A Myth

Ye Xuan seemed to notice nothing. His gaze simply rested calmly upon the jade tablet, and a hoarse, low voice slowly surged up from the depths of his chest—sounding as though it rose from the very abyss of the netherworld—yet it fell with perfect clarity upon every person's ear:

"In this life of mine, my bones were carved out and my sinews ripped away. I was betrayed by the one I loved most. I sank into the endless darkness beneath the Burial Immortal Lake for three full years—seeing no sunlight, hearing no human voice, accompanied only by darkness, decay, and oblivion."

His voice carried no tremor, no accusation, no tears.

It carried something far more terrifying. It was the transcendence and detachment of one who had already digested every fragment of agony and tempered it into a blade of even sharper edge.

"I once harbored hope. With all the warmth and trust I possessed, I sought to embrace this world."

"But what this world gave me in return was its most thorough indifference, its most heartless betrayal, and its most profound darkness."

Ye Xuan slowly lowered his head, his eyes sinking downward to rest upon the hilt of the Sun-Slaying Divine Sword in his palm, upon the cold jade-like patterns shimmering with faint light.

"Since heaven and earth have never regarded me as worthy, since this mortal realm is nothing more than a sickening illusion…"

His fingers began to slowly tighten around the sword's hilt.

Knuckle by knuckle, they turned white.

"Then let me be the one to personally sever this heaven and earth—and shatter this mortal realm to pieces!"

The sword left its sheath.

There were no sky-filling sword shadows, no deafening roars of thunder, no dazzling radiance tearing through the firmament. Those were the leaks and fluctuations of power that had not yet been cultivated to its utmost limit—energy compensating for essence with sheer spectacle.

A true supreme strike is always carried by the most extreme concentration, in the most absolute silence, bearing the most irresistible destruction.

A sword light, black as thick ink, as if capable of devouring all light and color in the world, suddenly leaped forth from the sheath.

That sword light was extremely thin—so thin it was almost a negligible black line, suspended in the air, barely perceptible to the naked eye.

And yet, this single thread-like black sword light, carrying the entire will Ye Xuan had accumulated over one day and one night, the full weight of suffering he had refined over a lifetime, and the primal essence of heaven and earth drawn forth by the Cycle of Six Paths Heavenly Scripture—at a speed that utterly transcended this world's concepts of time and space…

Silently, it sliced through the void before him.

"Heaven and Earth Are Heartless—The Severing Strike of Absolute Ruthlessness!"

The voice fell.

The sword light had already arrived.

The instant the black sword line touched it, the void froze completely.

Time, at this moment, stopped entirely.

All the geniuses widened their eyes. Every breath was held in the same instant, trembling as they fiercely stared at the ancient jade tablet.

One breath.

Two breaths.

Three breaths.

The surface of the jade tablet remained glossy and radiant, flowing with light, as if nothing had happened at all.

The reclusive genius who had earlier left a half-inch mark upon the tablet's edge let out a long sigh of relief. He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, forced a faint smile, and opened his mouth to say something…

"Ha… haha… just a bluff after all. I knew it—how could anyone possibly…"

But then—

"Crack!"

A single sound.

Extremely crisp, extremely faint, yet extremely abrupt.

In the very center of the Heavenly Dao Jade Tablet, a tiny black dot appeared.

Black as ink, bottomless, void of light and sound, like the black hole left behind by a star that had been completely annihilated in the universe—silently, irresistibly proclaiming the advent of destruction.

The next moment, the black dot moved.

It spread in all directions at a speed that made people despair.

One crack, two, ten, a hundred, a thousand.

Dense cracks, like madly growing dead vines, spread across the entire surface of the tablet in an instant—from the very center to the four corners, from the front to the sides, from the base all the way tearing upward to its ten-thousand-zhang summit!

From within the cracks, what leaked out was not the pale white or golden glow one would expect of jade, but a deep, abyssal black light that made every soul shudder.

It was the last angry wail of the primordial true immortal origin power sealed within the tablet, which had slept through countless eras before being utterly shattered.

"Boom—!"

As if millions of stars had exploded simultaneously.

The Heavenly Dao Jade Tablet—which had stood for countles eras, unmoving through eons, revered as a divine object by cultivators across all heavens, that had blocked the ambitions of innumerable peerless prodigies, that was hailed as the indestructible eternal benchmark within the Void Refinement realm—

In the horrified, nearly despairing gaze of more than three thousand of the cultivation world's most outstanding geniuses, it shattered.

Not into a few pieces. Not split into two halves.

It blasted apart, bursting into countless specks of flowing light and jade dust raining through the sky like falling stars, scattering across heaven and earth.

The shockwave of the explosion, forming a perfect circle, swept overwhelmingly in all directions.

The hundreds of geniuses nearest to it had no time to react before they were hurled into the air by that force, tumbling and spitting blood, falling to unknown destinations. Those further away hastily summoned their protective true essence to resist with all their might, yet were still pushed backwards step by step, the blue stone ground beneath their feet splitting into countless fragments, churning like waves under their boots.

The entire Heaven-Piercing Cliff shook violently at this moment, like a sleeping giant abruptly awakened. Huge boulders crashed down from its cliff walls, and dust spread across the sky, blotting out the heavens. Some thought the end of the world had come. Some fell to the ground. Some stood frozen, legs trembling so violently they had lost even the strength to flee.

One sword.

Just—one sword.

It shattered the eternal jade tablet.

In this moment, heaven and earth lost all sound.

All pride, all arrogance, all knowledge and common sense built upon the four words "Limit of Void Refinement," all understanding and definitions of the boundaries of the cultivation world—were all ground to powder before this single sword, like that jade tablet, scattered into the wind, leaving not a trace.

Countless geniuses sat there, utterly dumbfounded, collapsed on the ground—some slumped, some sprawled, some standing like carved wooden statues, staring up at the jade powder drifting through the sky, flake by flake, speck by speck—so beautiful, so overwhelming, so heartrending.

Their minds were a blank.

Silence stretched on for an extremely long time.

Until someone, in a trembling voice they could not control, murmured…

"Since this secret realm was born, tens of thousands of years… never… never has this…"

"We… have witnessed a myth."

The dust finally began to dissipate.

Where the jade tablet had stood, there was now nothing but empty void. Even the broken stones of its foundation had been shattered into dust by that destructive force and swept into the wind.

Ye Xuan maintained the same casual, careless posture of sheathing his sword, standing quietly amid the dust. His white robes were spotless, without even a single extra wrinkle on the hems. A single lock of silver hair drifted gently, falling across his cold, handsome profile.

As if what he had just done was not cleaving apart with a single sword stroke an ancient divine object that even the primordial immortal source power could not shake.

As if that was merely him casually crushing, with a flick of his fingers, an unremarkable piece of tofu.