606: Chapter 606 The Silent Figure

Blood Butcher's voice was cut off by a more grand, more thorough silence before the last syllable could be uttered.

At this moment, it was not mere fear that gripped him, but something deeper, more primitive—as if the very Foundation of his existence as a living being had been pulled out, brick by brick, without warning.

An unease, far more intense and viscous than when he had faced the Ancient Precious Technique, welled up like a cold underground spring from the deepest cracks of his Divine Soul, instantly permeating every strand of his Divine Thought, every drop of his demonic blood.

This feeling was like standing alone on the edge of a ten-thousand-foot cliff, with something behind him that could devour even the concept of "nothingness" itself.

"You... what are you looking at?"

He heard his own voice ring out, dry, strange, and even carrying a trace of a tremor he himself had not noticed, one that could almost be called bewilderment.

This was not a questioning, but more like an instinctive muttering, an attempt to grasp some tangible proof with words to counter the abnormality that was spreading and freezing his mind.

Luo Xiaojiu finally raised her eyelids.

Blood Butcher met her eyes.

What a pair of eyes they were.

Clear, clear as a cold pool reflecting the starlight of eternity, crystalline and bottomless, yet chilling to the bone.

There was not the slightest ripple of emotion within them. No blazing flames of anger, no chilling intent to kill, not even that basic trace of contempt or mockery that a strong person should feel toward a weak one regarding his previous arrogant behavior.

None of it.

She looked at him.

This gaze fell calmly upon his hideous blood-body, his surging sea of blood, his boiling Evil Qi, yet it seemed to pierce through the appearance of all these existences.

She was not looking at an enemy. Not a powerhouse of the Blood Clan. Not an individual possessing the power of destruction.

She had only seen something. Just like a traveler passing through a wilderness, whose gaze drifts lightly over a stone by the roadside, a blade of grass trembling in the wind, or a speck of dust floating in a beam of light. No joy, no sorrow, no distinction.

Then, the corners of her lips curved upward, ever so slightly.

This was not the smile of a victor, nor was it a smile carrying playfulness or malice.

This smile was abruptly clean, pure, and even... possessed an innocence akin to a child hearing an interesting story.

Yet, this purity and innocence appearing at this moment, beneath her emotionless eyes, were more hair-raising than any hideous intent to kill.

"Blood Clan?"

She gently recited these two words.

The syllables flowed from between her lips and teeth, endowed with a peculiar rhythm, as if she were truly savoring a completely unfamiliar vocabulary, attempting to understand its meaning—but the conclusion reached was: dull, and boring.

"You—!!"

A short, sharp shriek, mixed with shock, anger, and something on the verge of collapse, erupted from Blood Butcher's throat.

He had to say something, do something, to break this eerie silence that was slowly dragging him into an ice cavern!

His blood essence was driven frantically, and the viscous sea of blood behind him let out a boiling roar; he wanted to—

"Boom"?

No.

There was no "boom".

There was no sound at all.

Luo Xiaojiu's figure, right before his eyes, under his fully focused gaze—

Vanished into thin air.

It was not a teleportation so fast his Divine Thought could not capture it. It was not an escape technique merging with the Law of space.

It was a more thorough, more absurd erasure—as if she, her existence, all her aura, traces, and Karma with this world, had been gently wiped away from the scroll of reality in that very instant.

The previously striking orange color, the standing figure, were all just a hollow joke played by the light and shadow of the abyss, a brief and meaningless hallucination.

Blood Butcher's pupils shrank into two needle-sized, trembling black dots.

Thump-thump.

He heard his own heart make a muffled sound, heavy as a war drum yet suddenly losing its rhythm in extreme terror.

The next moment—

A fist.

Appeared before him.

No process.

No trajectory of where it came from.

No fluctuations or turbulence brought about by tearing through space. Not even the slightest disturbance of energy.

It just, "appeared".

So naturally, and so unreasonably, it occupied the center of Blood Butcher's entire field of vision and his entire perception of his Divine Soul.

Carrying an indescribable, ineffable purity.

This was not the will of destruction, not the desire for slaughter, but something more primal, more absolute—pure force, condensed into a solid entity, transformed into a fair, seemingly slender fist.

The fist-tip was aimed squarely at his face.

In this moment, infinitely stretched and nearly solidified, Blood Butcher could even see the texture on the surface of that fist.

Beneath the fair skin, there was no light of a Cultivation Technique, nor the flickering of runes, but lines of pale gold that seemed innate and flowed naturally.

They flickered slightly with a certain grand and silent pulse—this was power, physical strength condensed to the extreme, which, after condensation, compression, and qualitative change, naturally manifested on the surface of the fist as "Force Patterns".

Each minute line winding, in the perception of his Divine Thought, seemed to hold an ancient star being born, burning, and perishing.

The vastness contained within was enough to make the galaxy roll backward, to make the world collapse.

Dodge!

Block!

Burn!

Burn the essence blood!

Burn the Origin!

Burn every shackle and Treasure Trove in the Divine Soul that could be sacrificed!

Exchange for a glimmer of life!!

Countless thoughts, the most insane commands spurred by the desire to survive, exploded in his Sea of Consciousness like fireworks.

But—

This fist...

It was not fast.

Fast is a concept belonging to time, a relative motion.

And this fist, the moment it appeared before Blood Butcher, the result of its impact seemed to have already become a set, unshakeable fact.

Time lost its meaning of measurement before it, and Karma appeared blurred and fragile before it.

When the cold fist-tip gently touched the skin of his face, which was covered in hard blood-patterns...

Blood Butcher hadn't even had time to complete the emotion of fear—the entire process from generation to sweeping through his Divine Soul.

A voice sounded directly in the deepest part of his Divine Soul.

Very light, very faint, without emotion.

Like a casual whisper between friends, or stating a fact as simple as could be:

"Heavenly Horned Ant, the extreme realm of force."

Then, came the second declaration, calmly providing a footnote to his current encounter:

"Second fist."

No boom!!!

This time, it was even "quieter" than the first fist.

The massive roar expected to shatter the abyss for a million miles did not happen.

No destructive energy storm erupted.

The surrounding space did not even show a single crack.

Because, not a single bit of excess power leaked out.

All the force, all the destruction, all the intent of ending, were, at the moment of the fist's contact, perfectly and introverted-ly compressed into every inch under the skin of Blood Butcher's three-zhang blood-body, into every strand of flesh, between every section of bone, and within every smallest unit of life, by a will that was precise to the point of being hair-raising and controlled to the point of exceeding imagination.

Seen from the outside, the scene was almost comical, even carrying a trace of eerie gentleness:

Blood Butcher's towering, hideous blood-body was just lightly, steadily touched on the forehead by this fair fist.

He didn't even sway, not even once.

However, inside his shell—

Heaven turned, earth overturned.

This was not a landslide or tsunami, this was the Foundation of the world annihilating.

The fist power exploded at the point of contact—no, it did not explode, it descended.

It ran through the Bloodline network in a way that surpassed all concepts of speed, spread along the nerve currents, penetrated the finest cell membranes, and in one billionth of an instant, evenly and thoroughly filled every inch of the components of Blood Butcher's existence concept.

This was not destruction.

This was erasure.

In his flesh, which he had cultivated for ten thousand years and refined like divine metal, the boiling, roaring, and endlessly vital blood-Qi Origin, at the moment of contact with that pure vibration of force, melted silently like snow meeting boiling oil, turning into the most primordial particles of void.

Deep within his bones, the bone-marrow Dao patterns, which were branded with Bloodline secret techniques and carried the power of ancient Legacy and Law, were crushed by an irresistible force, peeled off inch by inch, shattered, and returned to the most primitive, meaningless energy dust.

Even in the core of his Divine Soul, where it was closely linked to the vast Bloodline Luck in the darkness, those tough threads symbolizing race, Karma, and Luck, under this absolute vibration of force, emitted a desperate wail that only a Divine Soul could perceive—

Then, they snapped thread by thread, turning to ash inch by inch.

Blood Butcher's eyes widened to the limit, almost splitting his eye sockets.

All the ferocity, arrogance, and cruelty within them had long been washed away, leaving only the most primitive, most naked—

Terror.

And an ultimate bewilderment that terror could not fully describe, regarding the fact that "existence" itself was disappearing.

His mouth opened to an exaggerated, inhuman arc, as if he wanted to let out a scream that would pierce through life and death, or a syllable of prayer—

But no sound came out.

Because, even his right to make a sound had already been thoroughly erased by that fist.