458: Chapter 458 The Backstage Area is Empty of Soldiers, Only a Silent Whetstone Remains

Just as Zhou Wannian was examining these threads, his gaze keenly caught a detail.

Within this perfectly orderly array of threads, some were undergoing changes.

He walked to a row of threads on the right, his gaze locking onto a small cluster in the middle.

These threads, which should have been transparent and clear, were now suffused with a murky, grayish-black color inside.

That grayish-black color was exactly the same as the color of that mud monster outside.

The grayish-black color spread slowly within the thread. As this color eroded it, the thread's vibration frequency began to slow and become erratic. The originally taut line also showed signs of slackening.

That was Death Qi.

It was the embodiment of the Law of Heat Death.

Zhou Wannian walked forward along those graying threads.

He discovered that this grayish-black erosion was not an isolated case.

In this vast and boundless backend space, the deeper he went, the more threads were contaminated by the grayish-black color.

On some racks, more than half of the threads had turned a completely dead gray. These gray threads no longer emitted that grand symphonic vibration but instead hung limply in the Void Realm like withered dead vines.

The moment a thread turned completely gray and stopped vibrating, in the corresponding Universe outside, a certain physical Law would declare collapse, and life in a certain dimension would face irreversible extinction.

This was the true reason the Universe was heading toward heat death.

It was not because Spiritual Qi had been exhausted, nor was it because of external destruction.

Rather, it was because the backend that maintained the Universe's operation—this massive server—had its underlying code rotting and decaying from within.

That mud monster hiding at the bottom of the Withered Well was not here to save the Universe at all.

It was a maggot spawned from the rotting of this backend, a catalyst accelerating the shutdown of this machine.

Zhou Wannian walked in the passageway, the threads on both sides transitioning from transparent to grayish-black.

His cyan cloth shoes landed in the nothingness, his steps remaining steady.

Faced with this despairing truth of the Universe's collapse, he did not feel any compassionate urge to save the world.

He only felt that this warehouse filled with tattered threads was somewhat an eyesore.

"The house has been in disrepair for too long; the pillars are rotten, and the beams have collapsed."

As Zhou Wannian walked, he casually gestured in the air, like a picky carpenter sizing up a pile of rotten wood.

"Instead of thinking about how to replace it with new wood, you let the mold spots grow more and more, and in the end, you even bred a huge lump of foul-smelling mud."

He raised his head, his gaze passing over the overlapping thread racks, looking toward the deepest part of this backend space.

In that area where the grayish-black contamination was densest, a rhythmic, dull grinding sound was slowly drifting over.

"Ka-la... Ka-la..."

The sound sounded just like a massive, rough grindstone slowly rotating on an old machine tool, constantly wearing down something.

Zhou Wannian listened to that sound.

A cold, sharp light flickered in his calm, unruffled eyes.

"No matter who you are, hiding back there sharpening your blade."

Zhou Wannian stood with his hands behind his back, his spine straight, and strode forward, facing the dull grinding sound.

"Today, I am going to smash that broken stone of yours."

His cyan cloth shoes stepped into the intangible Void Realm, his pace maintaining that same steady and monotonous rhythm.

Zhou Wannian followed the passageway formed by the two rows of transparent threads, heading toward the depths where the dull grinding sound originated.

This machine room, known as the Universe backend, was filled with a constant, cold, fluorescent light.

There was no alternation of day and night, no cycle of the four seasons; everything had been stripped of its appearance, leaving only the most basic Laws displayed here.

"Ka-la... Ka-la..." The dull grinding sound became clearer as he ventured deeper.

This sound was not transmitted through air vibration. There was no air in this space at all, and even the most basic dark matter particles had been cleared out.

This sound was a Law oscillation acting directly on the depths of the Divine Soul.

Every time the grinding sound rang out, Zhou Wannian could feel his three-foot Domain, anchored by Absolute Mass, undergo a subtle physical scouring.

It was as if a rusty, blunt saw was mercilessly cutting through the skeleton of the entire Universe.

On both sides of the passageway, those transparent threads, arranged as neatly as bookshelves, presented a shocking scene of decay.

At first, at the entrance of the rift, the threads contaminated by the grayish-black Death Qi were only a few scattered clusters.

But by the time he reached here, as far as his eyes could see, vast swathes of threads had completely turned a dead, grayish-black.

Those Law threads that should have emitted vibrations like a grand symphony were now hanging limply in mid-air, like withered vines drained of their moisture.

Zhou Wannian slowed his pace.

He stopped in front of a thread that was at the boundary between gray and white.

The upper half of this thread still retained a transparent, clear texture, vibrating slightly and radiating weak physical constant information outward.

But its lower half had been completely eroded by that grayish-black Death Qi, which represented heat death and zeroing out.

The grayish-black color was climbing upward along the texture of the thread with an irreversible momentum.

Zhou Wannian did not reach out to touch it; he just quietly observed it with the vision of the Great Perfection Space Law.

In his field of vision, this thread was connected to a middle-tier Major Thousand Worlds in the vast sea of stars outside.

It was a cultivation world dominated by fire-attribute Spiritual Qi.

The information radiated from the thread was the oxidation rules and energy release constants required for flames to burn in that world.

The grayish-black Death Qi climbed upward by an inch.

"Hum—" The vibration of the thread suddenly stalled.

Zhou Wannian could clearly perceive that in the corresponding middle-tier Major Thousand Worlds outside, all volcanoes ceased erupting at this moment.

The magma rolling in the depths of the earth's core lost the physical basis for releasing heat and began to rapidly cool and solidify, turning into blocks of cold, dead obsidian.

In the mundane world, the dry firewood under a farmer's stove, no matter how hard they blew on the fire starter, could no longer spark a single flame.

At the bottom of a great cultivation Sect's Pill Furnace, the earth fire vein that had been passed down for ten thousand years flickered twice, turned into a wisp of blue smoke, and extinguished completely.

Fire, in this world, had lost the definition of its existence.

Immediately after, the grayish-black Death Qi engulfed upward again.

This transparent thread, representing the Law of Combustion, emitted an imperceptible crisp sound.

"Click."

The thread snapped in the middle.

The two broken ends of the thread instantly lost all their resilience and luster, turning into two strands of lifeless grayish-white dust, fluttering down in this cold fluorescent light, and finally dissolving into the endless nothingness beneath his feet.

With the snapping of this thread, that middle-tier Major Thousand Worlds outside ushered in an irreversible deep freeze and heat death.

Life, having lost its heat cycle, turned into stiff ice sculptures in silent despair.

A civilization, a world, was erased from existence in that light "click."

Zhou Wannian watched that falling grayish-white dust.

On his handsome face, there was no expression of compassionate sorrow, nor was there indignation at the devastation of life.

His eyes, deep as a cold pool, were as calm as an ancient mirror without ripples.

Life and death, illusion and reality, the withering and flourishing of the Universe, are the natural principles of the operation of heaven and earth.

Flowers bloom and fall, tides rise and ebb; no one can escape the scouring of time.

But the premise of all this should be natural evolution.

But all of this before his eyes...

Zhou Wannian raised his head, his gaze following the passageway, piercing straight into the deepest part where the grinding sound originated.

This was fundamentally not natural life, aging, sickness, and death.

This was a premeditated, regular, and even stereotypically mechanical physical execution.

It was someone, or perhaps something, forcibly accelerating this process, using a blade to sever the backbones that supported the operation of the Universe one by one.

Zhou Wannian continued to step forward.

His spotless cyan cloth shoes landed in the nothingness, his pace steady and firm.

He walked past rows of broken threads.

A thread representing the gravitational constant snapped; external galaxies instantly lost their traction, and billions of stars collided with each other, turning into dust filling the sky.

A thread representing space curvature shattered; the concept of distance in a certain dimension was completely flattened, and all matter was squeezed into a single point, turning into a dead, silent black hole from which even light could not escape.

A thread representing the Karma of life reproduction withered; the genetic chains of countless races collapsed in an instant, mothers could no longer conceive new life, and civilizations could only wait quietly for extinction while growing old.

The source of all this destruction was in this machine room known as the Universe backend.

Zhou Wannian walked on the path of witnessing destruction.

He noticed a detail.

In this absolute restricted area that controlled the power of life and death over All Heavens and Myriad Worlds, in this core region where all the underlying code of the Universe was stored, there was not a single guard.

There were no geometric fleets armed to the teeth like those of the Truth Realm, no stone Protector statues left behind by ancient gods, and not even a trace of the Circle Envoys, which were materialized from rough doodles, could be found here.

Empty and deserted.

Except for those Law threads interwoven with transparent and grayish-white colors, and the constant, cold, fluorescent light, this restricted backend area was devoid of a single soldier, completely in an undefended state.

Zhou Wannian stood with his hands behind his back, his lips slowly curling into a mocking sneer.

"Outside, they put on quite a show, with tin cans blocking the road and fog covering the sky. Yet, when one reaches the place where the real master resides, it is unexpectedly wide open and unguarded."

He naturally understood the reason for this.

No guards were needed.

Because in this world, no living being could steal "annihilation."

Those great experts outside, those masterminds, they fought for Origin, for Spiritual Qi, for the fortune to maintain their own existence.

Who would run to the deepest part of this cosmic ulcer to snatch a portion of Death Qi that would return all things to zero?

Those mechanical life forms of the Truth Realm, even if they racked their brains to deduce up to this point, and even if they knew of the backend's existence, they would absolutely not dare to step foot in here.

Because once they were contaminated by the pure Law of Heat Death here, their logic cores would instantly be assimilated into scrap metal.

This was the absolute restricted zone for all life.

It was the final destination for the Universe's journey toward its end.

Except for Zhou Wannian.

Except for him, the variable who anchored "Absolute Mass" outside the underlying concepts of the Universe and was not defined by any dimensional Laws.

Except for him, no one could walk here.

No one could hear this grinding sound that was wearing down the backbone of the Universe.

"Ka-la... Ka-la..." The grinding sound became deafening.

The surrounding cold fluorescent light began to be swallowed by a layer of murky, grayish-black shadows.

Zhou Wannian walked to the end of the passageway.

The rows of Law threads, displayed like bookshelves, came to an abrupt end here.

Ahead, it was no longer a long, narrow corridor.

Instead, it was an open area that was empty to the extreme, and dead silent to the extreme.

Zhou Wannian stopped in his tracks.

He lifted his eyelids, his deep gaze piercing through that layer of murky shadow to see the culprit behind the dull, grinding sound.

Appearing before him was a stone.

A black grindstone so vast it had absolutely no boundaries, occupying the entire edge of his vision.

This grindstone had no regular shape; it looked like an inverted mountain peak casually smashed into the Void Realm.

The surface of the stone was rough and uneven, covered in pits and gullies of all sizes.

Its material looked like neither gold nor jade, presenting an absolute, pure black that could swallow all light and all Law.

This blackness was even purer than the swamp of Death Qi outside, and even more despair-inducing than the center of a black hole.

At this moment, this boundless black grindstone was slowly rotating in this Void Realm open area with a slow, dull, yet unstoppable momentum.

"Ka-la... Ka-la..."

As the grindstone rotated, Zhou Wannian finally saw clearly how those cosmic Law were heading toward collapse.

Above this open area, the Void Realm seemed to have a giant hole.

Trillions of transparent threads converging from all directions—those underlying codes representing the physical constants and Karma and Reincarnation of All Heavens and Myriad Worlds—were like a giant handful of hemp threads forcibly gathered by an invisible pair of giant hands.

This handful of threads hung straight down, landing on the rough, pure black surface of the grindstone.

With every slow rotation of the grindstone, the rough stone surface would undergo a brutal physical friction with those taut, transparent threads.

"Chi-la—"

There were no sparks flying.

There was only streaks of grey-black Death Qi, in the process of friction, forcibly rubbed onto those transparent threads along the surface of the grindstone.

The Death Qi spread upward along the texture of the threads, polluting the transparent, clear Law codes into a dull, grey-white.

And those threads that could not withstand the friction force would, after a violent tremor, snap with a "ba-da" sound, having been ground apart.

The broken threads turned into grey-white dust, scattering onto this massive grindstone, filling the pits on its surface, making this stone even heavier and more immense.

The breaking of every single thread meant the destruction of a dimension in the outside world, the extinction of a Law.

This was an invisible blade.

A dull blade in the background of the Universe, tirelessly slicing through All Heavens and Myriad Worlds.

Living beings outside were fighting because of the depletion of Spiritual Qi, and the Truth Realm was harvesting Origin everywhere to patch up holes.

They did not know that the reason this Universe was heading toward heat death, the reason it was riddled with holes, was not because of some natural aging.

It was because, in the deepest part of this background, there existed such a grindstone.

It pressed the underlying Law of the entire Universe onto its rough surface, grinding away, one stroke after another, in an orderly fashion.

This was the true physical reason for the Universe heading toward heat death.

Zhou Wannian stood at the edge of the open area, his spotless green shirt fluttering slightly in the current of Death Qi stirred up by the rotation of the grindstone.

He looked at this vast, boundless black giant stone, watching those Law threads that turned into dust and fell after being ground apart.

No wonder that swamp monster outside was kneaded together from the dregs of countless dead Universes.

That behemoth coiled at the bottom of the Withered Well, that monster that toyed with the Truth Realm and the Heavenly God and demons like insects, was not some ancient Vicious Beast at all.

It was merely the waste and dregs of Death Qi that fell off when this grindstone ground down the cosmic Law.

Over the long years, these wastes accumulated and fermented in the abyss of the Taiwu Ancestral Court, eventually giving birth to a trace of chaotic will, turning into that swamp monster that called the wind and summoned the rain outside.

The real master had always been this lifeless stone.

Zhou Wannian took a step, walking closer toward that black grindstone.

As the distance closed, he felt the suffocating Aura radiating from this stone.

In this Aura, there was no hatred, no anger, no desire for slaughter.

There was only a kind of absolute rationality, a sense of order that was cold to the extreme.

It did not care if what was being ground apart was the Spiritual Vein of the Immortal Realm or the mundane smoke and fire; it did not care about the wails of all living beings, nor did it care about the collapse of the Universe.

It was simply executing a command.

Zhou Wannian stopped at a distance of a hundred zhang from the grindstone.

His gaze searched across the rough, pure black surface of the grindstone.

Finally, in the very center of this giant mountain-like stone, on a smooth surface that had been ground relatively flat by countless Law threads, Zhou Wannian saw a brand.

That was not a script carved by some Divine Sharp Weapon, nor was it a rune left by Immortal magic power.

That brand was a silhouette reflected against this pure black background, formed because that part of the grindstone's surface had completely lost any concept of existence, creating an area of absolute blankness.

It was a character.

A character whose meaning could be directly understood in the Divine Soul by all civilizations in the Universe.

"Nothingness."

A simple character, yet one that permeated with endless despair and dead silence.

It was deeply branded onto this grindstone that wore down the cosmic Law.

Zhou Wannian looked at that "Nothingness" character, and a flash of sudden realization appeared on his handsome, easygoing face.

This was the true original core of that monster.

This grindstone was not some world-destroying Magic Treasure left behind by an evil expert.

It was something birthed by the Universe itself.

It was like a decrepit living being; when it reached the end of its lifespan, decaying cells would naturally grow within its body.

This grindstone branded with the character "Nothingness" was a cleanup program automatically generated by this Universe after experiencing countless epochs of expansion and evolution, due to its own aging and inability to bear the burden.

The Universe was tired.

Those complex physical constants, those tangled destinies of Karma, those All Heavens and Myriad Worlds that consumed vast amounts of energy, had become a heavy burden that this Universe, already heading toward its twilight years, could no longer bear.

In order to maintain the final balance, in order to let everything return to the initial state of Void Realm without any ripples, the underlying logic of the Universe evolved this invisible blade.

It wanted to, in the background, grind apart every single Law thread.

It wanted to clean up all those clamorous worlds, all those self-righteous experts, and all life and variables.

It wanted to make this Universe completely return to zero.

To return to that "Nothingness" character.

This was a sorrow that was grand to the extreme, and also a natural Law that was cold to the extreme.

It was the ultimate manifestation of the Universe's immune System, aiming to kill every cell still lingering on, so that this massive corpse could decay in peace.

Zhou Wannian stood quietly in place.

He listened to that monotonous, dull "Ka-la" sound, watching those threads representing vibrant worlds snap on the grindstone.

In his mind, a flash of that small town in Jiangnan during a spring rain suddenly appeared.

A flash of that muddy alley paved with bluestone slabs, a flash of that old wine shop emanating the sour, fermented smell of wine dregs.

The Old Shopkeeper lay on the counter clicking an abacus, drool running from the corner of his mouth; outside the window, on the eaves, raindrops hit the moss, splashing into fine water droplets; in a worn, coarse porcelain bowl, a few shelled salted peanuts soaked in warm, inferior yellow wine.

Those scenes, in the eyes of the world, were insignificant.

In the mathematical models of the Truth Realm, they were worthless redundant data.

In front of this grindstone representing the Universe's cleanup program, they were even more so Impurities that needed to be ground away and smoothed out first.

But unfortunately, these scenes, in the heart of this man wearing a faded green shirt, weighed more than a thousand jun.

That was the only trace of worldly life that he felt could still keep him interested in this cold Universe, after walking for countless epochs and seeing all the birth and destruction of the heavens.

"Nothingness."

Zhou Wannian's lips parted slightly, speaking the character branded on the grindstone.

His voice was calm, without the trembling of facing the ultimate destruction mechanism of the Universe, and without attempting to preach any grand principles about saving the common people.

In his eyes, deep as an abyss, that trace of laziness completely faded away, replaced by a kind of stubbornness that even this grindstone could not bear.

"Grinding everything into powder, cutting off all sounds. Creating a vast, clean blank space, just for the sake of convenience, for the sake of quiet."

Zhou Wannian pulled his hands out from behind his back.

He adjusted the lapels of his green shirt and rolled up his sleeves, revealing his fair, well-proportioned wrists.

"This rule, placed elsewhere, might be the rotation of the Heavenly Dao, perhaps natural decay."

His spotless green cloth shoes stepped heavily into the Void Realm.

As this step landed, deep within Zhou Wannian's Divine Soul, those ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine jade chains erupted with a crisp hum like the roar of a Dragon.

A warm jade light flowed within his body.

The Absolute Mass tempered by the Great Perfection Space Law was released at this moment without reservation.

It was not for defense, nor was it for oppression.

It was for anchoring.

"Hum—"

A sense of presence, heavy enough to make this background space wail, descended with a boom, centered on Zhou Wannian.

He did not turn this mass into a fist to smash everything, but instead transformed it into countless invisible Sea-Stabilizing Needles, pinning them firmly into this nothingness.

This "weight of existence" forcibly inserted itself between the grindstone and those transparent threads.

"Ka-la..."

That massive black grindstone, which had been rotating slowly and steadily, emitted a harsh jamming sound the moment it felt this Absolute Mass.

The rough stone surface could no longer touch those fragile Law threads.

"When I go for a walk, I hate nothing more than someone tearing down the tea shed where I'm resting my feet."

Zhou Wannian stood before that vast, boundless grindstone, his figure as tiny as a speck of dust.

Yet the Aura radiating from his green shirt forcibly suppressed this world-destroying giant stone that represented the Universe's aging cleanup program.

"You think this Universe is too old, that it should be ground clean and started over."

Zhou Wannian raised his right hand, his five fingers slowly opening, aiming at the giant "Nothingness" brand in the center of the grindstone.

"But I haven't finished my bowl of yellow wine yet."

His calm voice echoed clearly in the background space where the friction sound had been forcibly paused.

"So, this millstone... won't be turning today."