Chapter 436

The light scattered.

It was not extinguished lamp by lamp. Not left then right, not far then near, not weak then strong. It was the same instant—all light vanished together.

The silvery-white light of order—those light curtains hanging from the vault, the light veins seeping from the ground patterns, the light threads shining from within the walls.

The chaotic-hued light of passage—those gray light spheres welling up from the root tips of the Fusang tree, lingering long at the hall's edge; the thunderlight bursting in battle—silver snakes sprayed from the Thunder Prison Ancestor's hammer, still leaping in midair, not yet fallen.

The prismatic light refracted by ice crystals—billions of ice crystal shards floating after the Ice Spirit Immortal's glacier shattered, each refracting the battlefield's light. All light vanished at once, as if someone had, in an instant, closed a book long left open.

Pages shut, characters faded, story ended. The hall was abandoned by light.

Only darkness remained. Not the darkness of the Return to the Void. The darkness of the Return to the Void is "full"—filled with the wreckage of dead worlds, filled with embers of dissipated laws, filled with thirty thousand years of deathly silence.

The darkness of the Return to the Void has weight, temperature, texture. Walking in it, the darkness clings to your skin, seeps into your pores, whispers in your ear.

What it whispers is—you too will die, you too will become part of me. The hall's darkness is not like that. The hall's darkness is "empty"—empty like a room stripped of all furniture.

Empty like a skull hollowed of all memory. Empty like a person standing on an endless snowy plain, the snow black, the sky also black.

The lamps went out. Those light curtains on the vault, crystallized from order laws—those hanging for untold hundreds of thousands of years, never extinguished—went out.

Not one lamp after another going out, not like dominoes falling from far to near. It was "all at once." Like a mirror falling from height to ground, shattering into countless pieces, none reflecting light anymore.

When the light curtains died, there was no sound, only an infinitesimal sense of law breaking, like the last string of a zither snapping.

The fire went out. No one knew where the fire was, but everyone felt it go out—a chill rising from the heart—not bodily chill, but Dao-heart chill.

Every cultivator who refines to Nascent Soul and above has a ball of fire in their Dao-heart. That is Dao-fire, life-fire, fighting-spirit-fire. When not fighting, it burns quietly deep down, not bright, not hot, merely "there."

Now it simultaneously dimmed for an instant—as if someone had pinched the wick and given it a twist. Not extinguished, just dimmed. Everyone still alive felt this dimming in the same instant; no one spoke, but everyone shrank their shoulders in that breath's gap.

Stars fell. The hall's vault is immeasurably high, its apex connecting to the void beyond the limits of visual measurement, where countless law-crystals are inlaid—each grain a sealed rule-particle, silver, constant, arranged like constellations.

When the core of the Lord of Order shattered, the shockwave spread upward from the hall's center; the first wave struck the vault's highest point, and the topmost law-crystals resonantly detached.

After the first crystal detached, a chain reaction began—silver crystals peeled off one by one from their original positions, dragging short light tails as they fell downward.

Like a silent meteor shower. Midway, the light tails burned out their remaining energy, and the crystals themselves, under acceleration, disintegrated into finer debris. The debris fell in silence in the darkness. Nothing remained.

Wang Ping stood in the darkness. He did not know whether he was standing or floating. No sensation underfoot—just moments ago the ground was still there, silvery-white ground, absolutely flat, flat to the point that stepping on it required no balance adjustment.

Now the silvery-white was gone, and absolute flatness was gone. Is the ground still there or not? The hall's foundation is condensed from order laws; if the laws shatter, will the foundation still exist?

He felt his feet hanging in emptiness, as if standing on a melting ice surface. The ice still exists but grows thinner and thinner, thin enough to hear the sound of cracking deep within the ice layer.

He still held lightning in his hand. Chaotic Immortal Lightning—passed down from Lei Wan-ting, cleaved from Xiao Han Mountain all the way to the Return to the Void, from the Return to the Void all the way to the Spirit Realm, from the Spirit Realm all the way to the Order Holy Hall. Now only the last trace remains.

He raised his hand, opened his palm. The lightning's flame jumped in his palm, now only the size of a soybean. Not a lightning ball anymore—lightning balls are fist-sized, lightning strands are hair-thick. This is a lightning sprout.

The last trace of lightning source, unwilling to die, shrank itself to the minimum, burning the last trace of chaotic spirit-power in the most frugal way. The flame's edge in the darkness cast an extremely faint halo, illuminating Wang Ping's palm lines.

His palm lines are deep—the life line long, the wisdom line winding and twisting, the emotion line broken a short segment below the middle finger, beside which a few fine subsidiary lines have patched themselves up. Those are his own Dao marks. The lightning jumps. Each jump dims it a little—not burning evenly, but "panting." Burn a little spirit-power, pant, then burn a little more.

When panting, the flame shrinks to a pinprick, almost invisible; when burning, it barely swells back to soybean-sized. Like a lamp about to run out of oil—the wick is still there, but the oil is gone. The wick soaked through with the last trace of oil, now burning itself.

The flame of the Chaotic Immortal Lightning is burning itself. It says—I am still here, you are still here. I may be about to extinguish, but not yet. As long as you are here, I cannot extinguish.

He was looking. Looking at where the Lord of Order vanished. Not with his eyes—the hall is now pitch-black, eyes see no difference. With his Chaotic Divine Sense.

Chaotic Divine Sense surged from his spirit terrace aperture, unfolding in the darkness into a 360-degree perception field. Divine sense touched the ruins, touched void rifts, touched the dust still not dispersed. Then it touched that space—the original position of the Lord of Order's core.

There had once been a teaming silvery-white mass, a mercury-smooth core the size of a fist, and the pressure of a Void Refining cultivator like a heartbeat throbbing in all directions.

Now there is nothing there. Only air. This air is not true air—cultivators do not need to breathe; here the "air" is an extremely rarified medium formed by suspended law fragments.

When divine sense swept over, it could feel their remnants—fragments too low to be usable, shattered order inscriptions broken into strokes, fractured law edges like torn paper. Only the void—space torn open by Chaotic Creation but not fully healed, its edges glowing with the imminent extinction of chaotic faint fluorescence. Only the existence that no longer exists. That existence once was there. Now it is not.

He waited a while. For what? For a sound. For any sound besides his own heartbeat—even if only the Lord of Order's residual breath, even if only the law's moan after core shattering. For a ray of light.

Waiting for silvery-white to seep back out of that blackness, waiting for the phenomenon he most feared—existence recondensing, pressure rising again. Waiting for the Lord of Order's pressure to surge back and crush his fluke.

Waiting for a sign telling him this strike was not in vain. Silence continued. Chaotic Divine Sense waited in the darkness for one breath, two breaths, three breaths. No sound. No light. No pressure.

He held his breath. Breathing makes sound—in absolutely silent darkness, breathing is the greatest noise.

Each inhalation creates turbulence in the nasal cavity, each exhalation creates friction between the lips. He cut off airflow above his throat. Air ceased flowing, the chest cavity still minutely trembling. The heartbeat still continued. He feared his heartbeat would drown out the Lord of Order's sound.

The heartbeat was too loud—not because his heart was diseased, but because in absolute silence any internal physiological vibration gets amplified by divine sense into a seeming enemy-attack signal. Blood flowing in vessels—glug, glug, like residual water still draining in a pipe.

Muscles minutely twitching—after prolonged combat, muscle fibers spasm involuntarily, myoelectric impulses in silence captured by his own divine sense. Heartbeat—thud. Thud. Thud. Still beating, beating somewhat slower than before, but each thud solidly striking the chest cavity.

He pressed his chest to try to suppress the heartbeat, palm pressing the sternum, sternum pressing the heart, could not hold it down. It was too loud, loud enough to possibly be the only thing still sounding in this hall.

No sound. The Lord of Order made no sound. Did not cry out when dying, did not shout when shattering. Wang Ping recalled the moment the Chaotic Immortal Stele descended—Creation Power struck the core, the core exploded in silvery-white light flow, then shattered.

The whole process had no death cry. Was it because he felt no pain and thus did not cry? Or because he could not feel pain? Or perhaps he did feel pain, but pain meant nothing to him. He was Order itself.

What is Order? Rules, system, inevitability without exception. When a stone is smashed, it does not cry; when a river is dammed, it does not cry. Order needs no expression. Expression is Chaos's domain—life has feeling, feeling needs expression, expression varies infinitely. Order needs none of this.

Really dead? Wang Ping asked in his heart. Not asking the stele spirit—the stele spirit is in the Chaotic Immortal Stele, which just released the Creation Strike, now slowly turning in his dantian, almost stalled, not answering. Not asking anyone. Asking himself. Asked once, dared not believe. Then waited. Waited one breath, two breaths, three breaths. Counted from ten down to one, then from one up to ten.

Still silent. He dared not believe, because he had seen no corpse. A Void Refining cultivator's death should leave a corpse. A Nascent Soul cultivator's death—true spirit scatters but the body remains—his master Jiang Mingyuan died with his body still standing on the stone platform, eyes gazing at heaven.

A Unity cultivator's death—domain collapses but Dao foundation remnants linger long—Star Pupil's body still lies in the hall's ruins, the light points no longer turning in its transparent shell like a dead galaxy.

Void Refining—the highest known realm—his "being" is the laws themselves. If laws die, there should be traces. Spatial collapse, void storms, remnants condensing into an unbreakable, undissolvable crystal. Corpses do not vanish—the corpse continues to exist in another form. It merely shifts from living form to dead form. The corpse, sealed in this domain ruled by Order for countless years, guards its remnants in stillness unto eternity. It will only slowly decay.

Immortals do not rot—the immortal body is indestructible, deathless, preserving its appearance at death for tens of millions of years unchanged. Void Refining is higher than immortals. His corpse should lie in the darkness for a very long time, until this hall utterly collapses, until the void swallows everything here.

But the Lord of Order left not even dregs. Chaotic Divine Sense swept for the third time. Over the law-crystals ground to powder—those wall and ground fragments after shattering, each silvery-white scrap repeatedly scanned: no life traces, no law activity, merely inert remnants. Over the collapsed corner of the vault—its debris floating in the void, where law-crystals were once inlaid now only honeycomb-like dense cavities, each retaining extremely fine silver traces. Those are oxidation marks left when law-crystals were pulled out. Over layer upon layer of ruin dust swallowed by the canyon and coughed up again—dust containing stone fragments, metal scraps, ice crystal meltwater, bloodstains, broken feathers, snapped zither strings, splintered hammer handles. No core fragments. No corpse remnants—not even a fingernail-sized bit. No residual silvery-white light spots—not even a thread. Nothing left. Not blasted to pieces—blasting would leave fragments. Blasting is dissolution, not disappearance. After dissolution every fragment remains—thinned silver foil, scattered law inscriptions, shapeless liquid-entity remnants. Even a single law fragment invisible to the naked eye should be detectable by Chaotic Divine Sense. But none. It is "not there." Like a person going on a journey, taking the door with them, leaving the house empty. Like a drop of water falling onto a scorching stone slab, instantly evaporating, even the steam leaving no trace. Like never having existed. This is abnormal. In his heart he repeated—this is abnormal. The Chaotic Natal Spirit in his dantian also furrowed its brow. It does not truly frown, but its qi mechanism stagnated for a beat at that moment—it was using Chaotic intuition to judge this: an existence after shattering should leave remnants. No remnants equals shattering possibly incomplete. Incomplete equals possible fragments remain. Fragments equal not fully dead. Not fully dead equals may return.

Cangxuan's sword still hung in the void. Not plunged into the Lord of Order's body—his body had already scattered, the hall's center now only a law-vacuum. The sword lodged in the edge of the spatial rift, at the spot where the Lord of Order's core, shattered, burst open the largest spatial wound. The sword blade entered a patch of unseen resistance. Not rock, not metal, not ice. Some kind of still-throbbing "residue"—not Order residual power, more like a law scar torn open by the Creation Strike and not yet healed. The blade is gripped by the scar tissue, which still slowly expands and contracts—contracting grips the blade tighter, relaxing loosens it a bit. Between one contraction and expansion comes a force extremely weak, but the sword spirit can feel it. The hilt protrudes. Cangxuan stands three paces away, watching his sword hover in midair, half the blade sunk into the unseen resistance, only hilt and a short section of guard visible in the darkness, faintly appearing and disappearing. The hilt is faintly trembling. The tremor's amplitude is minuscule, nearly invisible to the naked eye, the wrapping threads on the hilt unmoving. But Cangxuan's tiger's mouth knows—when he just gripped the sword, his tiger's mouth went numb, that instant he felt from the hilt an extremely high, extremely fine vibration frequency—not physical vibration, but spiritual tremor. The sword spirit fears. Its fear is not "death"'s fear—swords do not fear death, swords are weapons forged to one day break. This sword, tempered in immortal realm fragments by Slaying Immortal sword intent, has a spirit older than most cultivators. Its fear is of "not yet ended." Battle finished, enemy dead, victory in hand still not warmed. But the sword says—he is still here. Not by voice, but by the residual resonance left in the hilt speaking. Cangxuan's tiger's mouth still numb, so it still speaks.

Cangxuan pressed his hand to the hilt. When he re-gripped, his fingers automatically found the optimal grip—index finger resting on the guard above, middle finger hooked on the thickest part of the hilt, ring and little fingers in order, thumb pressing the hilt's pommel. The wrapping still feels the same, the hemp rope softened by years of sweat-soaking. This time his fingers pressed down with noticeably less force—he wanted to feel not the sword's material warmth, not the blade's bend, but the finest undulations in the sword spirit's vibration frequency. His finger pulses would also generate micro-vibration; gripping too hard would mistake his own pulse for the sword spirit's tremor. He suppressed his finger pulses—one of a sword cultivator's basics—turning his finger pads into pure sensing membranes against the wrapping. The sword says—he is still here. The sword spirit pours the hostility impression it sensed into Cangxuan's spirit terrace. That is an extremely faint light point, silvery-white, only pinpoint-sized. It hides inside the spatial rift's inner side, snug against the rift edge's dark zone, not emitting light—it has no energy to emit light. It is "absorbing light"—sucking in the faint glimmer of all residual law fragments nearby, so its site is darker than surroundings. It breathes, compressing its existence to the extreme then hunkering down. Waiting—for them to lower guard, for them to celebrate victory, for them to draw swords. It and the scar tissue gripping the sword blade in the rift pulse in sync—same frequency, same phase. When the scar tissue contracts and expands once, it flashes once. Frequency extremely low, slow to undetectable. The sword spirit also only discovered this rhythm after the blade had been gripped long enough to go through repeated contraction-expansion cycles.

Cangxuan moved his fingers off the hilt. Did not draw. Drawing would spring the trap. The Lord of Order waits for this—waits for them to pull the sword from his body. That is not his body, that is his law remnant. The sword is lodged in the sole wound of his law remnant, a wound torn open by Chaotic Creation and never healed. Because the sword bears Slaying Immortal intent, Slaying Immortal originally being the sword path to slay all "Immortal"-level beings. Though the Lord of Order is Void Refining, Void Refining is a kind of Immortal. Slaying Immortal intent on his wound forms a continuous tearing force field—leaving the sword there is deadlier than pulling it out. Pull it out, the wound will heal. Law scar tissue will rejoin within a few breaths, silvery-white light will seep from the scar edges, that pinpoint-sized residual light point will follow the healing tissue back deep into the law remnant. Healed, he emerges. He need not regrow into that heaven-covering, earth-burying existence he was—no need. As long as a core fragment remains, he can rebirth. Fist-sized core and pinpoint-sized residue are essentially the same thing—the self-organizing core of Order law. Given suitable conditions, it can restart gathering surrounding residual law power, like salt crystals in fog silently absorbing moisture to clump, a small clump attracting more debris, debris gathering into fragments, fragments assembling into a residual core, the residual core growing into a new core. By then there will be no second Chaotic Creation.

Cangxuan turned. His sword still hung in the void, itself guarding that rift. The sword spirit's tremor in his insight sea still continues—not fear, but urging. Urging him to hurry, not wait here. Leave this to the sword, other matters to him. He spoke a sentence, not with mouth, but via sword heart to sword spirit. The sword heart has only one word—"Guard." Guard until the rift heals. Guard until the Lord of Order's last trace fully dissipates. Guard until the sword breaks. Receiving this word, the sword spirit stilled its tremor. The hum shifted from tremor to sustained low tone, low and flat, like wind through a canyon. That is the sword spirit's reply.

The strings of Yu Liuli's zither fell silent. Not that they had just gone silent—they had been sounding just moments before. In the instant the core of the Lord of Order shattered, she plucked the last complete melody. Not a heavenly sound, not a lament. It was a nameless tune, improvised on the battlefield, absent from the Fallen Immortal clan's scores. She played it with the four remaining unbroken strings—the palace string low like footsteps from underground, the commercial string bright as the gaze of the last star in the night sky, the horn string long and drawn-out like spring wind over dry grass, the feather string high and distant like the first pale gold stroke on distant mountains at dawn. The broken strings hung from the zither's body—the sixth string longest, dangling from Yue Mountain all the way to the zither's tail, its tip curled into an arc like a question mark. The fifth string snapped in the middle, its break uneven, the metal wire of the string lifting tiny burrs. The third string also broke, hanging at the zither's side, stuck to the lacquer by dried blood. The blood had hardened into a black scab, hard, its edges slightly lifted. She did not wipe it, for wiping would make it flow again—beneath the scab lay an unhealed wound, her fingers repeatedly sliced by the strings and forcibly re-bonded with the zither's core, flesh and sinew now indistinguishable. What did it feel like when the music stopped? Not that she stopped—it was the zither that stopped. After the final note, the harmonic resonance of the feather string struck one last echo against the remnant arc of the temple's dome. When the echo faded, the temple plunged into total darkness. All light extinguished, including the thin layer of spiritual radiance on the zither itself. Her zither's core raced, soon, so fast her chest ached—not heartache, but the depletion from overuse. She waited for the strings to sound on their own—the strings were made of immortal silkworm silk, which possesses spirituality and can tremble spontaneously when sensing hostile intent. She had tried before; near the edge of the Return to the Void, the sixth string would emit a deep, low hum on its own. Now the strings remained silent. She waited one breath, two. Still no sound. Had it truly died?

Youying pushed herself up from the ground. The aftershock of that blow which split chaos and opened heaven had knocked her down, her back striking the edge of a crack in the temple floor, her vertebrae emitting a dull thud. Now she braced herself with her hands on the ground, her knees shifting off the gravel—gravel grinding into the wound on her knee, bringing out a few specks of stone dust stained with blood. As she rose, her legs trembled—not from fracture, but from the backlash of void laws after her void escape was shattered—her half-void-formed body, just ejected from the void, had its meridians in disarray. She steadied herself with one hand on the broken pillar debris. The other hand pressed against her chest—where the ancient mirror fragment still pulsed. Thud, thud, thud—faster than usual, heavier than usual. It was warning her. She ran her tongue around her teeth—the blood was black, invisible in the darkness, but taste unaltered by dark. It was fishy, salty, hot—hot because her blood exceeded normal temperature, the recent battle having pushed her body heat to its limit. She wiped the corner of her mouth with her sleeve, leaving a damp mark on the cuff.

She was looking. Not with her eyes—in this total darkness, eyes were useless. She used void perception. For cultivators of the void laws, perception is not divine sense scanning, but "domain perception"—treating the void around oneself as an extension of one's own body. Any existence in the void leaves an imprint of existence within the void. These imprints have different textures—life is warm, spiritual power is bright, dead matter is gray. She closed her eyes and spread her domain perception across the entire temple ruins. The temple's center was a law vacuum—a core point of the domain held a hollow, which should have been the original position of the Lord of Order's core. Around the hollow floated extremely dense law debris, density like fine mist. Beyond the mist lay various battle remnants—cracks, rubble, wreckage, bloodstains. Further out, in the depths of the darkness, near the edge of the ruins' corner, something moved. Not a person—she had confirmed: no body heat, no spiritual power flow, no heartbeat. Not an object—an object's presence feels solid, this thing did not. It was a "shadow" of existence. Not the shadow of the Lord of Order—he cast no shadow, for shadow requires light. His light was silver-white to the extreme, pushing all darkness aside, so he had no shadow. This shadow was residual bodily tissue from after he was shattered—not core, not law, but the part producing his "sense of existence," torn into fragments by chaos, the largest fragment still writhing in the dark. The shadow moved. Like a snake crawling in darkness, yet not like a snake—when a snake crawls, it has head, body, tail, and muscular contraction waves transmitting motion. This shadow had no clear head or tail; its writhing was a whole-body motion—one end contracting, another expanding, the contracting end squeezing something toward the expanding end. Like a root—when the Fusang tree's root drills through soil, it does not go straight, but "seeks"—the root tip probes left, hits stone, retracts, then probes right. The shadow's writhing in the debris' base was just that—it was seeking. Seeking what? Seeking its other fragments. Like an injured earthworm in soil, bumping against a small stone, probing with its feelers—not the fragment it sought, so it detoured, kept burrowing. It was gathering itself back in the most primitive way, reassembling the existence blasted apart. Like a snake, like a root, like an embryo forming—it was growing. Not from eating—it had no mouth, no digestive system. It was "memory." It recalled its former self, its shape, its former magnitude of existence. Each recollection restored a bit of its existence magnitude, expanded its volume a bit. It drew in the law debris still floating in the ruins, one by one, the debris adhering to its surface, assimilated into its writhing tissue. It was becoming the Lord of Order again. Very slow—much slower than before. Earlier, its core could condense enough existence magnitude to cover the entire temple in the span of a breath. Now it was merely a worm probing the debris' base. But it was not dead—cut a worm in half, both halves live. The Lord of Order was blasted into countless fragments; the largest fragment writhes. It writhes in the deepest part of its own temple, in an unnoticed corner, slowly but irreversibly reclaiming its fragments.

Wang Ping also saw it. Not through void perception—Youying's perception and his divine sense were not the same language. It was his own chaotic divine sense catching the fluctuation of existence in that direction. Extremely slight, slight as a grain of sand falling into the sea. But the sea was calm enough—the temple now pitch-black, all law fluctuations stilled, this grain of sand falling in created the sole ripple. The shadow in the darkness, its writhing, its growth, its "memory." He asked the stele spirit in his heart—not with words, but with the rhythm of his heartbeat. As his heartbeat asked, his chaotic divine sense projected the perception data of that pinpoint-sized remnant light directly onto the Chaotic Immortal Stele in his dantian. The stele spirit gazed at him from the depths. The stele turned extremely slowly—heaven-opening strike had drained its accumulated power over countless years. Now it needed many heartbeats to complete a full turn. The stele spirit did not answer, but his eyes spoke—he saw the stele spirit's gaze, in the chaotic mist at the stele's deepest depths, a gray-robed, silver-haired middle-aged man standing there, eyes fixed on him. The gaze was not an answer, but "confirmation." The core remained. The Lord of Order's core was not the one just shattered by the heaven-opening strike—that was the main core. The main core shattered, shielding him from the strike. But his core was not singular. Like an onion—peel off the outer skin, another layer remains. The most central existence aggregate still intact. It lay hidden in the temple's deepest depths, at the source of those silver-white lights—not the light on the ground, not the light on the dome, but the source of light, the output of light, the very matrix of the Order law itself. Wang Ping's thunder pillar shattered his body, the chaos-heaven-opening strike shattered his main core, but the innermost core matrix remained unstruck. It still lay. Beneath the rubble, at the ruins' base, at the darkness's end. As long as the matrix endured, he could be reborn. The shadow writhes to gather the scattered existence fragments back to the matrix. Once enough fragments are collected, the matrix can begin crafting a new main core. With the main core formed, the new body gains a skeleton. With the skeleton, the Lord of Order stands again.

Wang Ping stepped forward. His foot trod over gravel, the gravel rolling beneath his feet, emitting a series of fine collision sounds. Sound traveled far in the darkness—now total black and total silence, any sound amplified into the sole reference. From the temple center to the ruins' edge, he could only measure distance by his steps. One step, two steps, three steps. He counted in his heart. His legs trembled—not from fear, but from exhaustion. The Chaotic Immortal Thunder was down to a single bean sprout, chaotic spiritual power nearly exhausted. The chaotic spiritual sea in his dantian had receded by more than half—once nearly bursting the dantian walls with its overflowing chaotic spiritual liquid, now contracted to a small shoal. The Chaotic Immortal Stele turned extremely slowly, the stele spirit silent behind him, uttering no word. He did not stop. By the time he reached the ruins' edge, his legs trembled worse, his knees nearly buckling. He braced a hand on his knee, fingers pressing on the kneecap to feel his tremor for an instant—tremor spreading from the thigh muscles downward, driving the calf and ankle. Then he straightened his waist and continued walking.

Cangxuan followed behind him. His hand was not on the sword hilt—the sword still hung in the void, still guarding that rift. His hand held no weapon. A sword cultivator without a sword is like losing an arm. Yet he followed. He kept pace one step behind Wang Ping's right flank—that was his position in the formation, whether he had a sword or not, he would stand there. Yu Liuli crawled up, cradling her zither. Her legs also trembled, but not from fatigue—her knee had been scraped on the ground—the skin above the kneecap was gouged away by gravel, still oozing blood. Blood seeped from her trousers, tracing down the tibia, dripping onto the gravel—drip, drip, drip. She cradled her zither and followed behind Wang Ping's left flank. The zither's body could still emit an extremely faint residual vibration—the sound of the zither's core not yet extinguished. Youying shifted her body from beside the broken pillar, the fingers gripping the pillar's edge leaving an extremely fine blood trace on the rough stone surface. They walked shoulder to shoulder into the deepest darkness.

The temple's deepest depths. Here there was no silver-white light, no chaotic light, no light at all. But at the very end of the darkness lay something. Not light—light can be seen, can be sensed by divine sense. This thing could not be seen, but you knew it was there, because the darkness here was unlike elsewhere, more "deep." Its position lay directly beneath that shadow, wrapped in layers of rubble and fissures. Wang Ping used his chaotic divine sense to push aside those rubble—divine sense like a hand, shifting debris piece by piece, exposing the bedrock below. The bedrock had split into an extremely fine crack; inside the crack there was no light, but when you gazed into it, it was not black, but "nothing." A void deeper than black—here, even the laws of existence had been drained. The core matrix of the Lord of Order lay at the end of this nothingness.

Wang Ping stood there, gazing at that transparent nothingness. It was not existence—existence is "is," this is the negation of "is." But he knew it was the core, for his chaotic primordial spirit throbbed—chaos's essence is to encompass all things, all things include existence, and also non-existence. His dantian's turbid spiritual sea sensed that nothingness, like the tide sensing the moon's pull. That thing was the Lord of Order's source—Order does not begin from "is," but from "is not." First exclude everything, then what remains is Order. The Lord of Order's source is that very "exclusion." It is there, but you cannot see it. If you saw it, you would have made its existence manifest, and once manifested, it is no longer non-existence. But it also cannot remain unseen—for Wang Ping's chaotic Dao foundation specifically counters this "non-existence." Chaos encompasses all things, non-existence being one of them. Before chaos, it cannot hide. It sensed chaos's gaze. The nothingness began to contract. Not retracting—it has no volume, cannot contract volume. Rather, its "density" changed—the mass attribute of the nothingness surged violently upon realizing it was seen, collapsing into an extremely minute singularity. The singularity's surface faintly glowed with a weak silver-white fluorescence—this was the trace of its forced manifestation.