Chapter 1234: The Guarding Dog

Within the Extinction Stone Coffin, Yan Buji's newly reborn body was like a statue carved from black jade, floating and sinking in absolute darkness; his bottomless eyes were not fully closed, and within them seemed stars flicker, reflecting not external scenes but countless flowing law runes and energy traces, as he used himself as the hub to process the massive yet subtle information streams gathered from every corner of the cultivation world.

The mental ripples of "vigilance" and "scan" coming from Han Wuxian were like a stone dropped into a deep pool, causing only a slight ripple on his inner lake before quickly subsiding; he paid no mind to the other's reaction, even welcomed it, and Han Wuxian's tension showed that his "probe" had worked, like a light touch on a spiderweb that instantly sensed the prey's position and condition.

"The guarding dog, steadfast at its ruin," Yan Buji's thought carried a faint indifferent appraisal; Han Wuxian's path ultimately leans toward "guarding" and "ending," the nature of his power dictating a response pattern—passive defense, counterattack after the fact. In the current game, this is no longer the biggest variable, more a relatively fixed "environmental parameter" that must be accounted for.

His attention turned more toward the "sediments" stirred up by the Returning Ruins' manifestation, hidden in the dust of history and the gaps of law.

On the extreme northern tundra, the exposed ancient runes, under his continual "observation," had had their energy flow patterns parsed almost completely; they were not an offensive or defensive formation, but more like a coordinate—or rather, a "lock." The other end of the lock connected to a folded, forgotten void, faintly exuding an ancient, desolate aura, and a pure death intent that made even his Silence Extinction Desire Path tremble slightly.

"Interesting," Yan Buji said, but he did not attempt to "unlock" it; stirring the grass to scare the snake was not his wish, and moreover, he sensed that a "volunteer" was already heading to investigate—the exploration team of the Heavenly Craft Sect, guided covertly by him (by amplifying a special wave emitted by the runes), arrived there earlier than planned. He only needed to watch quietly and await the feedback.

At the same time, another strand of his thought, attached to a millennial dark wood devoured by the Returning Ruins' eye in the South Sea, sank with the undercurrent into the endless abyss; the deeper it went, the stronger the "ending" intent within the natural great force became, even beginning to erode the thought strand attached to it. That was exactly what he wanted, and he savored this "natural Silence Extinction" power, which differed from the Returning Ruins of Han Wuxian that bore "will," being more chaotic, more primal, and closer to the universe's origin.

"Pure 'nothingness', containing no 'self' will…" He compared his own Path, Han Wuxian's Dao, and the natural Returning Ruins, continuously refining his mental deduction. "My 'Silence Extinction Desire' takes the median, centers on 'Existence Desire', harnesses the Silence Extinction power; it is neither total self‑negation nor forced domination, but… symbiosis, transformation."

He could even sense that deep within this natural Returning Ruins something else was gestating—not life, but an extreme 'stillness'-born anomaly; yet the feeling was too vague, like looking through thick frosted glass, still impossible to grasp clearly.

Beyond these celestial anomalies, the drifting remnants of demonic thoughts also supplied him with many "interesting reports." He "heard" that an elder of a second‑tier sect, after stumbling upon a mineral imbued with pure yin energy, saw his cultivation surge but his temperament become violent and erratic, hinting at demonic corruption—the mineral was merely ordinary black iron tainted by a stray thread of Silence Extinction Desire gas leaked during his "Dao Corrosion" experiment. He "saw" several lone cultivators fighting over a newly discovered small spirit vein, inexplicably descending into madness and killing each other to death—there, coincidentally, was a node where he had previously guided demonic thought residues to converge and test their natural Evolution.

These trivial "experiment" results, like scattered puzzle pieces, were collected and analyzed one by one. He was verifying his Path's influence on all things, testing the response thresholds of different individuals and environments to the "Silence Extinction Desire" power. The outcome pleased him: his strength needed no forced control; like a virus it could silently implant, then, relying on a being's own desire and environmental factors, evolve and bear fruit on its own.

"The Path is formless, giving birth to heaven and earth; the Path is emotionless, moving the sun and moon," Yan Buji murmured the ancient saying in his mind, gaining deeper insight. "My Dao is the same. No need to act deliberately; merely sow the seed, and all things of heaven and earth, by their nature, will aid its growth."

He no longer was content with merely observing and gathering information. He began to undertake more proactive, yet more covert, interventions.

He selected a remote town under the Flowing Cloud Alliance. It had just endured a small beast surge, leaving the populace anxious, with sadness, fear, and a yearning for power spreading. Yan Buji did not directly disperse power; instead, with exquisite subtlety, like tuning a string, he lightly plucked the extremely faint "Peace" law line flowing through the local ley lines, causing a barely perceptible disturbance.

Thus, the sorrow that should have eased with time grew into a lingering, bone‑gnawing ache; the fear that should have been soothed turned into sharper nightmares at night; the yearning for power began to mix with more unscrupulous thoughts… All these changes felt utterly natural, as if the inevitable post‑disaster evolution of human hearts, leaving no trace of external influence.

Yan Buji, like a detached scientist, calmly recorded the "sample's" changes, observing how these amplified negative emotions would affect the townsfolk's behavior, what stories they would spawn, and how they would in turn feed back and fine‑tune his Silence Extinction Desire power that had merged with the local environment.

Having done all this, his primary consciousness sank once more into a deeper level of Path deduction. The external turmoil, Han Wuxian's vigilance, the signs of celestial anomalies, even the "experiment field" he casually set up… all of these were merely fodder and reference for perfecting his Silence Extinction Desire Path.

His power rose steadily, his grasp of the laws deepening. He felt as if he were weaving an invisible, formless yet ubiquitous net, with "Existence Desire" as the warp and "Silence Extinction Power" as the weft, silently covering the world beneath its surface.

"Han Wuxian, you guard the 'reality' you see," Yan Buji's thought echoed in absolute darkness, with a hint of detached indifference beyond victory or defeat. "And I, I am weaving the 'truth' beneath 'reality'. When this net becomes dense enough, everything you protect, whether it exists or not, will be but a single thought of mine."

"This Dao contest has long surpassed personal grudges. It is… the reshaping of the world."

Within the Extinction Stone Coffin, death returns to absolute silence. Only the newly reborn Demon Lord, in an unknown abyss, uses heaven and earth as a canvas and all beings as ink, drawing a dark, grand blueprint of his own. The first person to glimpse a corner of that canvas may still be the Dao Master of the Returning Ruins far in the Ten Thousand Souls Mountain Range. Yet it is unknown how he will confront this silent, root‑level erosion of the world.