Faced with Phantylia's probe, The Herta didn't even bother to lift an eyelid, still idly twirling a brown lock of hair around her slender finger, as though she hadn't been the target at all.
"Prison?"
Her tone was as flat as stating a fundamental law of physics, saturated with matter-of-fact indifference.
"You're giving yourself too much credit. This place needs quiet. And you…"
She finally glanced at Phantylia, as if looking at an old machine making noise.
"…are too loud. You're disturbing the peace here."
A faint chill stirred in Phantylia's heart. That complete disregard—for her and for defense—made The Herta feel even more unfathomable.
But the sly smile on her face didn't change. She was about to probe again—by words, by angles—to pry out a flaw.
At that moment, it seemed The Herta on the throne had exhausted the last trace of her already scant patience.
"Enough. Engaging in such low-efficiency verbal interaction with you is pointless."
She muttered as if she couldn't stand the noisy interference, brimming with distaste.
"Good thing Xiao Ming is reliable enough. He figured you'd sniff your way here like a fly, and prepared a surprise gift for you in advance."
With that, she made no grand or elaborate move—just tapped the throne's armrest with a purple-polished fingertip.
There were no earth-shaking effects, no soul-stunning might.
But in the very next instant, it was as if a line of code had been silently rewritten in the Inner Sea of Stars' basic operating rules.
The radiant life currents still surged, but within that vast ocean of energy, a small domain of absolute reality was quietly hewn out and defined—a kind of anchor, ignoring all local illusions and energy interference, nailed into the bedrock of reality.
Then, reflected in Phantylia's abruptly constricted pupils, a tall figure stepped forth from that anchor.
She stood straight, clad in purple, a plain long tachi hanging at her waist.
Her slightly wavy purple hair fell like a waterfall; a few streaks dyed crimson hung like dried, congealed blood.
Her face was an almost inhuman, translucent pallor—stunningly beautiful, yet permeated by an unsettling stillness of death. Her deep violet eyes were so hollow they seemed to swallow all light; within them, it felt as though countless universes, long since sunk into heat death, echoed in cold, empty aftersound.
She merely stood there, yet her very being was like the ultimate paradox of existence—a walking, living thesis of nullity.
No energy leaked from her. Only an infinite stillness, the kind that makes all things hold their breath instinctively.
It was not ordinary calm, but a deeper realm—where even emptiness and nothingness themselves were further negated, reduced to absolute zero.
Phantylia's pupils pinholed. An instinctive shudder, born of life's deepest core and nearly freezing her soul, swept her body.
As one who walked the Path of Destruction, who had witnessed and wrought countless civilizational dooms, she had seen all manner of apocalypses—yet rarely felt such pure, absolute, despairing Nothing.
This even surpassed Destruction's scope.
It was a Nothing that negated even the very concept of destruction.
"Allow me to introduce her."
The Herta lightly swung her crossed, stocking-clad leg and snapped her fingers, looking with leisurely amusement at Phantylia's now-transformed expression, her lips curling in a playful smile—as if displaying a new toy.
"She's called Acheron, a… well, a theoretically impossible Nihility Emanator. Tch—sounds contradictory, doesn't it? Philosophy aside, as a new recruit, she hits pretty hard. Well? Do you like the gift?"
Truth be told, when The Herta first learned from Lu Jingming that one of his worst-case trump cards was a Nihility Emanator, even she—well-traveled and well-versed—was taken aback.
A Nihility Emanator that should not exist—her existence itself was a massive paradox, enough to upend most people's understanding, and equally irresistible to The Herta's boundless curiosity.
If the timing and setting weren't so inconvenient, she would have dragged Acheron straight into a lab to study her mode of existence, composition, and how she maintained selfhood.
As for Phantylia—her usual smile of "everything under control" vanished without a trace.
Instinct blared a shrill alarm in her consciousness—this time, she might really be in danger of overturning.
Her undying nature was indeed terrifyingly strong; with Heliobus's essence as blessing and the newly acquired Golden Tree body, her survivability rivaled those Emanators directly blessed by the Abundance Aeon, Yaoshi.
Methods or powers capable of truly and utterly killing her were vanishingly rare in the vast sea of stars.
Unfortunately, Acheron before her was precisely among that rare few.
And the most extreme, most unreasonable of them.
Nihility negates all existence. Its power is scarcely influenced or countered by other attributes. Conversely, it can erode, collapse, and even erase all other forms of existence in the most direct and essential way.
Phantylia instantly raised her vigilance to the utmost; the mask of ease and pretense evaporated. She fixed her full attention on Acheron, as if facing a mortal foe.
She knew clearly that if she mishandled a single step today, she—the Lord Ravager—might truly meet an unexpected end here.
Acheron's hollow gaze—able to swallow everything—moved slowly and finally settled on Phantylia, who was braced for battle.
There was no hostility within that gaze, no measuring or weighing—no emotion at all. It was as indifferent as looking at a roadside stone or a dead leaf about to scatter in the wind.
Phantylia felt that everything she possessed—her prideful power, her carefully laid schemes, even the foundation of her own existence—appeared laughable, pallid, and futile under that pure, empty stare.
Almost reflexively, she forcibly gathered her strength. The green and black light—life and destruction fused—flared from within her again, trying to build a defense against the sanity-shattering erosion of Nihility.
"Tss…"
The corner of Phantylia's mouth twitched despite herself. She suppressed her trepidation and attempted a last negotiation.
"Perhaps… there's been some… misunderstanding between us? Could we… temporarily cease hostilities and seek a… hmm… peaceful resolution?"
Even she found this opponent unprecedentedly troublesome.
Acheron answered with action.
No warning. No drawing the blade. Not even a ripple of killing intent or energy.
Phantylia merely sensed the faintest fluctuation of the other's will.
In the next instant, a clear boundary appeared from nothing.
It wasn't an energy barrier, nor a spatial partition, but a cut composed purely of Nothing—a stroke that negated all existence—laid with perfect precision between Phantylia and the plane-will's halo behind her.
It did not directly strike Phantylia, yet in an absolute, indisputable manner, it severed any possibility of her advancing toward—or even sensing—the plane-will.
The protective energy around Phantylia—surging with fused Life and Destruction—touched that boundary of Nothing and evaporated silently, like morning dew under a blazing sun.
No violent explosion, no energy shock, not even an observable process. That portion of energy—and the existence it embodied—was erased at the level of reality, returning to primordial nullity.
"Urk!"
Phantylia couldn't help a muted grunt, stepping back in shock, staring at Acheron in disbelief.
Her opponent hadn't even attacked her directly. With the authority of her mere presence, she had drawn a warning line—and Phantylia had been truly wounded.
Acheron still stood quietly where she was, gaze as hollow as before, as if she had performed some trivial, thoughtless reflex.
Slowly, she placed her pale hand again upon the tachi's hilt at her waist.
Such a simple motion—hardly even a preparatory stance—sent a frigid, marrow-deep sense of death lancing through Phantylia.
She knew with absolute clarity: the next stroke from that Nihility would not be merely a boundary.
Phantylia stared at the line of Nothing before her—seeming to cleave reality itself—and at the purple figure standing beyond it, hand on hilt. The pride and self-regard befitting an Lord Ravager burned within her like karmic fire, surging higher.
Retreat now?
She bore the gaze of the Aeon-Nanook and walked the Path of Destruction.
If she were to be cowed into scurrying away by a Nihility Emanator of unknown origin and a few words from an Erudition Emanator—if word of this spread—wouldn't Phantylia become a laughingstock within the Antimatter Legion and across the cosmos?
Especially that cold, taciturn Celenova, who saw all things as tools—she would record this and use it to taunt Phantylia for several Aeons of Amber.
Even in another world where few knew her, the dignity and face of an Lord Ravager could not be so lightly trampled.
Therefore, she could not retreat without a fight.
At the very least, she had to truly test the depths of this so-called Nihility Emanator, to glimpse the pattern of her power and the limits of her reach.