Acheron's gaze drifted to the observation window.
The starfield outside had never been full to begin with—but now it was being eaten away by something that wasn't darkness, wasn't fog, wasn't even absence in the normal sense.
It was emptiness itself.
"I can feel it," she said softly. "That presence… IX."
"We're here."
Only then did Wei Qing fully react.
His steps along Nihility were shallow—nothing compared to Acheron, an Emanator who'd been self-annihilating for who-knew-how-many years.
For her, coming here was almost like going home…
except she often didn't remember where "home" was.
At this point, the others felt it too.
The Astral Express had entered the Nihility zone.
Endless black filled their view. No living aura. No background noise of the universe. Even the concept of "a place" felt thin.
Granholm stepped to the window, his aged face drawn tight with a gravity Wei Qing rarely saw on him.
"So this is… the domain of IX, Aeon of Nihility." His voice rasped. "Even the outskirts make it feel like my soul is being pulled out by the roots."
Then the Express shuddered—just slightly, but unmistakably.
"Space structure abnormal! Stability is dropping, Pom-Pom reports!" Pom-Pom scrambled to the control console, little legs moving like pistons as he worked the levers with trembling focus.
Wei Qing didn't wait.
He moved to the front of the train and stepped out into the void—standing on nothing, anchored only by will.
A burst of brilliant gold erupted from him.
Trailblaze—pure, loud, stubborn.
The train's trembling stopped. Golden motes spread outward from the Express like a net of stars, forcing open a stable corridor through the onrushing Nihility.
Inside the train, Pom-Pom clutched the control bar, eyes wide.
"D-did it work?! Yi Qing passenger did it work?!"
Granholm exhaled slowly, watching Wei Qing's back through the glass with something like reverence.
"So this is… the authority of Trailblaze."
He'd devoted his life to the Path. He'd seen countless Nameless rise and fall.
But in terms of Trailblaze authority, even the strongest he'd ever witnessed—Navigator Falcon Amundsen—couldn't compare to what Wei Qing was doing now.
Maybe… one day…
Wei Qing really could make Trailblaze stir again.
Acheron spoke again, quiet as a knife sliding from its sheath.
"Fenghuo has been waiting here for some time."
A pale point of color appeared ahead—something that did not belong to the Express's gold.
A white, ash-grey glow—like embers after everything has already burned.
A Lord Ravager.
Fenghuo.
He hovered in the void, still a humanoid silhouette of ash, as if he had become one with this place. He watched the Express approach, the sparks within his form pausing—almost imperceptibly—for a heartbeat.
"I can hear the clamor of Trailblaze," Fenghuo's voice carried across the emptiness.
"Even at the doorstep of silence… you bring an inappropriate horn."
Wei Qing maintained output, standing at the train's forefront, facing Fenghuo across a span of collapsing meaning.
"Inappropriate?"
"For the Nameless," Wei Qing said, "the horn is always appropriate—especially when driving into the unknown."
It was a painfully cool line.
Wei Qing realized, half a second too late, he'd been infected by Granholm.
Fenghuo: "..."
He didn't comment.
Maybe he didn't care.
Maybe he understood exactly why his "colleague" was playing at being a Nameless.
After a beat, the sparks within Fenghuo flickered.
He turned his attention toward the deeper black.
"IX's domain erodes all things equally," he said flatly. "Your train… is too solid."
Then he moved.
Fenghuo lifted a hand of pale ash and swept it forward—lightly, as if brushing dust from a sleeve.
A vast surge spread out: Destruction braided with heavy Nihility.
It didn't strike the train.
It struck the incoming Nihility tide.
The pressure around the Express eased instantly. Wei Qing felt the weight on his shoulders drop.
He looked at Fenghuo, surprised.
This Lord Ravager had… helped?
"Don't be surprised," Fenghuo said, tone unchanged. "If the Astral Express collapses here, my waiting becomes meaningless."
"And besides…"
He turned his vague face toward Acheron.
"Even if I didn't act, she would."
Acheron's figure appeared beside Wei Qing without sound.
She didn't look at Fenghuo. Her lilac eyes were fixed on the void ahead.
"He's right," she said softly. "The train is too 'heavy.' The closer we get to IX, the more Trailblaze becomes a burden."
She raised her hand—no blade drawn.
A faint, nearly invisible aura spread outward and interwove with Wei Qing's golden Trailblaze.
Something strange happened.
The shield that had required Wei Qing's constant force didn't weaken when her Nihility entered it.
It became clearer—more transparent—less resistant in the ordinary sense, yet harder to erode.
Like a window instead of a wall.
Fenghuo watched, unmoving. The sparks in his body slowed, as if acknowledging her control.
Wei Qing felt it and blinked.
"Looks like I can save some effort," he muttered.
Two Emanator-level Self-Annihilators were helping.
He could practically start "working from home."
"…Wait." A third voice cut in.
Granholm stepped out of the Express, joining them.
Wei Qing frowned. "Old man?"
Granholm wasn't weak, but compared to these two… he was a candle in a storm.
Even if he could contribute, it would cost him what little time he had left.
But Granholm's gaze wasn't on the incoming Nihility.
It was on the train.
"The Astral Express doesn't need to follow us any further," he said calmly. "IX's domain is still a risk for it. Even with the three of you guarding it, deeper travel only increases its conceptual wear."
Inside the train, Pom-Pom's voice burst through the comm.
"But Granholm passenger! Pom-Pom can't just leave you behind, Pom-Pom can't!"
Granholm smiled, gentle and final.
"Pom-Pom. The Express has carried the Nameless through uncountable Amber Eras."
"Now it's time for it… to rest."
"If my selfishness causes the Express to be stranded here, then even in death I'd have no face to meet everyone."
He straightened and looked at Wei Qing.
"Yi Qing. Park the train here. The road ahead—we four will walk it."
Wei Qing held his gaze for a long moment, then nodded once.
"I understand."
Fenghuo watched Granholm in silence. No expression could be read from ash, but his embers slowed again—almost contemplative.
"Obsession," he finally said, neither praise nor pity.
Wei Qing withdrew part of the Trailblaze field.
The Astral Express eased into a relatively stable pocket at the edge of the domain. A golden Trailblaze barrier formed around it—thinner than before, but sufficient to resist the creeping erosion for now.
Pom-Pom stood at the window, small hands pressed to the glass, trying to look brave.
"Pom-Pom will wait here! Pom-Pom will wait for you to come back!"
Granholm smiled… and, this time, he didn't promise anything.
"Let's go," Fenghuo said, stepping forward first.
His ash-white silhouette became a lonely lantern moving through black.
Acheron followed, blade still sheathed, her Nihility already resonating with the realm like a quiet key turning in a lock.
Wei Qing looked at Granholm at his side.
The old Navigator's face held no fear—only a kind of release.
They entered IX's true domain.
If the outer zone had been a prelude, this was the song itself.
No stable sense of space. No reliable flow of time. Even the concept of "existence" felt questioned and dissolved in real time.
"We're close," Fenghuo's voice dragged strangely in the void, stretched by something that wasn't distance.
"Beyond this… is IX."
They walked.
Fenghuo said "close," but here "close" meant nothing.
It could have been seconds.
It could have been ages.
Then—at the edge of perception—everything stopped pretending.
A black sun appeared.
IX.
No light. No heat. No mass. No volume.
Not even the certainty that it "was."
Just an ultimate non-being, so pure that anything approaching should have vanished without ripple.
Yet the four of them were not ordinary.
The pressure was immense, but not instantly fatal.
Acheron swayed slightly, emotion flickering across her face—an ache that looked suspiciously like grief.
Fenghuo's voice, too, trembled faintly—an almost imperceptible crack in his perfect calm.
"…This is it," he whispered. "The boundary of cognition. The end of meaning."
Wei Qing cleared his throat, forcibly puncturing the mood.
"Okay. Fenghuo."
He turned to the ash-shaped Lord Ravager.
"You dragged us here. What are you actually planning? Just to have us witness something?"
Fenghuo's answer surprised him.
"Yes. That is my purpose."
Wei Qing's brow rose.
Fenghuo continued, embers pulsing.
"We are Self-Annihilators. We stand on Nihility's Path."
"I want it so that even if I fail—if I die—someone remains to continue walking this road."
Acheron's hand slid to her hilt.
"Are you sacrificing us?" she asked, voice cold.
"No." Fenghuo shook his head. "Sacrifice means nothing to Destruction. I require no offerings."
He raised both hands. His ash body began to glow faintly.
"What I will do is simple."
"I will burn my existence as fuel—"
"And in this ultimate 'nothing'… ignite a moment of 'something.'"
"Only a blaze of existence strong enough in IX's face may provoke… attention."
Wei Qing narrowed his eyes.
"Attention? Does IX even notice anything?"
"An answer," Fenghuo said, frighteningly calm. "Whether 'nothing' can be moved by 'something.'"
"If we burn ourselves and not even a ripple forms…"
"Then Nihility is truly immutable."
Granholm nodded, understanding dawning like a last sunrise.
"You're verifying it."
Fenghuo didn't deny it.
Acheron's voice was low.
"Even if you prove it, you can't destroy IX."
Fenghuo looked at her and asked softly:
"Acheron. After walking Nihility so long… are you still clinging to 'meaning'?"
Acheron fell silent.
She could answer.
She simply didn't want to.
Wei Qing exhaled, feeling the tension between them like a wire.
"Fine. Do your performance. But tell me this—why invite us at all?"
Fenghuo's embers pulsed once.
"Because even Destruction fades."
"If I vanish here, I want witnesses."
"And if my path ends, I want successors."
Then Fenghuo stepped forward toward the black sun.
"Look," he murmured, voice almost reverent.
"This is ultimate silence. The destination of all things."
"I have burned star systems. I have incinerated civilizations."
"I have listened to countless existences vanish in an instant."
"But all that noise—"
"Here, it is… laughably pale."
"Only by facing the final 'nothing'… can the 'something' of our existence be verified."
"Even if that verification… is meaningless."
His embers flared.
"It's time."
He turned his ash face toward the three behind him.
"You may witness."
"You may follow."
Then his entire form began to ignite.
Not ordinary flame—
but the release of his very existence.
Destruction, condensed to the limit, manifested as a white blaze that should not have been able to exist here at all.
In the absolute void where even light should be denied, his pale fire burned—stubborn, violent, rebellious.
Fenghuo spread his arms as if to embrace the black sun.
"IX."
"I have brought you Destruction!"
He became a pale meteor and hurled himself into the black sun.
IX did not move.
Did not react.
Could not react.
Fenghuo reached IX without resistance—
and at the instant of contact, grey-white exploded outward.
The black sun's surface—its "body," if such a word could apply—split.
A white wound opened in Nihility.
A scar.
A mark of "something" seared into the purest "nothing."
Granholm stared, stunned beyond speech.
"He… actually did it."
A Lord Ravager, self-destructing, leaving Destruction's imprint on an Aeon's "body."
Acheron breathed out softly, eyes shaking.
And Wei Qing, watching, spoke with certainty.
"…Not done yet."
Sure enough—
Fenghuo wasn't satisfied.
He became a white arrow of ash-flame and dove into the wound, plunging into IX's incomprehensible interior.
Then—
silence.
Absolute.
IX remained still, as if nothing had happened.
Granholm's mouth moved, voice hollow.
"Is it over? Did he… die?"
"He accomplished something incredible," Acheron said quietly. "He left Destruction's brand."
But Wei Qing didn't speak.
Because he knew.
A moment later—
from within the black sun, a faint light pulsed.
A pale spear of brilliance ripped outward, tearing through IX's "body" like a birth.
It was Fenghuo's blade.
Fenghuo emerged—worse than before.
His ash form barely held shape, like a pile of burnt paper about to scatter. Only at the core did a small white flame still jump stubbornly, proving he hadn't been fully erased.
"Not enough," his voice vibrated with obsession. "Still not enough!"
Acheron frowned.
She could feel it—Fenghuo was approaching true annihilation, not a glorious finale, but the silent collapse of exhaustion.
And so she moved.
Without hesitation.
Her hand drew the blade—
a blood-red arc flashed.
She struck at IX.
Not to wound.
Not to destroy.
But to create a path—a momentary contradiction in the void.
Fenghuo's fading embers flared.
He seized the opportunity like a drowning man grabbing rope.
A pale meteor tore free along the line carved by her slash and escaped the black sun's grip.
His presence stabilized—barely.
He faced Acheron.
No thanks.
No conversation.
Only the wordless recognition of one Self-Annihilator for another.
Acheron sheathed her blade.
The blood-tinge faded from her cloak, returning to plain quiet.
Fenghuo looked once more at IX—still unchanged.
Then his gaze swept the three.
"…Enough."
His voice was faint, but satisfied in a strange way.
Then his ash form dissolved into the surrounding Nihility and disappeared.
The domain returned to dead quiet.
Only IX remained.
And three visitors from the Astral Express.
Granholm stared at the place Fenghuo vanished.
"He left."
"Not even a polite goodbye," Wei Qing muttered. "Real 'come and go like the wind' energy."
He glanced at Acheron, then Granholm.
"So… we go back now?"
Neither answered.
Their silence held an unmistakable tremor.
Witnessing that act—Destruction carving a wound into Nihility—had stirred something in them.
Wei Qing's expression tightened.
"…Don't tell me."
He looked at the two Self-Annihilators beside him.
"Don't tell me you both want to try too."
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 165)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter220)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter125)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter250)
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Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 220
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
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The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 248
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
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Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 154
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The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 125
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 67
Uma Musume: From Beginner 145
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 85
Uma Musume: I Want All 120
I Can Copy Unique Skills 115
Summoning an Evil God, but the 75
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My Harem Is Indescribable 100
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Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 105
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The Most Filial Son Under Heav 85
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Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 78
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 55
Transmigrated as Sukuna 80
Checking In in Demon Slayer 85
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 100
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 85
My Best Friend Into a Slime? 80
A Saiyan Stands Above Marvel 90
What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 75
Tanya Starts from Re:Zero 80
Why did they assign me to Uma 75
MYGO Beauties 70
DanMachi: Emiya the Giant Hero 70
The Gacha Merchant Who Started 80
Honkai's Otherworld? Wait—Who Are You People?! 80
Emiya Shirou, Determined to Slay Every Curse and Evil Spirit 57
The Uma Musume Who Became 55
I'm Definitely Not the King of 60
After Maxing Out Every Class 45
Naruto: I'm Konoha's Local Men 35
Honkai: World Modulation Mode 34
I, the Elden Sword Saint 27
Dio Brando Is Challenging FGO 24
No One Knows Pokémon Better 18
I, Sakazuki, Won't Go Down Tha 20
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