[Flame of Heaven's Blaze: Transcendent Fire Seed]
[Grade: Immortal God-Demon]
Between Rosen's right fingers, a snake as thin as a toothpick coiled back and forth at his fingertips.
Even after fusing so many minor divine fires, the Flame of Heaven's Blaze was still just a fire seed at the level of an Immortal God-Demon.
In the past, that would have been a pleasant surprise, but now it left him a little unwilling.
After all, the Soulflame of Heaven's Blaze was an eternal-grade flame. Now his Flame of Heaven's Blaze had actually weakened it.
Fortunately, the Flame of Heaven's Blaze, as he had expected, had a far greater effect on tempering the essence of life than the Soulflame.
And it still had evolutionary potential—future fusions with divine fire could further strengthen it.
At a thought, the Flame of Heaven's Blaze drilled into his body.
In the blink of an eye, his entire body, from inside out, was enveloped in the blaze.
Every cell and every strand of DNA within him was refined under the tempering of the Flame of Heaven's Blaze.
If at this moment he transformed into all things and became an Immortal World, then the Immortal World formed from his divine body would surely be slightly smaller than before.
Over time, his body had fused with many worlds, and its size had long since surpassed the Dragon Realm at its peak.
It was already large enough, but bigger wasn't always better. The larger the world, the more its limited matter would be spread thin.
Larger worlds had their advantages: when fully unfolded, they could accommodate more life and absorb energy from the void far more efficiently.
Among Immortal Worlds, the Mystic Book Room's source-absorption efficiency was less than one percent of the Dragon Realm's.
But the strength of each world's structure was the reverse.
Rosen had no need to cultivate life within his body—what he needed from his divine body was the ultimate defense.
So he had to refine the essence and remove the excess. Of course, removing impurities meant the essence of life would weaken.
Therefore, while the Flame of Heaven's Blaze tempered his body, it also had to strengthen the Immortal World his body had become.
Inside the Soul-Binding World in the belly of the Sacred Flame Serpent, the Immortal Sky Wolf was already on the verge of death.
The endless Soulflame of Heaven's Blaze burned it mercilessly. The Immortal Sky Wolf had no power to fight back—it couldn't even self-destruct. Every time it tried to activate a self-destruct method, the Heavenfrost Chill would forcibly freeze it.
Under Rosen's meticulous control, the divine essence of the Immortal Sky Wolf was finally burned away little by little.
All that remained was an intact shell of flesh and blood, and an Origin Soul Crystal of Immortal God-Demon quality left behind after its divine essence and soul had been incinerated.
Rosen released the Immortal Sky Wolf from the Soul-Binding World and pressed his hand on its corpse.
The cells in his right palm instantly transformed into a Root-Mother Worm, becoming countless tendrils that burrowed into the Immortal Sky Wolf's body. Very quickly, the tendrils drained all nutrients from the shell, leaving only the Immortal World within its belly wrapped in countless roots.
The Immortal Sky Wolf's Immortal World was fused with a Black Hole Source Seed that governed cosmic gravity.
And like the Mystic Book Room, it was an extremely refined Immortal World.
In fact, relatively speaking, this Black Hole World was two to three times stronger than the Mystic Book Room.
After all, the Immortal Sky Wolf was almost one of the oldest Immortal God-Demons in the universe, while Apocalypse had only lived in the Old God World for a limited number of years.
Because the Black Hole World was too dense, Rosen couldn't digest it easily.
As the Immortal World formed by his body slowly devoured the Black Hole World, he was also trying to fully merge the Source Seeds he controlled into his body.
Big Immortal Worlds had their advantages, and small ones had their strengths too.
Rosen never made choices. He wanted all the benefits.
So he planned to completely integrate the Gather-Scatter Seed, the Black Hole Seed, and the Mechanical Seed into the Immortal World his body had become. That way, the newly reborn Immortal World would perfectly combine the traits of all three seeds.
Whether it was his flesh-and-blood body or the material world he had become, both could freely transform into mechanical form. Moreover, with the power of convergence and dispersion at will—when dispersed, it could expand into a vast Immortal World; when gathered, it could compress that Immortal World to the extreme.
Combining this with black hole gravity, his newly born body, by preliminary estimates, could already withstand the Heavenfrost Chill head-on.
As the black hole world was continuously digested, Rosen's life essence fluctuated between 180 and 182.
It finally settled at 180, but its strength was several times greater than the original 182.
Rosen joyfully concluded his cultivation, and the Eye of the Creator cast its gaze upon the Old God World.
During these years of seclusion, the Old God World had fallen into even greater chaos.
Aside from the Celestials, there were no empires left. Former empires had splintered into kingdoms, and those kingdoms into duchies.
Even the Celestials were struggling now, relying entirely on a multitude of Spirit Realms to barely sustain themselves.
If this continued, the Celestials were also doomed to extinction.
Rosen's Creator Will instantly enveloped all Celestial nations, issuing a command to gather their elite.
The most talented and loyal of the Celestials would be divided—some would be transferred to the True Realm of the Old Gods, while others would be sent into the universe to pave a path of retreat. The rest would be left to the laws of natural selection—survival or extinction would be their own responsibility.
Compared to the other races in the Old God World, they were already incredibly fortunate.
Though the noble system of the Old God World had nearly collapsed, Rosen noticed that the power of the Immortal Emperor Miracle Tarot had not diminished, but had actually increased.
The reason was simple—wise kings were still kings, but so were tyrants and fools.
Now, with the collapse of morals in the Old God World and the rule of the strong over the weak prevailing, without divine support to sustain empires, the scattered kingdoms and duchies instead saw even greater centralization of power. However, if this trend continued, the power of the Immortal Emperor would soon peak and decline.
This was precisely why he wanted to send the elite Celestials into the universe to establish civilized nations.
The corpse of the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf had already taken root, sprouted, and blossomed. The next stage was fruiting.
Yet at this stage, no fruit had appeared.
Upon investigation, Rosen found that the corpse of the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf contained primarily life essence. Its divine essence was limited. If he let it fruit in this state, it would greatly aid the transformation of his life essence, but offer little benefit to his divine essence.
To transform both life and divine essence, he would need to feed it an endless supply of divine essence.
Rosen used all the divine essence he had obtained from wiping out the Sky Wolf Clan and most of the Ice Feather Clan to nourish it, but it was still not enough. What right did those two races have to be compared to the life essence of the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf?
There were eternal beings of flesh, of elemental nature, and of soul.
It now appeared that he needed to find the cosmic forbidden zone formed from the death of a soul-type eternal being.
That was no easy task—soul-type beings were incredibly rare among cosmic lifeforms.
Even if he found one, it wasn't guaranteed that he would benefit.
And the Old God World had now reached a critical point in his plan—it was too late to go into the universe.
So his best option was to find the corpse of a soul-type eternal lifeform within the Old God World.
The Eternal Dreamfiend was just such a being. The Eternal Dream Realm was merely a dreamscape of the Dreamfiend, already comparable to an Immortal World and even exhibiting traces of eternal traits. The Dreamfiend's actual eternal world, or even its corpse, would surely be worthy of matching the life essence of the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf.
Actually, even without enough divine essence, the Root-Mother Worm could convert life essence into divine essence.
But conversion came with loss—if half the Eternal Soulbinding Wolf's life essence was converted, retaining forty percent would already be fortunate.
That was ten percent of an eternal being's origin—it was enough to make Rosen lose sleep from heartache.
Rosen immediately contacted the World Will to inquire about more information on the Eternal Dreamfiend.
The World Will did not withhold anything—it clearly knew Rosen urgently needed this to advance to Immortal God-Demon.
Before the clone of the Old God was hunted down, the stronger their side's combat power, the better.
But after a successful kill, all bets were off.
They might divide the plundered Source Seeds as agreed and go their separate ways—or they might immediately turn on each other.
After all, a plundered Source Seed would be split into at least five fragments—it was impossible to quickly extract massive amounts of life essence from an eternal being in that state.
But if someone could monopolize an entire Source Seed, their chances of advancing to eternal life would increase tenfold, or more.
The World Will was nearly omniscient within the Old God World. Part of that knowledge came from memories implanted by the Old Gods, and the rest from countless years of observation. However, none of it included the whereabouts of any eternal beings.
Those corpses certainly didn't just vanish.
The World Will had two theories. The first was that all the corpses were inside the Dark Sun.
The Old Gods used the Dark Sun to forge something extremely terrifying, so the World Will was deeply wary of the Old World.
The second possibility was that the Old God World housed a hidden realm.
"A hidden world..." Rosen's Eye of the Creator swept across the Old God World again and again.
Of course, he found nothing. If even the World Will couldn't detect it, how could I possibly find it?However, the World Will did provide him with one clue—this clue was related to Apocalypse.
So many great True Gods of the old and new worlds were said to be dead, but most had survived through various means.
Yet Immortal Apocalypse, who wielded the Omniscient Source Seed and the Book of Divinity—an Immortal God-Demon like that, even if he couldn't defeat others, could have at least escaped. The only ones capable of killing Apocalypse for certain were eternal beings like the Old Fisherman in reincarnated form.
But according to the World Will, the killer was definitely not one of them.
So the identity of the being who killed Apocalypse remained an unsolved mystery to this day.
There were quite a few other Immortal God-Demons who also died under unclear circumstances—those associated with the Information Source Seed, Game Source Seed, Corruption Source Seed, Ember Source Seed, and Hell Source Seed. Each Source Seed represented an Immortal God-Demon, meaning at least six had died in baffling ways.
Some of these deaths occurred during the brief awakenings of the Old God's clone, triggered by external stimuli.
Whenever the Old God's clone awoke, the World Will would seal itself and fall into slumber.
Because the World Will couldn't let the Old God's clone discover that it had developed self-awareness and the intent to betray.
As a result, the World Will knew nothing of the events that happened while the clone was conscious.
So it was possible that some of those six Immortal God-Demons were killed by the Old God's clone.
But Apocalypse definitely wasn't one of them, because when Apocalypse fell, the Old God's clone had not awakened.
Moreover, Rosen still didn't understand why he had obtained the Divine Book Room on Blue Star and been reincarnated in the Scarlet Flame Duchy, why the younger Rosen resembled him almost exactly, or why the Howard family—likely his descendants—had survived and carried on in the Old God World.
This all suggested that a hidden world might truly exist within the Old God World.
And this world seemed closely tied to Blue Star—perhaps even Apocalypse's death was related to it.
If Apocalypse had left any clues behind, they would be in his eyes, his relics, and the Divine Book Room.
Rosen brought out everything connected to Apocalypse and began combing through it repeatedly for possible clues.
Eventually, his eyes settled on the Apocalypse Treasure Map—this artifact had been merged into his Miracle Sequence.
Ever since mastering the Eye of the Creator, the Old God World held almost no secrets from him.
He didn't even need the Apocalypse Treasure Map anymore to find treasure—he could locate all sorts of treasures on his own, and many he couldn't even be bothered to collect.
So the value of the Apocalypse Treasure Map had grown increasingly low for him.
At times, he even regretted merging it into the Miracle Sequence.
With a thought, a Coin of Fate materialized in his left hand.
By tossing the Coin of Fate, one could receive different miracle outcomes depending on which side landed up.
It would also trigger the Fate Roulette, which contained both rewards and penalties.
Rosen then summoned the Apocalypse Treasure Map in his right hand. The map also had a miracle trait called "Coin of Fate," though that version of the coin was only used as a consumable to generate miracle treasure maps.
Thinking about it, this "Coin of Fate" miracle trait was a little strange.
If the Apocalypse Treasure Map needed to create miracle treasure maps, it could just consume luck directly.
Why was there this extra step of converting luck into a Coin of Fate?
And wasn't it strange that there was another miracle artifact also named Coin of Fate, one that was also tied to luck? Could it be the two were related?
Perhaps the miracle trait "Coin of Fate" in the Apocalypse Treasure Map actually pointed toward the artifact Coin of Fate.
Rosen tossed the Coin of Fate, guiding it to land on heads. His luck instantly surged to its peak.
The Fate Roulette began to spin, and under his control, it landed on a reward.
Because his Miracle Sequence had already reached the Immortal God-Demon level, the Coin of Fate was also enhanced to that level.
The rewards on the Fate Roulette mostly stemmed from wish-based miracles.
At ranks below Forbidden God-Demon, the rewards were decent—sometimes even providing True God-level extraordinary artifacts.
But at the Forbidden and Immortal God-Demon levels, the rewards were quite underwhelming. They typically offered a bit of enlightenment, healing of some wounds, or a vague lead toward an immortal material—none of which impressed him much.
Punishments were similar. At the True God level, the Fate Roulette could instantly kill a True God.
To a Forbidden God-Demon, it might inflict serious injuries. For an Immortal God-Demon, any harm was mild at best.
Rosen began madly tossing the Coin of Fate. He didn't care about the rewards, and any minor punishments could be easily healed.
He had no idea how many times he tossed it. In the process, he burned through over half of the Eternal Ember Origin he'd saved up since mastering the Ember Source Seed. The Fate Roulette's rewards and punishments began to cycle and repeat—until finally, during one more spin, a brand-new option appeared.
\[Fate Indicator: Upon selection, it points toward the World of Fate]
Rosen chose that option on the Fate Roulette without hesitation. This might be the true clue left behind by Apocalypse.
The Apocalypse Treasure Map had functions for treasure seeking and treasure storing, along with the seemingly redundant Coin of Fate trait.
Its real purpose wasn't to hide pieces of Apocalypse's body, but to point toward the Coin of Fate, to the Fate Roulette. Only Immortal God-Demons, who feared not the costs of tossing the Coin of Fate and spinning the Fate Roulette, had any chance of triggering this special reward—Fate Indicator.
As the Eternal Will selected the Fate Indicator, a new pointer appeared on the Fate Roulette atop the Coin of Fate.
Following the direction indicated by the pointer, Rosen dove into the void to search for this World of Fate.
(End of chapter)