456: Chapter 456 Seeing through the illusions of the muddy mire, one punch shatters eternal sorrow.

Zhou Wannian continued walking.

A mud hand covered in bone spurs passed right through his face, yet the bone spurs within the mud didn't even brush against a single eyelash of his.

Two thick, muddy arms crossed each other, attempting to lock around his throat, but they were like two incorporeal phantoms that overlapped and passed through his neck, eventually tangling with each other.

Mud splashed everywhere.

Millions of hands were tearing frantically.

Yet, on Zhou Wannian's faded blue cloth robe, not a single drop of black-gray mud had touched it. He seemed to have transformed into a projection of light that did not exist in this dimension. The mud hands could pass through the light, but they could never grasp it or tear it into pieces.

The highest Realm of Invulnerability to All Laws was, at this moment, perfectly demonstrated by this blue-robed figure.

The monster hiding in the depths of the darkness fell into a state of frantic confusion.

It did not understand why its Death Qi, which was capable of assimilating everything in the Universe, was completely ineffective against this human. It increased its power output, and more mud hands sprouted from the fault line, desperately joining in this futile capture attempt.

The mud hands pierced through Zhou Wannian's body, time and time again.

They brought with them a bone-chilling cold and a physical pressure capable of causing stars to collapse.

But to Zhou Wannian, all of this was mere illusion.

The reason he could exist in this strange state of Invulnerability to All Laws was not because he had mastered some exquisite movement technique to dodge attacks, nor had he transformed his Physical Body into nothingness.

The answer lay deep within his inner universe.

In that vast and boundless Sea of Consciousness of his Divine Soul.

Ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine ancient chains were lying quietly in the void.

These chains had long since shed their initial cold, rusty bronze luster. After experiencing the Fusion of a wisp of his divided Soul beneath the Withered Well, they had all transformed into mutton-fat white jade, emitting a gentle luster.

The white jade chains were no longer shackles suppressing his Absolute Mass.

They had merged perfectly with Zhou Wannian's Divine Soul and Physical Body, growing together completely.

These ninety-thousand-plus jade-transformed chains had become an anchor point rooted deep beyond the foundational concepts of the Universe.

This Universe, whether it was vibrant life or the heat-death Death Qi beneath the Withered Well, all operated within a fixed coordinate system of Laws. Life and death, energy and matter, all had clear rules of interaction.

The mud hands condensed by the monster using Death Qi were the ultimate product within this coordinate system used to execute the "heat-death" program. They could grab anything within this coordinate system.

But Zhou Wannian was different.

When he used the jade-transformed chains within his body as an anchor, he had forcefully pulled his "concept of existence" out of the coordinate system of Laws of this Universe.

He did not belong here.

He stood here, and everyone could see him and hear him speak, only because he used his Absolute Mass to leave an indelible projection in the three-dimensional physical space.

His true body, his essence, had long since become independent of these All Heavens and Myriad Worlds.

The monster tried to grab him with its mud hands.

This was like ink on a scroll trying to reach out and strangle the person who was looking down at the painting.

No matter how much the ink clawed and snarled, it could only run wild on the rice paper and would never be able to touch the entity of the person outside the painting.

No matter how fierce or insidious those millions of mud hands were, what they could catch would always only be a phantom that Zhou Wannian had left in the three-dimensional space. The monster's prideful power of assimilation became an utter joke in the face of this dimensionality reduction strike that transcended the dimensions of existence.

Zhou Wannian walked in the center of the storm woven by millions of mud hands.

All around him were the slippery sounds of mud colliding and rubbing against each other. Mud hands pierced in and out of his body, like countless gray snakes dancing wildly in the Void Realm.

He did not frown, merely feeling that these things waving back and forth before his eyes were a bit of an eyesore.

"Having rolled in the mud pit for too long, you've come to think that everyone in the world is just like you, a vulgar thing that can be covered in mud."

Zhou Wannian's calm voice clearly carried through the layers of the mud-hand cage.

His footsteps did not falter.

A mud hand as huge as a small mountain lunged at him, a large mouth filled with fangs splitting open in the center of the palm, attempting to swallow him in one gulp.

Zhou Wannian didn't even turn his head, walking straight toward that large mouth.

His blue robe passed through the muddy fangs and through the foul-smelling throat.

The mud hand's large mouth snapped shut viciously, but it only bit into its own chin, which was full of Death Qi, shattering a few fangs made of condensed mud.

"Grabbing back and forth, yet you can't even touch a corner of my clothes. You monster with thousands of hands, how is that any different from a blind man groping for fish in a puddle?"

There was no trace of concealment in the mockery of Zhou Wannian's tone.

He took a step forward.

His blue cloth shoe stepped into the Void Realm, stirring up a faint, strange ripple that did not belong to the Laws of this Universe.

This ripple spread outward from the sole of his shoe, less than a foot.

Yet, it was this distance of one foot that caused those frantically clawing mud hands to stiffen momentarily, as if they had been electrocuted. That was the instinctive trembling produced by low-dimensional matter when it sensed the repulsive force of a higher-dimensional existence.

Zhou Wannian continued moving forward.

Where he passed, those mud hands struck at empty air, then, under the effect of inertia, tangled together, turning into pools of foul-smelling dead water and mud, falling toward the depths of the endless starry sky below.

The darkness ahead grew increasingly dense.

Those millions of mud hands seemed to have realized the futility of this physical attack; their offensive began to slow down and become disorganized. The surface of the mud wall no longer frantically grew new arms, and those that had already extended out were like headless flies that had lost their target, waving blindly in the Void Realm.

Zhou Wannian passed through this obstacle zone composed of mud hands.

His faded blue cloth robe remained dry and neat. The frog buttons at the collar were fastened tightly, and there wasn't an extra crease on the hem of his robe.

He completely left behind those mud hands that were still clawing wildly behind him, not even having the interest to glance back at them once.

The physical means this monster could muster were likely just these.

From the steles of the Truth Realm to the River of Dead Water, and then to these millions of mud hands. After finishing its three-axe routine, other than making this starry sky foul and stinking, it hadn't been able to leave even a white mark on Zhou Wannian's body.

Ahead lay the darkness at the very depths of this Withered Well.

It was also where that thief, who had stolen and consumed countless parallel dimensions, hid its true body.

Zhou Wannian's hands remained securely folded behind his back, his spine straight.

A glint of cold severity rose in those eyes, which were as deep as cold pools.

His spotless blue cloth shoes stepped steadily into that absolute darkness where even light and Laws were stripped away.

Zhou Wannian walked into the deepest part of this Withered Well.

In the starry sky behind him, those millions of gray mud hands were still blindly clawing and strangling each other, making sticky, pattering sounds. But as those sounds penetrated the boundary of this absolute darkness, it was as if they had fallen into a thick mass of cotton, being quickly absorbed and smoothed out, eventually turning into a dead silence where one could even hear their own heartbeat clearly.

The darkness here had weight.

This was not the pitch darkness of a mundane night lacking light, but a materialized nothingness so thick it seemed as if it would drip water.

The air was filled with a nauseating stench. The smell was mixed with the scorched dryness of stars perishing, the stench of billions of living beings rotting into bones, and a pungent odor similar to rusty iron blocks being soaked and boiled in acid for ten million years.

This was the core scent of the Universe's ulcer.

Zhou Wannian did not block his sense of smell; he allowed this odor to enter his nasal cavity, and on that handsome, refined face, his brows furrowed imperceptibly.

From the darkness ahead, a slow and heavy rhythm faintly emanated.

"Thump... thump..."

That sound heard sounded like a gigantic heart covered in pustules and tumors, struggling to beat in the center of this nothingness. With every beat, the surrounding darkness would ripple with a visible gray wave, pushing out even more intense Death Qi.

Zhou Wannian stopped walking.

Directly in front of him, in the center of the darkness, a boundless mass of mud lay coiled.

This mass of mud had no fixed shape. At times it resembled an endless black mountain range, and at other times it spread out into a foul-smelling swamp covering the entire Star Domain. On the surface of the mud, huge human faces, beast heads, and even the outlines of those geometric machines from the Truth Realm constantly emerged, only to painfully melt and dissipate in the churning of Death Qi.

This was the "true master" hiding at the bottom of the Withered Well.

A monster without a true physical form, completely kneaded together from all the failures, despair, resentment, and zero-point Death Qi since the birth of the Universe. It did not need a specific form, because its very existence was meant to drag all matter with form and life into this soft, sticky, dead water and mud.

The monster sensed Zhou Wannian's approach.

It stopped its blind writhing, and in the center of that massive swamp, a huge fissure like an abyss slowly split open. Black-gray mucus flowed along the edges of the fissure, like a greedy, large mouth, or like a turbid, pupil-less single eye, locking firmly onto this uninvited guest wearing a blue robe.

"Hiss, hiss—"

A tooth-aching friction sound emanated from the depths of the mud, and the surrounding darkness seemed to come alive, transforming into invisible, soft tentacles that tentatively coiled toward Zhou Wannian. These tentacles carried no fierce lethality, only that pervasive, insidious cold and assimilation, attempting to seep into his Divine Soul bit by bit through Zhou Wannian's pores.

Soft and mushy.

Sticky and slimy.

It was like stepping into a bottomless swamp; the more one struggled, the tighter that disgusting mud clung.

From the steles of the Truth Realm on the periphery of the fog, to the River of Dead Water just now, and then to the millions of gray mud hands. All of this monster's methods reeked of the sleaziness of someone hiding in a dark corner shooting cold arrows. It dared not fight head-on, only thinking of relying on this edgeless softness to wear down Zhou Wannian's unreasonable Absolute Mass.

Zhou Wannian looked down at those invisible dark tentacles attempting to wrap around his ankles.

He sighed softly.

This sigh carried very far in the dead silence of the nothingness, carrying a deep sense of boredom and the annoyance born from having his leisure walk interrupted.

"Have you had enough fun yet?"

Zhou Wannian's calm voice rang out, sounding exceptionally cold and clear in this viscous darkness.

The mud monster did not answer; instead, more gray-white Death Qi surged out from that abyss-like fissure, like layers of heavy spiderwebs, enveloping down toward Zhou Wannian.

"When I go for a walk, I'm looking for peace and quiet. If there are thorny weeds growing by the roadside, I'll just pull them out."

Zhou Wannian raised his head. In those eyes, deep as a cold pool, the usual hint of laziness and nonchalance receded at this moment, just like an ebbing tide, leaving nothing behind.

Replacing it was an absolute indifference, devoid of any emotional Impurities.

"But you, this stinking sludge stuck to the sole of my shoe—mushy, disgusting to step on, and impossible to shake off. You are truly an eyesore."

Zhou Wannian moved.

Those two hands of his, which had been leisurely clasped behind his back ever since he entered the Taiwu Ancestral Court, slowly lowered.

His arms hung naturally at his sides.

With just this simple shift in posture, the surrounding physical Laws seemed to groan under an unbearable burden for a split second. The fabric of his faded blue robe tightened abruptly. The invisible dark tentacles that had been wrapping around his ankles, having lost the protection of his "leisurely" state of mind, were instantly crushed into nothingness by an invisible weight that suddenly surged in the air.

Zhou Wannian shed his leisurely demeanor.

His spine straightened, and his feet were firmly planted on the Void Realm.

He lifted his right arm slightly, extending it horizontally in front of his chest.

His long, fair fingers began to curl into his palm, one by one.

Index finger, middle finger, ring finger, little finger, and finally the thumb, tightly pressing against the second joints of the index and middle fingers.

He made a fist.

It was the most ordinary fist, the kind any brawling man in the mortal world would make. There were no complex immortal Spells being cast, nor were there any phenomena involving the stars, sun, or moon.

But the moment this fist tightened.

Inside Zhou Wannian's Divine Soul inner universe, those ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine jade-like chains, emitting a warm luster, erupted in unison, producing a crisp hum that shook the Soul.

All the jade light stopped radiating outward at this moment and instead began to collapse and shrink inward frantically.

Outside, the Absolute Mass that had originally permeated Zhou Wannian's surroundings—enough to crush a black hole—underwent a horrifying physical transformation with this clenching motion.

The mass no longer radiated outward to form a three-foot Domain.

It flowed along Zhou Wannian's Meridians, through his bones and flesh, converging entirely upon his right fist like a hundred rivers returning to the sea.

More specifically, it gathered on the four knuckles in front of his right fist.

An immeasurable weight—an Absolute Mass exceeding the upper limits of the Universe's mathematical models—was forcefully compressed into a microscopic point.

In front of the knuckles of Zhou Wannian's clenched right fist, a black dot appeared.

It was a black dot dense to the extreme.

It was only the size of a mustard seed, yet it was deeper than all the surrounding Void Realm combined. This black dot was not a color, but a "scar" left in the three-dimensional horizon after space and Law were forcibly distorted and collapsed by the terrifying mass.

The moment light approached this black dot, it didn't even have time to bend; it was directly severed and swallowed. The Void Realm around the black dot presented a strange, funnel-like depression. Time stood still in this tiny space, and even the micro-particles composing this world emitted shrill cracking sounds under the pull of this gravity.

The sludge monster sensed this power.

If Zhou Wannian's previous Absolute Mass was like an invisible mountain pressing down on its head, then this current black dot was a world-destroying poison needle capable of piercing the heart of the Universe.

Fear.

Pure, instinctive fear, stemming from low-dimensional matter facing high-dimensional crushing, instantly flooded the monster's chaotic will.

The abyss-like rift closed frantically, and the massive black-gray sludge began to shrink and pile up violently inward. It was defending itself. It covered its core layer by layer with the withered shells of hundreds of dead parallel Universes it had devoured.

Countless fragments of stars solidified by Death Qi and countless dimensional barriers drained of their Origin condensed in front of the sludge into a gray shield tens of thousands of miles thick. This shield flickered with the dead-gray light of the Universe's heat death; this was the strongest defense the monster could muster, a sturdy wall capable of blocking any immortal Divine Ability.

Zhou Wannian looked at the massive sludge shield that had formed in an instant.

His handsome face remained without a ripple.

He pulled his right elbow back slightly.

Then, facing that sludge shield of Death Qi tens of thousands of miles thick, facing that massive sludge core entrenched at the bottom of the Withered Well.

Zhou Wannian threw a punch, calmly and plainly.

The movement was not fast.

Captured by the retina, the trajectory of this punch was clearly visible, just like an old man practicing Tai Chi in the park in the morning, slowly pushing forward.

But on a physical level, this punch was faster than the definition of time. Because under the pressure of the dense black dot on the fist, the concept of "distance" simply did not exist in the space ahead.

Space was not cut open; it was directly leveled.

"Hum—"

The fist made contact with the gray shield tens of thousands of miles thick.

There was no deafening explosion, nor was there any energy dissipation blazing into the sky.

This was a pure aesthetic of violence, a brutal destruction that trampled physical Laws underfoot.

The hard substances on the surface of the shield, composed of dead star debris and dimensional barriers, had no room to resist the moment they touched the black dot on the fist. They did not shatter into stones, nor did they turn into dust; they were completely deconstructed and annihilated at the atomic level.

The black dot was like a giant abyss mouth, greedily and coldly devouring everything in its path.

Zhou Wannian's fist pushed straight forward.

The shield, tens of thousands of miles thick, was like butter under a hot knife beneath his fist. A vacuum channel, perfectly cylindrical, was forcefully gouged out through the center of the shield, following the momentum of his punch. The edges of the channel were smooth as mirrors, with no cracks spreading outward, because all the destructive power was concentrated on that point in front of his fist, without a single bit of waste.

It took only one ten-thousandth of a breath to pierce through the shield.

The momentum of the punch did not diminish in the slightest, and it slammed directly into the interior of that massive black-gray sludge.

"Pfft—"

An extremely dull, strange sound exploded deep within the sludge.

That monster, kneaded from cosmic ulcers, despair, and Death Qi, met the end of its existence under this punch.

The viscous dead water, the overlapping faces of myriad races, and the resentful wails of billions of living beings that made up its body—in the face of the black dot of Absolute Mass, they didn't even have the chance to assimilate; they were instantly torn into nothingness by that terrifying inward-collapsing force.

The massive sludge began to disintegrate from the center.

There was no splashing sludge, nor was there gray mist scattering across the sky.

The monster's shell was being frantically sucked inward by that tiny black dot at a speed visible to the naked eye. Its massive volume shrank drastically within a few breaths; those black-gray substances twisted into spiral afterimages in mid-air, and finally, they all disappeared into the deep black hole in front of the fist.

Pure violence, without any mysterious Spell light and shadow, yet it smashed this ancient sorrow and Death Qi, which had been entrenched for countless epochs, to pieces with one punch.

The Void Realm was completely cleared at this moment.

There was no more stinking sludge, no more viscous darkness, leaving only a pure and clean vacuum.

Zhou Wannian still maintained the posture of throwing the punch, his right arm extended.

However.

The power of this punch did not stop with the annihilation of the monster.

That Absolute Mass collapsed on the fist, having lost its obstacle, carried forward with unstoppable physical inertia, and slammed solidly into the end of this space.

It slammed into the physical barrier at the foundation of this Universe.

"Crack—"

A sound, crisp to the extreme, as if some eternal glazed glass had been forcefully shattered, echoed clearly in this cleared-out Void Realm.

This was not the dull sound of a space rift being torn open.

This was the foundation of the basic rules supporting the existence of this Universe—that "base plate" invisible to the naked eye and undetectable by Divine Sense—which, on a physical level, could not withstand the impact of this Absolute Mass and shattered.

Zhou Wannian withdrew his right fist.

The dense black dot in front of his fist dissipated silently into the air as he loosened his five fingers. That inward-collapsing Absolute Mass transformed back into the warm jade light that nourished his Divine Soul, retracting into the chains of his inner universe.

He stood quietly in place, his deep gaze looking forward.

At the place where his fist had just struck.

In the previously empty Void Realm, a rift appeared.

This rift was about a zhang long, with jagged edges, just like a hole casually cut into a black curtain by sharp scissors.

From the edges of the rift, there was no outpouring of spatial turbulence, nor was there the common dimensional storm.

It just floated there quietly, exuding an absolute silence that made one's Divine Soul tighten.

Zhou Wannian narrowed his eyes slightly.

His Great Perfection Space Law vision explored inside along the rift.

Behind the rift, there were no stars, no matter, and none of the sour, rotten Death Qi of the Taiwu Ancestral Court.

There, it presented a clean, empty whiteness where nothing existed. It was a color more heart-palpitating than absolute darkness, because it not only deprived light but even deprived the concepts of "space" and "time."

It was a pure "Nothingness."

It was the most primitive, coldest base that all physical Laws, mathematical models, and Karma revealed after stripping away their gorgeous outer garments.

This rift, forcefully smashed out with a single punch.

Led directly to the "Origin of Nothingness" of this Universe.

It was the true source from which the monster drew Death Qi and spread the Law of heat death. It was also the backstage of all life and death cycles in these All Heavens and Myriad Worlds.

Zhou Wannian's faded blue robe did not even flutter a corner in the faint, strange fluctuations emitted by the rift. On his handsome face, the hint of sharpness that had just arisen from throwing the punch gradually returned to his usual calmness.

He looked at the rift revealing endless emptiness.

No fear, no hesitation.

"After smashing through this layer of sludge on the surface, the rat hole hidden inside is actually somewhat interesting."

Zhou Wannian clasped his hands behind his back again.

His spotless blue cloth shoes stepped forward steadily into the Void Realm.

Facing the rift in the cosmic barrier that led to the "Origin of Nothingness."

The scholar in the blue robe walked in, unhurriedly.