444: Chapter 444 An idler severs the rain line, and yellow wine counteracts the unconventional situation.

However, this face was composed of cold, dark mirror material. It lacked the warmth of flesh and blood, and from those eyes generated by the mirror, a rigid, hollow, ash-gray light shone through.

The mirror-Zhou Wannian looked at the real Zhou Wannian sitting opposite him.

That mouth, formed by a crack in the mirror, slowly opened and closed.

"When I go for a walk, I have never liked following circles drawn by others."

The voice rang out in this wine shop, frozen in time and utterly dead.

This voice reached Zhou Wannian's ears, causing his fingers to tap lightly on the tabletop involuntarily.

It was not a mechanically synthesized electronic sound, nor was it a grinding noise emitted from a throat.

The timbre, the tone, and even the slightly lazy, halting rhythm of the speech—it was all of the same origin and lineage as Zhou Wannian's own voice, identical in every way!

This sentence was exactly what Zhou Wannian had casually said not long ago beneath the Taiwu Ancestral Court, while facing the lethal formation of The Initial Circle.

Now, this mirror-monster wearing a coir raincoat, using a face identical to his and a voice identical to his, repeated this sentence word for word in this small town's wine shop.

Not only that.

As the voice was emitted, the Death Qi Law that originally permeated the mirror-monster began to undergo a strange distortion.

It tried to restrain its Death Qi, attempting to imitate Zhou Wannian's state of absolute constancy, unbound by any dimension and independent of all things.

It was copying.

This Death Qi creation that had crawled out of the abyss of the Withered Well knew that it could not shake this Great Perfection Absolute Mass on a physical level.

Therefore, it had brought a copper coin capable of resetting the time constant to zero.

It had turned this wine shop into an absolutely static painting, free from any external Law interference.

Then, using this mirror face, it attempted to imprint the concept of Zhou Wannian as a "variable" onto itself, bit by bit, within this deathly silent painting, blindly imitating what it saw.

As long as it could replicate a trace of Zhou Wannian's spirit, as long as it could steal even a tiny bit of the fur of "Absolute Existence," the master beneath the Withered Well would be able to patch the greatest loophole in its logic, thereby completely breaking free from the shackles of over ninety thousand chains and dragging the entire Universe into an irredeemable cycle of heat death.

On the mirror-monster's face, composed of reflective material, it even attempted to squeeze out Zhou Wannian's signature lazy smile.

"Since you have brought a compass to my door."

The mirror-monster continued to use Zhou Wannian's voice, reciting lines he had once spoken.

Its pale, slender hand lifted, seemingly wanting to imitate Zhou Wannian by clasping its hands behind its back.

Zhou Wannian, sitting by the wooden table, watched this clumsy imitation show quietly.

He did not fly into a rage or overturn the table, nor did he radiate any earth-shattering Aura.

In those eyes, deep as an abyss, only a layer of profound boredom and disgust welled up.

"After staying in the gutter for too long, you've grown fond of playing these low-class copying tricks."

Zhou Wannian's calm voice rippled through the ash-gray wine shop, carrying an undisguised mockery.

"It is hard to paint the spirit even if you paint the skin and bones. Do you think that by looking into a broken mirror, you can stuff all the truths of the world into your pocket?"

He watched the mirror-monster attempting to clasp its hands behind its back.

"You learn to speak like me, walk like me, and wear my face."

Zhou Wannian's two fingers, holding a salted peanut, twisted gently in mid-air.

The peanut's red skin made a faint rustling sound under the friction of his fingertips.

"But have you ever learned that, in my life, what I hate most is when others damage the furnishings in this room while I am drinking?"

He shifted his gaze away from that disgusting mirror face, lowered his eyelids, and looked at the square wooden table in front of him, covered in dust and grease.

On the table sat a coarse porcelain wine bowl with a few chips in the rim.

In the bowl was more than half a bowl of inferior yellow wine that the old shopkeeper had just warmed up.

Under the Law of time resetting to zero, this bowl of yellow wine had also lost its temperature, turning into a bowl of lifeless, turbid, dead water.

There were no fermentation bubbles of distiller's grains, no mellow aroma of grain.

But this was wine of the mortal world.

It was a vulgar thing, stained with the worldly smoke and fire of this Jiangnan small town, brewed with rice and well water from the Lower Realm.

Zhou Wannian pinched that plump salted peanut.

His wrist tilted slightly downward.

His slender, fair fingers, holding the peanut, reached plainly and calmly into that coarse porcelain wine bowl.

In this dead zone that was completely frozen, where even micro-particles had stopped moving, Zhou Wannian's movements met no resistance.

He soaked the peanut in the turbid, yellowish wine.

His fingers stirred gently at the bottom of the bowl.

Under the protection of the Absolute Mass, this peanut was not assimilated by the Death Qi.

On the contrary, it became stained with the lingering Aura in that bowl of inferior yellow wine.

It was the smell of the charcoal fire the old shopkeeper used to warm the wine, the aged sourness that had not dissipated from this dilapidated shop for decades, and the earthy scent brought by the Jiangnan spring rain outside.

All of this worldly smoke and fire, vulgarity, and the chaotic variables that did not follow the rules were firmly smeared onto this shelled peanut by Zhou Wannian's fingers.

He withdrew his fingers from the wine bowl.

A few drops of turbid yellow wine clung to the peanut.

The wine gathered into droplets on the peanut's red skin, but because of the wrapping of the Great Perfection Law, they did not drip off.

Zhou Wannian raised his head, his calm eyes once again meeting the coir-clad monster standing inside the door with the mirror face.

That monster was still trying to repeat Zhou Wannian's past words in a stiff tone.

"Then I will personally, take this circle of yours..."

The monster had not finished speaking.

Zhou Wannian sat on the long bench, his back not even leaving the wooden pillar.

His right hand, holding the wine-soaked peanut, pressed the pad of his thumb against the nail of his middle finger.

The plump salted peanut was firmly wedged between the two fingers.

Ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine jade-like chains emitted a warm and crisp hum within the inner universe.

A pure Absolute Mass, containing no dimensional Impurities, flowed along Zhou Wannian's arm and silently gathered at his fingertips.

This mass was compressed to the extreme and poured entirely into the interior of the peanut stained with mortal yellow wine.

"Something that doesn't even count as a side dish for wine."

Zhou Wannian's tone was flat.

The physical pressure accumulated between his thumb and middle finger reached a critical point.

Facing that mirror face, which was as reflective as a mirror and trying to distort itself to imitate him, he bent his finger.

And flicked.

"Hum—!"

There was no roar of gunpowder explosion, nor the shrill whistle of Sword Qi breaking through the air.

Within one ten-thousandth of a second after leaving Zhou Wannian's fingertips, the physical kinetic energy contained within this salted peanut, stained with a few drops of turbid yellow wine, directly caused the absolutely static dead zone ahead to emit a groan of unbearable pain.

The peanut turned into an afterimage that the naked eye could not possibly capture.

It did not cut through space, nor did it use any mysterious Karma Laws.

It simply relied on that unreasonable Absolute Mass, carrying the crudest sour smell of distiller's grains and the smoke and fire of the mortal world.

In the most primitive and violent posture of physical impact, it crashed straight into the Law of time resetting to zero that locked this small space.

It was like a red-hot iron nail fiercely driving into a block of solid ice that had been frozen for millions of years.

"Sshhh-la-la-la—"

A teeth-grinding tearing sound exploded in the wine shop.

Wherever the peanut passed, that layer of ash-gray Death Qi painting that shrouded the surroundings and caused all things to lose their color was forcibly plowed into a straight vacuum channel.

The absolute closed loop where the time constant had been erased was, in front of this wine-stained peanut, as fragile as thin paper pasted on a window lattice, poked into a huge hole that could not be repaired.

With the breaking of the closed loop, the forcibly frozen physical Laws welcomed a violent rebound.

Outside the wine shop's door, that transparent water curtain composed of countless suspended water droplets, refracting bizarre and motley light and shadows, lost its binding support the moment the rules collapsed.

"Whoosh—Boom!"

Millions of raindrops, under the renewed pull of gravity, turned into a miniature waterfall, fiercely slamming onto the bluestone slab outside the wine shop's threshold.

Water splashed everywhere, and muddy water flowed across the ground.

The severed sounds, like a dam breaking, flooded back into Zhou Wannian's eardrums crazily.

The dense sound of rain hitting the eaves outside, the splashing sound of wind blowing over the river waves, and the barking of dogs deep in the alley.

It was overwhelming, the clamor filling his ears.

Inside the wine shop, the solidified flame in the clay stove suddenly leaped, once again emitting a dark red glow and scorching heat.

The white smoke from the spout of the coarse porcelain wine pot resumed its curling, rising posture.

The old shopkeeper's half-snore, stuck in his throat, let out a "puff" sound and was smoothly expelled.

Color, temperature, sound, the passage of time.

All the vivid, normal states of the mortal world, at this moment, completely regained control of this dilapidated wine shop.

The dead zone cage established by the solid copper coin thrown by the coir-clad traveler, used to freeze time and space, was smashed to pieces by a single peanut meant for wine.

And that peanut, which had pierced through the closed loop of rules, had not lost a single bit of its momentum.

Carrying the terrifying mass bestowed by the Great Perfection Space Law, and the sourness of that turbid yellow wine, at the very instant time resumed its flow, it had already arrived directly in front of that mirror face attempting to imitate Zhou Wannian's features.

It was less than half an inch away from that smooth forehead.