The aftermath of Li Yao's victory over Zhang Fan was a seismic event in the tournament. The story wasn't just about a win; it was about the manner of it. The "Void Disciple" was no longer an oddity; he was a phenomenon. Sects scrambled to analyze the few recorded glimpses of his fights. Theories abounded: a lost bloodline ability, a primordial constitution, a symbiotic bond with a void-type spirit beast. The truth—a scripture of nothingness—was too alien to be considered.
For Li Yao, the victory was sobering. He had been forced to actively use his void offensively, to unmake rather than just nullify. The Void Scripture in his mind seemed to pulse in approval, new, more complex characters shimmering at the edge of his comprehension, hinting at the next stage. He had passed a threshold.
His next opponent in the main bracket was a disciple from the Celestial Harmony Clan, the cross-law specialists from the Central Continent. Her name was Xun Mei, and she was a River Talent, a genuine genius. Her affinity was for the Law of Resonance itself—the principle of sympathetic vibration.
The match drew an even larger crowd than the grudge fight. This was a true test: the ultimate negation versus the ultimate connection.
Xun Mei was serene, her aura a harmonious, multi-colored glow. She held a small, silver chime in her hand. "Disciple Li," she said, her voice melodious. "Your power is fascinating. It creates a perfect silence. But silence is not nothing. It is a state of potential. And potential can be resonated with."
The match began. She did not attack. She simply flicked her chime.
A pure, clear note rang out. It was not a sound of energy, but a vibration of law. It passed through Li Yao's Warding Emptiness unaffected, because it wasn't an attack to be nullified. It was a query, a tuning fork seeking a matching frequency.
It found the edges of Li Yao's void.
The silent space around him hummed. For the first time, his perfect defense was not bypassed, but engaged. He felt a strange pressure, as if the void itself was being asked to define itself, to vibrate in sympathy. It was an attempt to force his absence to become a presence.
Li Yao was intrigued. This was a novel approach. He allowed the resonance to probe, observing its nature. It sought to find the "shape" of his emptiness and then fill it with its own harmonic.
He realized he had two choices. He could strengthen his void, making it an impenetrable fortress against the resonance, a battle of attrition. Or, he could apply the lesson from his last fight.
He chose the latter.
Instead of resisting, he accepted the resonance. He allowed it to seep into the outermost layer of his void essence. But he did not let it define him. He used his own comprehension of absence to alter the resonance. He turned the Law of Resonance back on itself.
He focused on the space between the vibrations, the inherent silence within the sound wave itself, and amplified it.
The clear note from Xun Mei's chime suddenly warped. It developed a dissonant, jarring quality. The harmonious aura around her flickered. She frowned, flicking the chime again, harder.
Another note, more powerful.
Li Yao repeated the process, but on a larger scale. He didn't just alter the note; he used it as a carrier wave to send a "ripple" of silence back towards its source.
Xun Mei's chime rang, but the sound that came out was hollow, dead. The multi-colored glow around her dimmed, the harmonious connection she maintained with the world around her faltering. She felt a profound disconnection, a sudden, terrifying loneliness, as if the laws of the world had stepped back from her.
She staggered, dropping her chime. The silver instrument hit the sand and did not ring. It made a dull, thudding sound.
She looked at Li Yao, her serene composure shattered, replaced by awe. "You... you didn't break the resonance. You showed me the silence within it."
Li Yao bowed slightly. "All things contain their opposite, Sister Xun. Thank you for the lesson."
She yielded, her spirit not broken, but expanded. She had encountered a deeper truth about her own law.
The victory was even more decisive and terrifying to the onlookers. He had defeated a Law of Resonance user not by blocking it, but by understanding it better than they did. He was now in the top 64.
His following matches became a grim procession of unraveling.
A master of illusory techniques from the Cloud Step Clan found his intricate mind-traps dissolving upon contact with Li Yao's consciousness, which held no fears or desires to exploit.
A brute-force expert from the Steel Fang Clan, whose body was tempered to the peak of Essence Refinement, found his mighty blows losing all their power the moment they touched Li Yao, his own momentum betraying him until he collapsed from exhaustion.
Li Yao moved through the bracket like a quiet apocalypse for conventional cultivation. He never advanced, never grew more powerful in a visible way. He simply was, and his existence made the power of others irrelevant.
He was now in the top 16. The final stages would be held on the Nexus Peak itself, on the legendary Arena of a Thousand Laws, where the ambient energy was so thick it was said to pressure even Core Tempering experts.
As he prepared for his quarter-final match, a formal summons arrived. It was not from the tournament organizers.
It was an invitation, on jade silk, from the Primordial Convergence Sect.
They requested the honor of his presence for an audience with Grand Elder Yuan Mo's current successor, Elder Heng.
The message was polite, but the implication was clear. The most powerful sect in the mortal realm had taken notice. They wanted to look directly into the void he represented and decide if it was a curiosity, a tool, or a threat.
Li Yao looked at the invitation, then out the window at the floating mountain, a convergence of all the something he was learning to unmake.
The tournament had been the test of his power.
This audience would be the test of his will.