The Garden of Lost Reasons was a symphony played on an instrument with broken strings. Li Yao stood at its center, not as a conductor, but as a tuner, attempting to find a stable pitch in the cacophony of illogic. His first attempts to project his Domain of Uncreation were like trying to hold water in a sieve. The local reality had no consistent laws to unmake; it was a sea of exceptions.
A rain of warm, dry pebbles fell from a clear sky, piling into a mound that smelled of lavender. Li Yao focused on the phenomenon, trying to feel the "law" behind it. There was none. It was simply an event, disconnected from cause. His void essence, which relied on interacting with defined structures, slid off it without purchase.
This was the test Wei Feng had promised.
For days, Li Yao did not try to impose his will. He simply observed. He watched as a stone, when kicked, turned into a burst of laughter. He saw a puddle reflect not the sky, but the memory of a long-dead star. He sat by the upward-flowing waterfall and listened to its sound, which was the visual pattern of a spider's web.
He was learning the "language" of this place. It was not a language of rules, but of pure, unmediated potential. It was chaos, but a gentle, almost dreamlike chaos compared to the violent will trapped beneath the Verdant Mountain.
Wei Feng observed from a respectful distance, taking notes on a scroll that changed its own text depending on his mood. He saw Li Yao not growing frustrated, but growing stiller, his presence deepening to match the profound strangeness of the garden.
After a week of silent observation, Li Yao tried a new approach. He stopped trying to unmake the local laws. Instead, he began to practice selective acceptance.
He focused on the laughing stone. He did not nullify its absurdity. He allowed the concept of "laughter" to exist, but he gently persuaded the concept of "stone" to take a rest. The pile of giggling pebbles did not vanish; they became a pile of giggling nothing. The sound remained, floating in the air, but the physical manifestation was gone. He had not enforced logic; he had simply reallocated the illogic.
It was a breakthrough.
He turned his attention to the upward-flowing waterfall. He accepted the "upward flow" but suggested an absence of "water." The waterfall became a flowing column of empty space, a river of nothingness climbing into the sky. It was even more bizarre than before, but it was a bizarre that he had directed.
He was not imposing balance by force. He was curating the chaos. He was becoming a gardener in the Garden of Lost Reasons, pruning the overgrowth of reality to create a more harmonious, if still utterly insane, arrangement.
He practiced for a month. He learned to create bubbles of localized reason within the garden. He could make a patch of ground behave with normal gravity, or cause fire to burn predictably again. His Domain of Uncreation evolved. It was no longer just a sphere of negation; it became a Domain of Curated Reality. Within its bounds, he could decide which laws functioned and which did not, and he could even introduce his own, temporary "reasons" for things to happen.
He could make it so that within his domain, a smile caused flowers to grow, and that was the law.
This was a power that went beyond the Immortal Realm's understanding. They manipulated existing laws. He was now learning to write temporary, local ones, using the void as his parchment and his will as the ink.
Wei Feng watched this evolution with a mixture of exhilaration and terror. He was witnessing the birth of a capability that blurred the line between immortal and… something else. Something closer to the primordial forces that had written the laws of the universe in the first place.
"The council will not know what to make of this," Wei Feng murmured to himself, his note-scroll frantically trying to keep up with his thoughts. "They seek to understand the painting. He is learning to change the paint."
The peace of the garden was shattered by an intrusion. The wards Wei Feng had placed trembled. The chaotic but gentle energy of the garden was pierced by a sharp, focused, and familiar aggression.
The Blazing Heaven Sect had found them.
They had not come through conventional means. A tear opened in the patchwork sky, and through it poured not flame, but a Conceptual Annihilator—a forbidden artifact that emitted a wave of pure "Un-Law," a forced state of non-existence that didn't nullify, but actively erased. It was the one weapon they believed could counter Li Yao's void by attacking it with a mirrored, destructive version of itself.
The wave of Un-Law swept towards Li Yao, disintegrating the very concept of the ground and air it passed through, leaving a trail of grey, featureless non-space.
Wei Feng shouted a warning, but Li Yao was already moving.
This was not a test. This was an execution.
Li Yao looked at the wave of absolute erasure coming for him. He felt its nature. It was not the peaceful nothing of the void. It was a violent, hungry nothing, a force that sought to consume all into a final, dead uniformity.
He did not retreat. He expanded his newly evolved Domain of Curated Reality.
The wave of Un-Law hit his domain.
And it was assimilated.
Li Yao did not block it. He did not fight it. He curated it. He accepted its destructive intent but placed it within a new, local law he wrote in that instant: Within this space, the Concept of Annihilation shall only apply to itself.
The wave of Un-Law, upon entering his domain, encountered its own erasing nature turned inward. It consumed itself in a flash of silent, logical paradox, vanishing without a trace.
The Blazing Heaven elders who had triggered the artifact from a safe distance stared in horror. Their ultimate weapon, designed to unmake the unmakable, had just been… edited out of existence.
Li Yao looked up through the tear in the sky, his gaze meeting theirs across the dimensions. He didn't need to speak. The message was clear.
They had tried to fight the void with a sharper sword. He had responded not by drawing a sharper sword of his own, but by rewriting the rules of the duel so that swords were no longer allowed.
He turned to a pale Wei Feng. "It seems my time for secluded study is over. The world is knocking."
Wei Feng swallowed hard. "What will you do?"
Li Yao's expression was serene, but his eyes held the depth of a universe that had just learned to define its own laws. "It is time to accept your invitation. It is time to speak to your council."
The student had surpassed the need for the garden. The Philosopher of Nothing was ready to debate with the architects of Something.