The sky, finally, cracked.
The black fissure that stretched across the heavens resembled a brutally torn eyelid, revealing a cold, enormous, inorganic electronic eye behind it.
[Countdown: 0] There was no earth-shattering explosion.
The world began to collapse in a deathly silence.
Shen Qingqiu watched helplessly as the distant, undulating snow-capped mountains, like a wet ink painting, began to blur and fade. Their once majestic forms became flowing ink, eventually turning into countless gray specks, returning to nothingness.
The wind stopped. The snow, suspended in mid-air, no longer fell, but instead transformed into strings of static character code.
This was "Region Reset."
Not destruction, but "erasure."
"Qingqiu, hide behind me." Seventeen's voice was somewhat hoarse. He stood in front of her, facing the giant eye above, which almost occupied half the sky, the "Severing Thoughts" sword in his hand emitting a mournful hum. He knew he couldn't stop it.
It was a dimensional attack from another dimension, like a paintbrush erasing ink from a painting. Even if the person in the painting possessed superior martial arts, what could they do?
But he only had one move.
*Zzzzt—!!!*
The giant eye shifted, and a beam of white light shot out from the center of its pupil.
The light wasn't blinding; it even possessed a sacred gentleness. It fell silently, stripping away the air and disintegrating the rock wherever the beam passed.
It was like a giant eraser, wiping away at the two people atop Broken Cloud Cliff.
"Ah—!!!" Seventeen let out a beast-like roar.
He didn't retreat; instead, he charged towards the white light. His entire body burned with a frenzied blue data stream as he poured all his energy into his sword, attempting to sever this "corrective light."
*Crack.*
In the instant of contact.
The "Severing Thoughts" sword, which had accompanied him through countless battles, shattered inch by inch.
Next came his arm.
Shen Qingqiu's pupils dilated violently.
She saw Seventeen's sword-wielding hand, the instant it touched the white light, its skin, muscles, bones… disintegrate as if under a microscope, instantly disintegrating into countless tiny, luminous cubes.
Half of his body began to digitize in the white light.
"Go…" Seventeen turned around, his once exquisitely beautiful face now half-transformed into flowing gibberish. In his remaining eye, there was no fear of death, only a bottomless despair at the impending loss of her.
"Don't worry about me…jump down…"
He pointed to the sheer cliff behind him. That was the edge of the map, perhaps still a glimmer of hope.
Shen Qingqiu didn't move.
She watched Seventeen's figure slowly disappear, watched him use his mangled body to desperately hold back the pillar of light, preventing even the slightest trace of destructive energy from reaching her.
Pain.
It felt like a red-hot steel needle had been inserted into her brain.
Extreme fear and grief caused her adrenaline to surge to lethal levels. Simultaneously, the computational power belonging to the "outsider," which had been lurking deep within her mind, erupted completely.
[Warning: Mental threshold breached.]
[Overclocking Vision – Logic Reconstruction, Loading…]
The world changed.
In Shen Qingqiu's eyes, the once despairing white pillar of light was no longer an invincible divine punishment.
It transformed into a river.
A river formed by countless complex formulas, logical operations, and underlying code. Though turbulent, it had a direction, a structure, which meant—it had vulnerabilities.
"All things are numbers, all beings are code."
Shen Qingqiu murmured to herself. Her pupils turned a melting gold in that instant, the color of absolute reason and divinity intertwined.
She saw it.
The frequency of that white light was f(x) = sin(Ωt + φ), using high-frequency oscillations to deconstruct the molecular bonds of matter.
As long as… as long as a reverse frequency could be created. Shen Qingqiu's gaze suddenly fell upon the ancient zither on her lap, its four strings broken.
Three strings remained.
That was enough.
"Seventeen, come back!" Shen Qingqiu roared. She was no longer the weak woman who needed protection; now, she was more like the queen of this crumbling world.
She sat cross-legged, her delicate hands pressing sharply onto the remaining three strings.
Under the gaze of those golden eyes, she was no longer playing the zither, but programming.
*Zheng—!*
The first note rang out.
This note was sharp, almost piercing. It wasn't for the sake of sound, but to cut into the frequency band of that white light.
Seventeen, who was dissipating, jolted violently. He felt the power that was devouring him momentarily pause.
*Zheng—!*
The second note.
Shen Qingqiu's fingertips cracked, blood staining the strings crimson. But she paid no heed. Her spiritual power, like tentacles, probed into the interior of the pillar of light, searching for that fragile point of balance.
Found it.
Right there!
*Clang—!!!*
The third, and final, sound.
This sound was like a silver bottle shattering, like iron cavalry charging forth.
A visible, faintly golden ripple of sound erupted from the strings, striking the "Achilles' heel" of the world-destroying white light with perfect precision.
[Logic Reconstruction: Reverse Phase Cancellation.]
*Boom—* A silent annihilation occurred between heaven and earth.
The seemingly indestructible white pillar of light, upon encountering this golden sound wave, was like two torrents colliding. There was no explosion, only mutual absorption.
The white light began to distort, dissipate, and self-destruct.
The air that had been "erased" was replenished.
"How...how is this possible…"
The giant eye in the sky seemed to reveal a human-like astonishment. It couldn't comprehend how a low-dimensional ant could possibly crack the administrator's delete command.
Seventeen plummeted from mid-air.
Shen Qingqiu tossed aside her guqin, leaped forward, and caught him steadily.
His right arm was gone, blue sparks flickering at the severed end. Half his face remained a jumbled mess, looking grotesque and terrifying.
But in Shen Qingqiu's eyes, he was more precious than ever.
"Qing...Qiu..." Seventeen struggled to open his remaining eye, looking at Shen Qingqiu's golden pupils, somewhat dazed, "Your eyes..."
"Don't speak." Shen Qingqiu held him, raising her head, her golden pupils fixed on the giant eye in the sky.
"An eye for an eye." Shen Qingqiu sneered, bloody tears sliding down her cheeks, leaving a poignant red mark on her exquisitely beautiful face.
She had already seen through the operating logic of that eye.
It was connected to the "root server" of this world.
"Seventeen, can you still move?"
"Yes." Seventeen struggled to stand. Though his body was incomplete, if she still wanted to fight, then he could still kill.
"I'll borrow your body for a moment." Shen Qingqiu reached out and pressed her hand on Seventeen's severed arm, which was flickering with blue sparks.
She wasn't trying to heal him; she couldn't do that now.
She wanted to connect to the internet.
Through Seventeen's "high-privilege account," she would trace the path of the collapsing white light and invade the giant eye in reverse!
[Access Request: Forced Execution.]
[Identity Impersonation: Supreme Administrator.]
Seventeen's body trembled violently. He felt an immense, terrifying stream of consciousness surge through his body towards the sky. The sheer force made him want to grind his teeth to dust.
But he remained silent, staring intently at the sky. Even if his core melted, he would be her strongest bridge.
*Zzzzt*— The giant eye in the sky suddenly trembled violently.
Its originally indifferent green data stream was suddenly stained with a layer of frenzied gold.
It wanted to close its eyes.
But Shen Qingqiu wouldn't allow it.
"Look at me!"
Shen Qingqiu roared in his consciousness.
Boom—!
The giant eye actually couldn't close. Then, from the depths of its pupil, a blinding burst of fire erupted.
It was the explosion of a server overload.
"Awooo—!!!"
A non-existent scream echoed from the sky. It was the lament of a system logic collapse.
The giant eye exploded.
A torrent of green blood rain (data fragments) poured down. The once oppressive black sky was blasted open with a huge, multicolored hole.
Through that hole, Shen Qingqiu vaguely saw…
The starry sky.
The real, deep universe, filled with stars.
Although it was only for a moment, the hole quickly began to self-repair, but that glimpse was enough to make all living beings in this illusory world tremble.
"We…did it." The golden light on Shen Qingqiu's body dissipated, and his pupils returned to their original black.
Exhausted, she collapsed, her strength giving way beneath her.
Seventeen held her tightly with his remaining left hand.
The Broken Cloud Cliff beneath their feet had completely collapsed. The collision, while preventing the deletion command, had destroyed the physical structure of the area.
The ground vanished.
Like two withered leaves, they plummeted into the bottomless, mist-filled abyss below.
The wind howled.
Weightlessness enveloped them.
Seventeen adjusted his position in mid-air, using himself as a cushion. He looked at the pale-faced Shen Qingqiu in his arms, his eyes so tender they seemed to melt the swirling snow.
"Are you afraid?" he asked softly.
Shen Qingqiu struggled to open her eyes.
She looked at the slowly closing crack in the sky above, then at the battered man holding her.
"No."
She buried her head in his neck, listening to his non-existent heartbeat.
"As long as you're here, anywhere is paradise." The two embraced, passing through clouds, through mist, and beyond the boundaries set by this world.
On this day.
The Broken Cloud Cliff collapsed, blinding the Heavenly Eye.
The mute guard who always wore a mask, for his master, shielded him from divine punishment with his own body.
The aristocratic daughter who always watched coldly, for her guard, ascended to godhood in a single thought, defying the laws of heaven.
They were falling.
But this was not the end.
This was another, grander epic, about slaying gods and love, just beginning.
(Volume 1: Low-Level Martial Arts World: The Mortal World's Heart-Refining Chapter - End)
[Next Volume Preview: Immortal Cultivation: Defying Fate Chapter] The two who fell into the abyss did not die, but instead landed in an ancient ruin—an "illegal crossing" to the Middle Thousand Worlds (the cultivation world).
Seventeen's body urgently needed high-energy materials to be rebuilt.
To repair him, Shen Qingqiu turned her gaze to the high and mighty leader of the immortal sect and the supreme ruler of the demon realm.
"I heard the core of your mountain-protecting formation is a nuclear fusion reactor? Lend me your man to replenish my strength." A new map, a new hunt, is about to begin.