With its drive-spindle jammed by the Sixteen-Catty Lead and its philosophical nihilism shattered by the truth of the sunrise, the intellectual structure of Zhu Heling’s void-rot began to undergo a rapid, permanent systemic collapse.
Nihilism possessed no physical mass. It operated as a conceptual parasite that needed the rule-following of mortal fear to maintain its load-bearing focus. For ten thousand seasons, Zhu Heling’s leftover piece mind had sustained the Void-Giant beast by projecting the total certainty of cosmic futility into the deep water, convincing the sleeping elements that decay was the only true law of the universe.
Now, that certainty had been exposed as the cowardice of a clerk who feared the tide.
The solar light streaming from the Broken Slate continued to penetrate the dark rock flat stone slabs. Then, the black void-rime that had glass-fused the floor of the Genesis Well began to undergo an amazing, potion-made dissolving.
The black ice dissolved into clouds of warm, golden steam that rose through the dense fluid aether in spiraling heat-rising plumes. Wherever the steam touched the grey silt, the powdered ash of the nine dead heavens was purged of its bitter, rotten-egg residue. The fine stone dust began to glow with soft, rainbow-bright hues of emerald, rose, and amber—the living, fertile settled mud of an uncorrupted seabed waiting for the first seeds of life to take root.
