I risked my life, using the butterfly effect to shatter the immortal realm.

The wind stopped.

The Taoist robe, soaked in blood and mud, fell lightly into the dust like a gray moth with broken wings.

Beneath the robe, there was nothing.

Ling Qingxuan knelt down, leaning on his broken, chipped sword, his pupils contracting sharply.

It felt like a red-hot iron rod was churning wildly inside my head, causing excruciating pain.

She stared intently at the pile of rags, her mouth agape so wide her jaw was clicking, but she couldn't utter the name.

That name melted on my tongue.

The laws of the world are coldly at work, and an invisible hand is roughly wiping the blackboard, erasing the "mistake" that should not exist.

A mortal killing an immortal?

absurd!

The logical chain was forcibly reorganized, and new memories were driven into her brain like steel nails:

"Master Huanglong practiced evil arts and suffered a qi deviation..."

"The golden core exploded, and the physical body collapsed..."

"Su Xiu and I miraculously survived..."

The logic is closed-loop and flawless.

Apart from the huge, hollow hole in his chest that looked as if his heart had been ripped out, it was completely empty and let in the wind.

"Waaah..."

Su Xiu dug her fingernails into the soil, drawing blood.

The girl clutched the sweat-smelling Taoist robe tightly; it was the only thing she had left.

She didn't know why she was crying; her mind was completely blank.

Mingming survived, and the cannibalistic old Taoist priest died, but tears flowed like a burst dam.

"Who are you……"

Su Xiu buried her face in her Taoist robe, her cries heart-wrenching, filled with the despair of a miser who had lost all her possessions.

"Who saved me? Whom have I forgotten?"

"My money... no, I think I've lost something more important than money... please, don't let me forget..."

The cries echoed mournfully and desperately at the foot of the empty Tianzhu.

Beside them, the piglet that had been pretending to be dead rolled over, its belly facing up.

The Thunder Fiend Fruit and the fragments of Huanglong Zhenren's golden pill underwent a strange reaction in its bottomless stomach.

"belch--"

Piglet let out a loud burp.

"Remain……"

"……good."

Pig Master spoke in human language again, as innocently as a child.

A wisp of golden air, belonging to a dimension other than the mundane, burst forth.

Instead of dissipating, it coiled tightly around Su Xiu's wrist like a shark that had smelled blood.

Su Xiu couldn't see it, but her wrist suddenly felt heavy.

It's like there's an invisible thread, the other end of which is tied to an abyss of nothingness.

Su Xiu was taken aback: "Pig Lord? You're speaking human language again?"

"What did you say? What's left?"

Su Xiu forgot the person's name and what the person looked like.

But she remembers that feeling.

I remember that finger twisting cause and effect in the downpour, I remember that cynical "meticulousness", I remember the messy debts that swindler owed her.

Human memories are like sandcastles, easily destroyed.

But this pig, which swallowed the creation of heaven and earth, became the anchor connecting reality and nothingness.

……

[The Ruins of Cause and Effect]

There is no light, no sound, only deathly silence and grayness.

Countless broken lines, like dead blood vessels, floated densely in the void.

Yu Liangpiao is here.

He was reduced to a semi-transparent silhouette, like a black and white photograph that had been soaked in water.

Several "Beasts of Retribution," composed of countless desperate human faces, roamed around, greedily sniffing out the presence of outsiders.

Yu Liang lowered his head.

The fingers are breaking down into gray powder.

It's fucking cold.

This coldness is not temperature, but the loss of "existence".

Like a drop of ink falling into the ocean, it is being diluted infinitely.

This is the price to pay.

For ordinary people to win against the house, they have to bet their lives.

Now, the dealer is here to take back the table.

Yu Liang grinned, a smile that looked particularly irritating against the gray and white world.

Don't want to die.

I don't want to lose.

Just before his consciousness was about to completely dissipate, something suddenly appeared in his hand.

A single thread.

Golden in color, as fine as a spider's thread, yet incredibly resilient.

At the other end of the line, there was an extremely weak yet persistent pull that held him tightly.

That was Su Xiu crying.

It was that pig's burp.

It is the only evidence in this messed-up world that still acknowledges his "existence".

"Oh……"

A glint of cunning gleamed in Yu Liang's eyes, which were almost disappearing from sight.

That was the ecstasy of a gambler who had secretly hidden his last card.

He did not attempt to climb up using the line.

That's too slow, there won't be enough time.

He made a gesture.

The illusory right hand rises, mimicking the action of gripping and lifting the rod.

"Causal deception..."

Yu Liang launched his final scam into the endless void.

He wasn't deceiving anyone else, but himself, and this cause and effect that was about to end.

He silently recited a ridiculous yet undeniably true reason in his mind:

I still owe that girl a meal of braised pork; that debt isn't paid off yet.

The cause and effect are not yet resolved, and the creditor is still there.

Repaying debts is justified.

As long as the debt isn't paid off, even the King of Hell won't be able to wipe this scumbag off!

"Get back here, you son of a bitch!"

Yu Liang suddenly leaned back, gripping the golden thread tightly, and like a big fish, he pulled himself up from the abyss of death!

……

The real world.

"Sizzle—"

A crisp sound, like cloth being torn.

The Taoist robe in Su Xiu's arms suddenly swelled up, the surrounding air distorted, and it groaned as if some enormous thing was forcibly squeezing into this cramped reality.

Ling Qingxuan suddenly looked up.

The void cracked open.

A pale hand, covered with eerie black patterns, suddenly appeared and grabbed Su Xiu's shoulder.

Next came the arms, shoulders, head...

The person seemed to rise from the water's surface, or perhaps emerge from a mirror.

Yu Liang.

He is back.

There wasn't a single scar on his body; the broken bones and shattered flesh had all been reshaped by cause and effect.

Instead, black lines, like cracks in porcelain, appeared on her skin.

That is the "mark of divine retribution," evidence of defying the ironclad law and stealing the path of life and death.

Su Xiu froze, tears still clinging to her eyelashes, her mouth agape in an "O" shape. The name rolled in her throat, but she hadn't managed to utter it yet.

"puff--"

Yu Liang suddenly spat out a mouthful of black blood, and his whole body went limp in Su Xiu's arms like a lump of mud.

"Don't...don't look..."

Yu Liang's face was deathly pale. He tremblingly stretched out his hand, covered in black markings, and clutched his crotch tightly, his face filled with a grief and indignation that was worse than death.

"Cause and effect reshaping... without clothes..."

"My innocence... is completely ruined."

The air froze for a second.

"ah--!"

Su Xiu screamed, her face flushed red, and hurriedly closed her eyes, but couldn't help peeking through her fingers, cursing, "You pervert! You scoundrel!"

"Clang!"

The broken sword in Ling Qingxuan's hand fell to the ground.

The memories are back, the name is back.

That immense, hollow grief was instantly filled, transforming into an extremely complex impulse—a desire to kill and a urge to laugh out loud.

That bastard.

They even dared to deceive Death.

Yu Liang had no time to pay attention to the two women's reactions.

He leaned weakly against Su Xiu, casually pulling the tattered Taoist robe around his waist, feeling the turbulent changes within his body.

Not the same.

The world has changed in his eyes.

Those lines that were originally blurry are now so clear they're almost blinding.

Killing a Golden Core cultivator is a huge consequence.

The fortune that Huanglong Zhenren had cultivated over hundreds of years, along with those unclaimed and scattered destinies, were now frantically pouring into his body along the lines of cause and effect.

Although it couldn't enable him to cultivate immortality, this enormous energy filled the void in his "existence."

It's like a exhausted Akhal-Teke horse suddenly coming back to life.

Yu Liang rubbed his fingers together.

The fingertips are no longer transparent; instead, they have a full, almost overflowing, sense of reality.

The black cracks on his skin shimmered faintly, a mark the world had left on him, and also his greatest medal.

The bet was won.

He grinned, revealing a mouthful of teeth stained with black blood, and was about to boast a little, such as "This hand of cards was played skillfully."

But suddenly his gaze passed over the ruins and froze on the distant East.

call out!call out!call out!

Three flying swords tore through the clouds, hovering arrogantly above the rocky beach with their arrogant tail flames.

Two men and one woman, dressed smartly, their sleeves fluttering, their clothes spotless.

They looked down at this muddy, blood-soaked battlefield with eyes that seemed to regard it as a few piles of dog excrement on the roadside.

"unlucky."

The young man in brocade robes, who was leading the group, covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief and waved his hand in disgust. "Master said that there was an unusual movement of the Earthly Fiends here, which meant that a great treasure would be born. How come there are only a few half-dead mortals? The stench is simply overwhelming."

"Senior brother, look there!"

The female cultivator next to her had sharp eyes and pointed to a murky, foul-smelling pig urination pit not far away.

With a flick of her hand, an invisible force lifted the mangled head from the pit into the air.

The head spun twice in mid-air, revealing its unseeing, dead face.

"Oh, isn't this Huang Long, the outer sect steward?"

The female cultivator's voice was surprised, tinged with a hint of schadenfreude, "How could a dignified Golden Core cultivator have mixed his head in pig piss?"

The young man in brocade robes narrowed his eyes and his gaze instantly locked onto the three people and one pig below.

"Wasn't he sent to Qingzhou?"

The killing intent descended like frost.

"Since Huanglong died here, these mortals... must have seen something they shouldn't have."

Yu Liang's heart skipped a beat. He gave a bitter laugh and tightened the tattered cloth around his waist to cover his shame.

Emerging from the wolf's den, only to fall into the tiger's lair.

This has really stirred up a hornet's nest.