Everything—first, silence. A deathly silence.
Amidst the ruins, the collapsed vaulted ceiling of the grand hall, the half-ruined star bridge, and the collapsed soul lamp platform stand silently like cold corpses. Only a gentle breeze sweeps through the broken pillar bases, stirring up wisps of black dust that seem to seep from the ground.
Then--
Roar!
Scream!!
Like the sudden burst of the throats of wronged souls imprisoned in the rift of tens of thousands of years, the sound was like the echo of a curse during a human sacrifice, the last wail of billions of Fate Soul before being torn apart, surging in from all directions like an explosion!
Boom--!!!
The ground shook violently, and the earth beneath Qin Yu's feet instantly caved in an inch. Amidst the flying debris, blood-red soul chains shot out from the cracks in the ground!
Immediately afterwards, countless mist souls condensed into blood-red orbs of light in the sky, falling from the Xingyun. Each one was wrapped in strange inscriptions and the mark of the dead, like "remnants of Fate Soul" that had been written and then erased!
Yao Zhiyan's eyes widened suddenly, her voice trembling. "These are... all the wronged souls that were swallowed up by this ruined city! They... have never disappeared!!"
Whoosh--!
Qin Yu had already reacted. With a swift movement, the azure shield suddenly expanded, and he drew the [Source-Extinguishing Divine Sword]. The sword's edge flashed like a star falling from the sky, Fate Cause Chain his body intertwined and spun, with light patterns flowing like a ring!
He shouted in a low, deep voice, "Retreat ten feet, protect yourselves—they are not undead, they are... 'Fate Soul feedback' constructed from fragments of memory!"
Having said that, he flicked his sword, and a nearly transparent sword light slashed straight towards the northern void!
"Sever the Void in a Single Thought."
The sword light pierced through the void, and the hundreds of red souls that were the first to charge were instantly frozen in mid-air. Then, they were cleaved from the inside by the invisible chains of rules into fragments of causal light, which exploded with a bang!
But this is just the beginning!
Amidst the ruins, countless vengeful spirits roared forth. They varied in appearance; some were clad in broken battle armor, some were reduced to skulls and soul flames, and others were twisted remains resembling out-of-control conceptual entities, their structures belonging to no known species!
They weren't there to attack—they were there to devour the newcomers and drag them into the deepest depths of the Sunken Soul Ruined Capital!
Beside Yao Zhiyan appeared the core seal ring of the "Nine-Aspect Revolving Splendor Array," a mechanical treasure given to her by her master. A series of glazed lock arrays appeared around her, drawing the incoming soul chains into the illusion array space.
Qin Yu swept his sword across the right side!
"Sever the Soul in Nine Silences!"
In an instant, nine aurora-shaped life-severing marks were drawn from the sword's edge, spiraling towards the surging tide of souls. Countless wronged souls screamed in agony before turning into fragments in mid-air—their soul consciousness was completely annihilated.
Blood and spirits surged on the ground, and a crimson tide fell from the sky!
The entire Sunken Soul Ruined Capital been transformed into a living battlefield in a sea of the dead!
Qin Yu, shrouded in a halo of azure light, stood in the center, his sword pointing diagonally, his long hair flying, and his eyes as cold and sharp as starlight Realm Breaking!
He whispered:
"You've come at the perfect time."
"Let me see—what exactly does this ruined city's underworld want to bury?"
Beneath the shattered mirror of the sky, the storm of the undead continued to surge, while deeper within the ruined city, a sealed, pitch-black coffin was slowly awakening...
The heavens and earth trembled, and billions of souls roared like a tidal wave!
Above the ruins of the Sunken Soul Ruined Capital, it was as if the gates of hell had been completely opened. The sky, a tapestry of gray-red and annihilated gold, was utterly submerged by countless wronged souls, like a death wave attempting to engulf and erase Qin Yu and Yao Zhiyan from the world beyond the era.
--A wave of the dead surged forth from behind the ruins of the tall buildings ahead, countless ghostly figures, withered bones, and half-dead spirits tearing through the void, each carrying a self-destructive curse and suppression.
"Zhiyan, turn the Soul-Locking Array three steps to the right and create distance!"
"Understood, Senior Brother!"
Qin Yu took a step forward, and starlight roared within his sea of consciousness. The [Source-Extinguishing Divine Sword] appeared beside him, and pure black, Nameless flames ignited on its blade, as if burning away "existence" itself inch by inch!
He raised the broken sword high in his hand, and three halos appeared around him:
--Destiny 'Fate-Cause: Realm Breaking Seal!
--The Law of Fate: The Lock of Cause and Effect!
--Silent Origin: Ring Master Soul Diagram!!
A sharp shout--
"Fate Trajectory Profiling: Discontinuous Soul Removal!"
With a swift stroke of his sword towards the sky, a massive outline of destiny suddenly appeared in the void, its surface covered with countless broken life lines. It then plummeted down, like a gate of judgment suppressing heaven and earth.
Just as the first wave of the Undead Charge stepped within fifty feet of Qin Yu, the trajectory of fate suddenly plummeted!
--boom!!!
All the souls froze in mid-air instantly, and the next second, they were completely severed from the causal logic structure!
There was no struggle, no screams. Those souls that had wailed countless times seemed to have their cries erased at this moment, annihilated in an instant!
The crimson shadows disintegrated, transforming into countless strands of gray, broken souls that scattered in all directions, as if a gray blizzard had instantly engulfed the battlefield!
At the same time, Yao Zhiyan stepped forward, and with a tremor of light from her sleeve, nine Glazed Illusion Cores instantly unfolded from her fingertips!
[Mechanical Treasure - Nine-Aspect Revolving Splendor Array - Soul Strike Form]
Her long hair flew in the wind, her Qingyi robes fluttered, and nine layers of illusionary rings hovered in the air around her. Each ring contained a musical structure of a different frequency, and strands of light intertwined to form a flowing illusionary sound tower!
"If the soul continues to stir, then the melody must be sealed to stop!"
"--Illusion: The Song of Nine Seals!"
Boom--!!
The nine rings resonated in unison, creating a musical resonance that rippled through the void like a curtain of light. Countless wronged souls, like a tide, approached within five feet of her, their bodies cracking as if a mirror were collapsing, and finally, without a sound of blood or flesh, they exploded into countless fragments of light!
These vengeful spirits are not truly alive or dead, but rather fragments of consciousness left behind by the "disappeared" in the Starlight Illusory Realm. They possess the characteristic of "illogical pursuit," and ordinary attacks cannot stop their surge.
However, Qin Yu and Yao Zhiyan were currently in control of skill structures at the Fate-Cause and Origin levels, which directly annihilated it from the source of soul consciousness and the logical fuse!
At this moment, tens of thousands of souls surged out wildly from the air, the ground, underground, and in the shadows of buildings, and soul fire fell from the sky like a meteor shower, covering the entire ruined city district in a second!
Qin Yu remained expressionless as he unfolded the last page of the Book of Fate Law in his palm.
He gently wielded the Yuanbi brush, the tip drawing a stroke in the air:
"Destiny Seal - Abyss-Turning Star Platform!"
With this single stroke, the entire battlefield space twisted, instantly reversing the course of all the wronged souls approaching Qin Yu, as if they had been bounced back from their fate's trajectory by an invisible force.
"You come from ruin—and I will repay you with ruin!"
"Time Reversal: Fate Rebounds!"
Tens of thousands of souls were pulled into the cracks of the Wheel of Time, and were directly twisted and pulverized before they could even manifest!
Meanwhile, Yao Zhiyan's Illusionary Sound Array was operating at full power, with the nine rings merging into one, ultimately condensing into a giant Illusionary Sound Halberd, which was dragged out from the void!
She let out a delicate shout:
"Phantom Extreme: Starry Night Finale!"
The sonic halberd suddenly cleaved down, forming a massive wave of sonic patterns hundreds of feet long that swept across the entire main street of the ruins. Hundreds of souls vanished like sand in an avalanche in this single strike!
The heavens and earth trembled!
Within five breaths, the first wave of wronged souls swept away and Annihilation from the entire ruined capital.
Fragments of lingering souls and remnants of life force floated in the air, and the ground was covered with broken runes and unresolved threads.
Qin Yu sheathed his sword, and the azure light slowly receded.
He gazed towards the direction of the still partially opened black coffin in the distance and whispered:
"That thing... should wake up now."
The tide of wronged souls swept away, and the world fell into a brief silence.
The dark gray sky seemed to have been drained of its last breath, and deathly silence spread throughout the entire Sunken Soul Ruined Capital. There was not a breath of wind, not a sound, only a chilling and desperate stillness.
Yao Zhiyan had just finished dismantling the "Nine-Aspect Revolving Splendor Array" and hadn't even caught her breath when—
Boom!!!
A roar that shook the Nine Nether, like the sound of countless worlds shattering, suddenly exploded from beneath the ancient, gold-plated coffin in the center of the ruined capital!
The entire earth trembled violently, numerous stone pillars collapsed, and countless cracks spread rapidly like a spider web. In an instant, the ruins stretching for dozens of miles seemed to have been "forced up from the depths of the Destiny Era" by some colossal being!
The ground beneath the coffin—risen a hundred feet!
It was as if it wasn't a coffin, but a mountain, sealed as a coffin!
Rumble rumble rumble!!!
The black and gold stone coffin slowly cracked open, and twisted golden nails with soul patterns appeared at the four corners of the coffin lid. One by one, they fell off the lid with a slight tremor. With each nail falling off, a flash of destructive lightning appeared in the sky, and the space experienced a momentary narrative vacuum tearing apart!
"Its existence was never permitted."
But it is waking up.
The coffin lid collapsed completely!
Wisps of dreamlike mist, deeper than the night, emanated from the coffin. These were not ordinary mists, but rather an entropy-driven flow of memories and causality intertwined—each wisp like a "forgotten self" returning after dying a thousand times, twisting and struggling in the void.
Then—the creature slowly rose to its feet.
He neither "sat up" nor "walked out," but rather slowly appeared "from the back of existence" in a way that distorted the logic of dimensions.
--As if forcibly pulled back to reality from an eternal dream.
His figure is almost impossible to fully describe in words.
His upper body was draped in a half-broken ruling robe, with patterns of karmic curses appearing on the cuffs. His shoulder bones were exposed, inlaid with fragments of a broken life monument.
His face was covered by a black and gold veil, revealing only a wisp of eerie blue fire in his eyes. There was no consciousness in his eyes, as if he was merely a remnant will "given a gaze".
Behind him, rings of "Dream Engravings" kept emerging—the afterimages of the myriad worlds he had seen while he was asleep, slowly rotating behind him like a nightmare trajectory, weaving together a huge remnant soul wheel, with each layer of the wheel burning with different colors of destructive Fate Soul fire.
He didn't utter a word, yet countless dead consciousnesses knelt and whispered behind him, as if all the remaining Fate Soul in the entire Sunken Soul Ruined Capital were holding an unspoken funeral for his "return".
Suddenly, abyssal-colored soul ring clouds surged in the sky, compressing the entire space into a gray-gold bubble.
Yao Zhiyan's heart skipped a beat. "Senior brother... this is..."
Qin Yu narrowed his eyes slightly, gripped the Source-Extinguishing Divine Sword tightly in his right hand, and said in a low voice:
--Dream Records: The Waking Enforcer.
"He is the 'Dream Guardian' of this entire ruined city, and also one of the 'Enforcers of Oblivion'."
"Those who come here will be purged and their existence extinguished."
Just as the creature was about to step out of the coffin, a fragmented structure suddenly appeared in the sky, as if forcibly left behind and shaken down upon the world:
"Now that you've stepped out of the dream—it proves you never truly slept."
"Awaken, Waking Enforcer."
"Jud them at the cost of forgetting—why are they still alive?"
In the blink of an eye, all the colors of the world faded away, and the boundary between dream and reality was completely erased!
He finally opened his eyes!
The sky has shattered.
The Dream Chronicles: The Waking Enforcer stands atop the broken coffin, the winds of destiny swirling around him, creating countless layers of fragmented spectra. Each spectrum represents a completely erased memory, or a fragment of dream consciousness that should never exist in the world.
He didn't move, but the entire ruined city began to collapse and sink, as if this forgotten land was "bowing down to him."
Just as Qin Yu and Yao Zhiyan were deciding on their next move--
A soft sound suddenly echoed in the void.
"Click."
A very faint, almost inaudible, broken sound.
Then, from the spaces on the left and right sides of Dream Chronicles: The Waking Enforcer, two distorted soul frequency vortexes suddenly appeared, as if something had been forcibly pulled back from the [unreal] to this place.
Two figures slowly emerged from the vortex.
Qin Yu's expression changed drastically, his consciousness trembling slightly. "... This is..."
Yao Zhiyan gripped the array core tightly, her pupils contracting. "How could this be...? That's not... ourselves!?"
Yes.
The first figure to emerge from the mist of dream consciousness wore a dark blue outer robe, with long hair as black as night, a blue light swirling around his waist, and held the Source-Extinguishing Divine Sword. His steps, aura, and even the frequency of his Fate-Cause vibrations were exactly the same as Qin Yu's —the flowing light nodes of the Ring Master Soul Diagram were exactly the same!
The other figure, dressed in azure feather gauze, with long, flowing hair cascading over her shoulders, a faint golden butterfly mark embedded between her brows, and the Nine Phases Array Mark hovering around her, was none other than a complete replica of Yao Zhiyan herself.
But the difference is--
There was no emotion in their eyes.
There was only a single, pale, soul-piercing pupil, its opening rotating with a memory-deletion structure identical to that of the Waking Enforcer.
It's as if they aren't "copies," but rather beings that have been reshaped after being conceptualized as a mirror image.
"Mirror Life Structure... is not simply copying..."
"They are a reconstruction of our existence after stripping the 'definition' of our existence from our dream consciousness." Qin Yu murmured coldly, the Source-Extinguishing Divine Sword lightly raised in his hand. "This is not the real you and me... This is the cognitive version of 'you and me' deciphered from the dreams of those Waking Enforcer."
"They don't possess our current will, but they possess all the settings we once had."
When the two mirror images stood completely to the left and right of the Waking Enforcer, the entire world seemed to enter some kind of "pre-set cycle."
Countless structural inscriptions began to appear in the void around them, each one recording—
"Fate's structural error: When you see yourself, you become part of the dream."
"The precedent is established: the Mirror Fate Rejudgment."
"--Activate the 'Dream-Constructing and Understanding Method'."
In an instant, the finger of the Waking Enforcer in the dream gently touched the ground.
"Hiss--"
The entire space of the Sunken Soul Ruined Capital suddenly twisted!
The ground shattered, and the sky receded!
Beneath Qin Yu and Yao Zhiyan's feet, a massive Dream Soul Array emerged. Its structure was extremely similar to, yet completely unfamiliar with, the Fate Track, resembling a superimposed version of some kind of "hybrid protagonist's metrical pattern." Its essence was:
Allow the original body and its mirror Fate Soul to coexist on the same logical frequency, and then force a replacement.
Yao Zhiyan whispered, "He wants us... to exchange our right to exist with those two things that 'aren't us'?"
Qin Yu chuckled lightly, "Since they constitute our 'old definition'."
"Then let me—rewrite 'us now'."
He gently closed his eyes, and in his sea of consciousness, the Book of Fate Law slowly unfolded its last page.
The light cascaded down like an inverted Milky Way.
The sword moved slightly.
The killing intent surged like a tide!