Chapter Sixteen: Dismantling the Celestial
Note… The Dance of Absolute Nothingness
A funerary silence blanketed the Broken Bones Valley just before the Spiritual Eclipse erupted at the peak of the heavens. It was not merely the disappearance of the sun—it was a black hole that devoured the laws of nature for a fleeting moment. Even the air grew heavy, saturated with the stench of sulfur and dark essence, which began seeping from the cracks in the earth like blood bleeding from the valley's womb.
Zhu Fan stood at the center of this upheaval.
The body once dismissed as trash had now become the battlefield of a cosmic conflict. His perforated meridians no longer leaked energy; instead, they functioned like a thousand miniature vortexes, drawing in the surrounding dark essence and converting it into pure nothingness. Every cell in his body screamed beneath the strain of the Lost Celestial Calculations, yet his mind remained cold—an icy blue calm—submerged in oceans of numbers and equations that mapped the structure of reality itself.
In the distance, Long Xiao stood atop a jagged rock, surrounded by a pale green halo. The bone zither in his hands was no mere instrument—it was a high-grade spiritual weapon, forged from the remains of a slain Earth Dragon.
"Zhu Fan…" Long Xiao whispered, his voice carrying a terrifying metallic resonance.
"The universe is nothing more than a grand note. A successful cultivator is one who knows how to add his own tone to the celestial symphony. You are nothing but dissonance—a miscalculation that must be erased for balance to return."
He raised his hand. His long fingers danced across the strings at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye.
Bone Zither Art: Sonata of Corporeal Annihilation!
Vrrrrrrrrr—
The first wave surged forth.
It was not sound—it was vibration etched into the fabric of space itself.
The air tore apart.
The ground beneath Zhu Fan began disintegrating into dust before the wave even reached him.
To an ordinary xianxia cultivator, this would be called magic.
To Zhu Fan, it was nothing more than a matrix of destructive frequencies.
Frequency: 14.5 kilohertz.
Amplitude: infinite.
Failure point: rib cage.
The analysis completed in less than a heartbeat.
Zhu Fan did not retreat.
He did not erect a conventional spiritual barrier.
Instead, he drove his foot into the collapsing earth and extended his right hand—now coated in a membrane of absolute black.
Chaos Derivation: Absolute Zero Balance!
When the annihilation note collided with Zhu Fan's palm, there was no explosion.
What followed was far worse.
A sudden, absolute silence.
Energy capable of leveling mountains vanished the instant it touched him. Zhu Fan had not blocked the attack—he had subtracted it. The annihilating vibration was offset by the nothingness within his body, reducing the result to zero.
Long Xiao's expression froze.
"Impossible! Even the elders of the Seventh Peak would explode if they tried to absorb the Sonata of Annihilation!"
"You don't understand, Long Xiao," Zhu Fan replied, his voice echoing like it rose from a bottomless abyss.
"I am not absorbing your power. I am negating its existence. In my equation, you are not an integer… merely a decimal fraction—and you are about to be rounded down to zero."
Zhu Fan took the first step of the Three Steps of Nothingness.
With each step, reality shuddered. He moved through the spaces between particles, bypassing conventional notions of speed. In the next instant, he appeared directly before Long Xiao, his hand extended like a claw from hell.
At that moment, Lin Er intervened.
Her black fan snapped open, releasing a dense violet mist carrying the fragrance of flowers and death.
"Zhu Fan, stop!" she cried.
"You're consuming your life essence! This path will drive you insane long before you ever reach immortality!"
Zhu Fan turned toward her.
One of his eyes had turned a dull gold—the Eye of Calculation.
The other was submerged in endless black—the Eye of Nothingness.
"Lin Er… the Soul Geometry you possess is the missing variable in my equation," he said calmly.
"My shattered meridians require the structure of your soul to prevent my body from detonating. You are not here to save me—
you are here to become the mold into which I will pour my new power."
Lin Er did not hesitate.
She slammed her fan shut and unleashed her technique.
Purple Lotus Prison!
Petals of solidified spiritual energy erupted from the ground, enclosing Zhu Fan from every direction. Each petal was carved with Daoist seals designed to prevent the soul from escaping the body.
"Structural analysis of the Lotus… complete," Zhu Fan murmured.
"Weak point: northwestern angle, third node."
With a single finger, he stabbed the air.
The prison—an art that had consumed half of Lin Er's energy—shattered like cheap glass. He had not used brute force; he had dismantled the spiritual welds binding the energy together.
"You… monster!" Lin Er screamed as she retreated—
—but Zhu Fan was already in front of her.
His hand closed around her throat—not to kill her, but to link the Veins of Nothingness within his body to the Core of the Soul inside hers.
Sensing imminent danger, Long Xiao unleashed the final note of his zither.
Requiem of the Drowned Dragon!
The valley exploded with vibrations that nearly uprooted the surrounding mountains.
Yet Zhu Fan—still holding Lin Er—smiled.
"Now… the equation is complete."
A beam of black-and-gold light erupted from Zhu Fan's body, engulfing the entire valley. Long Xiao ceased to exist as a threat. Lin Er faded from consciousness. There was only Zhu Fan—reordering the particles of air and qi around him.
The dark essence that once threatened to kill him now arranged itself into intricate geometric patterns within his soul, forming the first Computational Core in the history of cultivation.
Long Xiao collapsed to his knees, coughing black blood as his bone zither shattered into countless fragments.
Lin Er lay unconscious in Zhu Fan's arms, as the Tome of Soul Geometry tore itself free from her robes and was drawn toward the Heaven's Calculation Record in Zhu Fan's hand.
As the eclipse began to recede, Zhu Fan looked up at the sky and spoke softly:
"The error in this world is far too great…
I will need many more calculations to correct it."