construct rules"!
--Everything went black.
A brief pause in thought.
When he opened his eyes again, his soul pressure had not yet stabilized, and all he could hear was the Ultimate quiet sound of the wind.
He was already standing in another space.
The surroundings were completely silent; there was no sky, no wind, no fluctuation of spiritual pressure, as if even time itself had frozen.
And ahead of him—
It is a culvert road that collapses inward.
The cave walls are made of irregular black rocks, with a spiderweb-like network of hollow veins on the surface. Each vein seems to hold unspoken words, constantly moving, breaking, and disappearing.
At the end of the culvert, there was a faint light.
Not dazzling, but extremely real.
Like the only entity still "self-illuminating" in this space composed entirely of logical imbalance.
Qin Yu stared at the direction of the light, without taking a step, but stood still for a long time.
He knew that if he passed through that light, he would see the one the woman had spoken of—
"He".
At the end of the culvert, the faint yet persistent light, like a needle in the depths of frozen time and space, pierced through Qin Yu's entire senses.
He didn't leave immediately, but paused briefly at the cave entrance, his left palm slowly pressing on the old wound on his right shoulder. The Azure Ring resonated slightly, preventing his soul from being torn apart by the structure again in the unknown space.
Then he took a step.
One step, two steps...
With each step he took, an unknown Fate-Cause echoed within his soul, as if the world was trembling in advance.
Finally, he emerged from the culvert.
The space in front of us--
It was a domain of existence that could not be defined by the word "space".
There is no up, down, left, or right; there is no ground; there is no sky.
The entire world resembled a wasteland floating layer that had been forcibly crushed and then reassembled, with hundreds of broken "life trajectory remnants," decaying fragments of divine statues, and translucent fragments of boundary-building runes floating about it.
And in the very center of this desolate, timeless place...
"He" sat there quietly.
Qin Yu suddenly stopped, his pupils dilating in shock.
It was neither humanoid, nor divine, nor a ghost.
It was an immeasurable beast.
It resides in the core of the void, its body a fusion of a galactic torrent and a giant, dark serpent. Countless twisting segments coil around it to form a pillar of a ruined world, each spine embedded in the underlying logic of the shattered world, as if this space were a part of itself.
His body was forged from chaotic blood iron, its surface covered with the marks of sealed, nailed, and stripped of his name.
Each word is the last trace left by a certain "existence" before it is erased, such as "god", "realm", "book", "fate", "no", "knowledge"... Countless words flash and intertwine on Him, and then disappear.
He has no "face".
Instead, it has an enormous, gaping maw that grows on the body coiled around the core.
The gigantic maw was half-open, its interior writhing and wailing like billions of souls sealed in an abyss; it was not meant for eating.
Rather, it devours the "name" itself, which is the very concept of meaning and structure.
Qin Yu stood still, sword undrawn, yet his soul was already shaken to its Limit by the fluctuations of His presence.
It's not fear.
Rather, it was a form of oppression he had never encountered before.
It wasn't hostility. It wasn't murderous intent.
Instead:
You shouldn't know me.
You shouldn't have seen me.
"You... shouldn't be allowed into my space."
Qin Yu sensed that deep within his sea of consciousness, the [Reconstruction Remnant Voice] suddenly vibrated violently.
The three relics within him resonated simultaneously, as if forcibly maintaining his "permission to exist" in this place.
He moved.
With just a slight movement of its body, countless fragmented runes within its constructed space shattered instantly, as if the entire Obsidian Soul City would collapse once more.
And "His" voice entered Qin Yu's consciousness for the first time.
That's not language.
Rather, it is a will that does not belong to the language system at all.
"The one who named it."
"Boundary Builder."
"You... the unwritten enemy."
He seemed to... know Qin Yu.
At this moment, Qin Yu remained standing still, his soul pressure surging, but his hand never left his sword.
He knew that the place he was standing at this moment—
This is already outside the allowed boundary range.
He is using his very existence to shake the primordial beast of Fate-Cause that this world was originally sealed away.
This is the word the woman was saying:
"He."
The colossal beast sat silently atop the boundary core, as if the Annihilation of countless epochs had failed to decay it, but instead made its very existence heavier—like an unresolved stone pressing down on Qin Yu's soul.
Faced with that colossal, all-encompassing structure, Qin Yu remained calm.
He slowly stepped forward, cupped his hands in greeting, and spoke in a voice that was neither humble nor arrogant, but carried a clear and respectful tone:
"Senior."
"I entered this place by chance, disturbing your eternal slumber, and I am still unaware of the true meaning of this realm."
"If you permit, senior, please escort me away from here."
As soon as he finished speaking, the surrounding space seemed to turn a page in a lifeless book.
The previously motionless beast suddenly opened its eyes.
--Those were organs that could not be described as "eyes".
Like two anti-entropy abysses that devour the starry sky, they slowly lit up!
His gaze fell on Qin Yu, and for a moment, the entire space seemed to freeze.
Qin Yu felt that every thread of his soul and every segment of his Fate-Cause was locked in place, as if he were being skinned and interrogated.
The strange beast spoke in a low voice, its tone like a tome of Fate Canon being turned over and over, pressing down on the very logic of space.
Since we're here, we might as well make the best of it.
You now completely belong here.
The moment the voice fell, the space behind Qin Yu suddenly trembled.
He glanced to the side instinctively.
That one glance sent a jolt through his mind, and the Source-Extinguishing Divine Sword in his hand almost spontaneously resonated!
Mountains of corpses, seas of blood.
Deep within the core behind that strange beast lay piles of hundreds of millions of bones and remains!
They were dressed in various styles: some wore the radiant robes of the God Clan, some wore the battle armor of cultivators, some wore the simple clothes of unnamed individuals, and some even wore the tattered armor of world-constructors.
Some of them had their hearts ripped out, some had their faces shaved off, and some were even forcibly integrated into the bodies of strange beasts, becoming part of their shells!
That wasn't a deep sleep, nor was it a death in battle.
That is the final destination after being rejected by the boundary construct.
Each corpse had tried to leave, break free, or question "Him".
Their destination is at His feet.
Qin Yu's pupils contracted sharply.
"... This is hardly a meeting."
"This was a trap that woman set from the moment I stepped into this city."
The woman's composure, her indifference towards the three broken items, her seemingly gentle guidance... all of these transformed into a single line in his mind:
"Sacrifice guidance."
He no longer hesitated.
His right hand slowly reached for the scabbard behind him, no more words were spoken, and no more respect was shown.
The Source-Extinguishing Divine Sword slowly emerged from the sky, its blade as black as lacquer, its edge faintly glowing with a ghostly light, as it slashed diagonally through the void!
"You won't let me leave?"
His eyes turned cold, his words like knives:
"Then cut this dead end—from your own body."
The space suddenly felt tight.
The strange beast remained motionless.
But beneath its feet, the souls of the dead seemed to be activated, and the core of the boundary began to vibrate.
"He" gave a half-smile, his voice low and deep, like the echo of an ancient curse:
"Then... I'll show you the price of leaving here."
The core of the Silent Realm, the bottom of the structured realm, where all things collapse into nothingness.
Qin Yu before Him, his sword already drawn, the Ring Master Soul Diagram behind him swirling slightly, the ten rings subtly reflecting like a net woven from Fate-Cause, constructing a soul domain array around Him dominated by the "logic of existence".
"He," that colossal beast that blots out the sky World-Covering, has not yet moved.
But the surrounding space had already changed color.
The first wave of fluctuations was not an attack, but rather a collision of soul pressure.
An inescapable, unavoidable, and inexplicable oppression, like a tsunami ravaging the soul, slowly emanated from the center of His abyss-like form.
Every inch of air, every curve of spacetime, seemed to be saying one thing to Qin Yu:
You shouldn't be here.
The soul pressure within Qin Yu's body spontaneously rose to meet it.
That was the main soul diagram automatically tuning its frequency. Before the sword moved or the seal was drawn, the composition was already floating and locked in the air. The ring-based logic of the ten Fate Cause Master Seal slowly operated, transforming into a pressure core composed of "existence permission" and "naming structure".
The two sides have not even clashed yet, but the logic of the battlefield has already been violently shaken!
He uttered a soft sound, a sound that was not quite a word, yet it was enough to extinguish any glimmer of "self-awareness" in the world.
Your logic is flawed from the outset.
His soul pressure instantly converged, then erupted in the next breath!
Boom!!!
Qin Yu's body was forcibly pressed three inches into the ground. The Ring Master Soul Diagram spun violently behind him, and rings of Fate-Cause appeared all around him, blocking the cognitive rejection and identity elimination forces coming from all directions!
He whispered:
"Fate Cause Master Seal, Fate Ring, and Rank- Linked-Stage Judgment."
Bang!!
The seven consecutive pressure structures within the space were directly interrupted. The "hierarchical pressure" it released was judged as "illegal structures" by Qin Yu's main seal and forcibly pushed back under the original laws!
He growled, increasing the pressure once more!
Qin Yu responded again, taking half a step forward. The sword light didn't flash, but it was drawn out from within his sea of consciousness:
"The Source-Extinguishing Divine Sword - Sever the Void in a Single Thought"
Buzz!!
It is not an attack, but the power to sever His thoughts!
The entire battlefield at this moment--
The "right to actively conceive ideas" has been severed for three breaths!
As His thoughts were thwarted, Qin Yu also suffered the structural vibration, spitting out a mouthful of black blood from between his teeth, and a slight crack appeared on the right side of his soul consciousness.
Both sides simultaneously retreated half a step.
He breathed softly, seemingly surprised that this human could stand firm before the "power of original sin that constitutes the world."
And Qin Yu--
She simply wiped away the bloodstains from her lips.
"Soul suppression... is that all?"
He stepped forward.
The Ring Master Soul Diagram and the Ten Life Seals have slowly emerged in a semi-transparent state, their battle intent as if the book had not yet been turned.
"Are you ready to take my first sword strike?"
He slightly raised his head, and fragments of consciousness flowed in his eyes, like blazing stars burning out.
No response was given.