In the Mysterious Study Room, Rosen looked toward the Window of Time and Space on the wall.
Within the window, time and space shifted, revealing the cosmic starfield of the Fourteenth Star Ring in the universe.
Almost no stars could be seen—there were even fewer than in the Sea of Chaotic Stars.
Everywhere bore the marks left by eternal beings waging war, and even after countless years, those traces remained deeply embedded in the void, difficult to erase.
If eternal beings could leave such marks, then how much more devastating would the aftermath be from battles between primordial beings?
At first, Rosen had believed that any such damage must have been repaired by transcendent primordial beings.
But through the Ancient God, he came to understand that the scars, sins, suffering, and disasters left behind by the wars of primordial beings—even fragments of the primordial universe itself—were all sealed in the deepest part of the Nightfall Society. That place had another name: the Cosmic Graveyard.
Now, with the Mysterious Study Room and the Bookshelf of Fate completely burned away, the newly awakened Heart of the Universe had begun instinctively to save itself.
And this clearly went against the interests of the Ancient God and the others. What they needed was a Heart of the Universe marching toward destruction and death—only then could they capture it at minimal cost and merge it into their respective microcosms.
Since they could no longer stop the Heart of the Universe from reviving, they turned to other forces to torment it.
If everything sealed within the Nightfall Society—the Cosmic Graveyard—were to be unleashed, the universe would immediately be shrouded in endless evil and natural disasters. Even if the universe itself could withstand the impact and merely revert to its previous state before the revival of the Heart, the countless lives within it would have no path to survival.
At that point, even eternal beings would have to tread with extreme caution—one misstep and they would fall instantly.
The Ancient God and the others, though they plotted against each other in both open conflict and hidden schemes, still maintained a unified goal.
And that goal was to bury the universe and devour its final remnants in exchange for their own transcendence.
But even transcending eternal life into primordial being likely wasn't enough to survive post-universe destruction through a microcosm.
Rosen began to realize that the value of the universe might be greater than he had imagined.
In its prime, it could give birth to countless primordial beings. Even on the brink of death, the dying universe still held more value than anything lesser. If the goal were merely to ascend to primordial status, the Ancient God and the others should have cooperated rather than fought to the death—there would've been no need for such brutality if resources were sufficient.
Unless what they truly sought wasn't just transcendence from the eternal—but direct transcendence beyond the primordial.
Only in that case would the universe's final resources be insufficient to support the birth of three new primordial beings, forcing them into a desperate battle to the death. Only the final victor would be qualified to inherit everything—transcending both eternity and the primordial level.
Rosen was absolutely certain that the Chaos Supreme God and the others were now sparing no cost to hunt him down.
Even the Ancient God, who had once proposed an alliance, harbored the same desire—coveting the cosmic origin seed in his possession and dreaming of killing him to seize it. Of course, if he displayed sufficient power, the Ancient God might still genuinely cooperate with him.
The Chaos Supreme God's plan to unseal the Nightfall Society might have sounded simple, but carrying it out was anything but.
After all, the seal was left behind by a legendary figure who had transcended even the primordial—a seal not even true primordial beings could easily break.
Let alone the strongest among them, the Chaos Supreme God, who at best merely possessed a primordial sacred artifact.
Still, the fact that he had proposed it meant they must have found a way.
Their solution was to leverage external forces—by dragging the Nightfall Society directly into the Sea of Cosmic Origin. Once revived, the Heart of the Universe would instinctively begin to repair itself. But self-repair required materials, and the primordial world remnants sealed within the Nightfall Society were the perfect source.
As for the disasters and evils sealed within, the Heart of the Universe—without the guidance of the Cosmic Will—wouldn't realize it was a trap.
Those inner catastrophes were indeed terrifying. They could easily destroy the cosmic starfield, but destroying the Heart of the Universe itself was beyond their reach. At most, they would temporarily torment it. In the long run, the Heart would inevitably absorb and refine them as nourishment.
Thus, by its own instincts, the Heart of the Universe would inevitably choose to reclaim the primordial remnants.
And when both sides were weakened in the process, that would be the perfect moment for the Chaos Supreme God and the others to strike and plunder the Heart of the Universe.
Of course, all of this depended on first sending the Nightfall Society into the Sea of Cosmic Origin.
And that was no easy task—because the Nightfall Society had a guardian.
This guardian was a primordial puppet left behind by one of the primordial beings to oversee this cosmic graveyard. Although it wasn't a true primordial being, its power was no less than one, and even the Chaos Supreme God didn't dare to engage the Nightfall Guardian head-on.
How to neutralize the Nightfall Guardian—that was the problem the Chaos Supreme God and his peers needed to solve.
As for Rosen, his task was to assist the Heart of the Universe at the crucial moment, using the power of the cosmic origin seed to help it tear open the deepest seal within the Nightfall Society.
Over the next few months, the four-person meetings between universes were held frequently. Rosen originally wanted to coast through, but even the Ancient God—his potential ally—did not give him the chance to slack off.
Though he possessed the cosmic origin seed, he had yet to demonstrate strength on the same level.
Everything about him remained a mystery to the Ancient God and the others.
Clearly, the Chaos Supreme Gods could not accept this situation, so they planned to use this opportunity to probe his true strength, to test his background. Of course, he could have avoided it, but that would mean losing the chance to break into their circle.
After some thought, Rosen decided to play along and engage with them.
If they wanted to seize the chance to test him, then he equally wanted to use the opportunity to test them.
Among the Nightfall Society's more than two hundred members, ninety-nine percent of their true selves had gone to the Ancient God's world to try and regain the chance to return to eternal life.
Only a handful succeeded; the rest died in the Ancient God's world, leaving behind only their great true god avatars hiding in the Nightfall Society. Even for an avatar to become the true self and reclaim immortal god-demon status was not easy—especially under current conditions where the extraordinary threshold had been halved.
So many members of the Nightfall Society had already given up and were simply waiting for the universe to be destroyed.
After all, as long as they hid within the Nightfall Society, even if the universe perished, they would survive.
But while giving up was easy, it also meant being at the mercy of others.
Next to the Ancient God's world, the Old World floated in the void, where the dark sun was growing smaller and smaller.
All the power of this dark sun was being absorbed as nourishment by a presence deep inside the eggshell.
With a series of cracking sounds, the dark sun shattered piece by piece into countless eggshell fragments.
Within this eggshell, a giant was incubating. It opened its pitch-black eyes and gazed upon the entire Old World.
There's an idiom for describing a person's eyes: "eyes like torches," meaning bright eyes that shine like flames.
But the giant's eyes were beyond such a description. More accurately, the two eyes were like twin suns shining down on the Old World—not with sunlight's white light, but with ink-black darkness.
Wherever the gaze reached, everything was cloaked in darkness, and all colors of light were absorbed into black.
In the blink of an eye, the Old World was reduced to ashes in absolute darkness. All the origins within flowed into the giant's body, merging into its eyes to form a pair of eternal organs—Dark Sun Heavenly Eyes—before the giant detached from the Old World and appeared in the New World.
By this time, nearly a hundred winners of the Fate Wars in the New World had already been promoted to eternal beings.
The World Tree, which had been among the earliest to ascend, was already preparing to flee at any moment.
The Fate Wars had wrought too much destruction, far beyond the World Tree's control. Whether it was the Holy Sanctuary or the Ancient God's displayed foundations, their strength was overwhelming. The World Tree had sensed danger and was ready to temporarily give up its revenge against the Ancient God.
After the ravages of the Fate Wars, the entire Ancient God World resembled an apocalyptic wasteland.
The seas were filled with broken corpses and blood. Nearly all the islands and landmasses had crumbled and sunk. The astral realm no longer held any intact stars. The sun itself was shattered into pieces, endlessly pouring out sunlight, turning the entire Ancient God World into a massive furnace.
Yet, the moment the giant descended into the Ancient God World, all the sunlight vanished along with its gaze.
Even when the giant's eyes locked onto the colossal eternal world, the light of that eternal world began to fade away. Even though the gaze was fixed on the World Tree and not other eternal beings, the newly ascended eternals instinctively felt a deep fear.
The World Tree was far too familiar with this kind of power, and the eternal will hidden behind the darkness.
"Ancient God..."
The World Tree knew this was not the time to run, even if it was possibly only a shadow of the Ancient God.
Though it was eternal like the Ancient God's dark sun avatar, it did not wield any usable eternal sacred artifacts. In contrast, the Ancient God's avatar certainly wielded the Heaven-Cleaving Divine Axe. At this moment, the World Tree was certain it would be cut down inside the universe.
So there was absolutely no option to flee. Instead, it had to rely on other newly ascended eternal beings to force the Ancient God's avatar to back off.
But before the World Tree could rally others to resist the Ancient God's avatar—who had already refined the dark sun into an eternal-level avatar—the Ancient God struck first, giving the World Tree no chance for survival. Its gaze enveloped the World Tree, distorting space-time and pulling it away.
Seeing its shield gone, the World Tree had no choice but to flee despite itself.
The Ancient God's assault on the newly ascended eternal beings had already upset the balance with the Holy Sanctuary. As long as the World Tree escaped the Ancient God World and neared the Holy Sanctuary, the Ancient God's avatar would find it impossible to kill it, and might even be eliminated by the Holy Sanctuary in turn.
The World Tree's thinking was not wrong. Its mistake was underestimating the Ancient God's true power from beginning to end.
The Ancient God the World Tree knew was nothing more than a thief who had stolen part of its power. Although the Ancient God's strength was already enough to make the entire Holy Sanctuary wary, the Sanctuary had not eliminated the Ancient God simply because it did not want to suffer too great a loss.
The World Tree could never have imagined how much the Ancient God had grown and how far it had advanced since its fall all those years ago.
They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder—or rather, that when you meet again after some time, you see someone with new eyes. How much more so after tens of billions of years of long passage.
Everyone believed the Ancient God had eaten too much, had become too bloated, so that the divine origin and eternal will could no longer control such an overwhelmingly powerful life origin. This was why it had to fall into slumber, nurturing countless beings in the Ancient God World to strengthen its divine origin.
However, the World Tree did not know that the Ancient God's slumber was not due to these reasons.
It was because the Ancient God had been grievously wounded by the Chaos Supreme Gods. It slumbered in order to refine Blue Star, to create a Dark Sun avatar that completely controlled the dark sun's power, and to feign weakness—relying on the Dimensional Supreme Gods to resist the Chaos Supreme Gods.
The Ancient God's slumber was real and true, but the reason behind it had little to do with the World Tree.
Thus, the World Tree had underestimated the Ancient God—and it was about to pay a bitter price for that mistake.
Using the cosmic origin seed to transform space-time origin seeds, and taking advantage of the terrain within the Ancient God World, the Ancient God's avatar easily dragged the World Tree out of the colossal eternal world and into the astral debris, directly facing the Ancient God's avatar, which already raised the Heaven-Cleaving Divine Axe.
As the axe fell, space-time was immediately sealed off, leaving no chance for the World Tree to struggle or evade.
But as a former pinnacle member of the first echelon of eternal beings, the World Tree was not without any means of resistance.
It directly mobilized all the power it controlled over the Stone Realm, using the Stone Realm's strength to enhance its compatibility with the origin seed and with the laws, finally casting the Eternal Sacred Technique—Stone Rhythm. This fused petrification power into all things, turning everything into stone.
The Ancient God's right arm was petrified on the spot, and under the World Tree's control, the Heaven-Cleaving Divine Axe bent to strike itself.
However, in the next instant, the cycle of space-time erased all petrification, and the axe continued to fall, resealing space-time. It caught up with the World Tree, who was too late to cast any other eternal sacred technique, and from head to toe split it in two with no defense.
The Eternal Sacred Body's wounds were not fatal, but the Dark Sun's wrath attached to the wounds was like a festering poison in the bone.
The World Tree's reason was fiercely burned by the Dark Sun's wrath. It completely lost all rationality and stopped considering escape. Drawing out an Ancient God Stone Chisel that was not very effective, the Eternal Sacred Body split in two and fought fiercely against the Ancient God's avatar.
What seemed like a simple axe strike actually contained nearly all of the Ancient God avatar's strength.
So after breaking the World Tree's reason with that one blow, the Ancient God's avatar no longer fought it head-on. Instead, it exploited the irrationality and impulsiveness of the World Tree, relentlessly striking its weak points, one axe blow after another, destroying the World Tree's origin.
Seeing that the World Tree was on a dead end, Rosen's true self within the Holy Sanctuary could no longer sit idle.
He did not care whether the World Tree lived or died—they were merely using each other.
But the World Tree could not die by the Ancient God's hand. If it had to die, it must be by his own hand to realize the greatest value.
Rosen opened a space-time crossing gate and appeared in the Origin Dark Sea far from the Ancient God World. Holding a void fishing rod, he used the power of space-time as the fishing line, and a hook fused with the causal origin seed as the fishhook. With a swing through the void, the fishing hook, carrying the line, pierced through space and hooked the World Tree.
Then, using his mastery of the Dark Sun Heavenly Eyes, he suppressed the Dark Sun's wrath the Ancient God had cast upon the World Tree.
After ascending to eternal being, the power of the Dark Sun Heavenly Eyes had undergone a qualitative transformation.
The Dark Sun's wrath was the black light emitted by the dark sun. Besides polluting and assimilating everything, it could also deprive all things of their reason.
The World Tree, somewhat recovered, immediately cooperated with the void fishing rod and actively took the bait.
Though the Ancient God's avatar did not expect anyone to intervene and save the World Tree, it still reacted immediately. Under the gaze of the Dark Sun Heavenly Eyes, it warped the cycle of space-time, already beginning to crush the fishing line made of space-time power.
At the moment the World Tree's life hung by a thread, the void took the lead and opened a space-time crossing gate.
The Primordial Avatar burst out and blocked the space between the Ancient God and the World Tree, instantly becoming intangible and targeting the Ancient God with a punch.
This punch contained spiritual power, not pure power centered on essence, but a divine fist technique focused on eternal will—the Eternal Sacred Technique Divine Extinguishing Fist the Primordial Avatar had mastered in life. With that punch, the Ancient God's eternal will was struck as if by lightning, suffering a heavy blow.
Although Rosen still feared the Ancient God's true self, he no longer feared the Ancient God's avatars.
After ascending to eternal being, he was already able to exert at least sixty to seventy percent of the Primordial Avatar's power.
He could even easily wield the Eternal Sacred Techniques inscribed in the spiritual core by the Primordial Avatar. While simply relying on the Primordial Avatar's power certainly could not compare with the Ancient God's true self, suppressing the Ancient God's avatar was absolutely no challenge.
(End of Chapter)