635: Chapter 635 My Evidence

Luo Xiaojiu looked down at him.

Her gaze fell upon this demonic Cultivator, as calm as the surface of a deep, ancient well, without a single ripple.

It lingered for less than half a breath—perhaps even shorter, so short that the word "gaze" seemed too solemn.

Then, it moved away.

Just like looking at a stone on the side of the road.

A stone that was an eyesore, superfluous, and not worth leaving any impression of in her memory.

The demonic Cultivator's weeping stopped abruptly.

It was not that he did not want to cry anymore—it was that the surging wail in his chest, the moment it touched this gaze, was frozen by something colder and more absolute.

He suddenly realized that he did not even have the qualification to cry.

Crying is a plea for mercy, a lamentation, a posture of the weak attempting to exchange for a sliver of pity from the strong.

And she lacked even the interest to collect this posture.

She did not even deign to give him an answer.

Because the moment he opened his mouth and let the first trembling syllable squeeze out of his throat, she had already completed her judgment—not based on hatred, not based on anger, and not even based on contempt.

This was a more absolute, more essential judgment:

This person, and all the clamor, pleading, and existence he represented, were not worth her spending even a single breath of time to hold a thought of "response."

His words, his fear, the weight of his entire life, on the scale of her consciousness—

As light as a feather.

No, as light as nothingness.

The demonic Cultivator slumped on the ground, his eyes as hollow as two gouged-out holes.

His lips moved unconsciously, like a fish out of water, yet he could not make a sound.

Even despair arrived late.

What remained was only a desolate, completely negated blankness.

He suddenly remembered a story.

A very, very old story.

When he was a child, curled up by his Master's knees, he had heard that always-drunk old man tell it—

Long, long ago, there was a group of ants fighting on the side of the road.

In order to compete for a grain of rice or the boundary of a small territory, they bit each other, lined up to charge, and their carapaces collided with a barely audible crisp sound.

This was a war concerning the survival, glory, and revenge of their clan, the center of gravity of their entire world.

A child passed by, accidentally squatted down, and watched for a while.

He felt those busy black dots were a bit interesting, or perhaps he just thought they were noisy.

Then, he lifted his foot and, casually, stepped down.

The ants did not know why the sky would collapse.

They did not know what the huge shadow that blocked the sunlight and brought endless roaring and vibration was.

They did not know why the solid earth would tremble and crack violently.

They did not know why, after this shadow fell, the world they fought for, the enemies they entangled with, the beliefs they defended, along with themselves, instantly turned into a puddle of indistinguishable flesh and mud.

They did not know what a "child" was, did not know what "passing by" was, did not know what "stepping" was, and did not even know the word "death."

In the cognitive system of their short lives, they could not contain such a vast, such a casual, and such an absolute concept.

They only knew—

The sky had collapsed.

And now, he was that ant.

And Luo Xiaojiu was that child who squatted down to take a look, and then lifted her foot.

No.

Even worse.

The child at least took a look and had a moment of attention.

And Luo Xiaojiu—

Luo Xiaojiu's five fingers, amidst this dead silence and Soul-freezing realization, completely closed.

"Crack—"

A crisp sound, piercingly clear, yet hollow as if it came from outside the world.

It was not the sound of bones breaking.

It was the sound of space itself shattering.

It was the irredeemable wail bursting from within this place that carried light, air, dust, and Law, like a glass mirror struck by a heavy hammer.

Centered on the palm print that was as solid as if cast from gold, the space within a hundred zhang suddenly became covered with dense cracks.

The cracks crisscrossed, deep and pitch-black, as if connecting to the nothingness where all things end.

And from these hideous cracks, what seeped out was not darkness—

It was a scorching, flowing golden light.

This was the Qi and blood power of the Desolate Ancient Sacred Body, pure to the extreme, seeping out from the wounds of the spatial cracks.

They did not look like light, but more like liquid gold with substance and weight.

Like lava pouring down from the Nine Heavens, slow, viscous, carrying the terrifying power to burn everything and reshape everything, flowing slowly along the cracks in space.

Wherever it passed, even the nothingness was plated with a golden edge of destruction.

In the palm print, the dozen or so Cultivators trapped by the invisible giant force, at this moment, had their consciousness stripped to the most primitive level, feeling the most profound and pure despair of this life—perhaps also in countless Reincarnations.

It was not the pain of being attacked.

It was not the suffocation of being suppressed.

It was not the panic of being imprisoned.

It was being erased.

Just like using an eraser to wipe away lines lightly sketched with a pencil on paper.

The eraser falls, the lines disappear.

No debris, no traces, clean as if it had always been a blank space, never having had any figures or meaning.

The eraser itself would not care if it was erasing a carefully sketched portrait or a casual doodle.

They were not going to be killed.

But were going to be removed from this world.

There was no room for resistance—space had been locked, power had been absolutely suppressed, and thinking was nearly stagnant under a will of a higher order.

There was no process of struggling—any spiritual power attempted to be mobilized, Magic Treasure activated, or essence blood burned, in front of this flowing golden lava, melted like ice and snow, failing to stir up even a ripple.

There was no chance—from the moment Luo Xiaojiu's five fingers closed, the ending was already doomed.

This process was just letting the ending "happen."

Hu Lie closed his eyes.

He did not try to look at the golden light that was annihilating everything.

In his final moments, what he thought of was not hatred, not resentment, but those most subtle fragments that constituted the existence of "Hu Lie."

He remembered his father's rough hands, the first time he lifted him above his head, the sky was so blue.

He remembered the mottled totems on the ancient altar of the Sword Tiger Clan, glowing with a cold light under the moonlight.

He remembered this ancient sword that had accompanied him for sixty years; every scratch on the scabbard corresponded to a memory on the edge of life and death.

The hilt had long been worn smooth as jade by his palm.

He remembered the first time he tremblingly gripped the sword that was too heavy for him, his palm was worn through by the rough hilt, blood beads seeped out, it was very painful, but he gritted his teeth and did not let go.

His father said, holding the sword meant holding one's own life.

And then—

There was nothing left.

It was not darkness descending, not consciousness sinking.

It was that all possibilities after the word "then," along with the "self" that carried these possibilities, were wiped away together.

The golden light suddenly flared up.

As if a second sun had suddenly risen in this world, completely swallowing and shrouding the entire solid palm print.

This light was too blinding, too pure, containing a flavor of "purification" and "negation" that approached Law, forcing all survivors present—regardless of friend or foe, regardless of distance—to instinctively and painfully close their eyes.

Tears gushed out uncontrollably.

This light lasted for exactly three breaths.

Three breaths, in the long life of a Cultivator, was as short as a snap of the fingers.

But at this moment, before all the tightly closed eyes, in the beating of all hearts gripped by fear, these three breaths were infinitely elongated, as if experiencing three eras of Chaos.

After three breaths, the light dissipated as abruptly as it had appeared.

The wind began to flow again, carrying a strange, empty, and clean warmth.

The palm print was still there.

The huge, five-fingered, solid golden palm print still pressed heavily on the ground, golden light dust at the edges slowly drifting away like fireflies, proving the majestic power it once contained that was enough to split mountains and seas.

But inside the palm print—

The dozen or so who were originally trapped, struggling, and roaring—

Had disappeared.

Cleanly.

Completely.

There was no tragedy of flesh and blood flying, no explosion of Soul Flying Away and Spirit Scattering, no unwilling curses or wails before death.

Not even the tiniest fiber of clothing, not even the smallest drop of blood, not even the thinnest residue of breath, was left behind.

It was as if they had never stood there, never breathed, never existed.

This piece of land covered by the palm print was as flat as before, not even a single blade of grass had fallen.

It was as if the dozen or so Nascent Soul Realm experts just now, along with their Protective Aura and the radiance of their Magic Treasure, were just an overly realistic collective hallucination.

The only thing that could prove they had once existed were a few broken fragments of Magic Treasure scattered within the palm print area—

Hu Lie's ancient sword was broken into several sections from the middle, the blade was dull, and all spirituality was gone.

This cyan giant blade that once had astonishing power was left with only a few twisted metal wrecks.

After the golden lion phantom exploded, a few strands of golden mane remained, solid as real objects, but were rapidly dimming and dissipating.

The Demon-Subduing Pestle surrounded by Buddha light was left with only half of its body, and the scriptures on it were annihilated inch by inch.

But these proofs were also performing their final, accelerated curtain call under the erosion of this golden Qi and blood power that had not yet completely dissipated.

They lost their luster at a speed visible to the naked eye, became gray, then cracked, weathered, and shattered into finer powder.

Finally, in a series of barely perceptible breezes, they completely dissipated into nothingness.

Completely, they were wiped from this world.

From matter, to energy, to potentially remaining information, and then to traces in memory—

Were all wiped clean by this power.

The whole scene was dead silent.

A dead silence, deeper than death and colder than nothingness, heavily shrouded the area for several miles.

Even the sound of the wind seemed to hold its breath.

Insects had long vanished. Between heaven and earth, there was only the sound of blood rushing against the eardrums and the subtle clicking of teeth chattering uncontrollably.

The remaining hundred or so Cultivators, as if their spines had been pulled out, stood stiffly on the spot, their eyes locked tightly on that empty, yet heavy as a mountain, palm print.

Face after face was pale as paper, without a hint of color, and their whole bodies were trembling violently like they had the ague.

Someone's legs went soft, and they slumped directly onto the ground, not even realizing that their crotch was wet.

Someone covered their mouth tightly, their eyes wide enough to almost split, fearing that a single sound would leak out and attract the pity of this indifferent gaze.

Someone made a rattling sound in their throat, rolled their eyes, and fell straight backward, their mind having collapsed, directly fainting away.

It was not that their will was not firm, or they were timid as mice.

People who Cultivate, Heaven-Defying and fighting for their lives, which one of them had not waded through a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood?

Which one had not experienced dangers on the edge of life and death?

Death itself was not enough to make them lose their composure like this.

But what they felt at this moment was something that exceeded their scope of understanding, and even exceeded the cognitive Legacy of their tradition.

In their entire lives—no, in the oral traditions and recorded classics of several generations, or even a dozen generations of their clans—they had never described such power, such an ending.

This was not killing.

It was erasing.

It was existence being negated.

A dozen or so Nascent Soul Realm experts!

Among them were Prodigies like Hu Lie, who was famous in the younger generation of the Yao Race, high monks who Cultivated the Buddhist Diamond Divine Ability, and eccentric people who could control exotic beasts...

Any one of them, placed in the outside world, would be a hero of a region, a figure capable of establishing a sect and protecting a clan.

They possessed long lifespans, powerful Divine Ability, illustrious reputations, intricate Karma, people who loved them, people who hated them, their unfulfilled ambitions, and grudges that had not been repaid...

Yet, in these three breaths of golden light—

Everything returned to zero.

Like using the cleanest damp cloth to wipe away the clearest chalk drawing on a blackboard.

Whoosh, it was gone.

Not even chalk dust was kicked up.

This kind of fear had long surpassed the fear of Soul Flying Away and Spirit Scattering—that was, after all, still a process, a result, belonging to the endpoint within the cognitive system of a Cultivator.

This was the fear of "never having existed."

They could not fear death, and even not fear Soul Flying Away and Spirit Scattering.

The path of Cultivation was originally about fighting with Heaven for one's life.

From the day they stepped onto this path, everyone had, more or less, the realization of falling.

Being wrapped in horse hide, the Dao dissipating and the body perishing, was at least an ending.

It was the curtain call of the drama of life.

Perhaps tragic, perhaps desolate, but in the end, there had been a play.

But they were afraid—

Afraid that after they had bitterly Cultivated for hundreds or thousands of years, experienced countless tribulations, killed many enemies, struggled on the edge of life and death so many times, loved, hated, been obsessed, been crazy...

In the end, all these joys and sorrows, all traces of existence, all "proofs of why I am me," in front of this existence, did not even have the qualification to be ended—

But were just casually wiped away.

Afraid that after they died, this world would not remember them, would not care about them, and even fundamentally, would not know they had ever existed.

Their life and death, their stories, their Dao—

Were as light as a wisp of dust.

Just like... that group of ants fighting on the side of the road.

You step on an ant.

From the struggle of this ant breaking out of its egg, to the hard work of foraging for food, to the heroism of fighting to defend its nest—all the meaning, sweat, and struggle in its short life, ultimately condensed, perhaps only into this insignificant, almost undetectable, slight "sensation" transmitted from the sole of your foot.

And then?

And then you wouldn't even look down at the sole of your shoe.

You wouldn't remember.

Because ants are not important.

Its life and death, in your world, cannot stir up a single ripple.

And now, they—

This group of Cultivators who claimed to act on behalf of Heaven, who claimed to be righteous, who were used to being high and mighty, and who viewed mortals as grass—

In Luo Xiaojiu's gaze that was calm to the point of cruelty, under the gently closing five fingers—

Were not even as good as ants.

Ants at least get stepped to death.

That is an action, an "event" imposed upon them.

But they were erased.

They did not even deserve the process of being stepped to death.