Within the divine cosmos of the Holy Divine Hall, the Sky God of the Firmament sensed lingering fear as the spatial turbulence at the edge of the universe reverberated through the void.
The instant the Heaven and Earth God was forced to merge with the world itself, the Sky God of the Firmament immediately sensed it.
At that moment, he even felt a bit of schadenfreude.
After all, the Heaven and Earth God was his mortal enemy. Both coveted each other's source seed.
So long as the Heaven and Earth God suffered, the Sky God could bask in the joy for centuries.
However, once the Heaven and Earth God was trapped and taken away, the Sky God of the Firmament could no longer feel any joy at all.
At first, he simply thought someone was contending with the Heaven and Earth God over the power of the Primordial Space.
An unclaimed treasure naturally belonged to whoever seized it first.
But judging from the series of tactics that followed—used to trap the Heaven and Earth God—this was clearly not a chance encounter over a treasure, but a meticulously planned assassination. In fact, that seemingly naturally born primordial spatial power was, with high probability, a man-made trap.
To deceive both him and the Heaven and Earth God meant the mastermind wielded spatial power far stronger than theirs.
Among eternal lifeforms who possessed space-related source seeds, not one wasn't a mortal enemy of the others.
Other eternal beings might not realize it, but they themselves could distinctly feel the craving and greed for each other's source seed.
Therefore, the one who had set the trap to imprison the Heaven and Earth God was after both their source seeds.
The Heaven and Earth God had simply been unlucky and fallen into the trap first.
Spatial power stronger than the Firmament Source Seed and the Heaven and Earth Source Seed could only come from either the Space Source Seed or the Dimensional Source Seed.
Eliminating the possibility of the Dimensional Source Seed, the culprit who ensnared the Heaven and Earth God was clearly Rosen, the one from the Ancient God World.
Ever since the Elemental God failed in the plot to kill Rosen, it was no longer a secret that Rosen possessed the Space Source Seed.
If the Heaven and Earth God managed to escape alive, that would be fortunate. But if he never returned, then the next target would undoubtedly be the Sky God himself.
Thinking of this possibility, the Sky God of the Firmament was overcome with dread and immediately tore open space to rush to the Heaven and Earth God's rescue.
The Heaven and Earth God must not die. Ideally, they could join forces from inside and out to slay Rosen.
At the same time, other eternal beings—like the Elemental God—also followed the spatial rift, arriving at the edge of the universe.
The Sky God was already searching for traces of the Heaven and Earth God. They refused to believe that he couldn't stir up even the slightest disturbance. So long as the Heaven and Earth God made a sound, they could rush to his aid at top speed.
But despite using every method they had, they couldn't sense a single trace of him…
…
Deep within the Miracle Sea of Stars, the Heaven and Earth God was doing everything in his power to break through the blockade.
Even if he couldn't escape completely, as long as he made some noise, he could still hope for a rescue.
But when he finally managed to break through the blockade, he realized the outside wasn't the universe at all—it was the interior of a fragment of the Primordial World incarnated by the Primordial One. All disturbances were blocked by the world barrier of that fragment.
Realizing there would be no reinforcements, the Heaven and Earth God knew that staying on the defensive would only lead to a slow death.
He had only one option—fight with everything he had. Even if it meant sacrificing a thousand to kill eight hundred, so be it.
He had already deduced that the one plotting to kill him was Rosen. Unless Rosen wanted to die with him, the Heaven and Earth God believed he could seize an opportunity to break through.
The moment he made that decision, he canceled his fusion with heaven and earth.
As his full strength returned, the universe he had previously merged with flowed entirely into his Heaven and Earth Domain.
At this moment, the Heaven and Earth God held the Eternal Relic Heaven and Earth Shield in his left hand, wore the Eternal Relic Heaven and Earth Raiment, and wielded the Eternal Relic Heaven-Splitting Earth-Cleaving Axe in his right hand. And that wasn't all—behind him unfolded eight pairs of Heaven and Earth Wings that blotted out the sky.
Even that wasn't the end. The Eternal Relic Heaven and Earth Placenta, which guarded his Sea of Consciousness, had also reawakened.
To control five Eternal Relics simultaneously placed a tremendous burden on his eternal will.
So this had to be a swift battle—he had to carve out a path to survival in the shortest possible time.
Before the Heaven-Splitting Earth-Cleaving Axe could shatter the void and break the constraints of this dimension, the Primordial Incarnation had already approached at a terrifying speed of hundreds of millions of times the speed of light—far faster than the Heaven and Earth God could react.
In the universe, speed had a limit. Under normal circumstances, even the fastest beings couldn't possibly move at such velocity.
Never mind whether the body could react—the sheer resistance would be enough to tear an eternal lifeform to pieces.
But the Primordial Incarnation had actually achieved it. Though it possessed a physical body formed of spiritualized matter, it could freely shift between material and spiritual states. Material speed had limits, but the speed of thought and spirit far surpassed any physical form.
Even so, for close-range physical attacks, it still needed to manifest as a tangible entity.
The eternal sacred body of any eternal lifeform couldn't withstand such force, but the Primordial Incarnation could—its body surpassed eternity in strength, and its primordial spiritual power could convert essence and spirit into each other, exponentially boosting its core vitality.
With the addition of time acceleration, only then could the Primordial Incarnation approach the Heaven and Earth God at hundreds of millions of times the speed of light.
One punch landed squarely on the Heaven and Earth God's chest. The pure power from pure speed caused the blue crystal-like fist to pierce through the Heaven and Earth Raiment, tear open the Eternal Sacred Body, and pulverize all internal organs, including the heart.
As the punch finished, the Primordial Incarnation withdrew its fist and reached upward with a savage grasp.
With a single squeeze, it crushed the cervical spine and then the skull, bursting the Heaven and Earth God's head in its gradually enlarging palm.
In that life-or-death instant, the Celestial Deity of Heaven and Earth finally reacted and used spatial teleportation to escape the deadly grip of the Primordial Avatar.
Then, raising the Shield of Heaven and Earth in his left hand, he blocked the Primordial Avatar, whose speed had now dropped to merely a few hundred times the speed of light.
With the Heaven-Sundering Axe in his right hand, he ignored all spatial distance and cleaved directly at the Primordial Avatar's neck.
However, the Primordial Avatar remained utterly fearless, showing not the slightest intent to defend. Instead, he channeled the essence of his spirit power and the origin of life to the utmost, raining down supreme strength with his fists from every angle upon the Shield of Heaven and Earth.
The shield in the Celestial Deity's hand flickered like space itself, flawlessly deflecting every blow.
His head and heart, which had been blown apart a second time, slowly regenerated and recovered with the passage of time.
On the surface, the Celestial Deity of Heaven and Earth appeared to be recovering.
In contrast, the Primordial Avatar's speed grew slower and his punches weaker.
Eventually, the Primordial Avatar's strength declined sharply. With a single strike from the Heaven-Sundering Axe, he was blasted tens of thousands of miles backward. The Celestial Deity of Heaven and Earth pursued relentlessly through spatial teleportation, treating the Primordial Deity like a wooden stake as he hacked at him wildly.
Unfortunately, the Primordial Avatar's defenses were too formidable. Ordinary attacks from the Heaven-Sundering Axe couldn't even break through.
The Celestial Deity secretly gathered his strength, and when it reached its peak, he unleashed a strike empowered by the spatial laws of Primordial Space. A spatial rift formed on the blade, sharp enough to rend everything. That single strike severed the head of the figure before him.
Yet, as the head was severed, dark green poisonous blood erupted and engulfed the Celestial Deity.
Just before the Heaven-Sundering Axe struck the Primordial Avatar, he had already been withdrawn into the Mysterious Study Room. What was released in his place was the corpse of the Plague Deity, controlled by the Eternal Coffin of Heaven. It was this corpse's head that had been chopped off by the Celestial Deity's full-force strike.
Rosen had indeed wanted to use the Primordial Avatar to crush the Celestial Deity directly, but manipulating the Avatar consumed too much of his Eternal Will.
That terrifying initial burst had already drained ninety percent of his Eternal Will into a weakened state.
So, afterward, he only left the minimum necessary trace of Eternal Will inside the Primordial Avatar, while seizing the opportunity to consume various treasures and resources capable of restoring his will. With the aid of accelerated time and the Primordial Spirit Power, he recovered rapidly.
He was still a bit short, hence the need for the Plague Deity's corpse as support.
Since the Plague Deity was already dead, he was immune to all divine-origin-targeting damage.
The poisonous blood spraying from his neck instantly transformed into a dark green blood whip. The whip fused with the severed head at its tip. As it lashed through the void, it struck at the Celestial Deity of Heaven and Earth. This time, even his flawless defense failed to parry it.
There were many reasons for this—chiefly because his defense was slightly loosened after his full-power strike.
But the key reason was the sheer speed of the Plague Deity's whip.
Unlike other eternal beings, the Plague Deity had refined his own plague-infused blood into an eternal holy artifact: the Plague Blood Whip. It was universally acknowledged as the fastest offensive eternal artifact in the cosmos. Among all weapons, the whip had an absolute speed advantage.
Even an ordinary person swinging a whip could make its tip break the sound barrier with ease.
Let alone a whip like this—an eternal artifact whose tip's final speed nearly matched the punch speed of the Primordial Deity from earlier.
This speed far exceeded the Celestial Deity's reaction threshold. The whip tip landed squarely on his head. But it didn't explode on contact, because at the moment of impact, the severed head fused with the whip bit down on his head.
At that moment, all manner of plagues that struck fear into the hearts of lifeforms across the cosmos flooded into the Celestial Deity's body.
He had no way to suppress or purge them. His only option was to sever infected limbs to survive, sacrificing all plague-polluted flesh and blood. Yet within the plague viruses grew countless root-mother insects that relentlessly took root in his eternal divine body.
Meanwhile, the Primordial Avatar, who had just vanished, reappeared—this time entwined with the twin serpents of red and blue.
He poured Primordial Spirit Power into the Serpent Bracelet. The Heaven-Frost Sacred Serpent and the Flame-Heaven Sacred Serpent, now reduced to just a foot in size, cooperated with his flurry of punches, concentrating all blazing divine fire and extreme frost on his fists to enhance the damage.
After just a few dozen punches, the Shield of Heaven and Earth began to crack under the terrifying ice-and-fire-infused force.
With the shield broken and his Sacred Armor of Heaven and Earth gone, the Celestial Deity could no longer face his opponents head-on.
All he could do was use his Celestial Feather Robe to flee nonstop. But the Plague Blood Whip clung like a festering disease—every swing too fast to dodge. Though its poison wasn't immediately fatal, the sustained damage was incredibly troublesome.
To make matters worse, the Primordial Avatar had now abandoned close combat and was instead remotely controlling the twin Sacred Serpents with his spirit power.
Once fully elementalized, the Sacred Serpents moved as fast as the Primordial Avatar's will could command. Even though the Celestial Feather Robe allowed instant movement through all directions of space, he was still caught, entangled, and bitten over and over again.
The Celestial Deity of Heaven and Earth was now being completely overwhelmed. Yet, like a cockroach that refused to die, he could not be killed.
This was the most terrifying aspect of eternal life—it was exceedingly difficult to truly kill an eternal being.
One first had to wear down their life origin, and ultimately reduce it to 195 points—the threshold of execution.
Each point above 195 was equivalent to all the previous 195 points combined.
The Celestial Deity had nearly 300 life origin points at minimum. Now, after suffering devastating blows from both the Primordial Avatar and the Plague Deity, his total had dropped to under ten. His divine origin had suffered similarly.
Even more frightening was that his origin, while constantly being destroyed, was also recovering rapidly.
Eternal beings could plunder origin from the Eternal World to quickly heal. To completely erase the Celestial Deity's origin and kill him would take at least several years of grueling battle. But the outcome was already decided.
With the Shield of Heaven and Earth and Sacred Armor destroyed, his defenses had dropped two whole tiers.
Though he could still rapidly regenerate using the Eternal World, the recovery speed was now far lower than the rate at which his origin was being destroyed.
His healing couldn't keep up with the bleeding. Death was the only outcome waiting for him.
Realizing this, the Holy God of Heaven and Earth gave up on the idea of fighting a bloody path to escape.
Primordial beings rarely let emotion overwhelm reason. Unless someone else arrived to rescue Him, the Holy God of Heaven and Earth would not choose to struggle bitterly for years only to be worn down and killed. He would rather, in His current state, drag His enemies down with Him in a desperate final act.
There were so many Eternal beings' corpses scattered throughout the Forbidden Zones of the universe—why hadn't the origin of life been worn down to 195 points?
It was because, when reason sensed there was no hope of victory, they would all choose to take the enemy with them. If they succeeded, it was mutual destruction. If they failed, their corpses would at least retain some origin of life, allowing them to continuously absorb the source of the Eternal World and regenerate over time.
However, while the origin of life could be restored through corpses that did not decay, the same could not be said for the origin of divinity.
The divine origin required a constant expenditure of eternal will, so during combat, it was worn down much faster than the origin of life.
The Holy God of Heaven and Earth had only one hope left—that the avatar He left in the Sacred Hall of the Gods could escape the pursuit of the Holy God of the Firmament.
If so, He would at least have a chance to rise again.
The Holy God of Heaven and Earth stopped fleeing. He charged forward of His own accord, letting the Plagueblood Whip lash Him, and in the instant He closed in on the Primordial Avatar, He unfolded the Wings of Heaven and Earth and wrapped both Himself and the Primordial Avatar within them, then tightly locked the avatar in place, forming an inescapable restraint.
At the same time, the Holy God's Eternal World descended and merged with the Heaven and Earth Domain.
After completing all preparations, the Holy God of Heaven and Earth unhesitatingly unleashed the Eternal Divine Art He had reserved for mutual destruction—Heaven and Earth Lament Together.
The sky of the Eternal World merged with His divine origin, manifesting countless dense, endless sealing runes.
The earth of the Eternal World merged with His origin of life, also displaying an infinite number of sealing runes.
All the sealing runes collapsed with the crumbling heavens and shattering earth, wrapping around both the Holy God and the Primordial Avatar. In the end, at the cost of sacrificing the entire Eternal World, the runes transformed into an unsolvable seal that would bury both enemy and self together.
Next to the Plague Holy God, Rosen stepped out of the Mysterious Study Room and let out a weary sigh of relief.
At last, they had forced the Holy God of Heaven and Earth to his death. The only thing left was to figure out how to break His seal.
But after several attempts, Rosen realized he couldn't break it at all.
The seal created by the Holy God of Heaven and Earth was likely beyond the ability of nearly anyone in the entire universe to break by force.
If the seal couldn't be broken, the Primordial Avatar couldn't be freed. And if the Primordial Avatar remained sealed, the Heaven and Earth Origin Seed couldn't be retrieved.
That was probably the Holy God's intent—to leave behind a suicide seal that ensured Rosen would gain no spoils of war.
What's more, because the statue formed by the seal had fused with the power of the Primordial Space, even time and reincarnation couldn't reverse it to undo the seal.
The only way to unlock it was by brute force.
Rosen knew he couldn't do that on his own. But he could borrow external strength to break the seal.
The Ancient God's Heaven-Opening Axe would definitely be able to do it.
Several Eternal beings from the Sacred Hall of the Gods working together could likely do it as well.
But none of them would help him break the seal. That left only one source of external power—the Forbidden Zones of the universe.
The first thing Rosen thought of was the Dimensional Forbidden Zone. But the level of danger there remained completely unknown.
Still, with fragments of the Primordial World in his possession, the Dimensional Forbidden Zone wasn't enough to make him back down.
The Book of Destiny and Fortune contained very little about the Dimensional Forbidden Zone—it didn't even mention how it was formed.
Perhaps the World Tree would have more knowledge about it.
The bronze dragon avatar, upon receiving the main body's command, immediately contacted the World Tree to inquire about the Dimensional Forbidden Zone.
The World Tree quickly responded—with a rather unexpected result.
The Dimensional Forbidden Zone originated from the Dimensional Holy God, once universally acknowledged as the strongest among the Eternal beings.
After the Ancient God devoured the World Tree, He once had an encounter with the Dimensional Holy God.
The result? The Ancient God was utterly defeated.
The World Tree even suspected that the Blue Star the Ancient God held didn't originate from the Dark Sun, but from the Dimensional Holy God. Not long after the Ancient God's defeat, the Dimensional Holy God became the first Eternal being to commit suicide.
This caused an uproar among all Eternal beings at the time. They banded together to investigate the cause of the Dimensional Holy God's death.
Because none of them believed that such a being would suddenly choose to end His own life.
Some suspected He faked His death, some believed He left the universe, and others thought He had perished due to some lingering power left behind by a Primordial being. In response to these doubts, all the Eternal beings tried to work together to destroy the Dimensional Forbidden Zone.
But it was impossible.
Because the Dimensional Forbidden Zone had merged with the Cosmic Source Sea.
Destroying the Dimensional Forbidden Zone was equivalent to destroying the Source Sea—its difficulty was second only to destroying the entire universe.
Since it couldn't be destroyed, they had no choice but to investigate deeper. And in the process, they discovered the Dimensional Holy God's will and testament.
The Dimensional Holy God had mastered the Dimensional Origin Seed. To Him, there were no secrets left in the entire universe.
Because of that, He discovered the universe was headed toward destruction.
Even if a new universe were to arise from the ruins of this one, there would be no room for Eternal beings to exist in it.
All Eternal beings would ultimately perish along with the universe.
The Dimensional Holy God's suicide was, in essence, a sacrifice—He returned the power of the Dimensional Origin Seed to the Heart of the Universe, thus delaying its collapse. His death was not suicide, but self-sacrifice.
If not for His sacrifice, the universe might have already expanded to the First Star Ring and reached its end.
(End of Chapter)