Rosen returned to the Heaven-Scorching Furnace of Creation and tried every method he could think of, but he still couldn't kill the Immortal Star God.
But keeping the Immortal Star God imprisoned like this wasn't a solution either. Not only had he failed to obtain the Miracle Source Seed, but the Miracle Star Sea was also being forced to indefinitely maintain the seal.
The simplest solution was to make a trade—obtain the Miracle Source Seed in exchange for releasing the Immortal Star God.
However, letting the Old Fisherman escape had already left him deeply regretful. If he let the Immortal Star God go as well, he could forget about capturing the being alive ever again. The only reason he'd succeeded this time was that the Immortal Star God had underestimated his strength and hadn't taken adequate precautions. Otherwise, things wouldn't have ended up with the Immortal Star God being forced into such a desperate situation so easily.
Rosen even started to doubt whether the Immortal Star God he had captured was truly the main body.
Since there existed an Immortal Dawn clone, it was entirely possible there were other clones as well.
Otherwise, why hadn't the Immortal Star God used that cloak-like Eternal Artifact, even when backed into a corner?
After a long period of contemplation, Rosen opened the dimensional gate leading to the Study of Fate.
He cautiously probed first—the Study of Fate was currently empty.
As far as he knew, only he and the Ancient God's clone could access the Study of Fate. Even if there were others who could enter, their numbers would be extremely limited.
So the chances of encountering anyone else here were quite low.
Rosen approached the desk, sat down, and opened the Book of Destiny Creation.
The moment he lifted the cover, countless eyes emerged from its surface, staring fixedly at him as if they intended to pierce through his entire future and life. By instinct, Rosen had already used the combined power of the Time, Causality, and Miracle Source Seeds to conceal himself.
After opening it, the Book of Destiny Creation remained blank—nothing appeared on its pages.
Clearly, with so many interfering forces, the book had failed to perceive his destiny.
This wasn't because the Fate Source Seed was weak, but rather because it could only function through the Book of Destiny Creation. Since no one truly controlled this transcendental relic, it couldn't fully unleash the Fate Source Seed's power, and naturally couldn't see through a destiny hidden beneath the Time Source Seed's veil.
Rosen then immediately injected Eternal Will into the Book of Destiny Creation, trying to have it reveal the fate of the Immortal Star God.
This time, the Book of Destiny Creation successfully peered into the Immortal Star God's fate almost instantly. Moreover, since he was examining the past of the Immortal Star God, the difficulty was much lower than expected. Soon, the book began presenting the Immortal Star God's entire history.
However, the memory of an eternal being spanning at least several billion years—converted into text—was an unfathomably massive tome.
Even flipping at the speed of light, it would take hundreds of years to finish reading it.
Rosen wanted to search directly, but he discovered that the Book of Destiny Creation didn't support queries.
If one wished to know the destiny of a target, they had to honestly flip through the book page by page. This was clearly a restriction left behind by the creator of the book—to prevent the user from abusing it to control the fate of everyone at will.
Since that was the case, he could only increase his flipping speed—and he could even flip from back to front.
With accelerated time, his flipping speed increased a thousandfold. The Creator's Eye captured the content, while the Main God Computer used the Information Source Seed to store the data and filter for the details he wanted. In this way, he frantically flipped through the book for several months.
Although he gained a lot, it was still far from enough to fully grasp the Immortal Star God's history.
Rosen wanted to continue, but suddenly stopped.
He reversed all accelerated time, erased every trace of his presence with Time-Space Reincarnation, and quietly left through the dimensional gate.
That was because the Foresight Painting of Time had issued an automatic warning—someone was about to enter the Study of Fate.
He had no desire to run into anyone right now. If it happened to be the Ancient God's clone, even escape would be difficult.
The Space Source Seed was powerful, yes—but with only one of them, he couldn't act recklessly.
Otherwise, his Space Source Seed would have been enough to imprison the Old Angler who wielded the Void Source Seed, but clearly it wasn't.
Back in the Mysterious Study Room, Rosen began examining the data compiled by the Main God Computer.
It confirmed that Immortal Dawn was indeed a clone of the Immortal Star God. Like Rosen, this clone hadn't entered the true alliance circle of the Old Angler and the others. Furthermore, the Immortal Star God did have other clones—there was also an Immortal Golden Crow clone wandering the cosmos.
Rosen also discovered why the Immortal Star God had been so adamant about having someone bring the Star-Shot Crossbow into Blue Star.
The core of the Star-Shot Crossbow wasn't just the origin of Blue Star—it also secretly contained the Eternal Stellar Origin under the Immortal Star God's control. If this fragment of Blue Star's origin returned and merged with the planet, the Immortal Star God could use it to pinpoint Blue Star's location.
In the end, Rosen realized that he might've overestimated the Immortal Star God.
Yes, the being's power was immense. As the universe expanded, the strength of the Stellar Source Seed continued to grow as well. It had become so powerful that not even universal rejection could prevent the Immortal Star God from creating two clones with strength on par with the original.
This method of creating clones was one form of reincarnation—a way for eternal beings to return to eternity.
A single main body might not possess Eternal Will strong enough to ascend to eternal life.
But by creating enough clones—ten or eight peak-level Immortal God-Demons, for example—then fusing them with the original body, the accumulated Eternal Will would vastly increase the chance of reclaiming eternal life. However, even for someone as powerful as the Immortal Star God, only two such clones had been successfully created.
As for the rest of the clones, they had all stalled at the level of Great True Gods.
The Immortal Star God was indeed powerful, but due to being a celestial body by nature, it spent 99.9% of its life asleep. The more one sleeps, the less one experiences—and the less one understands. The Immortal Star God was far too arrogant, and its actions—relying purely on brute force—were overly direct.
That's why Immortal Dawn had died so easily. That's why the Immortal Star God had been caught off-guard and captured alive so easily.
Rosen enveloped the Sea of Miracles with the Law of Time and initiated a thousandfold acceleration.
He had already discovered the Immortal Star God's weakness. By relying on the origin of Blue Star, the Immortal Star God had transformed into Blue Star itself, resonating with it, and through this resonance, had tapped into Blue Star's nearly fixed spacetime reincarnation cycle across time and space. However, the energy required to sustain this cycle of reincarnation still had to be provided by the Immortal Star God.
And in order to cultivate more clones, the Immortal Star God was already extremely depleted.
Even the eternal sacred artifact, the Star River Cloak, was currently in the hands of the Immortal Golden Crow clone. Had the cloak been with the main body, the Immortal Star God would have easily escaped. Now, it was just a matter of draining the accumulated Eternal Star Origin, and the Immortal Star God would naturally lose all ability to resist.
As the years sped by, Rosen harvested more and more refined cosmic matter.
The spacetime reincarnation of the Immortal Star was also becoming increasingly sluggish.
Resonating with Blue Star did not come without a price—the portion of Blue Star's origin that the Immortal Star God controlled would likely be exhausted first.
But at this moment, Rosen had no time to bother with the Immortal Star God.
Because his Origin Seed had already begun splitting—one becoming two, two becoming three.
Although the Origin Seed was a postnatal seed, the distinction between postnatal and innate was merely a matter of strength.
The Primordial Beings were powerful, so the seeds they created were innate.
The Immortal Gods and Demons were weak, so the seeds they created could only be called postnatal.
However, the distinction between strength and weakness was relative. As long as a postnatal seed continued to grow, catching up to an innate seed was entirely possible. It was just that the difficulty was too great for any Immortal God or Demon to achieve, which was why there had never been a precedent of a postnatal seed surpassing its limits to rival the innate.
But Rosen was no ordinary Immortal God or Demon, and his Origin Seed wasn't fighting alone.
As the powers of the Compatible Seed, Life Seed, and Genesis Seed continuously merged into it, the Origin Seed began to grow without end—from having just one core body, it gradually split into one, then two more Origin Seeds.
When the third Origin Seed emerged, it signaled that the Origin Seed had already surpassed the weakest of the innate seeds.
After all, even the weakest innate seed only had three components: one core and two offshoots.
Now, the Origin Seed had four in total. The accumulation of quantity had triggered a qualitative transformation, completing its metamorphosis into an innate seed.
The moment the Origin Seed crossed the threshold into the innate level, Rosen's Eternal Will was once again drawn into the Sea of Cosmic Origins.
Through the channel where the Origin Seed absorbed Eternal Source Origin, his Eternal Will touched upon a pulsating existence deep within the Sea of Cosmic Origins—an existence that resembled a beating heart. The instant he made contact, he instinctively understood what it was.
It was the Heart of the Universe—the core of the Sea of Cosmic Origins, the source of all innate seeds.
All innate seeds, except for the Origin Seed, were essentially fragments of authority stripped from the Heart of the Universe.
In essence, all innate seeds were exploiting the Heart of the Universe.
And the Heart of the Universe was the cosmic core—without it, the universe would be an empty shell devoid of energy. Having lost the laws and order derived from those seeds, the Heart of the Universe now retained only two abilities.
The first was absorption. The second was transformation.
The Heart of the Universe could absorb all concepts and matter, and then freely transform and reshape them.
This was a power that surpassed even creation itself—without the Heart of the Universe, the cosmos could never exist.
Yet, the existence of innate seeds doomed the universe to eventual exhaustion and destruction.
Even though the Will of the Universe had perished, the universe would still attempt to save itself on instinct.
Postnatal seeds were the result of the Heart of the Universe instinctively reshaping cosmic rules in an attempt at self-preservation.
All innate seeds created by the Primordial Beings had completely severed ties with the Heart of the Universe.
The restrictions left behind by the Primordial Beings prevented the Heart of the Universe from reclaiming any of the innate seeds they had created.
However, innate seeds that had evolved from postnatal seeds did not fall within those restrictions.
Thus, the Heart of the Universe could absorb the Origin Seed to replenish itself. But it could not forcibly take the Origin Seed from Rosen, which was why it had drawn in his Eternal Will—instinctively requesting the Origin Seed from him.
After a moment of contemplation, Rosen decided to merge the core and two sub-bodies of the Origin Seed into the Heart of the Universe.
On the surface, it seemed like a devastating loss—a self-inflicted blow to his foundation. But in truth, wasn't he using the Origin Seed to let his Eternal Will infiltrate the Heart of the Universe?
In the past, Rosen had believed the Primordial Beings created the innate seeds to give the universe a chance at rebirth.
But now, his perspective had completely changed.
Because while building an eternal world using innate seeds might be feasible, it was fundamentally impossible to construct a complete new universe.
Without the Heart of the Universe, no new cosmos could ever be born.
Given this, there were two possibilities behind the actions of the Primordial Beings.
The first was that they had a genuine change of heart. Although the innate seeds couldn't create a new universe, perhaps after they had completely drained the Heart of the Universe, the fusion of all the seeds might birth a new one.
The second possibility was far darker—that it had always been a conspiracy. That perhaps the Primordial Beings created the innate seeds for the sole purpose of destroying the Heart of the Universe.
To destroy it outright was unthinkable—even dying, a camel is bigger than a horse. The Heart of the Universe's final backlash might be more than even the Primordial Beings could endure. So back then, it wasn't that they didn't want to destroy the Heart of the Universe, but that they didn't want to perish alongside it.
That was why they created the innate seeds—to boil the frog slowly, destroying the Heart of the Universe bit by bit.
If they had only intended to eliminate a threat, that would be one thing. But the real fear was that the Primordial Beings were cultivating and harvesting—waiting until the innate seeds had completely drained the Heart of the Universe, and then reemerging to wipe out everything and reclaim the seeds.
In this scenario, sitting idly by and watching the Heart of the Universe die would be a slow suicide.
Only by fusing the postnatal source seeds that have ascended into innate source seeds can the Heart of the Universe gain a glimmer of hope. However, a problem arises: why does the Heart of the Universe have no need for the Flame Source Seed?
Because the Flame Source Seed was never a postnatal source seed. It was not artificially created by the Immortal Gods, but rather a primitive form of an innate source seed that naturally arose after the endless expansion of civilizations within the universe. The Flame Source Seed not only does not benefit the Heart of the Universe, but it actually further harms it.
In contrast, the Root Source Seed is the true postnatal-to-innate source seed that has broken free from the restrictions of the original life.
As the Root Source Seed integrates with the Heart of the Universe, Rosen gains a deeper understanding of it.
At its peak, the complete Heart of the Universe was not only the core energy source of the universe but also the core source of its order. The powers of all innate source seeds were actually the powers of the Heart of the Universe.
However, these powers have been stripped away, and the Heart of the Universe has become just an energy core capable of absorption and transformation. It is like a computer that only has a power supply and a case, with all other hardware removed.
The integration of the Root Source Seed is akin to the Heart of the Universe acquiring new hardware.
Though this hardware is weak, the Heart of the Universe can help the Root Source Seed grow quickly. In a short time, it can reach the level of ten fully developed Root Source Seeds. At that point, the Heart of the Universe will be able to recover the lost hardware with the help of the Root Source Seed.
The more innate source seeds that are recovered, the faster the Heart of the Universe can restore itself.
Rosen has already made up his mind: he will use all the source seeds he controls to nourish the Heart of the Universe.
Because his eternal will will merge into the source seeds, the Heart of the Universe absorbing the source seeds is the same as absorbing his eternal will.
As the Heart of the Universe gradually improves, it will inevitably give birth to a new cosmic will.
At that time, his eternal will, now integrated into the Heart of the Universe, will be the perfect choice for creating the cosmic will.
If he can control the Heart of the Universe as the cosmic will, defeating the Ancient Gods will undoubtedly be no problem.
The only thing he needs to worry about is the interference of the primordial life.
So Rosen is gambling. He's betting that the primordial life is probably not in a good state at the moment.
Though transcending the universe allows one to see beyond it, who knows the current state of those beyond? It's possible the primordial life has already perished in the world outside the universe. After all, how else could it have disappeared for so many years without making an appearance?
Rosen's eternal will withdrew from the Heart of the Universe and then sensed the remaining Root Source Seed.
Though only the seed remains, the power it holds is even stronger than when the four Root Source Seeds were united.
This is because the Heart of the Universe inherently possesses absorption and transformation abilities. These two abilities are highly compatible with the Root Source Seed. The Heart of the Universe's absorption is just as powerful as its plundering, and its transformation is no less than its compatibility. This is why the Root Source Seed has experienced such rapid enhancement.
The Root Source Mother Worm that Rosen has now created can even forcibly parasitize the bodies of eternal beings.
He is just waiting for the Heart of the Universe to recover enough to absorb innate source seeds.
However, the innate skill of the Root Source Mother Worm no longer matches the current Root Source Seed.
So, under the thousand-fold time acceleration, with the assistance of wisdom source seeds, the main god computer, and other abilities, Rosen begins to develop new skills more suited to the Root Source Seed. These skills are derived from the Root Source Mother Worm but include additional postnatal abilities.
He is now in seclusion within the divine secret chamber, while the disturbances he caused in the universe have subsided.
However, a new disturbance gradually begins to appear as the Heart of the Universe changes.
In the deep reaches of Blue Star in the Ancient Gods' world, a new cosmic embryo is being created using the powers of the Time Source Seed and Space Source Seed.
Although this embryonic universe cannot possibly meet the conditions for evolving into a true universe without the Heart of the Universe, it can certainly form a small-scale universe.
However, as the Time Source Seed is stripped away and the Space Source Seed is depleted, this embryonic universe, which hasn't even fully formed, begins to collapse. The constant resonance of the Immortal Star God further exacerbates the negative effects on Blue Star.
But the final fatal blow comes when the Space Source Seed's efficiency in absorbing the cosmic essence from the Heart of the Universe decreases.
This is because the Heart of the Universe starts to self-repair and gains the ability to resist the plundering of innate source seeds.
Even though the Ancient Gods are asleep, this level of disruption has already surpassed their tolerance.
In the depths of the void in the Ancient Gods' world, an invisible eye slowly opens.
This eye only opens a slit, yet time and space throughout the entire Ancient Gods' world are already frozen.
The Ancient God avatar walks out of the depths of the spiritual world, despair evident in its movements. It knows what its fate will be.
It is an Ancient God, possessing fragments of the Ancient God's memories.
However, from its perspective, it is not truly an Ancient God. It lacks the complete memories of the Ancient God and has no independent self.
Now, the negative resentment from all the beings in the Ancient Gods' world has not been eliminated, and the main body is suddenly forcing itself to awaken.
Clearly, something even bigger has happened that it was unaware of.
In this situation, the best choice for the main body to quell the disturbance is to sacrifice this avatar.
Sure enough, as the main body gradually awakens, the resentment from all beings starts to flow into the Ancient God avatar. This resentment is so overwhelming that even the main body can barely withstand it. After the avatar takes on this burden, it has only one fate: death. It remains uncertain how the main body will utilize its remaining value before it dies.
(End of chapter)