434: Chapter 434 Thunder Rumbles Beneath the Ruins, Murderous Intent Rises from the Depths of the Divine Tomb

The azure cloth shoes stepped on the shattered white jade tiles, making a soft rustling sound.

Zhou Wannian walked along the precisely calculated path through the ruins toward the Core Main Hall. His faded azure cloth robe remained completely still in the deathly silent air. There was no wind around; even the sour, musty smell that hung there year-round seemed frozen in midair by this matrix cage constructed of mathematical constants.

After walking for a while, Zhou Wannian slowed his pace.

He lowered his eyes slightly, his gaze falling upon the giant, crack-ridden white jade slab beneath his feet.

A sensation traveled up through the soles of his shoes.

It was a slight, numbing tremor. The amplitude of the tremor was so minute that ordinary Cultivators would struggle to detect it even if they lay flat on the ground. However, the perception granted by the Great Perfection Space Law allowed Zhou Wannian to clearly capture the anomaly coming from deep within the earth veins.

"Thump."

"Thump."

This was not the turning of an Earth Dragon caused by crustal movements. The vibration was rigid and dull, with the interval between each rise and fall being precise to the millisecond, as if a massive steel heart was beating, thud by thud, within the deepest bedrock of the Taiwu Ancestral Court.

As he drew closer to the ruins of the Core Main Hall, the vibration grew stronger, gradually evolving into a rumble like rolling thunder.

The rumbles accumulated underground, shaking the gravel and jade dust on the ground so that they rose into the air, spinning. A numbing sensation of static electricity that made one's teeth ache filled the air, and the sour, musty Death Qi in his nostrils was forcefully dispersed by a strong, pungent smell of engine oil and the metallic tang of red-hot metal.

Zhou Wannian stopped in his tracks, casually folding his hands behind his back, quietly watching the ground before him.

"Buried underground for so many years, you finally can't hold it in and want to crawl out."

Zhou Wannian's calm voice drifted through the rumbling thunder, carrying a hint of casual amusement, as if he were watching a play.

No sooner had he spoken.

"Crack—Boom!"

Without warning, the grayish-black bedrock ahead split down the middle, opening a terrifying abyss hundreds of Zhang wide. The outline of the ruins, meticulously calculated by the Truth Realm to exhibit the golden ratio, was brutally torn to shreds at this moment by the violent power surging from beneath the earth.

A blinding, eerie blue light erupted from the abyss like a volcanic eruption, illuminating the dark, deathly silent core area of the Taiwu Ancestral Court in a ghastly white.

Accompanied by the screeching sound of metal scraping, a colossal figure forcefully squeezed through the thick crust and crawled out of the abyss.

It was a warship.

But it was entirely different from the Geometric Fleet that Zhou Wannian had previously dismantled into scrap metal with his bare hands on the outskirts of the mist. There was no mirror-smooth, silver-gray armor on this warship's hull. Its surface was densely covered with a thick, rocky crust, and in some places, even the dried moss unique to the Taiwu Ancestral Court grew.

It had not just recently sneaked in.

Over the course of countless long epochs, this warship, along with its companions that were now continuously breaking through the soil behind it, had long buried itself deep beneath the Taiwu Ancestral Court. They disguised themselves as the Foundation of these ruins, as the massive rock layers supporting the palaces. With the patience of water dripping through stone, they had constructed a massive underground nest in this dry well right under Zhou Wannian's nose.

At this very moment, the disguise was completely torn away.

The earth cracked frantically amidst the tremors. Countless chunks of dirt and rock weighing tens of millions of tons peeled off the backs of the warships, crashing down in all directions.

One, ten, a hundred...

An entire main warship fleet, ten times larger than the peripheral fleet and armed to the teeth, rose from various corners of the ruins, carrying a chilling aura of slaughter suppressed for countless epochs.

They hovered in midair, blotting out the sky. The plasma exhaust plumes spewing from the bottoms of the warships burned the dried moat bed below into a boiling lake of lava.

Zhou Wannian stood on an isolated stone pillar that had not yet collapsed, looking up at this steel torrent that filled his entire field of vision.

These warships did not line up in uniform mathematical formations as they had before. They were scattered around the Core Main Hall, with countless thick energy cannon barrels protruding from the gaps in their armor, flashing with crimson targeting lights.

The ambush circle had completely closed the moment they broke through the ground.

But to Zhou Wannian's surprise, this long-lurking main fleet did not immediately aim their cannons at him, the "unresolvable variable."

Only a few dozen warships on the periphery projected tractor beams, draping over Zhou Wannian's head like cages in an attempt to restrict his movements.

Meanwhile, the remaining hundreds of heavy warships aligned their energy cannon muzzles—capable of melting through dimensions—directly at the tallest and oldest ruins of the Core Main Hall straight ahead.

"Beep—Ultimate excavation directive confirmed."

"Destroy physical barrier at all costs."

"Extract Constant Zero!"

A synthesized mechanical voice, laced with heavy static noise, boomed across the sky above the thunderous ruins through the warships' communication network. This voice was no longer purely cold and rigid; deep within the static, there was a madness and fanaticism that seemed on the verge of burning out its logical circuits.

With the issuance of the directive,

ten thousand cannons fired simultaneously.

There was no probing; they went all-in with a world-destroying strike right from the start.

Thousands of thick, eerie blue cutting beams converged into a surging river of destruction, slamming violently into the ruins of the Core Main Hall.

"Boom!"

That temple, which had undergone the baptism of countless years and witnessed the rise and fall of ancient gods... under the washing of the eerie blue beams, its bronze pillars, thick as the ribs of beasts, could not even hold out for half a breath before turning into a pool of boiling copper water.

The white jade steps paved before the hall and the massive stone walls engraved with primeval dragon patterns instantly vaporized in the high temperature and high-frequency vibrations of the beams, turning into white dust that filled the sky.

The Truth Realm's fleet was like a pack of frenzied grave-robbing rats.

They poured out firepower recklessly, peeling away the ruins of the main hall layer by layer, digging frantically toward the deepest part of the earth veins.

Zhou Wannian stood on that isolated stone pillar.

Over his head was a web of dozens of crimson tractor beams. These beams carried a powerful force of spatial confinement, attempting to pin him to the spot. All around him, the violent airflow generated by the roaring of the warships' main cannons made his azure robe rustle loudly.

He ignored the targeting beams overhead, which felt like trying to scratch an itch through a boot.

His eyes, deep as abysses, coldly watched the rapidly evaporating Core Main Hall through the flying dust and blinding blue light.

He was listening to the name spoken by that mechanical voice.

Constant Zero.

In the Truth Realm's Universe model constructed of numbers and formulas, one through nine were the basis for the evolution of all things, the constants that supported the movement of stars and the birth and death of Laws.

And "zero"...

...represented nothingness, represented the Void Realm, and also represented the Origin and end of all logic.

The Truth Realm had spent ten billion world Origins to deduce the Taiwu Ancestral Court, burying an entire main fleet under the ruins as a Foundation for countless epochs, and even the ancient remnant soul hidden beneath the mechanical shell did not hesitate to expose its trump card.

They had not come to seek revenge on him.

They were here to dig out the ultimate Origin hidden deep beneath this main hall, the one that could fill in the final piece of the Truth Realm's logical puzzle and explain the concept of "nothingness."

Once "Constant Zero" was excavated, the Truth Realm's Mainframe would be able to complete its logical closed loop. By then, even an unreasonable "variable" like Zhou Wannian could be incorporated into their newly established mathematical model to be completely analyzed and erased.

The ruins of the main hall had already been blasted into a massive sinkhole ten thousand Zhang deep.

The eerie blue cutting beams were still sparing no effort to excavate even deeper.

At the bottom of the sinkhole, a strange fluctuation began to emanate.

This fluctuation had no color or sound. But as it radiated outward, the energy shields on the surfaces of the surrounding Truth Warships, which were frantically pouring out firepower, actually underwent a bizarre distortion. The internal logic codes of some warships that were too close returned to the state of "zero" without warning the moment they came into contact with this fluctuation. The warships plummeted straight into the sinkhole like cold stones, smashing into scrap metal.

"Origin radiation detected... Logic collapse rate rising..."

"Increase output power! Do not stop! Dig it out!"

The fanaticism in the synthesized mechanical voice had completely overridden all reason. Instead of retreating, the fleet of warships pressed forward like moths to a flame, braving the radiation that was causing their Systems to reboot.

Zhou Wannian stood on the stone pillar, feeling the strange fluctuation spreading up from the bottom of the sinkhole.

The Absolute Mass tempered by the Great Perfection Space Law was like a calm ancient well. The moment it came into contact with this fluctuation, a tiny pebble seemed to have been cast into it, sending out an imperceptible ripple.

To be able to cause ripples in the Absolute Mass...

This indicated that the essence of the thing buried beneath was already infinitely close to the "absolute existence" at the dawn of the Universe's birth.

"Smashing all the tables and chairs in someone else's house just to pry out the copper coin beneath the floor tiles."

Zhou Wannian raised his right hand and gently scratched his temple with his long, fair index finger.

He watched those massive warships digging up the dirt like mad dogs, and looked at that ancient main hall which had been completely razed to the ground, its very Foundation excavated.

On his handsome and easygoing face, the hint of casual amusement vanished completely, replaced by a layer of frost like ten-thousand-year-old black ice.

Running into the courtyard that he had personally locked up back then.

Not only drawing random grids on the ground, but now also uprooting the main house in this courtyard right in front of him to dig up that so-called ultimate Origin.

Such unsightly conduct was so repulsive that it made Zhou Wannian feel somewhat nauseous.

"I have never been one to care about grand displays."

Zhou Wannian's calm voice ignored the roaring of the cannons filling the sky and the piercing mechanical alarms, echoing clearly within the logical core of every Truth Warship.

Facing the dozens of crimson confinement beams above his head, he slowly raised his right foot.

"But for a guest to run into the host's home, swing a pickaxe, and dig up their ancestral grave..."

The spotless azure cloth shoe left that isolated stone pillar and stepped plainly into the Void Realm ahead.

The sole of his shoe descended.

"That is being a bit too disrespectful of the rules."

As his words fell, the Absolute Mass tempered by the Great Perfection Space Law surged from the sole of Zhou Wannian's shoe, transforming into a visible transparent ripple that swept out in all directions with overbearing force.