In the depths of the void behind the Holy Divine Hall, the Elemental Holy God gazed at the Eternal Relic known as the Eye of Elemental Law.
On the spirit-crystal orb, which resembled an eyeball, the old fisherman's every move was currently being projected.
A failure is always a failure—reincarnation and rebirth had done little to help him grow.
The old fisherman thought hiding in the Holy Divine Hall meant safety. What he didn't realize was that one day, even someone obsessed with fishing would become bait himself.
Although he had never seen Rosen's true form, that strange beetle was definitely connected to him.
According to the Immortal Particles, Rosen was someone who never let go of a grudge.
So if Rosen had the power, he definitely wouldn't let the old fisherman off. All it took was to keep a close watch—Rosen wouldn't be able to resist making a move. This was currently the only chance to capture him.
Therefore, a way had to be found to get the old fisherman to leave the Holy Divine Hall in a seemingly reasonable manner.
Simply suppressing him wouldn't work—his threshold for humiliation was lower than expected.
Since suppression wouldn't work, then only humiliation would.
At this moment, the old fisherman, still amusing himself with fishing, had no idea he'd already been made into bait.
Several days later, the old fisherman suddenly felt something was wrong as he cast his line.
Having grasped the Source Seed of Causality, he would naturally sense it if someone was scheming against him.
Even for an eternal lifeform, unless one possessed a special Source Seed, it was impossible to completely avoid the effects of the Source Seed of Causality when used against them.
The old fisherman's gaze pierced through the Eternal World and looked outside. He saw several Immortal Gods and Demons approaching the ruins of the Holy Hall. From them, he sensed unfiltered hostility—it was obvious they were here for him.
"Did you know? He was once an Eternal Lifeform."
"Him? An Eternal Lifeform? Feels more like a rat hiding in the Holy Divine Hall."
"Some things are just inborn… but trash is trash. I heard he got scared by some newly-advanced Immortal and didn't dare step outside…"
The more unpleasant their words became, the more stifled the old fisherman felt.
But after calming down, he realized this had all been said intentionally for him to hear.
Although he had sold information about Rosen for a bounty, that intel didn't mention how long Rosen had been cultivating. Yet those Immortal Gods and Demons outside knew he was a newly-advanced Immortal—information only Rosen and the Immortal Particles could have known.
So it seemed the Immortal Particles had sold Rosen's information too—and done so even more thoroughly.
These Immortal Gods and Demons had deliberately come to shame him, and left clues so he would learn what the Immortal Particles had done.
At the same time, they were reminding him that they knew exactly how Rosen operated.
The meaning was clear: they expected him to obediently serve as bait.
Although this could indeed draw Rosen out, the current Rosen had escaped even from the Elemental Holy God's grasp. While the bait might be good enough to attract the fish, the moment the fish bit, the bait would be consumed as well.
Neither the fisherman nor the fish cared about the bait's survival during their battle of wits.
This was undoubtedly the Elemental Holy God's doing. Those Immortal Gods and Demons sent to "remind" him of his role as bait had definitely been dispatched by Him.
The Elemental Holy God wanted to have it both ways—He wanted the old fisherman to play the bait without appearing heartless. After all, it was only because the old fisherman had accepted the Elemental Holy God's bounty that he was allowed to return to the Holy Divine Hall. The Elemental Holy God had a reputation to maintain and couldn't just throw him out.
But if he didn't comply and refused to act as bait, things wouldn't stop at verbal humiliation.
Because while the Elemental Holy God cared about appearances, He wanted Rosen dead even more.
If he was obedient, the Elemental Holy God might still give him some protection.
If not, and he forced the Elemental Holy God to tear away the pretense and kick him out, he would truly be driven into a dead end. And all of it was because of Rosen. If Rosen didn't die, he could forget about living in peace.
At that thought, the old fisherman could no longer suppress his fury.
He immediately unleashed the Eternal World, dragging those outside who had insulted him into it.
Under the suppression of the Eternal World, ordinary Immortal Gods and Demons were utterly powerless before him.
In the end, the half-dead intruders were thrown out of the Eternal World by the old fisherman.
Soon, the guards stationed at the ruins of the Holy Hall arrived, and all those involved in the fight were expelled from the ruins.
Now unable to remain within the Holy Hall's ruins, and with all the space in his personal microcosmos completely divided and taken by other Eternal Lifeforms, the old fisherman had no place left to stay.
Like a stray dog, he was driven out of the Holy Divine Hall.
Having left, the old fisherman knew that Rosen, who possessed both the Space and Omniscience Source Seeds, was most likely watching him now.
There was no need to pretend—he truly felt he'd been cast out, deeply humiliated and furious.
But that still wasn't enough. The old fisherman knew Rosen was an extremely cautious man.
Unless he was sure there were no tails following, Rosen would never strike rashly.
In this contest, the bait was never the key—the real confrontation was between Rosen and the Elemental Holy God. If Rosen realized the Elemental Holy God was behind the scenes, the fishing would fail. Only if he didn't realize, would he possibly bite.
After the old fisherman fled the Holy Temple in a panic, he immediately used the Void Source Seed to shift through the void, heading straight for the Ancient God World.
Although the Void Source Seed couldn't compare to the Space Source Seed in terms of freely traversing the universe, moving from the Sea of Universal Origins to the Ancient God World only required a few spatial transfers. There was no way Rosen would let him escape into the Ancient God World—those few spatial shifts were Rosen's best opportunity to strike.
"Is this baiting a trap, or did he really get driven out?"
Rosen's Eye of the Creator locked onto the old fisherman, constantly calculating the chances of success and the level of danger in taking action.
If he were the Elemental High God, he would definitely use the old fisherman as bait.
But the old fisherman was heading directly to the Ancient God World, leaving Rosen less than a minute to act. If he truly escaped into the Ancient God World, not only would eliminating him become impossible, but he might even sabotage the cooperation between Rosen and the World Tree.
Although the Elemental High God was formidable, he likely couldn't keep up with the Void Source Seed's spatial shuttling.
Could the Elemental High God be hiding within the old fisherman's Eternal World? Or was Rosen just overthinking it all?
Because of the existence of Time Reincarnation, Rosen had become much more aggressive in his actions, often unconsciously so.
Thus, his first instinct was to intercept and probe the old fisherman.
Even if it was a trap, with Time Reincarnation, he could still escape.
However, the Elemental High God had already witnessed Time Reincarnation in the Ruins World—would he really lay a trap without a way to counter it?
Rosen kept wavering back and forth, changing his mind countless times in less than a minute.
In the end, he still chose to make a move—but under no circumstances would it be his true body doing so.
The Death God clone, carrying his true body hidden within the Mysterious Study Room, instantly crossed space-time through an Interworld Gate and intercepted the old fisherman as his void transfer ended.
The moment he manifested, he immediately unfolded his Creator Domain. The Eternal Hell of the Hell Reincarnation Diagram also descended through the Painting Realm and fused into the Law Domain.
And it wasn't just the Eternal Hell—it was a hybrid of the Miracle Star Sea and the Eternal Hell.
The Death Burial, originally empowered only by the Death Source Seed, was now enhanced by the Burial Source Seed of the Miracle Star Sea and the suppression effect of the Monument of Immortality. This combined Death Burial forced the old fisherman to retreat into the Void Fish Basket on the spot.
The Void Fish Basket was not only an Eternal Sacred Artifact but also the carrier of his Eternal World.
The old fisherman was confident that even an Eternal Lifeform wouldn't be able to kill him in a short time.
And indeed, the Void Fish Basket withstood the Death Burial—though it sustained some damage in the process.
But Rosen's true killing move had never been the Death Burial. It was the forbidden curse unleashed by his true body within the Mysterious Study Room at the same time.
Using permanent consumption of divine origin as the price, he painted a spiritual artwork imbued with a forbidden curse.
Rosen did not consume his divine origin permanently. Instead, he used mental power and the Eternal Fall Source as materials to create the forbidden curse painting.
The resulting forbidden curse used mental power as the medium, causing the Fall Curse to pierce deep into the essence of life and divine source.
Once the Fall Curse activated the primal instincts within his life essence, the old fisherman instantly lost all resistance, collapsing to the ground, trembling in fear.
Eternal Lifeforms, though born with the potential to become powerful intelligent beings, possessed no innate intelligence at birth—any wisdom had to be developed later. In their earliest state, they only had animalistic instincts.
The old fisherman's shivering was a result of feeling the innate suppression that the mental power exerted on his life and divine essence.
It was like a mouse seeing a cat—an instinctive fear that overrode all reason.
Of course, this state wouldn't last long. While the mental power was strong, the Fall Source wasn't yet powerful enough.
So, just as the Void Fish Basket was damaged, the Celestial Coffin Beetle charged inside and appeared beside the old fisherman.
While the old fisherman was still paralyzed and unable to resist, the carapace on the beetle's back split open. The corpse of the Plague High God reached out, grabbed the old fisherman, dragged him into the coffin, and held him tightly as the lid slammed shut.
At the same time, the Star Sea Ladybug swallowed the entire Void Fish Basket in one gulp.
At the very moment the old fisherman was secured, the Death God clone activated the Interworld Gate in preparation to retreat.
However, although the Interworld Gate opened, what lay on the other side wasn't the intended destination—but the Elemental High God, lying in wait in the void with his forces. It was already too late to close the gate, because a higher-order spatial force from the Space Source Seed had locked it in place.
"Spatial power…"
Rosen sensed the Interworld Gate and sighed.
So it was a trap after all. The Elemental High God had actually obtained the Primordial Spatial Power from the Holy Temple. Although it didn't seem to be much, it was enough to interfere with the Interworld Gate and disrupt Time Reincarnation. That was his confidence in using the bait.
The destabilized Interworld Gate instantly expanded, engulfing Rosen and forming a spatial prison.
At that moment, the Elemental High God and the billions-strong elemental army he led began casting various elemental spells. Although the strength of the individual soldiers ranged from weak demigods to powerful true gods, their overwhelming numbers compensated for all weaknesses.
The moment those billions of elemental spells were unleashed, they were completely taken over by the Elemental High God's Elemental Domain.
Then, all spells of the same element began to merge. These merged spells didn't use any special techniques—they all locked onto the spatial prison, which began to absorb an endless torrent of elemental power.
As everyone knew, when space is limited, compressing matter increases pressure.
Thus, as endless elemental matter poured in, the spatial prison began to shrink. The terrifying pressure and destructive force from extreme elemental compression became something even Eternal Lifeforms could hardly endure—survival was nearly impossible.
This trap set by the Elemental High God was already enough to instantly annihilate any third-tier Eternal Lifeform.
However, it still wasn't enough—because the Elemental Holy God was very aware that Rosen had taken away that ruin-world.
That fragment of a world, just like the Holy Temple, was a piece of primordial-level territory. Although it was significantly inferior to the Holy Temple, it was more than enough to resist the elemental oppression of the Eternal Elemental Spell just now. Thus, the Elemental Holy God prepared to return directly to the Holy Temple with the spatial prison in tow.
As long as they returned to the Holy Temple, Rosen would truly have no way to escape—even with wings, he wouldn't be able to fly.
Yet at that very moment, the spatial prison was torn open from within by a pair of bare hands.
Even though Rosen's hands were drenched in blood, the flesh and tendons shredded by the distorted space until only white bone remained capable of withstanding the force—he had indeed torn open the Eternal Spatial Prison, a space spell formed by primordial spatial power, with nothing but his own hands.
At this point, Rosen's eyes showed only mad savagery. There was no trace of reason to be seen.
Rosen knew very well that breaking out of the Elemental Holy God's trap wouldn't be an easy feat.
Using his Primordial Avatar was the first option he considered—and also the first to be discarded.
That was because this trump card couldn't be revealed yet. It wasn't time to use it and allow others the chance to develop counters.
Instead, Rosen pushed his intellect to the limit using the Wisdom Seed and the Eternal Wisdom Relic. Then he activated the miracle trait Savage Will of the Eternal Kindling, sacrificing his rationality entirely in exchange for even greater physical power.
And that wasn't all—he even fused the Miracle Star Sea into his Undying Divine Body to enhance the quality of his physique.
Finally, using an ability he had learned from the Spirit Soul Butterfly, he reversed all the spiritual power he could currently muster into the essence of life and the essence of divinity, then used the Heart of the Old God to convert the divine essence into life essence.
After all of these layers of reinforcement, Rosen's life essence broke past its limit and reached a staggering 260 points.
Once life essence surpasses 195 and hits 196, it already qualifies as the life intensity of an Eternal Lifeform. Beyond that, it's no longer about 15-point increments stepping into the realm of Primordial Life. No one knows the exact life essence threshold required to equal a primordial being.
But one thing was certain—Rosen's current 260 points of life essence still hadn't touched the edge of Primordial Life.
Still, with that much power, he had just physically torn open a spatial prison—and proved through his actions that it was possible.
Without any technique, Rosen instinctively locked onto the Elemental Holy God and threw a punch.
That punch carried no laws, no energy—just pure physical strength. Yet it made the Elemental Holy God feel an overwhelming threat. He barely had time to teleport away with a small fraction of his elite elemental army. More than ninety percent of the remaining elemental troops were instantly obliterated.
Time, space, and all matter were physically smashed apart by the punch powered by 260 points of life essence.
Rosen instinctively teleported through space and gave chase, reversing the tide—hunting the Elemental Holy God across the cosmos.
It wasn't until the Elemental Holy God had been wounded several times and was forced to flee across the void using spatial power that Rosen finally regained clarity. He opened a spatial portal and departed—but he still tightly clutched a tiny fragment of spatial power in his palm.
The Elemental Holy God had not previously mastered spatial power. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been powerless against spacetime reincarnation within the ruin-world.
So the spatial power He wielded had been borrowed. The Eternal Will had not yet fully mastered the power of space. Because of that, Rosen had been able to focus his spiritual strength and destroy a fragment of the Eternal Will within the spatial power—successfully seizing a portion of it.
Once he assimilated this portion of spatial power into his Spatial Seed, traps of this kind would be much harder to ensnare him again.
His loss of sanity had only been a ruse. In truth, Savage Will couldn't completely destroy his rationality.
Thanks to the Wisdom Seed and the Wisdom Relic, he was able to retain a certain level of cognition.
In a corner of the universe, inside the Mysterious Study Room, Rosen lay half-dead, receiving treatment.
As ferocious as he had been while chasing the Elemental Holy God, that was how miserable he looked now.
Once his life essence reversed back into spiritual power, his Undying Divine Body nearly collapsed completely.
Even spacetime reincarnation couldn't fully reverse his injuries.
Fortunately, he still had the Life Seed to heal, the Game Seed to modify his physical data, and the Dream Seed to nullify the injuries within a dream state. Every available method had been used one after another, finally stabilizing his injuries—though his life essence had permanently dropped by a point.
Even the ancient god relic, which locked down life essence, couldn't stop this permanent decrease.
While this was a loss, compared to what he'd gained, it was a small price to pay.
The Old Fisherman, who had been suppressed by the Miracle Star Sea, had suffered greatly as a result. Because the Miracle Star Sea had been fused into Rosen's Undying Divine Body, and his life essence had reached 260, even the Fisherman—and his damaged Void Fish Basket—were crushed and heavily injured by Rosen's terrifying muscles.
Now, the Old Fisherman was tightly bound by the Creator's Shackles formed from spiritual power. All of his life essence and divine essence were completely suppressed.
Rosen, using the techniques of the Doctor Sequence, dissected the Old Fisherman alive from the outside in.
Although the Fisherman didn't follow a godhood-based system and thus lacked a godhood core, Rosen dug out an Undying Celestial Heart.
This was a transcendent system that used the heart as the core—transforming the tangible organ into something intangible. It peeled off Eternal Will and divine essence from the sea of consciousness, and finally merged them into the heart to form a single Celestial Heart. The Undying Celestial Heart could integrate into any Undying World at will.
Once the Celestial Heart merged with an Undying World, the Old Fisherman's Eternal Will could become the World Will of that world.
Even if the Undying World already belonged to another Eternal Lifeform, the Fisherman's Celestial Heart could forcibly seize ownership.
Beyond that, the Celestial Heart could greatly enhance the growth rate and quality of Eternal Will.
Rosen didn't hesitate—he dug out his own Heart of the Old God, and countless tendrils grew from its surface to take root in the Celestial Heart. Very quickly, the Celestial Heart became nourishment for the Heart of the Old God, allowing him to successfully obtain the Celestial Heart's core ability.
Rosen continued dissecting the Old Fisherman and quickly unearthed a pile of spoils.
Three acquired-grade Fishing Seeds, nine innate-grade Void Seeds, one Causality Seed, and the Eternal Relics: Void Fishing Rod and Void Fish Basket. Inside the basket were also the Purple Light Super Galaxy Cluster and Purple Light Island.
The Purple Light Island would certainly be merged into the Miracle Star Sea. The Void Fish Basket could be dismantled and fused into the Serpent Mother Gourd.
The Void Fishing Rod and Fishing Seeds could be kept for future use. The extra Causality Seed could be used to craft a Causality Fish Hook.
Finally, regarding the Void Seeds—while refining them, Rosen discovered that the Spatial Seed could actually devour the Void Seeds.
As if the Void Seeds had originally stemmed from the Spatial Seed itself.
(End of Chapter)