Karmic Chains Lock the Forest · The First Fracture in the Fate Trajectory

The moment Qin Yu received the ancient scroll, the tattered scroll emitted an ancient fluctuation, like a whisper from billions of years ago echoing in the empty castle. The scroll trembled slightly, and a faint glow flowed from between the cracks, as if some long-dormant will was awakening, quietly resonating with the aura within Qin Yu's body.

In an instant, the Azure Ring deep within Qin Yu's sea of consciousness trembled slightly, and rings of azure light spread out from the depths of the Silent Origin, illuminating the entire sea of consciousness as if it were a sea of azure stars. The azure light fell like rain, stirring up countless Karmic Dust and fragments of the Silent Origin, which condensed into a blurry scene deep within Qin Yu's sea of consciousness—a vast expanse of butterfly shadows, covering the sky and the earth, like an ocean of eternal stars.

Azure Ring's voice echoed in his mind, deep and solemn, yet tinged with barely suppressed excitement. "Little Qinzi, with this map, we can more accurately locate the Silent Abyss Butterfly Sea... Look, that butterfly shadow is the echo of the Silent Origin Soul Butterfly Sea. If my deduction is correct, the abyss marked on the map is its entrance."

Azure ripples spread across the sea of consciousness, seemingly intertwining with the radiance of the ancient map, forming a strange resonance. Each ripple carried an indescribable power, as if revealing the supreme opportunities and terrifying dangers hidden in the unknown land ahead.

Qin Yu's gaze was deep as he slowly traced the tattered edges of the ancient map with his palm, silently resolving, "No matter what, I must find the Tear of the Silent Origin Soul Butterfly and awaken Yunyi..."

Azure Ring's voice echoed again in his mind, Ultimate yet resolute. "Remember, Little Qinzi, this is not just your obsession, but also a vow I must uphold. With the map, the road ahead, though treacherous, is now clear. Next, it depends on whether you can withstand the true trial of the Realm of Primordial Echoes."

At this moment, the castle fell silent, starlight fell, and Qin Yu and Hong Xiuxiang exchanged a glance, a new light igniting in each other's eyes.

Inside the ancient castle, a soft, hazy light flowed slowly across the dilapidated dome, illuminating Mengxin's serene figure. Qin Yu took a deep breath, clasped his hands in a fist salute, and said in a steady and respectful voice, "Thank you for the incomplete map and guidance, senior. I will remember it forever."

Mengxin gazed at him tenderly, her eyes filled with the sorrow accumulated over the years, yet also with a renewed hope rekindled by Qin Yu. She slowly nodded, her slender fingers slightly raised in return, her voice soft yet firm. "Young Master Qin, there's no need for such formality. That you and Miss Hong could come here and tell me that my sister is still alive is already a tremendous stroke of fate. If you return safely from this journey, it will be a blessing from heaven for my Meng family. At that time, I will surely leave this ancient castle with you, reunite with my sister, and break her seal."

As she finished speaking, Mengxin gazed intently at Qin Yu, as if she wanted to etch this entrustment into his Fate Soul.

Qin Yu and Hong Xiuxiang exchanged a glance and nodded solemnly. They bowed once more, bidding a solemn farewell to Mengxin. The starlight in the castle suddenly twinkled, as if responding to this solemn vow.

The moment they stepped out of the castle, the world suddenly shifted, the aura of the stele forest gradually faded away, and outside the dense forest, the protective power lingering in the void rose again, slowly sending them back to the exit of the Realm-Cause Dense Forest.

The wind whistled through the forest, carrying strange echoes. Qin Yu turned back, taking one last look in the direction of the ancient castle, his gaze unwavering.

"Xiuxiang, let's go." Qin Yu said in a deep voice, clutching the tattered map tightly in his hand.

Hong Xiuxiang responded softly, her eyes revealing an unprecedented determination.

The two walked out of the dense forest side by side, and the world unfolded in an instant, revealing a vast and unknown territory ahead. The fragmented map trembled in Qin Yu's palm, its ethereal light flowing and gradually guiding a path, pointing directly to a mysterious area shrouded in mist ahead.

Light and shadow intertwine, mountains and rivers are broken and then reassembled, as if to foreshadow the perilous yet opportune path ahead.

Qin Yu's mind stirred, Azure Ring vibrated slightly deep within his sea of consciousness, echoing in his heart like a soft whisper, "Little Qinzi, the next place may be the true entrance to the Silent Abyss Butterfly Sea."

Qin Yu's eyes flashed like lightning, his steps were steady, and with the Hong Xiuxiang lingering, he resolutely stepped into the unknown depths indicated by the incomplete map.

After emerging from the dense forest, Qin Yu and Hong Xiuxiang flew along, guided by the ancient map. Suddenly, the void trembled, as if the heavens and earth had been forcibly ripped apart, and a decaying yet ancient aura rushed towards them. The next instant, the scene before them completely changed—

It was a boundless desert, the earth cracked into dark fissures that seemed to extend into the endless void. The sky was not clear, but rather filled with countless fragments of time, like shattered mirrors floating high in the air. Each fragment reflected a completely different era—some showing the vast war of gods millions of years ago, and others projecting the devastation of billions of years to come.

A fierce wind swept through, carrying not sand and gravel, but invisible quicksand of time, lashing against the skin as if to age a person by millennia in an instant. In the distance, layers upon layers of withered bones piled up into mountains, each skeleton shimmering with lingering "time's afterimages," their past and future still cycling—some bones transforming into young bodies for a fleeting moment before turning to dust, while others are constantly reborn and destroyed in nothingness, as if time refuses to let them go.

Hong Xiuxiang's expression hardened. She reached out to shield her face from the swirling currents of energy and whispered, "This is... a wasteland formed by time turbulence?"

Qin Yu's gaze was calm, and the Annihilation Origin Qi within his body automatically circulated, protecting the two people's sea of consciousness from being torn apart. He sensed that this was not a simple desert, but a forbidden zone where spacetime had collapsed, and every inch of land could instantly turn into "a thousand years".

Suddenly, a time rift swept across from them, like a long, black blade, slashing straight at the spot where the two were standing!

Qin Yu's feet suddenly sank, and the radiance of the Azure Ring quietly vibrated deep within his sea of consciousness. He swung his hand back, and the Source-Extinguishing Divine Sword materialized into a shadow. The sword's edge clashed with the crack, stirring up countless fragments of light, as if severing the future and the past completely. At the same time, Hong Xiuxiang unfolded the Spirit Brocade Book Realm in her hand, and countless pages transformed into a barrier of illusory light, forcefully blocking the annihilation current of time and space that was capable of swallowing thousands of years.

The heavens and earth roared incessantly as the two stood side by side. The desolate desert of time beneath their feet seemed to whisper silently:

This place can steal away the future of everything that exists.

Before the two had fully steadied themselves, the world suddenly fell silent. All the sounds of the wind, the cracking of cracks, the whispers of time on the wasteland... all came to an abrupt halt.

The next instant, the cracks in the earth trembled violently, as if a time-space chain that had been compressed for millions of years had been torn apart.

From that pitch-black abyss, a colossal beast of time slowly crawled out.

Its body is not flesh and blood, but woven from countless broken timelines. It is tens of thousands of feet long and resembles an ancient dragon, with billions of shimmering light threads trailing behind its back—each light thread being a shattered piece of spacetime. Its head is covered with a grayish-white cracked mask, and its eyes have no pupils, only the ever-flowing and accelerating torrent of time.

As it breathed, the air distorted, Hong Xiuxiang felt as if her body had been pulled into the future in an instant. Her hair turned white rapidly, and signs of aging appeared on her skin. The next moment, she was pulled back to the innocent appearance of a child. She gritted her teeth and activated the Spirit Brocade Book Realm, writing her "Time Positioning" into the pages, barely managing to stabilize the changes.

Qin Yu's gaze was icy, his hand gripping the Source-Extinguishing Divine Sword, and a cold light emanated from the Azure Ring in his sea of consciousness. Suddenly, the Time Beast roared—

Boom! Hundreds of different time slices appeared simultaneously across the entire wasteland, each slice showing a different form of the behemoth: some still in its gestation stage, some already slain, and some raging with fury. They pounced at the same time, as if the behemoths of the past, present, and future were attacking together in the same instant!

Qin Yu's long hair danced wildly, Azure Ring between his brows shone brightly. With a thought, he directly used [Fate Cause Master Seal - Final Order - Fate-Severing Question], carving an annihilation seal in the void, forcibly severing the "fate trajectory" of countless future phantoms, forcing the giant beast to exist only in its "present" body.

Immediately following, the Source-Extinguishing Divine Sword transformed into billions of sword lights, like a torrent Time Splitting, and crashed down!

Hong Xiuxiang's eyes were cold and sharp. The Spirit Brocade Book Realm suddenly unfolded, and hundreds of virtual pages fluttered in the air, writing in unison:

"Mirror Lock - Year Break"!

Instantly, a mirrored array of books enveloped the wasteland, forcefully locking the torrent of time of the giant beasts into a "single present moment," no longer wantonly depriving them of their time.

The roars of the colossal beasts shook the wasteland, each roar carrying the rumble of billions of years collapsing. The fragmented time mirror in the sky continued to shatter, like a cosmic catastrophe.

Qin Yu and Hong Xiuxiang exchanged a glance, and they both understood.

This is the first hurdle to overcome in the Time Barren Plain. If one does not go all out, one will be annihilated by time in an instant, leaving no trace of existence.

On the wasteland, the wind has long since Annihilation, only the roaring torrent of time continues to surge. The colossal beast woven from millions of Time Splitting is frantically breaking free of its chains. Each roar is the overturning of billions of years of time. The entire wasteland is like a shattered piece of glass, constantly being reassembled, collapsed, and regenerated in the cycle of "future-past".

The rubble beneath Qin Yu's feet suddenly turned to ashes, and his shadow tore through the ground, creating countless "time afterimages," each representing a possible "death outcome" for him. In that instant, a blue light exploded from between his brows, and Azure Ring slowly emerged from his sea of consciousness. Countless annihilation patterns ignited on the ring, like billions of Annihilation galaxies rotating within it.

[Azure Ring: The Realm-Overturning Primordial Cosmos]!

Boom!!!

The void suddenly swirled into a vortex, devoid of any light or shadow, only the black and white chaos of the "Unborn World." The Azure Ring spun rapidly, releasing countless cracked chains of Annihilation light, like a stellar storm pouring down, directly covering the entire body of the behemoth.

The scene instantly distorts—all the Future Self, Shadow of the Past, and possible evolutions of the Time Beast are torn to shreds!

Countless "mirror images of giant beasts" in the sky collapsed simultaneously, as if an invisible hand was tearing apart the pages of a historical script, reducing its past glory and its yet-to -Unborn ferocity to nothingness.

At this moment, the entire wasteland seemed to have entered a Hollywood special effects blockbuster:

The sky was forcibly torn open with more than a dozen spacetime rifts, from which gushing forth reversed galaxies and torrents of reversed time;

The ground undulated like an ocean, and shattered stones flew into the air, turning into specks of light before being sucked back into the "Unborn World" and disappearing.

Qin Yu in the center of the halo of light, his clothes fluttering wildly, and countless shattered time gears appeared around him, melting away one by one under the suppression of the Azure Ring's power.

The behemoth roared, its head split open, and the reversed flow of time in its eyes surged forth, transforming into trillions of light blades that swept across the heavens and earth. But as soon as these light blades touched the "Unborn Silent Universe" encircled by the Azure Ring, they seemed to fall into a bottomless abyss, instantly annihilated without even causing a ripple.

"Sever Karma, sever cultivation, sever memory!" Qin Yu roared, and with each word he uttered, the annihilation light on the ring doubled.

Finally, as the ring completely closed, a deafening roar resounded throughout the heavens and earth, as if the entire sky of the Source of Epochless had been torn apart. The massive body of the Time Beast suddenly froze, and then its entire timeline collapsed like a broken string. Hundreds of millions of light threads exploded into ashes and were completely Entering Stillness, with no Return Path.

Heaven and earth returned to deathly silence.

Qin Yu's chest rose and fell slightly, his body still surrounded by the lingering annihilation light rain from the Azure Ring. Hong Xiuxiang stood not far away, her eyes filled with shock. Just now, her Book Realm Soul Locking Power was almost crushed by the torrent of time, yet Qin Yu was able to annihilate such a monster with a single blow—at that moment, she almost felt as if she had personally witnessed the "Unborn world" being forcibly manifested.

The wasteland fell silent once more, but the aftershocks of that world-class destruction still lingered in the air: the distorted afterimages of spacetime, the echoes of collapsing galaxies, and the cold glow of the Azure Ring annihilating the rain of light.

The instant the behemoth collapsed completely, the entire Time Barren Plain seemed to lose the foundation upon which it existed. Every inch of soil and every grain of sand on the wasteland turned into the ashes of time, swept away by the wind and dissipated into the boundless void. The sky was as if an ancient scroll had been torn open, revealing countless intertwined chains of cause and effect. These chains, like inverted galaxies, hung down from the cracks in the wasteland, shimmering with unfathomable gold and black light.

Qin Yu amidst the aftershocks, his robes fluttering. His divine sense instantly detected the unusual movement of those causal light chains. They weren't falling naturally, but rather pointing towards some unknown abyss, as if silently calling those who entered to go to the next, even more terrifying realm.

Hong Xiuxiang clenched her fists, looked up, and her expression changed slightly. "That's... a chain of cause and effect?"

Qin Yu nodded solemnly. As the barren plain completely collapsed, the outline of a dark forest gradually emerged on the desolate horizon. The forest seemed to be formed by countless intertwined branches of cause and effect, with each tree trunk engraved with the destiny patterns of all things in heaven and earth. Sometimes light points were born, and sometimes they were swallowed up and annihilated, with life and death overlapping in the same instant.

The Azure Ring vibrated gently deep within Qin Yu's sea of consciousness, sending a chilling tremor through him. Qin Yu's heart sank; he realized this was the next region recorded on the map—

Karmic Forest Abyss.

The wind howled, and the world seemed to be quietly shifting. The Time Barren Plain had turned to dust, and the Karmic Forest Abyss ahead was opening its maw with an irresistible force, awaiting new invaders.

Qin Yu slowly tightened his grip on the sword, his gaze fixed on the eerie black forest. "Let's go, that might be the real danger."

Hong Xiuxiang nodded, and the two figures flashed, stepping into the direction indicated by the chain of cause and effect.

The last glimmer of light in the world gradually faded away, and only from the depths of the distant forest came a deep rumble that seemed to transcend endless time, like the heartbeat of the very source of cause and effect, awaiting their arrival.