The heavy, exhausted silence in the circular vault did not last long.
Fang Lin remained on the dark bronze floor, completely naked, his muscular frame covered in a sheen of cold sweat. The unnamed, grey cosmic mist lingered in the air, a testament to his survival.
He had conquered the eradication of his flesh.
He had conquered the eradication of his foundation.
During this, he had discovered a new type of Core Force.
He took a deep, ragged breath, preparing himself to stand.
Before his lungs could fully expand, the atmosphere in the room violently snapped.
The absolute, blistering heat that had defined the first two stages vanished in less than a microsecond. In its place came a profound, unnatural freezing cold. It wasn't the physical cold of ice or snow. It was the terrifying, hollow cold of absolute emptiness.
The darkness of the vault seemed to press inward, crushing against his physical senses.
Fang Lin's eyes widened. He tried to circulate the new, grey cosmic energy, but his meridians remained completely dormant. The external pressure was gone. The threat to his body had ceased.
The danger was no longer physical.
Deep within the glabella, inside the vast, ethereal expanse of his Spiritual Sea, a sudden, blinding light erupted.
It looked like a spark.
It was no larger than a grain of sand, yet it radiated an intensity that dwarfed a dying star. It was a spark of the Void-Silver Flame. It had bypassed his physical defenses, his meridians, and his Dantian entirely.
It had manifested directly inside his mind.
Fang Lin's physical body violently convulsed. He collapsed onto the bronze floor, his eyes rolling back in his head. The physical pain of the first two stages was agonizing, but it was something a cultivator could comprehend.
This was different.
The Void-Silver Flame did not burn flesh. It did not evaporate Qi. It burned existence.
And right now, it was trying to burn his very identity.
The spark flared, sending tendrils of silver light shooting across the dark expanse of his Spiritual Sea. Wherever the silver light touched, a terrifying numbness followed. It wasn't pain. It was the sudden, horrifying sensation of absence.
The flame was isolating his memories.
A memory flashed in his mind. It was Uncle Wei in the Mylan village.
It was a foundational memory. The warmth of a simple life, a connection to the mortal world before the endless rivers of blood and cultivation took over.
The silver flame wrapped around the memory.
Suddenly, the image of Uncle Wei's face began to blur. The sharp grief and warmth that Fang Lin carried for the village began to soften, turning dull and distant.
The Void-Silver Flame was burning it away.
For a fraction of a second, an overwhelming sense of peace washed over Fang Lin. If he let the flame consume the memory, the pain would disappear forever. He would be free from the burden of the past.
But that peace was a lie.
It was the peace of erasure. The peace of becoming nothing.
"No!" Fang Lin roared in the physical world, his voice echoing throughout the vault.
He realized the true horror of the third stage. The Void-Silver Flame was a conceptual law of eradication. It didn't care about the difference between good and bad, between trauma and love. It was designed to erase his humanity entirely.
If it burned his traumas, it would burn his loved ones. It would burn his hatred, his ambition, and his desires. It would strip away every emotional anchor until there was nothing left but an empty, soulless vessel.
It was spiritual death.
Inside the Spiritual Sea, a massive, ancient structure loomed in the distance. The Ancient Spatial Furnace.
From within its depths, a pair of pitch-black, intelligent eyes opened. The Dark Flame Spirit.
She observed the tiny spark of Void-Silver Flame wreaking havoc across the Spiritual Sea. She did not cower. She did not retreat. The Dark Flame was one of the three supreme Primordial Flames in the universe. This silver spark, despite its terrifying conceptual law, was merely a lesser flame in her presence.
A profound, ancient consciousness echoed through Fang Lin's mind.
*Do not run,* the Dark Flame Spirit commanded, in a low voice.
*It is merely a conceptual flame. A lesser law. Do not suppress it with force. Use it. Let it burn. Let it temper the true steel of your will.*
Fang Lin gritted his teeth, blood dripping from his lips as he bit down to maintain his focus.
He understood.
He could not fight a conceptual flame with raw soul power. If he tried to smash it, it would simply burn through his divine sense. He had to face it with a concept of his own.
He had to face it with his.....Mortal Will!!
Fang Lin stabilized his trembling consciousness. He drew upon the core essence of his being. The absolute, unyielding stubbornness that had allowed him to survive the Abyssal Valley. The sheer, terrifying resolve that had mastered the Frozen Heaven Sutra.
He drew upon his Mortal Will.
"I am Fang Lin," he declared. The words weren't spoken aloud. They reverberated through the entirety of his Spiritual Sea, booming like thunder against the encroaching silver light.
He focused his immense soul power, drawing upon the unique, impenetrable defense he had cultivated.
The Crystal Soul Realm.
Vast, translucent barriers of crystalline soul force materialized around the silver spark. They didn't try to extinguish the flame. They formed a perfect, isolated quarantine zone, trapping the spark in the center of his mind.
The Void-Silver Flame flared violently, instantly burning the inner layers of the crystal barriers.
But Fang Lin relentlessly funneled his soul power to his Mortal Will to reinforce them, creating a static, terrifying deadlock.
The flame continued its assault on his memories. It bypassed the physical crystal and attacked the concept of his identity.
A memory flashed in his mind. Feng Jiu'er.
The silver light washed over her image. The memory of her lips pressed against his, the warmth of their kiss amidst the absolute chaos of their lives. The profound, undeniable connection they shared.
The flame tried to turn it to ash.
Suddenly, the image of her face began to blur. Fang Lin felt the warmth of that memory begin to fade. A terrifying, hollow apathy threatened to replace it.
"You will take.....nothing from me!" Fang Lin roared in the physical world, his voice echoing through the frozen vault.
His Mortal Will surged with unprecedented ferocity. He threw his entire being into the struggle. He refused to let go. He clung to the warmth of Feng Jiu'er's kiss. He clung to the endless oceans of blood he had spilled, the sins he had committed, and the terrifying ambitions he harbored.
He was a monster. He was a savior. He was a cultivator walking a path of absolute defiance.
Every memory, every emotion, every sin—it was all him.
Uncle Wei, the village chief, Aunt Ma, Xuo Mu, Feng Jiu'er. His friends at Green Bamboo sect, people from the Lotus Lake City.
He would not surrender a single fragment of his humanity to the void.
His Mortal Will, which had been tempered in the fires of endless combat, began to shine with a blinding, ethereal light. It manifested as a towering, incorporeal figure within his Spiritual Sea, standing directly before the quarantined Void-Silver Flame.
The flame burned the figure. The figure reformed.
The cycle repeated. Ten times. A hundred times. A thousand times. Ten Thousand times. A million times!
The pain was infinitely worse than the destruction of his physical flesh. Every time his Will was burned, he felt a piece of his sanity slipping away. He felt the terrifying abyss of madness clawing at the edges of his mind.
But he did not break.
He simply refused to yield.
He would not give, not here.
Hours bled into weeks, months, years within the accelerated perception of the Spiritual Sea. In the physical world, only minutes had passed, but inside his mind, Fang Lin was fighting a war of absolute attrition.
The Void-Silver Flame was a relentless, emotionless law.
But Fang Lin's Mortal Will was fueled by the infinite, terrifying chaos of the human soul.
Slowly, imperceptibly, the tide began to turn.
The silver spark, isolated by the Crystal Soul Realm and constantly battered by the unyielding weight of his Mortal Will, began to flicker. It was a lesser law. It required fuel to burn. And Fang Lin was refusing to give it an inch of his identity.
His Mortal Will continued to condense. The constant, brutal tempering by the eradication flame was refining it, burning away any lingering doubts, any subconscious fears, any hidden weaknesses.
It was becoming absolute.
A sudden, deafening crack echoed through his Spiritual Sea, followed by a profound, earth-shattering vibration.
It wasn't the sound of destruction. It was the sound of a barrier breaking.
Fang Lin's Mortal Will, pushed to the absolute limit of human endurance by the conceptual flame, broke through.
It hit the absolute peak of the Mortal Will stage.
The towering, incorporeal figure in his mind suddenly solidified, taking on a terrifying, suppressed weight. It felt impossibly heavy, as if it contained the mass of an entire world. It was no longer just the will of a mortal man struggling to survive.
It was a hair's breadth away from evolving into something conceptual. It was a tiny, microscopic step away from Heavenly Will—the stage where a cultivator's intent could actively suppress the laws of the world.
With this breakthrough, the balance of power shattered.
Fang Lin's peak Mortal Will crashed down upon the flickering silver spark with the force of a falling meteor.
The Void-Silver Flame did not fight back. It could not.
Under the absolute, suffocating pressure of a peak Mortal Will that refused to be erased, the conceptual law of eradication submitted.
The silver spark dimmed, its destructive intent instantly vanishing. It stopped attacking his memories. It stopped threatening his humanity.
It simply floated in the center of his Crystal Soul Realm, completely suppressed and utterly docile.
In the physical world, Fang Lin gasped, his eyes snapping open.
He lay on the cold bronze floor, his chest heaving violently. His entire body trembled with sheer, unadulterated exhaustion. He felt as if he hadn't slept in a thousand years. His mind was a raw, aching wound.
But he remembered everything.
Every trauma. Every love. Every sin.
He was still Fang Lin.
He slowly pushed himself up, kneeling in the center of the dark vault.
He closed his eyes and looked inward. His Spiritual Sea was calm. The towering presence of his peak Mortal Will radiated a profound, unshakeable stability, anchoring his mind against any future mental assaults.
But that wasn't the only change.
The spark of the Void-Silver Flame, now completely submitted, was slowly dissolving.
It wasn't vanishing. It was assimilating.
The silver light merged into the crystalline walls of his Soul Realm, fusing with the very fabric of his divine sense.
Fang Lin focused his mind, projecting a thin tendril of divine sense outward into the physical vault.
The invisible wave of soul power swept across the bronze floor. But this time, it carried a terrifying, conceptual edge.
Wherever his divine sense touched, a faint, microscopic layer of silver ash briefly materialized in the air before vanishing.
Fang Lin's eyes snapped open. A chilling, ruthless light flickered in his pupils.
The silver sheen in his eyes was unmistakable.
He hadn't just survived the soul attack. His divine sense had absorbed a fragment of the law itself.
He had awakened an Innate Soul Skill. A terrifying ability born from enduring conceptual destruction. An ability that functioned on the level of an ancient, forbidden legacy art.
A profound, ancient resonance echoed in the depths of his mind. It wasn't a voice, but the fundamental vibration of the law itself, imparting its true name directly into his consciousness.
The Eradication Gaze.
Also known as the Void-Silver Gaze.
By simply focusing his soul power and projecting his sight, his divine sense was now imbued with the Law of Eradication. He could directly erase lesser spiritual attacks, shatter illusions with a single glance, and instantly burn the divine sense of cultivators into nothingness just by looking at them.
It was an absolutely lethal, unblockable weapon.
Fang Lin exhaled a long, steady breath. The newly birthed grey mist swirled around his naked, silver-tinged obsidian skin. His physical body was a fortress. His meridians were vast oceans of power. His soul was an unyielding weapon of eradication.
He had passed the Trial of Fire.
And he had completely transformed!
He was very eager to test it out.
Suddenly, the absolute, freezing darkness of the circular vault suddenly rippled.
The scattered, ambient energy of the Void-Silver Flame that had permeated the room during the three stages began to move. It didn't attack. It swirled gently, coalescing in the center of the room.
The silver light grew brighter, condensing into a humanoid shape.
Fang Lin watched the coalescing light closely. He didn't know for certain if this was a trial, a trap, or some ancient execution method, but given the structure of the three stages, he had his suspicions.
An illusory figure slowly materialized before him. It was an old man, dressed in simple, ancient blacksmith's robes. He possessed a dignified, scholarly aura that completely contradicted the brutal, terrifying nature of the room.
It was the soul remnant of the ancient starry cultivator.
Ou Yezi
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