Chapter 39: Origin Stone

Day 126

Today, I went hunting in the surrounding forest with several family members, including my cousin Xuan Ou, who is also stuck at the peak of qi accumulation.

We teamed up and managed to bring back two war beasts. That's when I really realized the improvement cultivation has brought me.

My body was already very powerful, and even though my strength hasn't changed much, I've developed reflexes and bodily control that I never had before.

Even my sword technique is way better than before.

Although the Quatilard almost ripped my head off and even if I was injured, it was worth it, especially since the clan will allow us to use formations to help us break through as a reward.

...

BOOM

A huge crack opened on a floating island and a huge iron vein formed. Under the constant pressure between its weight and the magnetic levitation force, the island split in two, dropping most of the iron into the ocean and leaving the rest in the air.

Elsewhere, the ground cracked and floating islands soared into the air, while continents and the ocean floor continued to open and close.

As it rapidly expanded, the divine realm trembled in all directions and its inhabitants clung to anything they could find to avoid falling.

Fortunately, Liam had asked the mages to build matrices and magical formations under each city and village, preventing the ground from opening up at those locations.

At the spatial wall, the chaotic energy seemed to be suddenly drawn to the center of the demi-plane and pierced the spatial barrier.

The demi-plane realized something and controlled the incoming energy, purifying it in the process.

When the energy finally reached the center of the demi-plane, it had already transformed into an extremely thin and pure spiritual energy, hard to find in a plane.

This energy began to swirl, absorbing everything around it.

"It's about time."

Liam opened his spatial ring and threw a bunch of rank 4, 5, and 6 magical minerals into the swirling vortex.

He didn't even need pearls; he simply covered them with his own faith and spiritual energy, imprinting them with his mark.

The swirling vortex engulfed everything and grew visible to the naked eye.

From a few centimeters to a meter, and then two, three...

In the void, Liam felt his heart burning as he watched materials worth hundreds of thousands of faith points vanish in smoke in an instant, but he continued to produce magical ores one after another.

Several hours later, the energy vortex stabilized at a diameter of about twenty meters and no longer accepted any minerals.

At that moment, it began to spin faster and faster, compressing during the process.

At the same time, chaotic energy surged more and more around the demi-plane and managed to break the spatial wall in several places, but instead of tearing everything apart, it rushed towards the forming origin stone.

The closer it got, the purer and finer it became.

The swirling vortex engulfed all this energy and continued to shrink.

As things began to calm down and the vortex disappeared, it revealed a splendid crystal stone perfectly spherical, about twenty centimeters in diameter.

Before the will of the plane fully awakened, Liam plunged his consciousness into the origin stone and found a newborn soul which, although not yet fully developed, was of incredible purity.

Yet he did not let himself be swayed and began to form mental seals, encompassing this new consciousness with an indelible mark.

This mark was a soul enslavement seal.

It wasn't like a typical slave seal, which forced an individual to obey orders.

These seals had several flaws. Either they didn't restrict the thoughts of the slave, allowing them to revolt at the first opportunity, or they erased their consciousness and made them completely stupid; barely capable of carrying out simple orders.

In contrast, this one was special and merged directly with someone's soul, making them a true slave in their mind.

In their own thoughts, the master's orders were absolute and had to be followed to the letter, but they would still retain their ability to think and their intellectual flexibility.

It could be said that once marked by such a seal, you would be a slave body and soul, faithfully devoted to your master, no matter what they did to you.

However, these seals were very complicated to set up. It usually took several hours to establish the seal, and most people would self-destruct their soul if they realized they couldn't escape rather than become soul slaves.

So either you needed a newborn soul that didn't resist, or you needed to be three or four ranks above the one you were trying to control to completely immobilize their consciousness for hours.

It was no joke. A split second of inattention and the individual would take the opportunity to self-destruct, injuring you in the process.

Plus, you had to be a higher existence to have enough control over your soul to perform such an operation.

Once all this was done, the slave's soul would be fully merged with the seal and marked by the master's soul.

This created a soul bond between the two, allowing them to communicate almost instantaneously as long as they weren't thousands of light-years apart.

At the same time, the master would also have a soul seal that allow him to control the slave, placing a certain burden on their soul, much like a linked artifact.

It wouldn't pose a problem for practice, but there was a limited number of soul bonds each could establish.

On their side, the slave was bound to the master, and if the master died, then the slave would too.

Conversely, if the slave died, the master would suffer a certain backlash, but nothing permanent or truly dramatic.

...

Several hours later, the divine realm stopped trembling and gradually regained its calm.

From a radius of 200km, it now measured 650km radius and was already well advanced as a low-tier plane, but the proportions of the realm had hardly changed. The two continents were now much larger, and several islands had appeared in the seas and in the air.

Several mountains emerged from the ground everywhere, creating large mountain ranges, and there were now nearly a thousand floating islands.

Although most were only tens of meters, some measured several hundred meters.

There were even three islands measuring nearly a kilometer, with two above the capital.

They emerged from the largest island introduced by the divine pearl before it split in two, and then the pieces continued to grow.

The only difference was the composition of the floating islands. Before, they were just pure blocks of fluxorium, but now they were covered with all sorts of different minerals like rocks, metal, or soil.

One may wonder why new islands had emerged from the ground and why there were such changes, but the answer was quite obvious.

When a plane naturally expanded, it converted spiritual energy into matter. However, apart from simple elements such as oxygen, iron, iodine, hydrogen, and many others, it couldn't "invent" atoms.

So everything it created was essentially a copy-paste of what already existed in the divine realm.

That's why it's said that the more diversified the divine realm is early on, the less there would be to do later on.

...

At the level of the spatial wall, the void energy gradually calmed down, and the holes in the spatial wall closed.

Upon contact with the blue wall, chaotic energy was absorbed and slowly transformed, releasing pure and gentle energy inside the plane.

...

At the same time, the spatial rift in which Liam's divine realm was located seemed to be closing, rapidly compressing the space around the plane.

At that time, Liam took out two reproduction pearls and merged them with his divine realm.

In addition, he also fused the pearl from the spiritual stone vein offered by his family and placed it under the Nagas' sanctuary, next to the capital, finally exhausting all his fusion slots.

Immediately after, he took out a matrix disc from his storage ring and launched it above his divine realm. When the disc aligned with the center of the realm, it expanded to several hundred meters and began to glow brightly, releasing a gigantic sphere that covered the entire plane and extent to the whole rift.

As a result, the space quickly stabilized and the rift stopped to collapse. As Liam looked inside the plane, he saw everyone moving at high speed, as if they had received a nitro boost.

It was the main effect of this formation, which once fully charged, could accelerate the time of a low-tier plane at a ratio of 1/10 compared to the main void for 25 years.

In other words, during the next 10 days on Earth, or the next 25 years in the vacuum, 250 years would pass in the plane.

It was a treasure of the Adler family that his uncle and father requested (extorted) from the family elders, just like the magical ore pearl.

This formation disc was a precious asset of the family, and even a demigod at the pinnacle would have to spend several months recharging it.

Even so, it had a fatal flaw: it could not withstand the pressure of the main void.

The primordial laws like time and space were much stronger in the void than in the crack, and would eventually destroy the disc after a certain time.

So it had to be used either on a demi-plane, which was a huge waste of resources, or on a new plane just before it was expelled into the main void.

Fortunately, the artifact also had several matrices to stabilize space and prevent the crack from ejecting the plane. It could be said that it was a major asset for any student.

Now, all he had to do was waiting.

...

As the tremors subsided, Liam's believers looked around them vigilantly.

ROAR

Throughout the plane, beasts roared as they sensed the concentration of spiritual energy increasing.

It was even worse in the sanctuary; between the breakthrough of the divine realm and the addition of a spiritual vein with a source stone, the concentration of spiritual energy had directly reached the level of a low-tier plane, and it continued to increase.

Everywhere, beasts went berserk and began to kill each other as their strength increased.

In facts; beasts were different from intelligent races; they created their own spiritual roots as their strength increased, and they only had to breathe in spiritual energy and eat energy-rich food to grow to the top of their bloodline.

Unconsciously, all the beasts absorbed the spiritual energy just by breathing, and most of the beasts stuck at the peak of their rank directly reached the next rank.

However, every system had its advantages and disadvantages.

For a beast, it was easy to progress to the limit imposed by the bloodline, eventhough it was pretty slow.

After that, it became extremely difficult because they had to directly break through their bloodline barrier and surpass their own genes.

…

Back in the plane, the worst case was in the sanctuary, where spiritual energy had been introduced long ago.

There were already four rank 3 beasts that had established their own territories and shared half of the sanctuary, while Sylvera's turtle occupied the other half, supported by the Nagas and Valyrs who cultivate precious plants.

However, the beasts all seemed to have entered a state of total madness and were attacking everything that moved, including the believers' territory and were now ravaging the fields.

Even though the turtle was powerful and very strong defensively, it could only fight against two of the sanctuary's leaders: a honey badger and a Simiar.

[SIMIAR PICTURE HERE]

The Nagas were ill-prepared, and there was only one great warrior on guard, thinking that the beasts would never attack.

Now, he was completely caught up with a forty-meter-long horned serpent which has reach advanced rank 3.

Even the war beasts seemed to no longer fear death and were also attacking, devouring several magical plants alongside the last rank 3 beast.

...

A few kilometers away, in the capital, Ruvia was monitoring the outskirts of the city when she saw her bracelet break in two.

"I'll leave the capital to you grandpa; there's a problem at the sanctuary."

Immediately, she used her mana and flew at sound-speed towards the sanctuary.

...

The battle continued but the turtle and the great Naga warrior were slowly being cornered and forced into a desperate fight.

At that moment, a huge pressure descended from the sky and pushed everyone to stop fighting.

"Surrender or die!" Ruvia Said.

She was no longer the playful young girl from the altar and displayed a chilling expression that made everyone who met her gaze shiver.

Nevertheless, the serpent seemed not to appreciate it and raised its head to defy her, but it was greeted by a blade of wind that sliced off its head, sending blood flying everywhere.

The war beasts and those below were already so frightened that they had become unconscious, and even the rank 3 honey badger, surely the most stubborn of all, lowered its head in fear.

Ruvia looked at the Simiar, the honey badger, and the white fox, which were the only great beasts still alive, especially the female fox.

She was about twenty-five meters long (with the tail) and eight meters. She had a splendid pearly white fur that seemed extremely soft to the touch, making Ruvia's eyes shining.

"I give you a choice." She said to the fox. "You can choose to stay here and become one of guardians of this place, or you can become my companion beast. I can provide you with everything you need to become a spiritual beast and make you reach the next rank. If I'm not mistaken, you are the weakest of the great beasts here. If you follow me, be sure that you will surpass them all. I'll even take you to other worlds!"

The fox listened to Ruvia's proposition and seemed to weigh the pros and cons.

She was the youngest of the sanctuary leaders and was barely twenty years old, being a beginner at rank 3.

Even though the turtle didn't meddle in their affairs, she had continuously been harassed by the other three. Without her great agility, she was almost sure she would have already been killed.

Finally, she resigned herself and approached Ruvia, crouching in front of her.

Under the astonished gaze of the other three great beasts and the great Naga warrior, Ruvia sat on her back and showed a lovely smile.

"From now on, I'll call you Maya!"