Qingcheng City is growing in prosperity.
In this modern jungle, where every inch of land is precious, people are busy exchanging numbers and desires in the clouds. They neglect the layers upon layers of remnants from the old era beneath the city's surface — an area completely cut off from electricity and signals. This is the perfect hiding place for those seeking a "casual escape".
Yanfu trudged through the thick layer of dust towards the abandoned sewage treatment plant beneath the Holy Seminary in the north of the city.
The air was thick and heavy, like solidified engine oil, and an eerie, chilling green glow emanated from the cracks in the concrete walls — radiation left behind by the Longevity Society's 'causal evaporation'. This technology creates an absolutely blank 'present' by erasing a person's 'past'.
'Since reality can no longer accommodate the truth,' Yanfu said, stopping and pressing his right hand against a massive, rusty load-bearing pillar. "Then I will tear open an exit from the ruins of logic myself." 'Yama-Deva—Decree.'
With this low murmur, the previously silent underground space instantly descended into frenzied physical chaos.
Boom!
The earth began to pulsate rhythmically, as if this concrete jungle buried deep underground had gained a heartbeat. A pure black karmic storm erupted from Yanfu's body. This karma had transformed from chaotic black smoke into countless tiny, shimmering, dark golden ancient Sanskrit characters.
Like a swarm of living ants, these Sanskrit characters spread wildly along the cracks in the walls.
It was a visual spectacle as the modern concrete shell peeled away under the erosion of divine power, revealing not red bricks but bluish-black rock engraved with images of hell.
Space began to fold. The murky water flowed back up to the ceiling and converged in mid-air to form a dark, round moon. The once narrow passage stretched infinitely in both directions and massive bronze pillars and a red-hot iron bed appeared and disappeared in the void.
Yanfu's eyes turned completely golden and red. He was not only occupying space; he was rewriting reality.
He stretched out his hands and tore through the void.
A rift, a hundred metres long, opened menacingly in the air. Behind it was not nothingness, but a vast expanse of scorched earth and karmic fire — his 'Incessant Realm'. 'With the sins of this realm, I forge my divine throne.'
Yanfu closed his eyes. The immense evil karma he had absorbed at the 'Life-Swapping Clinic' seeped from every pore of his body. These remnants of cause and effect, enough to instantly drive a mortal mad, were being forcibly refined by Yama-Deva's divine essence.
Countless jet-black 'soul-binding chains' shot out from the cracks, intertwining and finally solidifying into a solemn yet terrifying throne at the centre of the domain.
Formed from the crystallisation of karma, the throne's base was etched with the agonising cries of suffering beings, while its backrest was composed of countless hands lifting upwards.
This was the initial form of the 'Vajrasana' (Throne of Diamonds).
As Yanfu lifted his trench coat and slowly sat on the throne, Qingcheng City sank one centimetre. The sleeping superhumans awoke simultaneously, an indescribable sense of judgement rising from their feet and locking onto their souls. The instant the domain stabilised, a heavy, beast-like panting sound came from the shadows deep underground.
'Who... who's there?'
A towering figure slowly rose from behind the ruins, his upper body bare and his muscles coiling like writhing dragons. However, it was his ridiculously long arms, covered in twisted blue veins, that were most striking.
That was Abang. In the world of underground boxing, he was once known as the 'Skull Crusher'. However, in a match rigged by the Longevity Society, his immense power got out of control. Not only did he instantly shatter his opponent's bones, he also caused the arena stands to collapse with the force of the explosion, burying his sister, who was sitting in the front row, alive.
Above Abang's head, a massive, bull-headed phantom hovered, a fragment of ancient divinity that he had accidentally activated in his extreme anger and self-reproach.
'You want to die.' Yanfu sat on his throne, propping his cheek with one hand and looking down coldly at the man.
'I... I can't control these hands.' Abang knelt in the rubble, slamming his fists against the ground in agony; each punch cracked the concrete. 'Whenever I try to save someone, it always ends up as murder. Is this my fate?'
'Fate is the excuse of the weak.'
Yanfu slowly raised his hand and a jet-black chain appeared in front of Abang.
'Your power stems from your rage against injustice. Rather than letting it rot here, hand it over to the underworld." Yanfu's voice carried an undeniable authority. "Become my disciple. I permit you to kill, but every punch must land on the debtor."
Abang raised his head, his bloodshot eyes reflecting the image of the god on the throne. Without hesitation, he reached out and gripped the cold chain tightly.
"I am willing to enter hell."
As he spoke these words, the phantom bull's head above his own merged with his spine and a pair of short, ferocious horns sprouted vaguely from the sides of his skull. He was the future general of the underworld: Bullhead.
"Very good."
Yanfu slowly stood up, his gaze fixed on the abandoned monastery above and piercing through the earth.
'The guards are in place. Now, go and tear down that hypocritical bell tower."
Bathed in the twilight, the Holy Monastery of Qingcheng City emerged from the depths of the abyss, resembling a colossal skeleton.
This Gothic building, which was once a haven for orphans and believers, was now shrouded in an invisible grey film. In Yanfu's Visions of Samsara, this place no longer belonged to three-dimensional reality, but to a "logic pocket" that had been forcibly frozen.
'The actuaries of the Longevity Society set up an array of "causal evaporation" here,' said Yanfu, standing on the moss-covered steps as the evening wind whipped his trench coat.
From the shadows behind him, Abang's massive body slowly emerged, the bull-head patterns on his bare back opening and closing with his breath. With each step he took, the ground cracked in a spider's web pattern, unable to withstand his primal force.
'Boss, the air here... makes me feel sick,' Abang grumbled, his voice booming like thunder in his chest.
"Because the 'cause' here has been drained." Yanfu pointed to the towering bell tower at the centre of the monastery. 'Those without a past have no guilt. The Longevity Society mass-produces 'blank souls' here to bear the karmic retribution of the powerful and wealthy. That bell is the filter that washes away sin."
The Prelude to Slaughter: A Symphony of Physics and Causality
'Intruders.'
The two heavy oak doors of the church slowly opened and dozens of 'Executors' filed out. They wore pristine white robes, but their faces were covered by gas masks. They held silver halberds, the tips of which flickered with eerie blue sparks of causality.
They were the actuarial guard of the Longevity Society, having abandoned their personalities and completely entrusted causality to the array in exchange for absolute coordination.
"Abang." Yanfu didn't even look up at them.
"Here."
Leave the logic to me; you take care of the physics.'
Abang grinned, revealing a gleaming set of white teeth, and suddenly charged forward into the crowd like a cannonball.
Boom!
It wasn't the sound of humans colliding, but the deafening roar of a heavy battering ram striking flesh. One Executor attempted to block it with his halberd, but Abang's mutated hands rendered the alloy weapon as fragile as a biscuit.
"Die!"
Abang let out a beastly roar. He spread his arms and slammed the heads of two Executors together.
In Yanfu's vision, these Executors' causal lines were extremely short and fragile. He stretched out his fingers and flicked them in the void.
'Vision of' Effect (Eye of Fruit).
With a flick of Yanfu's finger, the causal anchors beneath the Executors' feet vanished instantly, plunging their once-disciplined formation into utter chaos. They forgot their fighting techniques and even how to breathe, convulsing wildly on the ground like a group of drowning fish.
Abang became the sole Grim Reaper in this chaos. Each punch he threw sent up a cloud of blood mist as he slammed those 'empty' shells back into the dust.
The Truth of the Abandoned Sanctuary: The Evaporator
Passing through the blood-stained corridor, Yanfu entered the church. The central hall.
Any clergyman would be driven mad by the sight here: the shrines that once housed the idols had been demolished and replaced by a massive metal furnace riddled with intricate pipes.
At the heart of the furnace was a human heart still beating.
Countless transparent tubes extended from the heart and connected to a massive bronze bell at the top of the hall. Every second, black smoke representing evil collected from every corner of Qingcheng City and was injected into the furnace. There, it was filtered through the heart and transformed into pure white vapour, which was then absorbed by the bronze bell.
'This is "Cause-Evaporation".' "
A hoarse yet calm voice came from the shadows.
An elderly man wearing an exquisite three-piece suit and gold-rimmed glasses was sitting in an armchair beside the furnace. An old-fashioned abacus lay before him, his fingers moving rapidly and producing a crisp click-clack sound.
This was the 'core component' employed by the Eternal Life Society to sustain the logic required for the evolution of the Incessant Realm.
Just as Abang reached for his heart, the logic of the entire church collapsed completely and the once solid walls turned to ash. Among the ruins, Yanfu saw a little girl in a red dress sitting on top of the bell tower, smiling silently at him.
She was the Eternal Life Society's true trump card: 'The Daughter of Cause and Effect'.
'It's not over yet.' Yanfu stared at the vanished red figure, feeling the growing weakness emanating from his divine core. 'This sacred realm is just the first trap they've laid.' With a deafening roar, the Holy Monastery collapsed completely in the twilight, reduced to a desolate ruin.
On top of the ruins, Yanfu sat on a broken stone pillar, with Abang kneeling at his feet.
Although he had obtained the 'heart', the chilling feeling of being watched by a venomous snake lingered in his heart.
As the 'Causal Evaporator' collapsed, an eerie deep purple hue spread across the sky above the ruins of the Holy Monastery.
Tens of thousands of tons of 'karma', which had been extracted and erased, surged back like water from a burst dam, flowing frantically back through the broken pipes. A dense series of cracking sounds filled the air — the mournful cry of physical constants being scoured by high-pressure causality.
Yanfu sat atop a broken stone pillar, his 'Vision of Effect' right eye operating at overload. In his vision, the space within a one-kilometre radius had become chaotic: past timelines and present points of space repeatedly overlapped.
He saw the nun who had prayed here a century ago and the executor who had just been killed by Abang repeatedly overlapping, tearing apart and finally vanishing into nothingness at the same coordinate point.
'Is this the return you sought?'
Chief Actuary Chen Xuxuan knelt amidst the rubble, his hair dishevelled. His cherished abacus, his lifeblood, was now reduced to a single charred bead. Pointing to the ever-expanding black vortex in the sky, he laughed bitterly and said, 'You've shattered the vacuum balance here! Now, all the evil deeds committed over the past century are out of control. This is no longer judgment, but annihilation!' Yanfu slowly stood up.
His body trembled slightly under the weight of his logic, but his sombre divinity became even more intense.
'Balance isn't about maintaining a vacuum, but ensuring every debt finds its creditor.' Looking down at Chen Xuxuan, Yanfu's voice seemed to emanate from the depths of hell.
He abruptly raised his right hand, his five fingers grasping at the void.
'Incessant Realm—Forced Descend!'
Boom!
The earth churned violently. The black realm, which had previously existed only in the realm of the imagination, was forced into the real dimension. The 'Vajra Throne', composed of countless karma crystals, burst forth from the earth like a black island at the eye of a storm. Once the throne was firmly established, the torrent of evil karma ceased its chaotic rampage and began to form a massive, slowly rotating black nebula around the throne, like subjects before a monarch.
Yan Fu ascended the steps and returned to his cold, sacred throne.
At that moment, the chaotic logic within a ten-mile radius ceased instantly. 'Chen Xuxuan, since you enjoy divination, I'll let you calculate it clearly.'
Yan Fu casually waved his hand and the charred abacus bead flew towards Chen Xuxuan.
'This abacus bead contains the "cause" owed by three generations of abacus masters of this Holy Academy, and now I return the "effect" to you.'
As he finished speaking, an extremely thin yet incredibly heavy red line split from the black nebula in the sky and fell precisely on top of Chen Xuxuan's head.
'No... no! This is too heavy! My abacus can't bear it!'
Chen Xuxuan let out a piercing wail. His once rosy skin was instantly covered in age spots, and he could feel an invisible force crushing his spine inch by inch. He had calculated the lives and deaths of countless people, but he had never included his own in this high-stakes gamble.
Under Abang's gaze, the arrogant actuary shrank to the size of a withered infant's corpse in less than ten seconds before being sucked into the charred abacus beads and disappearing completely. Just as Yanfu was preparing to absorb the karma of this area completely, the red figure reappeared.
Sitting barefoot in the shadows behind the throne, swinging her slender legs, it was Lin Ling, the "Daughter of Karma" of the Longevity Society.
"Big brother, you took the heart, but you broke the 'lock'!"
The little girl's voice was clear and melodious, yet it had a chilling quality that could freeze the soul. She pointed to the heart that was gradually turning to stone in Abang's hand. 'That heart wasn't for dissipating negative karma; it was for feeding the man below.'
Yanfu's pupils contracted sharply.
He sensed that, with the collapse of the Holy Monastery and the destruction of the evaporation furnace, the suppressed underground aura was resurfacing at terrifying speed.
It was an ancient and chaotic power, older than the Eternal Life Society.
'Hmph, for the rest of the game, you can play with someone else.'
The girl in the red dress transformed into countless red petals which dissipated in the wind. Simultaneously, the entire ruin began to tremble violently. Suddenly, a gigantic bronze hand covered in ancient runes emerged from the abyss beneath the earth, gripping the crumbling walls of the Holy Monastery tightly.
"Boss, what is that thing?" Abang roared, his muscles tense and the phantom of a bull's head almost bursting out of his body.
Yanfu sat on his throne, staring intently at the giant hand.
'It seems the Longevity Society is just a parasite on this shell.' He chuckled coldly, his eyes burning with a fierce fighting spirit. 'Very well. If this world is too filthy, then let's start from the root with physical exorcism.'
The colossal bronze hand gripped not only the ruins, but also the city's "reason".
As it climbed upwards, the earth's crust within a hundred metres of the Holy Monastery began to bulge radially. The black karmic fire that originally belonged to the Incessant Realm was forcibly dispersed by a primal, chaotic grey mist — the guardian of the 'First Seed of Cause and Effect', a secret that the Longevity Society had kept hidden for nearly a century.
'Boss, this thing... it's dead!' Abang roared, charging forward with his fists gathering dark red qi — pure violence bestowed upon him by the bull-headed divinity.
Boom!
Abang's heavy punch slammed into the joint of the bronze hand. The force was powerful enough to collapse a building, yet it left only a shallow white mark on the rust-covered metal surface. The recoil sent Abang flying like a kite with a broken string, crashing through several stone pillars before finally coming to a stop.
"Of course it has no breath." Yanfu sat on the Vajra Throne, his eyes slightly narrowed. 'It's a corpse forcibly "frozen" by causality. The Longevity Society feeds it with evaporated evil karma, keeping it in a 'near-death' state and acting as a shock absorber to prevent the collapse of the city's entire logic system.
Now the evaporator is destroyed and this shock absorber has gone out of control." The enormous bronze corpse finally revealed its full form. It had no head and its chest cavity contained a huge, hollow gear set that rotated slowly with the pulse of the Earth. With each rotation, the flow of time around it twitched eerily.
'Mortals steal divine fire, ultimately suffering its chaos.'
Yanfu slowly rose from his throne, feeling the Yama-Deva staircase within him tremble violently — the instinctive response to encountering a being of the same kind, or even a higher one.
"Visions of Samsara — full activation!" His left eye overflowed with pure white light while his right eye erupted with a magma-like red glow. In his eyes, the bronze behemoth was no longer a physical entity, but a tangled, completely carbonised 'logical deadlock'.
It had no 'cause' because it had existed for far too long, nor any 'effect' because it had been forcibly stripped of death.
'Since you no longer belong to this cycle of reincarnation, I grant you the right to destruction.' Yanfu raised his right hand, his five fingers like hooks grasping at the massive, gear-like chest cavity in the void. 'Soul-Binding Noose—Eternal Unity!' "
The scattered chains in the void were no longer mere illusions.
Thousands upon thousands of jet-black chains, shimmering with dark golden Sanskrit runes, surged forth from the depths of the Incessant Realm. Instead of attempting to bind the giant corpse's body, they precisely pierced the gaps in the rotating gears and transformed into absolutely still 'logic latches'.
Crunch!
A teeth-grinding, metallic scraping sound echoed through the heavens. The entire city of Qingcheng felt a strange tremor in their hearts as if some axis supporting the world's operation had been forcibly jammed.
"Abang! Smash its heart!" Yanfu roared. A trickle of dark golden divine blood spilled from the corner of his mouth — forcing this ancient god-level logic had taken him to his limit.
"Roar!"
Abang leapt again. This time, the bull-headed phantom above his head had solidified completely. He burned all his life essence; his arms burst open with dense, bloody gashes from the unbearable force.
'Break!' "
That punch, carrying the rage of the underworld's gatekeeper, slammed heavily into the centre of the gears jammed by the chains with a resounding crack.
It was the sound of a centuries-old lie being exposed.
At that moment, the colossal bronze corpse ceased its struggle. Its massive body began to disintegrate, turning into countless tiny, phosphorescent grey particles. However, these particles did not disappear; instead, they converged frantically along the chains that Yanfu had laid onto the petrified 'core of logic' in his hand.
The petrified heart began to revive, its grey hue fading. It had a deep, obsidian-like texture.
[Obtained Divine Artifact – Heart of the Underworld (Initial State)]
As the corpses completely dissipated and the tremors deep underground subsided, the ruins of the Holy Monastery appeared particularly desolate under the moonlight. However, the chilling atmosphere that had been suppressed for a century finally vanished.
Yanfu stood in the centre of the ruins, holding the slightly pulsating heart in his hand.
He turned his head to look at the Lin's Twin Towers, which were still brightly lit in the distance.
'Lin Cangye, did you think you left behind a "landmine" powerful enough to cause mutual destruction?'
Yanfu casually pressed the heart into his chest. In that instant, his aura surged again and the blue patterns on his skin shimmered faintly with a dark golden light.
'Thank you for your generosity. Now I am one step closer to becoming King Yama.'
In the heart of the Holy Monastery ruins, the slowly settling dust was bathed in moonlight.
Yanfu stood on top of a pile of bronze fragments, the newly fused 'Heart of the Underworld' in his chest beating heavily and powerfully. With each beat, a steel stake called 'Order' was driven into this desolate land.
The fragmented logic was being reassembled, but this time it no longer conformed to the pseudo-Heavenly Dao of the Longevity Society. Instead, it followed the laws of the Underworld, with Yanfu at its absolute centre.
'Cough... cough... cough!'
Abang, leaning on a broken steel bar, stood up shakily. The muscles in his right arm were charred black from overexertion. But his eyes were no longer bloodshot; they now held an almost religious fervour and devotion.
"Boss, that monster... it really shattered?"
"No, it simply returned to where it belonged." Yanfu stretched out his hand, with a trace of bronze coldness remaining in his palm. 'It was originally the "logic bad debt" accumulated in this city over the past century. Lin Cangye wanted to use it to crush me, but he forgot that I was here to deal with these bad debts.' Yanfu closed his eyes, and at that moment, his Visions of Samsara underwent a qualitative change.
Previously, he could only see partial causal red lines, but now they had converged into a giant network map covering the entire city of Qingcheng, and the 'Heart of the Underworld' fused into his body was like a scanner, frantically capturing the true accounts behind every connection point.
East of the city: Three officials are undergoing 'causal whitewashing' by the Longevity Society in an attempt to erase their violent deaths caused by corruption.
West of the city: A genius surgeon's hands are being crippled by 'causal transfer', benefiting the illegitimate son of the Lin Group chairman.
In the heart of the city: A colossal, causal black hole was hovering above the Lin Twin Towers, resembling a monster with its jaws wide open and ready to devour the city's future.
'This isn't business,' said Yanfu, slowly opening his eyes. The crimson light in his pupils froze into ice. 'This is bankruptcy plunder.' He pulled a twisted silver cross, salvaged from the ruins, from his trench coat pocket.
'Soul-Binding Noose—Refine.'
Black karmic fire instantly engulfed the cross, reshaping it into a long, jet-black command arrow engraved with blood-red scriptures.
"Abang."
"Here!"
"Take this." Yanfu tossed the black command arrow to Abang. 'From tomorrow onwards, you are no longer a boxer, but a soul-collecting messenger of the underworld.'
Abang caught the command arrow. A chilling, bone-piercing power instantly coursed through his body. The scriptures on the arrow seemed to come alive, moving across his skin and finally solidifying into an ancient Chinese character meaning 'judgement' on his forehead.
'Whoever this command arrow points to is a debtor.' Yanfu turned his back and gazed at the city lights beginning to awaken in the distance. 'Whether they are powerful or superhuman, if their causal connections are severed, bring them to me.' Just then, a thin figure stumbled out of the shadows at the edge of the ruins.
He was one of the soul fragments rescued at the clinic earlier. Now that the seal on the Holy Monastery had been broken, these previously restless souls had gained a chance to breathe in this 'sanctuary'.
'My lord... save us...' It was the soul of an old man. He had long been declared brain dead, but the cause had not yet been resolved.
Yanfu gazed at the drifting spirits and the Vajra Throne within him roared once more.
'This ruin will henceforth be your safe haven.'
He stamped his foot and the entrance to the 'Incessant Realm' split open in the ground, transforming into a massive doorway engulfed in eerie blue flames.
'Enter here and you will no longer be manipulated by the Longevity Society. In exchange, you will become my "eyes" in this city. I must know every distorted cause and effect, every hidden sin.' At five in the morning in Qingcheng City, the first rays of dawn had not yet touched the horizon. In the deathly silence, the ruins of the Holy Monastery exuded the bitter smell of oxidised earth and bronze.
Yanfu stood in the centre of the devastated ruins, his right hand clenched in the air. The 'Heart of the Underworld', fused with the remains of an ancient god, emitted a final, heavy rumble within his chest.
'Thump—'
This sound was no longer confined to the underground; it travelled along the city's intricate network of cable conduits, striking the server array buried deep beneath Lin's Twin Towers with precision.
The fluctuating numbers, which had symbolised wealth growth, abruptly ceased, and then the city's financial indices began flowing in reverse.
'Boss, look over there.' Abang wiped the blood from his face and pointed to a broken utility pole at the edge of the ruins.
Though de-energised, the public address system on the pole now emitted a sharp crackling sound. Then, a cold, mechanical and emotionless female voice echoed through the empty ruins:
'An abnormal logical gap has been detected. Audit procedures have been initiated forcibly. Current deficit: 990 billion life essence. Auditor: Yama-Deva. Twenty-four hours remaining until the initial liquidation.'
This was the deepest alarm system of the Longevity Society, yet Yanfu had forcibly reversed it into a judgement. He slowly raised his head and the red lines in his eyes, which had previously been chaotic, now converged to form a blood-red ledger spread across the heavens and earth. "Lin Cangye, you use numbers to cover up your crimes and probability to exploit the masses."
With a casual wave of his hand, the shadow of his trench coat transformed into boundless night, completely engulfing the ruins of the Holy Land.