"Even light is frozen..."
Rosen stared at the frozen sunlight in horror.
Fortunately, he had never counted on the sunlight released from transforming into a Three-Legged Golden Crow to melt the Heaven-Frost Forbidden Zone. The real threat in that sunlight wasn't the heat—it was the tainted rays infused with the source of Eternal Degeneration and Eternal Wisdom.
These rays had no effect on powerful Icefeather Clan members, but they were a deadly threat to the weak ones.
First, the rays would cause degeneration of consciousness and stir primal instincts. Then, they would sap intelligence. If the pollution couldn't be removed, every Icefeather clan member exposed to the rays would gradually lose all intellect and become mindless beings.
The Icefeather Clan had a unique form of life—their bodies were entirely made of water elements.
Water elements were not simply water—they were energies imbued with water attributes.
Since their bodies were primarily composed of water elements, the Icefeather Clan had no fixed form. They could appear humanoid, beast-like, or any other shape imaginable.
Once they entered combat mode, a pair of wings made of ice crystal feathers would form on their backs.
The stronger they were, the larger their ice crystal wings became. This was also the origin of the name "Icefeather Clan."
The smallest wingspan was thirty feet. The largest could stretch thirty thousand miles.
Rosen had originally thought a thirty-thousand-mile wingspan was already formidable—just seeing the Icefeather clansman with such wings had made him feel threatened.
But just as he was preparing to strike first, a pair of ice crystal wings appeared over the Heaven-Frost Forbidden Zone that covered a full third of the sky.
Rosen was instantly shaken. The threat those final wings projected was overwhelming.
From that pair of wings, he sensed a power surpassing that of Immortal Gods and Demons.
Even though the Icefeather Progenitor had reached the peak of the Immortal God-Demon stage, even with the terrain advantage, it should have been impossible—by any reasonable measure—to unfold such a terrifying pair of wings, let alone exude such overwhelming threat.
So there was only one possibility: the Icefeather Progenitor possessed an Eternal Relic similar to the Serpent Mother Gourd.
Only by relying on an Eternal Relic could they have unfolded those dreadful wings.
In an instant, Rosen had already foreseen the result of the life-and-death battle. He had no chance of winning against such a terrifying opponent in the Heaven-Frost Forbidden Zone.
Without hesitation, he activated the Mechanical Fire Seed Source, transforming his ancient god's body into a metallic lifeform.
Then, his body began to shrink continuously.
In the blink of an eye, his form was reduced to the size of a grain of rice.
Rosen wore the Immortal Crown on his head, the Butterfly-Metamorphosis Feather Cloak on his back, and had four extra arms sprouting behind him. His six hands held the Heavenly Feather Bow and Apocalypse Bone Arrows, the shrunken Royal Sword of Kingship, the Glorious Throne cradled in his palm, the Creator's Divine Brush and Painting Book, and finally the Serpent Mother Gourd.
Six treasures in six hands still weren't enough. He even merged the Fallen Paradise directly into his sea of consciousness to guard it.
Just as he finished these preparations, the Icefeather Progenitor locked onto him.
The pair of frost wings that covered a third of the Heaven-Frost Forbidden Zone mobilized every frost law within it, then instantly compressed the cold energy, freezing everything within a three-thousand-meter radius around Rosen. Not just space—even time itself was frozen.
Yet Rosen ignored the frozen time entirely. The Glorious Kingdom and Butterfly-Metamorphosis Feather Cloak absorbed the bulk of the damage.
The remaining force, he endured entirely with his ultra-compressed body condensed through the Converge-Diffuse Seed Source.
Concentration creates essence—even foam, when compressed enough, becomes unbreakable.
Seeing that freezing space-time had no effect, the Icefeather Progenitor summoned an even greater surge of frost energy for a full-scale freeze.
There were no fancy techniques—just pure, overwhelming cold.
Simple and straightforward, but carrying the most terrifying damage.
The first to give out was the Glorious Throne, as it could only transfer damage.
Now, even the buildings in the Ancient God Realm's blizzard were buried. No matter how many supernaturals there were, they couldn't hold on much longer.
Next to fall was the Butterfly-Metamorphosis Feather Cloak. Though it was difficult for even Immortal Gods and Demons to break through its damage dispersion—
It was unfortunate that its first real battle was against an offensive-type Eternal Relic.
And compared to that, the auxiliary-type Serpent Mother Gourd was simply no match.
The endless cold shattered the Butterfly Feather Robe and easily penetrated the layers of defenses Rosen had stacked up. Fortunately, after his body was compressed and condensed, its defensive strength increased by several times. Although the blood inside him, which had turned into engine oil, was frozen solid, the cold could only freeze his body—it couldn't shatter it, and even more so, it couldn't bypass his body's final defense to completely freeze his Sea of Consciousness.
But seeing the ever-growing cold in the Sea of Consciousness, it was only a matter of time before it was completely frozen.
Even if he could resist for three to five years, he wouldn't last a thousand or two thousand.
Rosen had no doubt that, over a millennium or two, he would be worn down by the Icefeather Ancestor backed by the Heavenfrost Forbidden Zone.
Three months passed in the blink of an eye, and Rosen's Sea of Consciousness was on the verge of total freeze.
He had underestimated the power of the Eternal Relic in the Icefeather Ancestor's hands. The freezing power of the cold wasn't constant—it continued to intensify over time. So the originally estimated minimum of three to five years had turned into merely three months.
In an instant, Rosen canceled the compression effect of the Gathering Seed on his body and returned from the size of a grain of rice to a normal human size.
Countless blood vessels inside his body had turned to powder, his eyeballs were frozen into spheres of ice, and his brain had become an ice sculpture. From any perspective, he was already on the brink of death. The only reason he was still alive was due to the Immortal Crown keeping a faint thread of breath.
As even the Immortal Crown was about to freeze and shatter, Rosen, who had been frozen for three months, finally moved.
The Royal Authority Holy Sword locked onto the frost wings in the sky, and in an instant, he swung a slash powerful enough to split the heavens and earth.
The frost wings were cleaved in two, and even the world barrier of the Heavenfrost Forbidden Zone was torn open.
Having swung that sword, Rosen could no longer resist the eruption of cold within him and was completely frozen into ice dust.
However, when the Icefeather Ancestor descended to search for the body, the scattered ice dust had already vanished.
The Icefeather Ancestor looked up at the world barrier of the Heavenfrost Forbidden Zone, torn apart by a single slash, and saw an ancient-looking sailboat following the path carved out by the sword strike and the vanished frost aura, nearing escape from the zone.
Just as the ancestor considered pursuing to eliminate the threat at its root, the intruder stood at the stern, bow drawn and arrow not yet loosed, aiming at the ancestor.
This mysterious human still retained enough strength to threaten them.
If the ancestor insisted on pursuing, even if they succeeded in killing the human, it would come at a tremendous cost.
Moreover, the gourd in the human's hand, though it appeared to be merely a support-type artifact, was an Eternal Relic-level support treasure. Its defense wasn't weak. The fact that it hadn't been used yet made it clear the human still had more strength to spare—he wasn't seeking a life-or-death struggle with no retreat.
The Icefeather Ancestor gave up the pursuit and began repairing the damaged world barrier after letting the intruder leave.
The moment the Doomsday Ark burst out of the Heavenfrost Forbidden Zone, it immediately drew the attention of nearby Origin Beasts.
By the time the ark broke through the encirclement and escaped from the Origin Dark Sea back into the starry universe without interference, it had been battered to the point of being in shambles—not much better than when it had sunk to the depths of the Spirit Realm sea.
Rosen pushed open the captain's cabin door, his whole body covered in frost, shivering as he stepped to the bow.
He used the laws of time and space to form a space-time fishing rod and began distorting the void to fish for stars from the nearby superclusters.
The hook pierced through the void and snagged a star, which was instantly reeled in and compressed into the size of a candy bead, then swallowed into his belly.
The more stars he consumed, the less cold remained on his body's surface.
Ever since he determined that it was impossible to kill the Icefeather Ancestor in the Heavenfrost Forbidden Zone, Rosen had abandoned the idea of fighting to the death.
But if he wanted to leave, he had to make the Icefeather Ancestor feel wary.
So, relying on the innate skills from the True Creator Sequence, and using the Creator Scholar's abilities, he activated the core skill of the Masochist Witch—Pain Endurance. He accumulated all the damage he suffered, waiting until he could no longer endure, then converted it all into a counterattack.
Then, by stacking damage from various different Sequence abilities, and using the Gathering Seed to compress the damage to the extreme...
He finally carved out a path to survival and forced the Icefeather Ancestor to feel wary.
But the price Rosen paid was not small. Not only was the Doomsday Ark heavily damaged, he even died once. When he unleashed that slash, his Eternal Divinity, which had been layered in protections within his Sea of Consciousness, was frozen and shattered. He had to modify his own game data to resurrect.
However, even after dying once, he still couldn't completely expel the cold from his body.
If death and resurrection could clear all negative effects, Rosen would have gladly exhausted all the Eternal Game's origin energy to raze the Heavenfrost Forbidden Zone to the ground.
Looking at the tattered Doomsday Ark, Rosen took out the remaining resources dismantled from the Eternal Starship and began repairing the ark.
With time accelerated a thousandfold, even a month of real time was used on repairs—and in that month, Rosen fully recovered from all his injuries.
Originally, his next destination was supposed to be the cosmic forbidden zone adjacent to the Heavenfrost Forbidden Zone.
But now Rosen had changed his mind. He was preparing to head to the Scorching Heaven Forbidden Zone.
If the Celestial Frost Forbidden Zone was the epitome of ice and cold, then the Burning Heaven Forbidden Zone was the hottest place known in the universe.
And unlike the cold and desolate Icefeather Supercluster, the Burning Heaven Supercluster was definitely one of the liveliest places in the cosmos.
The journey was a bit long—the Doomsday Ark took five months at full speed before arriving at the Burning Heaven Supercluster.
Unlike the Icefeather Supercluster where no stars burned, the countless celestial bodies in the Burning Heaven Supercluster were shrouded in raging flames.
In the void, starships at the level of Immortal Godfiends constantly appeared, delivering countless stars as fuel into the Burning Heaven Supercluster.
Due to the special nature of the Burning Heaven Forbidden Zone, it wasn't occupied by any one race.
All Immortal Godfiends could claim a galaxy for themselves here.
Most other superclusters contained tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of galaxies, but the Burning Heaven Supercluster had only a few thousand.
Even so, the total number of Immortal Godfiends in the universe was far less than those few thousand.
As a result, there was no need for conflict—any unclaimed galaxy could be occupied freely.
Other Immortal Godfiends wouldn't take more than they needed either, because the ability to transport stars from across the universe to this supercluster was limited. A single galaxy was generally enough to burn all the delivered celestial bodies.
The Doomsday Ark ignored the surrounding prying eyes. Those traveling to and from the Burning Heaven galaxies were usually just avatars of Immortal Godfiends.
These avatars couldn't see through Rosen's disguise or recognize that he wasn't actually an Immortal Godfiend.
The Doomsday Ark passed through galaxy after galaxy and soon arrived outside the Burning Heaven Forbidden Zone.
Unlike most cosmic forbidden zones, the Burning Heaven Forbidden Zone was nearly risk-free—so long as one didn't act recklessly.
The entire Burning Heaven Forbidden Zone was not only an Eternal World, but also the Eternal Sacred Artifact known as the Burning Heaven Creation Furnace.
The Sacred God of Burning Heaven had completely merged his Eternal World with the Eternal Sacred Artifact he controlled.
The Burning Heaven Creation Furnace needed fuel, and the best fuel was stars.
So periodically, the furnace would erupt with Sacred Flames of Burning Heaven, transforming the entire supercluster's stars into fuel. After the combustion, the flames would return to the furnace, leaving behind crystalline Immortal Stars in the void.
With a stable output of Immortal transcendental resources, the Burning Heaven Supercluster was naturally divided up by the Immortal Godfiends.
Aside from the Sacred Flames, various types of extraordinary fire seeds would also be born within the Burning Heaven Creation Furnace. One could collect these seeds simply by entering and harvesting them from the outer regions. As for the depths of the furnace—it was virtually unreachable.
The Eternal Machine Race had definitely been to the deepest parts, but no records of it remained.
For even the Eternal Machine Race to conceal something, it was clear that some great treasure must lie within.
Of course, it was also possible that the treasure had already been taken away by the Eternal Machine Race's Progenitor Sacred God.
The Doomsday Ark passed through a flame-blackhole-like opening and charged into the Burning Heaven Creation Furnace.
Soon, it arrived in a boundless world of fire. Countless suns floated in the void—not gaseous stars like normal suns, but solid celestial bodies burning with Solar Divine Fire. These suns undoubtedly contained numerous Solar Divine Fire seeds.
However, these suns couldn't move—each one was a part of the Burning Heaven Creation Furnace.
Rosen was just about to start searching for extraordinary fire seeds. With his extremely fortunate Heavenly Will and the treasure-hunting ability of the Miracle Pouch, the more and better-quality seeds he found, the more confident he'd be in returning to the Celestial Frost Forbidden Zone.
But before he could even begin, the Doomsday Barrier of the Doomsday Ark had already been burned through.
Then, a round ball of flame rolled in and hovered above the forward deck.
Rosen only took one glance and immediately confirmed—it was an Immortal Godfiend no weaker than the Icefeather Ancestor.
Ordinary Immortal Godfiends couldn't easily tear through the Doomsday Barrier. This rotund ball of fire had clearly drawn upon the power of the Burning Heaven Creation Furnace. After thinking it over, Rosen figured this fireball was likely here because of the Celestial Frost Forbidden Zone.
"You carry the scent of the Sacred God of Celestial Frost."
The fireball circled around Rosen, not hiding its hostility in the slightest.
Rosen thought he was in for another tough battle, but to his surprise, the fireball's malice gradually diminished.
"The scent of the Sacred God of Celestial Frost is fading... You escaped from the Celestial Frost Forbidden Zone?"
The fireball spoke in obvious surprise.
Clearly, its true enemy was the Sacred God of Celestial Frost. Once it was sure Rosen was at odds with that forbidden zone, it gave up its killing intent.
"You guard the Burning Heaven Forbidden Zone like the Icefeather Ancestor?" Rosen asked tentatively.
"I'm not..."
The fireball replied without hesitation,"I'm the fire spirit of the Blazing Heaven Divine Flame, naturally a part of the Blazing Heaven Creation Furnace. I was born with hostility toward the Frost Celestial God. If you can kill many members of the Icefeather Race, you can come to me to exchange for extraordinary fire seeds."
"What's in the depths of the Blazing Heaven Creation Furnace?"
Seeing how straightforward the fire spirit was, Rosen asked directly.
"The Blazing Heaven Celestial God used his own life as material to create an eternal sacred artifact..."
The fire spirit didn't hide anything."Many eternal beings have come here, but none have taken it away. You can try if you want, but if you die, I'll burn you. You smell delicious. You're the best fuel I've seen since my birth."
Rosen stared speechlessly at the fire spirit disappearing into the flames.Sometimes, the truth really stung.
This fire spirit might simply be naïve, or perhaps so confident it didn't feel the need to lie. Of course, there was also the possibility it was lying through and through. With such brief contact, it was hard to tell, especially since the fire spirit's power was clearly superior.
According to the fire spirit, the Blazing Heaven Celestial God used himself as material to forge a treasure.
If true, then there might exist an eternal sacred artifact of the highest quality deep within the Blazing Heaven Creation Furnace.
But if it was a lie, then the furnace's depths were a deathtrap.
Rosen had broken through the world barrier of the Frost Forbidden Zone and carved out a path of survival, but there was no way he could destroy the Blazing Heaven Creation Furnace. If it were that easy, if the treasure inside could be taken so simply, the Eternal Mechanic Race would've long ago packed everything up and taken it.
Having suffered once already, there was no way Rosen would risk his true body again.
He released the Yinglong avatar and had it board the Golden Crow Starship, heading deeper into the furnace.
The further into the furnace they went, the more destructive the Blazing Heaven Divine Flame became.
Soon, even the Golden Crow Starship couldn't withstand it and disintegrated into pigment, forcing Rosen to put it away. The Yinglong avatar had no choice but to endure the flames head-on.
The Yinglong avatar wore the Molting Butterfly Feather Robe and carried the Serpent Mother Gourd.
The Eternal Immortal Vine that grew from the gourd could grow endlessly. Its end was tied to the Doomsday Ark, so even if the Yinglong avatar couldn't hold out, it could retreat into the gourd and be pulled back by the vine.
With layers of defensive skills activated, the Yinglong avatar's defense was even stronger than that of the Golden Crow Starship. Divine battleships were now far behind in comparison.
However, even these layers of defensive skills were quickly burned through.
There was no other choice—he had to activate the ice orb within his body.
The fire spirit had been able to sense the aura of the Frost Celestial God precisely because Rosen had extracted all his internal cold energy via the Root Insect Mother, then used the Source Seed to condense it into an ice orb—strong enough to freeze even an immortal god-demon.
Now, that carefully extracted cold energy had instead become fuel for the Yinglong avatar to resist the Blazing Heaven Divine Flame.
After several hours, the Yinglong avatar had passed through the front and middle sections of the Blazing Heaven Creation Furnace and reached the bottom.
Since the furnace was a fusion of an eternal world and an eternal sacred artifact, its internal space was a hundred times smaller than the Frost Forbidden Zone.
The Yinglong avatar was engulfed by Blazing Heaven Divine Flames the entire way and couldn't see anything beyond the flames.
But upon reaching the very bottom, there was surprisingly little flame to obstruct his vision.
That was because nearly all the divine flames had been absorbed by a fiery ring suspended in the void.
Looking closely, the ring was a fire serpent biting its own tail.
Just gazing at this tail-biting fire serpent from afar, Rosen's entire body began to spontaneously combust.
Not just his body—even his sea of consciousness and Yinglong godhood started to ignite.
Rosen was forced to fully detonate the ice orb, unleashing a freezing force that sealed the Yinglong avatar in ice. Only then did the mysterious internal fire finally dissipate. But this action also startled the Ouroboros-like fire serpent.
It stirred as if waking from slumber, slowly loosening its bite on its tail...
(End of chapter)