The prosperity of Qingcheng City is merely a thinly veiled facade.
Beneath the Financial Street skyscrapers lies a hidden space called the 'Causal Black Market', a place devoid of law where a forbidden technology known as 'Causal Escape' exists.
Yanfu, holding a pure black umbrella, stood before a building called the 'Deci Private Wellness Centre'. To ordinary people, it was a top-tier sanctuary, but under the gaze of 'Visions of Samsara', the entire building was shrouded in a thick, viscous, dark green mist — the resentment of countless lives forcibly stripped of their destiny.
'Welcome, sir,' said the waiter at the door, smiling amiably, but his eyes held a mechanical coldness. 'Do you have an appointment?'
Yanfu slowly turned his head, his left eye — Vision of Cause — slightly contracting.
In his vision, a thin black tube was floating above the waiter's head. This conduit pierced the void and connected to a core within the building. It was maintaining this perfect shell by devouring the health of others.
'I've come to retrieve some misplaced "goods",' Yanfu said calmly.
An invisible wave emanated from him. The waiter's smile froze instantly and his body was frozen in a bent-over position, leaving him unable to move. The last image on his retina showed the man before him not walking, but trampling the logical laws of this space. He pushed open a hidden door, revealing a grotesque scene.
This wasn't a clinic; it was a wholesale market for evil.
Huge transparent culture tanks were arranged in a staggered pattern. Instead of containing organs, they held clusters of shimmering fragments representing "lifespan", "luck" and "talent".
Dozens of dignitaries in expensive suits were browsing the tanks as though selecting luxury goods.
'Chairman Lin, this "artistic talent" was extracted from a genius painter who committed suicide. It's of exceptional quality,' the doctor wearing gold-rimmed glasses introduced obsequiously. 'As long as it's connected to your causal chain, your youngest son will win an international award again next month.'
'Price is not a problem,' said the man called 'Chairman Lin', his belly protruding and his eyes filled with greed. 'The key is to keep it "clean", so that no bad karma follows.'
'Don't worry, we have a "causal escape" filter. All the negative consequences will be transferred to those on the fringes of society.'
Yanfu strolled among these dignitaries like a ghost that didn't exist. Those around him ignored him; only the dark golden ripples beneath his feet foreshadowed the impending judgement. 'Do you think negative consequences can be filtered?'
A cold voice suddenly rang out in the noisy trading hall, like an icicle piercing the flames of revelry.
The dignitaries all turned to look at the gloomy young man who had appeared in the centre of the hall at some unknown time.
"Who are you? Security! Where are the security guards?" The doctor screamed.
Yanfu ignored him, slowly raising his right hand and touching his index and middle fingers together before making a light stroke in the air.
'Visions of Samsara—Manifest.'
Boom!
The once magnificent clinic lobby instantly collapsed. It wasn't a physical collapse, but a sensory one: all the decorations, lights and fine wines faded to grey in an instant, replaced by the revelation of the truth.
The powerful and wealthy discovered with horror that fragmented spirits were riding on their shoulders.
Behind Chairman Lin, who desired 'artistic talent', stood a painter with a blood- and tear-covered face; the painter's brush frantically carved runes called 'Despair' onto his back. At the feet of wealthy women pursuing 'longevity' were the cries of infants — the maternal instincts they had stolen from others.
'Ah! Get away! Get away! My face! Who's scratching my face?" "
These powerful and influential people usually use money and power to conceal everything, but at this moment, Yanfu's pupil technique has completely shattered the illusion of escaping cause and effect.
'Cause and effect don't disappear; they only accumulate.' Yanfu stood at the centre of it all, his expression both compassionate and mocking. 'You thought you had escaped, but you've only accumulated all your debts until this day of reckoning.' He flicked his finger and the 'Soul-Binding Chains' soared into the air like a black dragon, instantly piercing the incubation tanks containing the fragments of cause and effect.
The fragments scattered, transforming into countless points of starlight and returning to the bodies of the vengeful spirits that were hovering above the clinic.
With the return of cause and effect, the previously grotesque spirits gradually regained their composure. They floated in the air, their eyes filled with gratitude and bewilderment as they looked at Yanfu.
They had been rejected by the order of this world.
As their physical bodies had long been destroyed and their places revoked, they were considered "non-existent people" in the current social logic, unable to find their way back even with the return of cause and effect.
Looking at the countless souls with nowhere to go, Yanfu felt a sense of 'heaviness' arise in his heart for the first time.
The law of cause and effect in this world was rotten to its core; restoring justice did not mean restoring order.
'There is no place for you in this world,' Yanfu said in a low voice as he surveyed the freed but helpless souls. 'Then stay in my shadow for now.' The illusory figure behind him reappeared and the gate to the 'Boundless Realm' opened slightly. The souls transformed into wisps of cold smoke and flowed into Yanfu's trench coat.
He felt an immense, heavy force of will.
'Lin Cangye...' Yanfu turned around and looked at the paralysed doctor, his eyes as cold as blades. 'This debt has only just begun,' he said.
Beneath the 'Deci Nursing Home', screams mingled with the crackling of fine china.
The elegant classical music had inexplicably transformed into eerie electromagnetic noise. Those who were normally powerful and influential were now writhing and scratching themselves undignifiedly on expensive Persian carpets. Due to the powerful intervention of 'Visions of Samsara', the 'isolation layer' of causal transfer had been completely shattered and the karmic retribution that they were supposed to endure was being 'repaid' on their bodies at a thousandfold speed.
'Help… my lungs! It feels like thousands of cigarettes are burning inside!' The energy tycoon, who had taken the lungs of a lowly miner in a life-saving operation, was now clutching his neck, his face turning purple.
Yanfu moved through the chaos. He didn't use violence, but the sound of his leather shoes echoing on the ground was like a death knell tolling on these people's causal threads.
"This is the 'escape from cause and effect' you've been pursuing."
Yanfu walked up to the terrified, bespectacled doctor, bent down and said, his black trench coat trailing on the ground like a closing curtain of night. 'Return what you've stolen. Interest? Pay with your life.'
"No… no! This has nothing to do with me!" The doctor scrambled backwards frantically, knocking over a cart full of blue reagents. 'It's the Longevity Society! It's their 'causal anchor' technology! I'm just an employee. Don't kill me. Don't take those things back!" Yan Fu's left eye shifted slightly as he caught the keywords in the doctor's mouth.
On the doctor's chest, he spotted a miniature rune resembling a chip that was shimmering with a ghostly blue light. Like a parasite, it was rooted in the part of the heart that beat most violently, continuously channelling the evil consequences into the depths of the earth.
"I see."
Yan Fu extended a pale finger and clenched it in the air.
"Soul-Binding Noose—Remove."
A thin yet incredibly strong jet-black chain appeared out of thin air and burrowed into the doctor's chest cavity through his airway, precisely binding the pale blue rune.
"Aaaaaah—!" The doctor screamed in agony. His chest bulged eerily as if something were about to burst forth.
Yanfu exerted a sudden burst of strength and forcibly pulled the 'causal anchor point' out. The moment the rune left his body, the doctor withered rapidly, turning into a blubbery skeleton. The life force that he had squandered through scheming over the course of his life was instantly wiped out by the universe's entropy after losing the anchor point's protection.
Yanfu stared at the trembling blue rune in his palm.
Not only did the rune contain data, it also contained coordinates pointing to the heart of Qingcheng City: the Lin Family Twin Towers. 'Who's spying?'
Yanfu whirled around, his gaze piercing the surveillance camera in the corner of the hall. In the 'Visions of Samsara', the camera was not connected to a fibre optic cable, but to a perceptive tentacle spanning the void.
Lin Cangye, head of the Lin Group, was currently staring directly into Yanfu's divine and indifferent eyes through this 'eye'.
'A very interesting young man,' boomed a hoarse yet elegant voice from the monitor's loudspeaker, exuding arrogance and superiority. 'Do you think you're upholding justice? No, you're just creating more chaos. Without a way to escape the consequences, the city's elite will collapse instantly, and civilisation will regress by a century. Can you bear that causal burden?'
'Civilisation?'
Facing the probe, Yanfu revealed an extremely cold sarcasm. 'Prosperity built on rotting flesh is nothing more than an exquisite tomb. Lin Cangye, your list of demands is too long. Even this land cannot bear it, and the price..."
He lifted his foot and slammed it heavily on the ground.
'Incessant Realm—Expansion.'
Darkness spread rapidly from the centre of Yanfu, the once pristine white tiles turning to scorched earth as the whispers of countless spirits echoed in the void. In that instant, the entire clinic was ripped from the real world and plunged into a dimension called 'Judgment'.
The powerful, the bodyguards and the evil healers disappeared the moment the darkness closed in. When Yanfu stepped out of the clinic again, the magnificent building behind him had become a long-abandoned ruin, its walls peeling and covered in cobwebs.
The real world's logic had been restored: this clinic had closed five years ago due to serious medical malpractice and financial collapse.
But Yanfu knew that those who had disappeared were not dead; they were imprisoned in the shadows behind him, repaying their debts in an eternal cycle of cause and effect.
He looked down at his left hand.
He had just forcibly absorbed hundreds of wronged souls into the 'Incessant Realm', and crack-like blue lines had appeared on his skin — a sign of 'Yama-Deva's' evolution towards 'King Yama', the erosion of mortal bodies by divinity.
'It's not over yet.'
He looked at the pure souls drifting around him, unable to find their place, like a swarm of homeless fireflies flickering uncertainly in the cold rain.
They were the by-product of this chaotic era. In a world where cause and effect had collapsed, 'innocence' had become an error incompatible with the laws of physics.
'I will give you a place to belong.'
Yanfu clenched his fist, crushing the causal anchor in his hand.
'Before that, I will make every inch of this city hear the knocking of the underworld.'
He raised his black umbrella and disappeared into the rain. His next task was to find Su Xiaoxiao. Her appearance was no coincidence; rather, she was the only flaw in Lin Cangye's plan and the key to breaking the deadlock.
In the rain, the dilapidated tenement buildings on the outskirts of the city shook as thunder rolled across the sky.
Holding a black umbrella, Yan Fu waded through the muddy puddles to the front of the building. He sensed a massive 'logical void' forming here — due to the death of the Longevity Society's deacon and the reversal of cause and effect that he had stolen in his previous life, this area had become extremely unstable in physical reality. The golden Sanskrit that had once sealed this place had long since dissipated, replaced by a deeper, more restrained sense of oppression.
He pushed open the rickety door.
Su Xiaoxiao was curled up in the farthest corner of the wardrobe, clutching a tattered rag doll tightly in her arms. As Yan Fu approached, the fear in her eyes turned to numbness, replaced by an almost transparent emptiness.
According to the "Visions of Samsara", Su Xiaoxiao's state was chilling: most of her "cause" had been removed, while the "effect", due to Yan Fu's previous violent intervention, was suspended in a state where it could not take effect. She had become a 'causal orphan'.
'Have they all disappeared?' Su Xiaoxiao's voice was barely audible, conveying a stillness beyond her years.
'In this moment's logic, they never existed.' Yanfu reached out, his fingertips tracing the air as he forcefully stabilised the crumbling spatial structure around the girl. Just as he was about to take her away, the old television in the room suddenly turned on by itself.
There was no static on the screen, only a blinding crimson revealing Lin Cangye's dignified, well-maintained face. He was seated behind an obsidian desk, behind which were floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the entire city.
'Yanfu, let's play a game about "probability".' His voice, tinged with amusement, came from the speakers. "You just destroyed my clinic, releasing those 'goods,' but have you considered that those so-called powerful figures are actually the 'anchors' of this city's causal chain?"
Yanfu's eyes turned cold and he remained silent.
"Once they disappear, the businesses they're associated with will collapse instantly, as will the city's power supply and financial order, due to the loss of their 'causal support'." Lin Cangye pointed to the view of the city at night outside the window. 'Right now, three substations in Qingcheng City have already shut down due to "probabilistic failures". If you take this girl away and cut the last experimental line, this city will be plunged into complete darkness tonight. What follows will be immeasurable chaos and death.'
'Are you threatening me with the "fate fruit" of all living beings?' Yanfu finally spoke, his voice chillingly calm.
"No, I'm telling you what 'the grand trend' means." Lin Cangye stood up, his hands resting on the table, his eyes burning. 'So what if it's Yanmotian? In the context of modern civilisation, your judgement is far too insignificant. By submitting to the Longevity Society, we can redefine this world's logic." Yanfu was not convinced by Lin Cangye's grand narrative.
He slowly raised his right hand, palm upwards, and a ball of dark golden light danced at his fingertips — the remnants of cause and effect that he had just brought from the 'Life-Swapping Clinic'.
"Lin Cangye, your understanding of 'order' is limited to the greed of mortals."
Yanfu clenched his fist sharply.
'Soul-Binding Noose—Reverse Flow.'
A terrifying tremor shot through the signal lines to the Lin Group building, instantly shattering the television screen. However, the fragments didn't scatter, but instead hovered eerily in mid-air, piecing together a distorted symbol.
It was the warning mark of the Vajra Throne.
At the same time, Yanfu sensed a deep roar emanating from the Yama-Deva divine core within him. He could see not only Lin Cangye, but also the vast 'pseudo-Heavenly Dao' behind him, woven from countless false causes and effects.
'You want to see the big picture?'
Yanfu picked up Su Xiaoxiao and turned around, his back appearing aloof and resolute in the lightning.
"Then I'll reshuffle the cards of this world." As he led her out of the tenement building, the entire city was indeed experiencing a strange, localised power outage, as Lin Cangye had predicted.
The streets were filled with the panicked honking of horns. In the darkness, countless pairs of greedy or desperate eyes were watching them.
Su Xiaoxiao nestled against Yanfu's shoulder and whispered, 'Big brother, can I go back to school?'
Yanfu was silent for a moment.
Under the gaze of Visions of Samsara, Su Xiaoxiao's future was a chaotic white mist. The real world had lost its 'logical interface' with her; she was now a living ghost, an anomaly forgotten by causality.
"There is no place for you in this world."
His voice sounded cold in the rain, yet also carried an unspeakable warmth. "But in my underworld, you can have an unyielding lighthouse."
He raised his hand and gently pressed it against Su Xiaoxiao's forehead.
'Incessant Realm — temporarily stored.'
The girl's figure gradually faded, finally transforming into a dark red gem that fell into Yanfu's trench coat pocket.
He stood alone on the dark street. In the distance, the neon lights of the Lin Twin Towers still flickered, mocking his insignificance.
'The scale of a long-running drama...'
He stroked the gem in his pocket. The gloom in his eyes gradually dissipated, replaced by calm judgement.
'Since the cause and effect of this world has died, I will start with this rotten root and cut it away piece by piece.'
The rain took an eerie turn. Each drop seemed to be drained of its weight by an unseen force before touching the ground, turning into tiny ice crystals.
Yan Fu stood at the empty crossroads, the faintest hint of warmth still lingering on his fingertips where he had just touched Su Xiaoxiao. He could feel the 'Boundless Domain' expanding wildly within his consciousness. The souls he had saved were screaming in agony inside it because they had lost their 'anchor' in reality and were on the verge of logical collapse.
'Is this the salvation you sought?'
A voice suddenly rang out in the darkness.
The old man with the monocle appeared in the shadow of the street lamp. His leather shoes were dry, and his walking stick tapped lightly on the ground, producing a dull, commanding sound.
"You saved her, but you also killed her." The old man looked up at Yanfu, a judgemental light flashing behind his monocle. 'In this broken system, unregistered souls are considered viruses. Hiding her in your domain only overloaded your divinity.' Yanfu slowly turned around; the 'Vision of Cause' in his left eye had changed from pure black to a deep purplish gold.
'You are a member of the Vajra Throne. Shouldn't you only care about the stability of physical constants?' Yanfu's voice carried a deep, resonant bass tone, the divinity of Yama-Deva emanating from him.
'We care about "conservation".' The old man took a step forward, distorting the surrounding space. 'Lin Cangye is ruthlessly accumulating evil karma; you are collecting wronged souls. One of you is mortgaging the future; the other is devouring the past. To the logic engine of this planet, you are both 'abnormally overloaded'."
Yanfu snorted coldly and suddenly lashed out with his right hand.
'Soul-Binding Noose – Withdrawal!'
Jet-black chains shot out from the void like an angry dragon, but halted eerily three inches from the old man and shattered into countless characters that scattered across the ground.
'Useless.' The old man shook his head. 'I represent "observation". As long as I don't recognise your cause and effect, your attack cannot affect me." 'Is the conservation you speak of just watching the Immortal Society turn this city into purgatory?' Yanfu pointed to the shimmering Lin's Twin Towers in the distance. There, neon lights formed a giant, mocking smile.
'That's the evolutionary path chosen by "civilisation".' The old man's tone was chillingly calm. 'Humanity's discovery that cause and effect can be quantified, traded and transferred is a technological explosion in itself. We, the Vajrasana, are only responsible for ensuring that this explosion doesn't destroy the foundation that supports reality. As for who lives and who dies, that's just a matter of probability."
Yanfu's eyes turned completely crimson.
At that moment, he experienced an overwhelming sense of irony.
Mortals commit evil in their quest for immortality; gods stand by indifferently for the sake of stability; and only Yama-Deva, existing outside the cycle of life and death, is the sole exception.
'Probability theory?'
Yanfu suddenly laughed, his laughter filled with sinister intent.
"Then let's gamble. If I forcibly reclaim all the evil karma of this entire city, how long can your 'foundation' withstand it?" The old man's face turned grim for the first time. 'You're insane. That amount of evil karma will burst your godhood instantly, turning you into a demon god who only knows how to kill — the prototype of 'Yamāntaka' (the Demon Lord of Hell). You're not ready to bear the weight of that staircase."
"I don't need to be ready."
Yanfu took a sudden step forward, the asphalt beneath his feet instantly cracking into dust and revealing the dark red veins beneath.
'In this market, where evil karma is traded, I am the only buyer paying the full price.' "
Boom!
A terrifying suction force erupted from Yanfu. Within a kilometre radius, the shadows that had previously clung to the mansions of the wealthy and powerful, as well as the hearts of ordinary people, seemed to sense a supreme summons. They transformed into countless plumes of black smoke that converged frantically upon Yanfu.
Behind him, the phantom of Yama-Deva gradually took shape. The divine image was no longer compassionate, but instead exuded an intense sense of oppression and rage.
The old man was forced back dozens of steps and a crack appeared in his monocle.
'Madman... you are actually forcibly restarting the causal self-purification system of this area!' As the last wisp of black smoke was drawn into Yanfu's trench coat, the streetlights along the entire block instantly regained their brightness, but it was a washed-out whiteness.
Yanfu stood in the middle of the road, his body swaying slightly. The bluish lines beneath his skin had spread to his neck, and dark red tears of blood streamed from his eyes.
That was the price he paid for bearing the sins of tens of thousands.
The old man looked at him deeply, his figure gradually dissipating into the air. 'Yanfu, you've won this round, but remember: behind the Longevity Society are not only Lin Cangye and those old monsters who have already "ascended to a higher dimension", but also... Next time, the Vajra Throne won't just be an observer.'
The rain stopped.
Yanfu wiped the blood from the corner of his eye and looked at the sky, which was gradually turning pale.
He could sense that the gem in his pocket, representing Su Xiaoxiao, had faintly revealed a glimmer of life after absorbing a massive amount of karma.
'The wholesale market for evil karma has closed.' He muttered to himself, his voice hoarse but resolute:
"Next, it's time for retail to die."
At four in the morning, the streets of Qingcheng City were eerily silent.
Yan Fu walked alone along the deserted asphalt road, his trench coat casting thick, dark shadows on the ground. These shadows screeched when they touched the ground, then quickly dissipated. He had forcibly absorbed the evil of the entire neighbourhood, transforming his body into a vessel for countless sins.
With each heartbeat, the dying curses of countless people echoed in his mind: 'Why am I the one to die?' 'My life was sold for five million!' 'The Longevity Society promised me...'
This constant noise, a cacophony of greed and despair, would have driven an ordinary person to a mental breakdown. But Yan Fu's eyes remained as calm as a frozen pool.
He stopped, and the "causal vision" in his left eye flickered slightly, revealing a ragged old man sitting beside a rubbish bin not far ahead. In reality, he was just a homeless vagrant, but in the 'causal perspective', thousands of broken white threads extended from behind him.
These threads had originally connected him to his descendants, his property and his health, but now they all pointed to the same place: the Deci Private Nursing Home.
'This is the cruelty of the "wholesale market": one person's immortality comes at the cost of a thousand people's "social death".'
'Can you feel it?'
A deep, thunderous voice resonated within Yanfu's consciousness. It wasn't an external invasion, but the awakening of the will of the next stage in his evolution — Yamantaka, the Demon Lord of Hell.
'Kill these pests that create chaos. Sacrifice this city to the underworld. Only then can order truly return.'
Yanfu's fingernails dug deeply into his palms, blood oozing out with an eerie dark gold hue. He responded coldly to the divinity within him: "What I want is balance, not slaughter. If destruction is used to end evil, then what difference is there between me and Lin Cangye?'
'The difference,' the mocking voice continued, 'is that you are the sole judge, while they are necrotic flesh.'
Suddenly, the gem representing Su Xiaoxiao in Yanfu's arms trembled violently.
An aura of extreme purity overflowed from the gem, forcefully suppressing the turbulent noise of evil karma. As a 'causal orphan', Su Xiaoxiao had lost her past and future, but in doing so, she had gained absolute 'emptiness'.
This emptiness was Yanfu's only source of calm at that moment. "Boom—!"
Three modified heavy motorcycles roared in from the end of the long street, their wheels sparking blindingly on the ground. The riders were not human, but 'causal prosthetics' developed by the Longevity Society — logical monstrosities created by injecting evil karma into machinery.
They had no life, so they feared no death. They had no causality, so they could not be erased directly by the Visions of Samsara.
'A product beyond logic?' Yanfu slowly raised his head; the Soul-Binding Noose behind him sensed hostility and manifested automatically.
Suddenly, three cybernetic warriors leapt up ten metres away from Yanfu, their high-frequency vibrating blades tearing through the air.
Yanfu didn't even move.
He simply lifted his left foot slightly, then stomped down heavily.
'Boundless Domain—Logic Deprivation.'
The space within a hundred metres of him instantly turned black and white. The moment the cybernetic warriors entered the domain, their movements slowed and distorted, and their mechanical structures began to disintegrate. This wasn't due to physical damage, but because the 'pseudo-causality' that supported their operation had collapsed in the face of Yanfu's divine power.
'Since there is no life,' Yanfu's voice was like the cold wind of the polar regions, 'then return to dust.'
Black chains coiled around the core of the cybernetic body like venomous snakes, twisting slightly. Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three muffled thuds later, the expensive prosthetic body, worth hundreds of millions, was reduced to scrap metal, its stored evil karma instantly drained by Yanfu. The first rays of morning sunlight attempted to pierce the gloom of Qingcheng City, but could only cast dim patches of light upon the ground.
Yanfu stood amidst the scrap metal, gazing in the direction of the Lin Twin Towers. He knew that the "wholesale market" incident tonight was just the beginning. Lin Cangye wouldn't be deterred by this loss; quite the contrary, he would accelerate the implementation of his so-called 'Great Dimensional Ascension Plan' because he felt threatened.
He pulled an old copper coin from his trench coat pocket — an object he had casually played with while working in the switchboard room.
At that moment, one side of the coin was engraved with 'cause', and the other with 'effect'.
"Lin Cangye, you treat all living beings as bargaining chips."
Yanfu tightened his grip, turning the copper coin to dust. 'But I will make you understand that when debts accumulate to the point where even the gods cannot bear to look at you, the only way to repay them is eternal damnation.'
He turned in the dawn, his figure gradually becoming transparent.
After this night of reckoning, the causal logic of Qingcheng City remained distorted, and the rift forcibly torn open by Yanfu could not be healed. Deep within Yanfu's consciousness, the Incessant Realm underwent a subtle change.
In a realm that was once filled only with darkness and wails, a withered stone tree had sprouted with Su Xiaoxiao's arrival. Beneath the tree, the girl's illusory figure sat quietly, legs crossed. She became the first resident of this underworld realm and its future gatekeeper.
"Big brother, is it dawn yet?" the girl's ethereal voice rang out.
"Not yet." Yanfu walked further and further away from the streets of reality. 'But before I bring you back, I'm going to take all the light back from the thieves.'
Just as Yanfu was about to disappear completely into the morning mist, his right index finger suddenly began to tremble.
'Buzz—'
This wasn't a tremor of divine power, but a repulsion from the physical realm. Looking down, he saw the asphalt road rippling beneath his feet like water. The once straight street curved eerily at the horizon towards the ruins of the Holy Monastery in the old city, long since erased from the map.
In that desolate, mist-shrouded land, an extremely ancient and pure law of causality was awakening. This was the complete opposite of the Longevity Society's decaying aura, yet it exuded a sense of despairing decay.
'That is...' Yanfu's right eye, the 'Vision of Effect', suddenly activated, its dark red light piercing through kilometres of reinforced concrete.
He saw a massive, rusty bronze bell hanging from the spire of the abandoned church. The pendulum did not swing, but every second, a transparent causal thread was drawn from the void and converged inside the bell's cavity.
The Longevity Society was conducting an experiment there that was even more insane than 'wholesale evil' — causal evaporation.
If it was not stopped, all 'cause' would be forcibly erased and the world would become a chaotic prison without logic or memory, existing only in the eternal present.
'Lin Cangye, do you want to turn reality into a madhouse with no exit?'
Yanfu slowly raised his head, his gaze locking onto the desolate outline.
This was once the place where gods suffered; now, it would become the altar where Yama-Deva would truly descend.
Next chapter preview: Chapter Three: The Abandoned Sanctuary
The Divine Miracle Peels Away: In the magic-suppressing realm, Yanfu's abilities were severely limited, and he had to rely on primal causal logic for hand-to-hand combat.
The Truth of the Sanctuary: Revealing how the Eternal Life Society exploited religious beliefs to create a 'causal trap' and capture the divine essence of spirits.
The War of Dimensional Reduction: When the soul-binding noose becomes entangled in a decaying cross, who emerges as the true redeemer?