453: Chapter 453 A Thousand Faces of Clay Statues Lament, All Things Are Empty and Untainted by Dust

The soles of the cyan cloth shoes landed steadily.

Ahead lay a boundless black-gray swamp. The foul-smelling sludge, formed from the remnants of countless shattered worlds, churned with turbid bubbles the size of human heads.

Just as Zhou Wannian's toe hovered above the pool of black water bubbling with acid at the edge of the swamp...

In the center of the swamp, the thousand-faced mud idol—so massive that even the Dragon bones of the Primordial Star River would seem like a toy—went completely berserk.

It seemed to have realized that this man in cyan robes was not bound by conventional Laws or Karma. Even the dimensionality reduction strike, capable of weaving the fates of All Heavens and Myriad Worlds, had been kicked into dust by him. Physical obstacles were like thin window paper blocking an iron ox-cart before this variable emitting Absolute Mass.

Since physical means were ineffective, it would use the most fundamental concepts, the despair accumulated over countless epochs by the entire Universe, to corrode his Divine Soul and crush his Dao Heart.

"BOOM—"

On the surface of the mud idol, those thousands upon billions of faces opened their mouths simultaneously.

The ancient god-demon face with a dark golden horn opened its blood-red maw, revealing broken fangs; the Buddha with half a melted face opened lips that should have preached compassion, from which black phlegm flowed; the mechanical skull crafted from precision gears split its metal jaw, emitting not a synthesized electronic sound, but a sharp, grating friction.

Immortals, Demon Lords, Demon Emperors, Mortal ants...

Billions of mouths, at this moment, emitted the same voice toward Zhou Wannian standing at the edge of the swamp.

This was not an ordinary sound wave.

As these billions of voices converged, there was no medium for vibration in the air, because the sound had transformed into materialized spiritual pollution.

"Wooo— Ahhh—"

A visible, thick, ink-black sound wave, like a sky-covering tsunami, erupted from the giant mouth of the mud idol, crashing down upon Zhou Wannian with destructive force.

Before the sound wave even touched his body, the terrifying sensory impact had already arrived.

First and foremost was the smell.

It was an extreme stench that made one's internal organs churn. It was mixed with the scorched smell of star cores drying up and extinguishing, the pungent, bloody sweetness of billions of living beings' flesh and blood being evaporated into blood mist simultaneously, and a moldy smell that permeated to the bone, like that of an ancient wooden coffin buried in a dark, damp underground for a hundred thousand years.

Next came the total collapse of hearing.

As the black sound wave struck, a panoramic scroll of the apocalypse exploded deep within Zhou Wannian's eardrums.

He heard it.

He heard the heart-wrenching, throat-tearing screams of billions of Mortals on a once-beautiful blue cultivation star as the earth's core collapsed and they watched the sky split open into a sea of fire. In those screams, there was the helpless wailing of a mother shielding her burning infant in her arms; there was the elderly man kneeling in a dried-up Spiritual Vein, desperately cursing the unfair heavens.

He heard it.

He heard the sound of cold central mainframes frantically reporting errors as a highly developed mechanical civilization faced a higher-dimensional collapse. After losing logical support, billions of metal mechas emitted metal friction sounds as harsh as beasts before death, and then, along with their planet, were flattened into a two-dimensional painting.

He heard the collapse of Immortal blessed lands, and the frantic roars of high-and-mighty Immortal King Dao Ancestors, filled with reluctance and fear, trying to grasp the last straw of life as their Lifespan withered and the Five Decays of Heaven and Man descended.

"Why... Why must Heaven cut off our path to survival..."

"Save my child... Who will save us..."

"It's all fake! Longevity is fake! The Dao is also fake! Everything will die..."

The wailing of billions upon billions of living beings, the destruction of billions upon billions of worlds.

These sounds had been collected without omission by this mud idol, fermented and concentrated in the abyss beneath the Withered Well for countless epochs.

Now.

It turned this endless wailing, this despair capable of instantly driving any deity insane, into the sharpest bone-scraping blade, stabbing fiercely into Zhou Wannian's Sea of Consciousness along that black sound wave.

It wanted to make Zhou Wannian personally experience these billions of deaths.

It wanted to use this vast sea of negative emotions to crash Zhou Wannian's perfectly self-consistent inner universe closed loop. It wanted to tell him that no matter how great his mass, no matter how perfect his rules, before the grand tragedy of this Universe inevitably heading toward destruction, the power of an individual was less than a speck of dust.

"Hum—"

The black magic sound storm slammed solidly against the space three feet around Zhou Wannian.

The absolute vacuum Domain granted by the Great Perfection Space Law revealed a faint, five-colored glazed luster at this moment.

The sound wave, capable of instantly polluting the Divine Soul of a Creation Immortal King into a pool of black water, hit this glazed luster and acted like a surging mudslide hitting a flawless crystal wall.

"Sss, sss, sss..."

A hair-raising melting sound exploded crazily in front of Zhou Wannian.

The black sound waves condensed from resentment and despair, upon contacting the physical crushing of Absolute Mass, actually presented a tangible, viscous state. They were like clusters of claw-wielding black sludge, sticking tightly to the edge of the three-foot Domain, desperately trying to drill inside, trying to crawl into Zhou Wannian's ears and eyes through the gaps in the air.

In the swamp, the massive thousand-faced mud idol saw that the first strike had failed, and the expressions on those billions of faces became even crazier.

Its vast, boundless consciousness, mixed with the rolling magic sound, condensed directly in front of Zhou Wannian into a grand, cold, nihilistic declaration.

"Ignorant variable... What do you think you are saving?"

The mud idol's voice was like countless different people speaking simultaneously, layered, shifting between male and female, old and young, carrying a bewitching magic.

"Look at this ruin beneath your feet, listen to the screams of these billions of living beings. This is the truth of the Universe."

The black magic sound storm circled and squeezed around Zhou Wannian, turning his small patch of space into an isolated island in a raging sea.

"All stars will eventually extinguish. All Spiritual Veins will eventually wither. No matter how you cultivate Immortality and question the Dao, no matter how glorious a civilization you build. These All Heavens and Myriad Worlds are like a leaky, broken furnace. Heat is escaping, vitality is dissipating."

The single eye on the god-demon face of the mud idol stared fixedly at Zhou Wannian, revealing a kind of pathological fanaticism.

"All things will eventually reach heat death! Existence is delusion!"

"All struggles, all reproduction, are merely increasing the pain in the process of this Universe heading toward death."

"Your ridiculous inner universe, your meaningless Absolute Mass, before this grand finale, merely prolongs the time of suffering. You are alive, just a breathing piece of flesh in this graveyard full of corpses!"

"Give up. Do not make meaningless resistance."

The Buddha's face, with its half-melted side, revealed a strange, compassionate smile.

"Merge with me. Let this Universe return to the initial nothingness sooner. Without life, there is no pain. Without existence, there is no destruction. I am not destroying the All Heavens, I am liberating this terminally ill world. I am the only salvation for these All Heavens and Myriad Worlds!"

The magic sound poured into his brain.

Every word struck the heart.

The purpose of this monster hiding at the bottom of the Withered Well was finally completely exposed.

It did not want to establish any absolute rule like the Truth Realm. It did not want to harvest resources from other worlds like the Immortal-Demon Great World.

It was a pure nihilist.

It was the collective of all negative, failed, and despairing emotions since the birth of the Universe. It believed that the operation of the Universe itself was a mistake, and all life was suffering meaningless pain.

Therefore, it wanted to accelerate the destruction of it all. It wanted to drag all worlds into this black-gray quagmire, to let everything end sooner and return to that "primordial deathly silence" where nothing existed.

This kind of mental dimensionality reduction strike was far more terrifying than any physical attack.

Because it did not attack your Physical Body, it directly destroyed the meaning of your existence.

If even the meaning of existence was denied, then what use were the most powerful magic power and the most invincible rules?

Faced with this ultimate judgment that struck directly at the Soul.

If it were anyone else in this world, even those ancient Dao Ancestors who had lived for millions of years.

After hearing these words and personally feeling the desperate wailing of billions of living beings.

Their Dao Heart would inevitably waver. They would doubt the meaning of their lifelong cultivation, fall into deep powerlessness and nihilism, and finally lay down their weapons, letting the black magic sound completely pollute and assimilate their Divine Soul.

However.

Zhou Wannian stood at the very center of this violent magic sound storm.

On his clear and easygoing face.

No confusion appeared.

No pain or struggle manifested.

His washed-white cyan cloth robe, protected by the three-foot Domain, was not stained by even a drop of mud, nor by even a trace of black resentment.

It was as clean as if he were standing at the bridgehead of some sunny town in Jiangnan.

Zhou Wannian stood there quietly, listening to the layered, grand declaration of the mud idol.

Then.

He made a gesture that left the massive mud idol, and even this dead, silent starry sky, feeling stunned.

He slowly pulled out his right hand, which had been folded behind his back.

He did not form any profound meditation mudra, nor did he draw the primal beginning questioning sword to hack at the magic sound filling the sky.

He just extremely casually reached his right pinky finger to the side of his right ear.

Then.

Facing the magic sound tsunami that could shatter stars and brainwash a Creator.

Zhou Wannian used the long nail of his pinky to pick at his ear, extremely casually and comfortably.

"Phew..."

He even gently blew on the tip of his pinky, as if blowing away some non-existent earwax.

The movement was relaxed.

The posture was lazy.

Relaxed to the extreme.

The massive mud idol in the center of the swamp, the expressions on those billions of faces, showed a trace of extremely strange stiffness at this moment.

In its vast, boundless consciousness, a flash of incomprehensible chaos passed.

It had exhausted the despair collected over countless epochs, it had expounded the ultimate truth of the Universe, and in front of this man in cyan robes, it was met with...

Just an ear-picking gesture?!

Zhou Wannian lowered his right hand and shook his wrist casually.

He lifted his chin slightly, and those eyes, as deep as an ancient well, pierced through the thick black sound wave barrier in front of him and fell directly onto the mud idol.

On that face that usually wore a lazy smile, a flash of undisguised, deep disgust appeared.

It was not disgust for the tragically dead living beings, but disgust for the monster's pretentious, moaning-without-illness manner.

"Chattering endlessly, making my ears ache."

Zhou Wannian's tone was steady, and although his voice was not loud, it carried the absolute penetrating power granted by the Great Perfection Space Law.

This voice was not drowned out by the external magic sound, but like a red-hot steel needle, it stabbed directly into the core of the mud idol.

"I thought you'd been holed up in the bottom of a well for so many years, surely you'd have come up with some earth-shattering profound knowledge."

Zhou Wannian folded his hands behind his back again, looked at the mud idol, and shook his head.

"After all that, you're just a bitter woman with an upset stomach, complaining here."

His spotless cyan cloth shoes stepped forward steadily in the Void Realm.

This understated step.

Caused the absolute vacuum Domain within three feet to suddenly expand by half an inch.

"BOOM!"

A muffled explosion.

The black, viscous sound waves stuck to the edge of the Domain were crushed into nothingness by this half-inch expansion of mass.

Zhou Wannian looked at the massive mud idol, a trace of cold mockery flashing in his eyes.

"What 'all things will eventually reach heat death,' what 'existence is delusion.'"

"Whether this broken Universe becomes a cold rock or explodes into a firework in the future, what does that have to do with me?"

His voice became cold, carrying an extreme dominance that ignored all grand principles and only cared about personal likes and dislikes.

"I walked out the door today and felt the sun warming my body. I passed a wine shop and thought that mouthful of yellow wine tasted good. I saw a wild cat stretching on a wall and thought it was interesting."

Zhou Wannian extended a slender, fair finger, pointing at the foul-smelling swamp churning in front of him.

"These things are warm, they are alive, they are real."

"You sit in a stinking mud pit, scraping other people's leftovers onto yourself. You feel life is meaningless, you feel you've lived enough."

Zhou Wannian sneered.

"Then go find a hole and bury yourself, and die quietly."

"Running out here to scream and shout, forcing your stinking depression and sour bile onto others."

"And calling it 'liberation'?"

Zhou Wannian's eyes narrowed slightly, and within his inner universe, the Great Perfection Five Elements Law began to roar silently.

"You are just a madman who read two depressing books, thought you'd seen through the Mortal World, and insisted on dragging others to jump off a building with you."

He gave the mud idol no more opportunity to continue emitting magic sound.

Reason with it?

What reason is there to discuss with a pile of mud?

Zhou Wannian lowered his right arm to his side.

He looked at the vast, boundless ultimate ulcer in front of him, composed of black-gray sludge.

"All Dharmas are empty, is that it?"

Zhou Wannian's tone was flat, without fluctuation.

"Then I'll use the least empty thing to fill this pit for you."

The words fell.

His right hand, hanging flat at his side, opened its five fingers slightly.

Great Five Elements Illusory World Art.

Great Perfection Space Law.

At this moment, it abandoned all exquisite changes and retained only the most primitive, most brutal attribute.

Absolute Mass.

Zhou Wannian faced the overwhelming magic sound storm, faced the churning mud swamp.

He stepped forward, plain and simple.

His right palm, carrying a terrifying weight capable of making all All Heavens and Myriad Worlds sink, swung heavily toward the front.