Rosen focused all his attention, waiting for the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf's counterattack.
However, something completely unexpected happened. After closely observing the Skyburning Sacred Serpent, the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf's intense hostility suddenly vanished. From the horn on its forehead, a beam of light shot out, instantly forming a massive spacetime black hole.
It wasn't a black hole formed by gravity, but one composed of the laws of time and space.
At the same time, Rosen realized he could no longer control the Skyburning Sacred Serpent.
Because the Eternal Will he had infused into the serpent's body had, in that very moment, been enslaved and taken over by the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf.
Then, the spacetime black hole froze the serpent and Rosen—who was hidden inside the mysterious Book Room within the serpent's body—and hurled them into the black hole. At the final moment before being banished, Rosen lost control over the Root Insect Mother.
Rosen had believed that the Skyburning Sacred Serpent and the Skyfrost Sacred Serpent already represented eternal-level power.
But now it's clear—I underestimated eternal lifeforms.
When the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf was operating purely on instinct, its enslaving origin seed could only control souls and divine-source essences.
But with a virtual soul and memories of its former self, the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf could now even forcibly enslave time and space—and fully control the Skyburning Sacred Serpent, leaving Rosen no chance to resist as he was expelled.
Its terrifying strength was one thing, but what was even more frightening was its ability to instantly assess the situation.
The virtual soul, possessing the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf's memories, could indeed control the corpse to overwhelm the Skyburning Sacred Serpent. But killing the serpent outright was virtually impossible. And the virtual soul couldn't sustain control over an eternal corpse for long.
So if it really came down to a drawn-out fight, the one who'd survive in the end would definitely be the Skyburning Sacred Serpent.
The Eternal Soulbinding Wolf realized this instantly. So it decisively abandoned the fight and removed the threat.
The Tenth Star Ring, after the Skyburning Sacred Serpent passed through the spacetime black hole, was crushed beneath its arrival.
Countless stars and civilizations within the supercluster were instantly annihilated—completely unaware of what had occurred.
The destruction was caused simply by the Skyburning Sacred Serpent's appearance in the cosmic void, which ruptured the universe like popping a bubble. The cost of a civilization's weakness and fragility was exactly this. It made Rosen start to consider which forbidden zone to target next.
But while he was still thinking, the fading spacetime black hole suddenly expanded again.
Through the black hole, Rosen saw the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf. The Sirius Supercluster was gone. The Soulbinding Forbidden Zone was gone. It was clear that the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf had devoured the forbidden zone, then chased him across time and space.
Rosen released the Doomsday Ark to escape—but after glancing at the star map, he froze.
He was currently located near one of the superclusters close to the Ancient God World.
This is no coincidence. The Eternal Soulbinding Wolf is headed for the Ancient God World.
Rosen recalled that the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf's heart had been excavated by the Eternal Mechanical Race—perhaps that was its goal: to retrieve its heart.
But in its current state, entering the Ancient God World would be suicidal.
No one cared about whether the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf lived or died—but if it awakened a slumbering Ancient God, it would trigger a hopeless catastrophe.
After passing through the spacetime black hole, the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf—with only one eye remaining—scrutinized Rosen, still hidden deep within the Skyburning Sacred Serpent.
Even the combination of Skyburning Soulfire and the Book Room couldn't block the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf's perception.
Suddenly, Rosen sensed the Root Insect Mother again. Then he looked at the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf in surprise.
Because he saw that the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf was actively cooperating, voluntarily merging its life essence into the Root Insect Mother.
"Descendant of the World Tree, I want to make a deal with you," the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf's voice transmitted directly into the Book Room through Eternal Will.
"What kind of deal?" Rosen asked in surprise.
"My resurrection contingency was destroyed..." the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf said rapidly. "You come from the Ancient God World. My heart is there. If you promise to retrieve my heart and use the Birth Origin Seed to cultivate it, then my corpse, my eternal relic, and the enslaving origin seed will all be yours."
"That simple?" Rosen asked suspiciously.
"Retrieving my heart is no easy task..." the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf said as it began to actively disassemble its own corpse.
All of its cells, its life essence, its bloodline origin, and the Eternal Enslavement Source were fully and willingly merged into the Root Insect Mother. In a short span of time, the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf's corpse completely vanished, leaving behind only countless endlessly replicating Root Insect Mothers.
In the end, only the horn on its forehead remained—this was the sole item left behind by the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf.
Rosen gathered all the Root Insect Mothers using the Aggregation-Diffusion Source.
Only then did he control the Skyburning Sacred Serpent to swallow the horn and made contact using his Eternal Will.
The Eternal Soulbinding Wolf's virtual soul and Eternal Will had not yet dissipated. Upon encountering Rosen's Eternal Will, they took the initiative to help him merge his will into this special Eternal Relic. The moment the fusion completed, the virtual soul dissipated entirely.
[Eternal Soulbinding Horn: Eternal Organ]
[Grade: Eternal Relic]
[Eternal Attribute: After fusing with this eternal organ, it can bind and imprison divine essence]
[Eternal Trait: Soulbinding World, Enslavement Source]
Rosen triple-checked to ensure everything was fine before attempting to fuse with the Eternal Soulbinding Horn.
A crystalline horn grew from his forehead. Upon merging, he immediately sensed the eternal world hidden within the horn, along with the Enslavement Source that served as the core of the Soulbinding World. All of this was power the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf had later infused into the horn.
Rosen had originally believed the horn on the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf's head was a naturally grown organ.
But in truth, it wasn't. The Eternal Soulbinding Wolf had forcibly fused this eternal organ by relying on the Enslavement Source.
And it was also by means of the Enslavement Source that the horn's power to bind and imprison divine essence had been activated.
The origin of this horn was unknown—even the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf itself didn't know where it came from. It belonged to some mysterious eternal lifeform.
At Rosen's thought, the Eternal Soulbinding Horn fused into his soul and vanished from his forehead.
This thing is powerful. The only downside is that it doesn't look very good.
Fortunately, it could be retracted, and its functionality remained unaffected.
The greatest value of the Eternal Soulbinding Horn, to Rosen, was its ability to forcibly enslave captured hostile transcendental beings through the Enslavement Source. It could also provide the Root Insect Mother's control powers with an ultimate level of enhancement.
Rosen sensed the Soulbinding World inside the horn and took out two Source Seeds.
These two seeds came from two other imprisoned immortal divine demons who had possessed Source Seeds.
Their immortal worlds had already been absorbed into the Soulbinding World, and their life essences and divine essences had been used up when constructing the virtual soul. Only their Source Seeds remained indestructible. The two Source Seeds were the Memory Seed and the Spirit-Motion Seed.
The Memory Seed's basic function was to enhance memory.
Beyond that, it granted the power to manipulate memory—modifying, deleting, or adding memories was all possible. Even manifesting objects from memory wasn't difficult. The Eternal Soulbinding Wolf had used the Memory Seed to carry its own memories.
The Spirit-Motion Seed—"spirit" referred to the soul, and "motion" referred to activity.
The Spirit-Motion Seed could manipulate souls, and even briefly grant a soul to soulless inanimate objects.
The core of the virtual soul, aside from the Eternal Soulbinding Horn, was the Spirit-Motion Seed.
Rosen quickly infused his Eternal Will into both seeds before moving on to deal with the rest of the spoils.
Deep within the Soulbinding World, there were some eternal-grade transcendental materials hidden.
There were even more materials of the immortal divine demon grade. However, there were no new Eternal Relics. Evidently, even for eternal beings, Eternal Relics were extremely rare. As for the immortal divine demon-grade treasures, quite a few were found—relics left behind by the imprisoned divine demons.
They were all excellent items, but not particularly suitable for Rosen's use.
Because many of the treasures had been specially crafted to match the individual power systems of the transcendental beings who used them.
So they lacked versatility. The best method of use was to melt them down and reforge them.
Except for a few top-quality items Rosen was reluctant to part with, he planned to have the Root Insect Mother decompose the rest to upgrade other treasures.
After quickly processing the loot, Rosen eagerly turned his attention to the Root Insect Mother, which was already sprouting, flowering, and bearing fruit.
What kind of Root Fruit could grow from the corpse of an eternal lifeform with over ninety percent completeness?
It would be hard to grow anything in a short time, so Rosen planned to take the opportunity to find the original master of the Starshooter Ballista—the Immortal Star God.
The Starshooter Ballista could point toward Blue Star, located on the reverse side of the Ancient God World, so the Immortal Star God definitely knew more information about Blue Star.
After leaving the Ancient God World, Rosen attempted to use the remnants of the dismantled Starshooter Ballista to track down the Immortal Star God.
But all his attempts failed. He had no certainty that he could find him on this return journey either.
Back when he traveled from the tenth star ring—where the Ancient God World was located—to the Soulbinding Forbidden Zone in the twelfth star ring, he had dropped thousands of eternal incarnations along the way. These incarnations were scattered throughout different superclusters and had already provided him with basic intelligence on over ten thousand superclusters.
In the Starclan Supercluster, there were many superclusters inhabited by celestial beings.
It was extremely difficult for stars to give birth to life. Normally, it required at least the twelfth star ring for a few stellar lifeforms to emerge.
The cosmic environment of the tenth star ring simply couldn't support the natural emergence of stellar lifeforms.
Therefore, the Immortal Star God was most likely located somewhere in the Starclan Supercluster.
This leg of the journey took the Doomsday Ark less than ten days.
Rosen's true body guided the Doomsday Ark into the Mysterious Codex Room and exited the Endless Void into the cosmic starry sky with his Bronze Dragon avatar taking the lead.
The tenth star ring couldn't withstand his power, so he could only let an avatar handle the investigation.
Rosen had witnessed the immortal formation of the Sirius Supercluster, built on countless stars, and thought the Sirius Clan was already formidable. Yet, unexpectedly, a mere supercluster in the tenth star ring housed an immortal formation even more powerful than that of the Sirius Clan.
Similar to the Sirius Supercluster, the immortal formation in this supercluster was primarily designed to gather origin power.
But rather than concentrating that origin power to forge transcendental star systems, it was dispersed and infused into certain promising transcendental stars. Then, through artificial intervention, the process of stellar soul birth was accelerated, resulting in a supercluster with a significant number of stellar lifeforms.
Using the Memory Source Seed, Rosen continued to probe the memories of various stellar beings.
However, he found nothing of value. The ones who had arranged the formation and created these stellar lifeforms remained unknown—even the stellar beings themselves had no knowledge of it. Lacking any heritage, many of them aimlessly wandered throughout the Starclan Supercluster.
Since he couldn't find the Immortal Star God, he would have to make the Immortal Star God come to him.
Rosen took out the transcendental materials left over from the dismantled Starshooter Ballista and let the Golden Crow Starship roam about, casting bait.
In an inconspicuous galaxy within the Starclan Supercluster, on an equally inconspicuous star, residual signals from the Starshooter Ballista were sensed. The star's surface slowly cracked open, revealing facial features glowing red like a deep abyss. Its eyes cast their gaze across the void, projecting onto the surface of the Golden Crow Starship.
The instant this gaze spanned hundreds of light-years, Rosen's Eye of the Creator immediately sensed it.
He counter-probed and instantly saw the awakened stellar lifeform.
It was only Sequence 0. Even in a fragile part of the universe, the gaze of a Sequence 0 being should not have been able to cross hundreds of light-years.
So, just like Rosen's Bronze Dragon avatar, this awakened stellar being was either an avatar or had actively sealed away its power. As expected, under the All-Knowing Source Seed's appraisal, the terrifying power hidden inside the stellar lifeform could no longer hide.
"Is this an Immortal Divine Demon?"
Rosen's eyes stung slightly as he gave a bitter smile.
Now he understood why the Immortal Star God knew of Blue Star—something even the World Will didn't.
Because the Immortal Star God was not only more terrifying than the Icefeather Ancestor, even the World Will and the recently pseudo-resurrected Eternal Soulbinding Wolf couldn't compare. After ruling out all other possibilities, only one answer remained.
The Immortal Star God's current power was only what he possessed now. In his prime, he had likely been known as the Eternal Star God.
Only a reincarnated eternal lifeform could wield such immense power at the level of an Immortal Divine Demon.
Inside the Memory Source Seed, a portion of the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf's memories had been stored.
While the Bronze Dragon avatar wandered and explored, Rosen's true body spent all his energy sifting through those memories.
Though they were mainly combat memories, the rest still benefited him greatly.
The strength of a Source Seed was, in fact, also influenced by external forces.
The universal law of survival was the strong devouring the weak, and the essence of that law was plunder.
That's why the Ancient Gods were so terrifying—because the foundation of their plundering Source Seed lay in the entire universe's law of survival of the fittest.
The World Tree's compatible Source Seed worked similarly. In the universe, after the birth of all things—from initial chaos to gradual integration and mutual compatibility—this, too, reflected a basic cosmic order. Even before civilization had flourished, compatibility was stronger than plunder.
From this, it was clear how powerful the Eternal Star God who mastered the Stellar Source Seed truly was.
Although the Eternal Star God couldn't compare to first-tier existences like the Ancient Gods or the World Tree, he could absolutely hold a solid position in the second tier.
As for why he wasn't in the first tier—that was because the main structure of the universe consisted of the Primordial Dark Sea at the core, followed by the Endless Void, and only then the visible Cosmic Starry Sky. Compared to the entire universe, the starry sky was just the "surface," while the Endless Void and Primordial Dark Sea were the true "substance."
That's why the Eternal Star God didn't qualify for the first tier—but he had the potential to grow into one.
As the universe continued to expand, the cosmic starry sky would grow larger, stars would become more numerous, and in turn, the Primordial Dark Sea would be increasingly diluted. If the universe ever reached the end of its expansion, then the Eternal Star God would definitely be able to ascend to the first tier.
Rosen had no interest in facing the reincarnation of an Eternal Star God. Without hesitation, he tore through the void and escaped into the Endless Void.
The moment his true body recalled his avatars, the Doomsday Ark activated the coordinate teleportation of its exclusive navigation map.
However, before it could complete the teleportation, the space around them was sealed by an infinite force of starlight.
Rosen released the Flame-Heaven Sacred Serpent, and the malicious intent that had enveloped the Doomsday Ark instantly dissipated.
The void split open, and a plain-looking physical star fell into the Endless Void.
The star's surface shattered and cracked open, and at its core was a stellar energy mass composed of countless strands of starlight.
The stellar energy collapsed and reshaped, transforming into a middle-aged man exuding boundless majesty. He wore golden armor, with a cloak like a river of stars stretching deep into the void. With a single step, he appeared before the Flame-Heaven Sacred Serpent.
"Hand over the Starshooter Ballista, or you won't be able to leave."
The Immortal Star God threatened coldly, leaving no room for negotiation.
"Although you're powerful, I'm no weakling either."
Rosen, manipulating the Flame-Heaven Sacred Serpent, flicked its tongue fearlessly in response.
"It's difficult to kill you, but injuring you is easy."
The Immortal Star God's voice fell, and the previously retracted malicious aura returned, completely enveloping the Sacred Serpent.
Rosen understood—this was the Immortal Star God's bottom line. There was no room left to bargain.
Because the strong don't waste words haggling with the weak. Had Rosen not summoned the Flame-Heaven Sacred Serpent from the snake bracelet, the Immortal Star God wouldn't have said a single word. He would've simply taken the Starshooter Ballista remnants and searched Rosen's memories—that would've been the standard procedure.
"I might not be your match, but I can completely destroy every trace of the Starshooter Ballista's existence."
Rosen said, testing the waters.
If the Starshooter Ballista wasn't as important to the Immortal Star God as expected, he might strike immediately.
But the Immortal Star God didn't. Instead, he fell silent, weighing the pros and cons.
Unlike those eternal beings who had grown weary of life, the Eternal Star God still had ambitions and desires.
Since stellar lifeforms preferred long slumbers, the Eternal Star God, though one of the oldest eternal beings, had actually been awake for only a fraction of the time most other eternal lives had lived. Naturally, he hadn't reached the point of existential fatigue.
And as long as he wasn't tired of life, he would assess advantages and losses carefully.
Would he be able to defeat his opponent? What were the chances of success? Were there others nearby who might intervene? Would an injury open him up to pursuit? Would the gains from killing the enemy outweigh the costs?
There were too many variables to consider. Eternal beings were no reckless fools overcome by emotion.
"What conditions will make you hand over the Starshooter Ballista?"
The Immortal Star God finally compromised after weighing the situation.
Rosen let out a quiet sigh of relief and began forcefully bargaining with the Immortal Star God over the terms.
Sometimes neither party was willing to back down—they might even probe each other with force.
Eventually, a compromise was reached. Rosen would hand over the transcendental materials left from the Starshooter Ballista after it was dismantled by the Origin Bug Queen. In exchange, the Immortal Star God not only had to disclose everything he knew about Blue Star, but also had to pay with a Stellar Source Seed.
Mastering a Stellar Source Seed could accelerate the birth of transcendental stars within the True Realm of the Ancient Gods.
With it, under the right conditions, one could even transform a star into a personal "eye"—a surveillance medium.
On the surface, it looked like the Immortal Star God had suffered a great loss.
However, obtaining a Stellar Source Seed wasn't all benefit. Through the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf's memories, Rosen had already learned: unlike acquired seeds, innate seeds still retained the eternal will of the Immortal Divine Demon who originally possessed them. That will could not easily be erased.
The highest authority over an innate Source Seed would always remain in the hands of an eternal being.
Unless the eternal willingly removed their eternal will, no one could truly seize control of an innate Source Seed.
And the Stellar Source Seed that the Immortal Star God was willing to hand over—its eternal will had definitely not been completely removed.
(End of chapter)