Li Yao walked the borderlands of the Immortal Realm, a silent pilgrim in a world of thunderous power. He traversed the "Shattered Valleys," a region where floating islands had collided and broken, leaving behind a jagged landscape of half-formed laws and unstable energy geysers. It was a place of chaos, avoided by most immortals as it offered little pure energy to harvest and was fraught with spiritual hazards.
For Li Yao, it was perfect.
Here, the "something" of the world was fractured and weak, making the underlying "nothing" easier to perceive. He found a stable fragment of an island, a flat plate of obsidian that hovered silently amidst the cosmic debris. This would be his sanctuary, his laboratory.
His goal was the Domain of Uncreation. He understood the principle: a Domain was a territory where an immortal could project their law, making it temporarily absolute. A Fire Domain would be a space of endless combustion. A Water Domain, a realm of infinite flow.
His domain would be a space of absolute balance. A place where all laws were held in a state of potential, neither active nor inactive, but perfectly neutral. A place where a fire could not burn because the concept of "combustion" was suspended, and a river could not flow because the concept of "current" was asleep.
He sat in the center of the obsidian plate and sank into the deepest meditation he had attempted since his ascension. He reached out with his Void Resonance, not to touch the chaotic laws around him, but to feel the spaces between them. He sought the silent, connective tissue of reality that allowed laws to interact, and he began to gently persuade it to... rest.
It was an act of profound conceptual weight. He wasn't destroying anything. He was inviting the universe to take a nap in this one, small spot.
Days turned into weeks. At first, nothing seemed to happen. Then, the air within a ten-foot radius of him began to change. The faint, ever-present hum of the Immortal Realm's background energy faded. The light, which had been a vibrant, magical gold, became a simple, mundane daylight. The temperature, once fluctuating with bursts of fire and ice energy, settled into a pleasant, neutral warmth.
A bird, a spirit-beast composed of crystallized wind, flew too close. The moment it entered the ten-foot sphere, its form unraveled. It didn't die; it simply ceased to be a wind-construct. The crystalline feathers dissolved into motes of harmless light, and the consciousness of the beast, confused but unharmed, drifted away as a wisp of pure spirit, no longer bound by the Wind Law.
Li Yao had done it. He had created the Domain of Uncreation.
It was a small domain, barely larger than the room he'd been tested in, but its implications were universe-shattering. Within its bounds, he was not a god of a specific element; he was the arbiter of existence itself. He could choose which laws were allowed to function and which were not. He could make a master of the Blazing Heaven Sect as powerless as a mortal within his ten-foot sphere.
He spent the next month practicing. He learned to expand the domain to a radius of fifty feet, though maintaining it at that size required immense concentration. He learned to shape it, forming it into a wall of nullification or a bubble around a specific object. He practiced selectively reactivating laws within it, allowing a single flame to burn in the absolute silence, a stark, beautiful testament to his control.
It was during this practice that he was found.
A skiff, carved from the heart of a lightning-struck tree and powered by crackling Storm Law, navigated the Shattered Valleys. On it were three immortals. They were not from the Primordial Nexus Sect. Their robes were a deep, volcanic black and red, and their auras were singular and fierce—pure, unadulterated Fire Law. Disciples of the Blazing Heaven Sect.
They were likely on a mission to harvest "Storm Embers," fragments of lightning that could be fused with their fire to create more volatile techniques. Their leader, a brash young man with hair like moving flame named Zhu Yan, spotted Li Yao's obsidian plate.
"Look! A hermit," Zhu Yan sneered. "Probably some failed Nexus disciple who couldn't handle multi-law cultivation. Look at him, sitting in that... dead zone. I can't even feel any energy from there."
One of his companions, a more cautious woman, frowned. "That's not a dead zone, Senior Brother Zhu. It's... it's an absence. It feels wrong."
"Wrong?" Zhu Yan laughed. "It feels weak." Deciding to have some sport, he pointed a finger towards Li Yao's domain. A lance of concentrated solar flame, hot enough to melt divine metal, shot across the void.
It entered the fifty-foot radius of the Domain of Uncreation.
The result was instantaneous. The brilliant, roaring lance of fire simply ceased. There was no explosion, no steam, no resistance. It was there, and then it was not. It didn't hit a wall; it hit a concept, and the concept was "no."
Zhu Yan's jaw dropped. "What trickery is this?!"
The cautious woman paled. "Senior Brother, that's not a trick. That's a... a Domain. But it's not a Fire Domain. It's... I don't know what it is!"
Enraged and humiliated, Zhu Yan leaped from the skiff, his body igniting into the form of a blazing phoenix—a high-level Blazing Heaven technique. "I'll burn you and your strange domain to ash!"
He dove directly into Li Yao's Domain of Uncreation.
The moment he crossed the boundary, his fiery form guttered and died. The magnificent phoenix wings vanished. The corona of intense heat disappeared. He was just a young man in red and black robes, falling clumsily towards the obsidian plate, his connection to the Fire Law completely severed.
Li Yao stood up and caught him, setting him gently on his feet.
Zhu Yan stared at his own hands, his face a mask of terror. "My... my power... what did you do to me?!"
"I did nothing," Li Yao said calmly. "You entered a place where fire does not burn. It is not a personal affliction. It is a local reality."
He looked at the terrified disciples on the skiff, then back at Zhu Yan. "You should go. The Shattered Valleys are not safe for those who rely on a single, rigid law."
He released a slightly dazed Zhu Yan, who scrambled back to his skiff, his bravado utterly shattered. The skiff powered up and fled faster than it had arrived.
Li Yao watched them go. The encounter was a valuable test. His domain worked. It could neutralize even the aggressive, high-level techniques of a major immortal sect.
But it also meant that the clock was ticking. The Blazing Heaven Sect would now know of him. The Primordial Nexus Sect was already looking for him. He was no longer an unknown; he was a curiosity, a threat, a prize.
He dissolved his domain, the vibrant, chaotic energy of the Shattered Valleys rushing back in. He had proven his power. Now, he needed to understand the politics and the players of this new realm. He needed to find a place, not to hide, but to observe. To learn how to apply his balance to the intricate, powerful conflicts of the immortals.
The quiet void was about to step onto the grand stage.