In the True Realm of the Ancient Gods lay the Empire of Heavenly Melody, an empire established around the forbidden zone known as the Domain of Heavenly Sound.
Over ninety percent of all musicians, bards, choristers, war-chant shamans, and other transcendent professions in the entire True Realm of the Ancient Gods were concentrated within the Empire of Heavenly Melody. It was a convergence point for the most comprehensive and high-level music in the universe.
At Rosen's command, a divine orchestra composed of true gods from the Empire of Heavenly Melody had already been assembled.
He then used the Sacred Law of Myriad Transformations to analyze them, and subsequently applied the same law to his eternal incarnations, transforming them into replicas of those gods—replicating their memories and transcendent sequences. Each incarnation was even equipped with a perfected Heavenly Melody source seed.
Deep within the Sea of Miracles, Rosen took out the Sacred Bell of Mercy and cast it into the void, letting it ring.
The Heavenly Melody source seed fused within the Sacred Bell resonated with the source seeds held by the eternal incarnations. The natural rhapsody of joy performed by various instruments intertwined with the melody emanating from the Sacred Bell, their combined effect significantly enhanced.
As Rosen listened to the joyful harmonies in his ears, he felt all the negative emotions within him dissipate in an instant.
The corrupted eternal will that he had suppressed and sealed via the Sea of Miracles also calmed under the power of the natural rhapsody of joy. The irrational consciousness of the eternal will was drawn into the spiritual world, caught in a cycle of endless resonance.
The corrupted eternal will, tainted by undying intent within the universe's primal force, was being purified bit by bit of its negative thoughts.
Once fully purified, Rosen eagerly retrieved and absorbed the polluted eternal will. Since the primal force of the universe had actively merged with the undying intent, the corrupted undying intent was naturally absorbed alongside the eternal will.
Now that the corruption had been purified, Rosen smoothly digested the undying intent that had delivered itself into his hands.
The amount was small—he hadn't dared to preserve too much, after all.
But now that he had a method to purify the corruption from evil beings, he could finally hunt and consume without worry.
His first prey, naturally, was the incarnation of the old fisherman—an eternal clone transformed using the Sacred Law of Myriad Transformations.
After fully becoming an eternally evil being, that incarnation had completely severed its link to Rosen's true self. At the very least, as an eternally evil being, it could no longer use that connection to corrupt him across space.
That the prey had given up on contaminating him didn't mean he couldn't provoke it in return.
Using the Eye of the Creator, Rosen locked onto the old fisherman—who was currently fishing at the edge of the universe.
Though the fisherman incarnation had only grasped a single source seed of Angling, and Rosen had only given it one when transforming it, the power it displayed far exceeded what a single Angling source seed should be capable of.
The eternal will directly manipulated the laws of space-time and fishing through the primal power of the original universe.
Distorted laws of space-time formed into spatial pools, and the endless primal force of the universe became fishing rods, with lines cast into various forbidden zones of the universe—violently yanking entire unclaimed forbidden zones from the space-time pools.
The terrifying power displayed was no less than that of the Elemental or Celestial Holy Gods.
More than ninety percent of the eternal beings of the Divine Temple would be crushed if they had to face the fisherman now.
No wonder the Chaos and Dimension Holy Gods had struck with lethal force to set an example—forcing those eternal beings who had joined the Divine Temple to retreat into its miniature cosmos. Had they not banded together, facing these evil beings alone would have been a death sentence.
Rosen opened a portal through space-time and arrived several hundred light-years away from the old fisherman.
At the edge of the universe, space was fragile, and the essence thin, minimizing interference with eternal will and enhancing perception range.
The crazed old fisherman instantly locked onto Rosen as a threat.
With a flick of the rod in his hand, a hook formed of space law lashed toward Rosen.
Sensing danger, Rosen immediately summoned his Heaven and Earth Shield. Yet even this eternal sacred artifact was torn open by the spatial-law-formed hook—an instant that proved just how terrifying this destructive power was, nearly rivaling that of an Ancient God.
Even worse, Rosen found he could no longer activate his portal—his control over the laws of space-time had been severed.
Rosen possessed the Root Source Seed that could convert into any other source seed. With the converted space-time source seed, he had always been able to manipulate all space-time laws within the universe. This was why he feared no enemy—not even the Chaos Holy God could block his escape route.
But now, the old fisherman—this evil being—had done the unthinkable, completely stripping away his control over the laws of space-time.
Source seeds not only provided a constant flow of power, but also amplified the effect of laws. But that required laws to be available in the first place. Without usable space-time laws, all Rosen could manipulate were the laws from the True Realm of the Ancient Gods within his own domain.
Rosen expanded his domain of laws and unleashed his Primal Incarnation to strike at the old fisherman.
Unable to control laws outside his domain, and with the strength of the laws inside the domain insufficient to contend with his opponent, the most suitable response to this situation was the Primal Incarnation. This was because the Primal Incarnation did not rely on the laws of the universe for power; it could enhance its essence and spirit directly through the spiritual primal core.
In the past, Rosen could not accurately judge the strength of the Primal Incarnation because during the era of Immortal Gods and Demons, his number of eternal wills was insufficient.
Now that his eternal numbers had risen and the quality was complete, he could unleash most of the Primal Incarnation's power.
A conservative estimate placed the Primal Incarnation's life source at over one thousand, its divine source also over one thousand, with a combined spiritual source exceeding two thousand. This explained why even a partial display of the Primal Incarnation's power once shattered the Celestial Saint's armor and crushed the heart of the Celestial Saint.
At this moment, with the Primal Incarnation at full power, Rosen believed even the Chaos Holy God would hesitate to confront it directly.
However, defeating the Chaos Holy God was impossible because the Primal Incarnation's greatest weakness was its eternal will—the greater the power it used, the greater the consumption. As long as the Chaos Holy God avoided a direct clash, it would be easy to exhaust the eternal will.
If the Chaos Holy God couldn't withstand this terrifying power, then of course the old fisherman could not either.
With its mighty physique strengthened by a spiritual source exceeding two thousand, the Primal Incarnation crushed the old fisherman's entire body with bare hands. Yet, witnessing this, Rosen did not hesitate to apply various speed-enhancing skills and temporarily retreat.
Because he discovered something terrifying: the damage dealt by the Primal Incarnation was nothing but a joke.
If the Chaos Holy God had taken the Primal Incarnation's crushing blow head-on, even if it survived, it would be heavily wounded and require hundreds of thousands of years to recover.
But this level of damage meant nothing to an evil being.
The Primal Incarnation, moving at hundreds of billions of times the speed of light with Rosen, instantly put thousands of light-years between them.
Only now did Rosen regain control over the space-time laws of the universe.
He opened a space-time portal and temporarily retreated back to the miniature cosmos of the Divine Temple.
From just a few breaths of fighting, he had discovered the truly terrifying aspect of the evil beings.
First, the evil incarnation used the Undying Will rather than the Eternal Will. When he and the old fisherman simultaneously controlled universal laws, the Undying Laws held absolute priority over the Eternal Laws. This meant that in the presence of the Undying Laws, he could not control the universal laws.
Relying only on the laws from the True Realm of the Ancient Gods, he could never resist universal space-time laws.
If not for the True Realm evolving into a miniature cosmos, the laws inside his domain would likely have been controlled by the evil being.
Beyond the absolute priority, the Undying Will was also deeply fused with its primal source.
Rosen's Eternal Will was a derivative of the divine primal source, which contracted within his sea of consciousness.
But the evil beings were different. Their life primal source and divine primal source were completely fused with the Undying Will, thus sharing its undying properties. This was why when the Primal Incarnation crushed the old fisherman barehanded, its primal source was not damaged at all.
Being crushed from a whole state into a pulp was just a change in appearance—the blood and source remained intact.
This was not even the true Primal Life, but an eternal evil being polluted and assimilated by the Undying Will.
Rosen dared not imagine how terrifying the true Primal Life must be.
From this perspective, the Primal Incarnation seemed unworthy of the title "Remains of the Primal Life."
Rosen realized he might have overestimated the value of the Primal Incarnation. Among the true Primal Lives, there were certainly stronger and weaker ones. The Primal Incarnation was probably near the bottom, as evidenced by its complete remains still being preserved.
The stronger the life, the harder it was to leave behind a corpse after death.
Because no one wanted their body to become an enemy's trophy. Moreover, stronger lives were harder to kill, requiring the complete annihilation of the divine primal source. The remaining life primal source would be scant.
Unless a living eternal being willingly left its corpse, it was fully capable of destroying both life primal source and body.
Eternal beings rarely left corpses unless they wished to; the same applied even more so for Primal Lives.
Rosen initially thought the Primal Incarnation willingly left its remains. Now, it seemed it was just too weak—when faced with a strong enemy who killed it, it couldn't even destroy its own body. Otherwise, the huge difference between it and eternal evil beings would be inexplicable.
The undying nature of the Undying Will was terrifying beyond measure. It was unimaginable how one could kill a Primal Life.
The evil beings' current primal source was fused with the Undying Will, which could not be destroyed. Yet, without destroying the Undying Will, one could not harm the divine primal source. Without harming the divine primal source, it would continually restore any damage to the Undying Will.
Even Rosen's Main God Computer was struggling to find a solution, almost overheating trying to figure out how he could defeat eternal evil beings under these conditions.
Perhaps beings like the evil lifeforms were simply beyond the ability of eternal lifeforms to contend with.
The only one truly capable of resolving the threat of evil lifeforms was the Heart of the Universe. Those unlucky evil lifeforms that had remained in the Sea of Universal Origin were effortlessly eliminated by the Heart of the Universe's instinctive counterattack. Rosen had completely underestimated the power that the Heart of the Universe possessed.
As the core of the universe, the Heart of the Universe could mobilize all the power of the cosmos.
When that power was fully unleashed, it might even surpass that of the most powerful Primal Lifeform.
After all, even a starved camel is bigger than a horse. Even if the will of the universe had perished and only the shell of the Heart of the Universe remained, it still wielded terrifying power. The Chaos Holy Gods' schemes against the Heart of the Universe worked only because they exploited the fact that it operated on instinct alone.
After giving up on hunting the evil lifeforms, Rosen began to monitor them instead.
As years passed, the outermost edge of the universe saw all the world origins drained completely by the evil lifeforms. With no origin energy left to endlessly repair the void, both the Dark Sea of Origin and the cosmic starry skies began to collapse.
Only the endless void remained, slowly beginning to implode inward.
The universe, once an ever-expanding balloon, now began to shrink toward the Sea of Universal Origin under the constant deflation caused by the evil lifeforms. The ones who had destroyed the third stellar ring at the outermost edge of the universe had now begun to break into the fourth ring, continuing their destruction.
At their current rate, they would tear through all the stellar rings and reach the Sea of Universal Origin within a few hundred years.
Rosen could remain calm, but the Divine Temple was starting to grow restless.
After separating from the Sea of Universal Origin, the Divine Temple's miniature cosmos, under the control of nearly two hundred eternal lifeforms, advanced toward the fourth stellar ring.
Even though they had previously been subdued by the Chaos Holy Gods and the Dimensional Holy Gods, the Divine Temple still believed itself to be the strongest power in the universe.
They thought they had merely been defeated one by one, and as long as they stuck together and didn't split up, they would remain the strongest faction in the cosmos.
This belief wasn't entirely wrong. The Chaos Holy Gods couldn't take on the Divine Temple head-on either.
But they had vastly underestimated the evil lifeforms, having no true understanding of just how terrifying a power the Undying Will—surpassing even Eternity—truly was.
Though it was a misjudgment, it wasn't born of arrogance.
It was simply a matter of ignorance leading to incorrect conclusions.
The ruined temple was a structure left behind by a Primal Lifeform, and it had the power to suppress and stabilize a miniature cosmos.
So even as a ruin, it remained the absolute core of the Divine Temple.
At this moment, within the only intact main hall—expanded by spatial manipulation—a grand council chamber had been established.
The Chaos Holy God had once been the hidden ruler of the Divine Temple, relying on the Elemental Holy God and other high-ranking members to maintain control.
But after the Chaos Holy God's existence was revealed, the Elemental Holy God and others fled and defected to their former master.
The Celestial Holy God, who had once been suppressed and marginalized within the leadership, had instead become the universally acknowledged strongest eternal lifeform remaining in the Divine Temple.
However, Rosen did not assume absolute authority because, as a single manager, the Celestial Holy God could not compel nearly two hundred eternal lifeforms to bow their heads. Over the years, the Divine Temple had restructured its power system, adopting a council model to form its internal governance.
Rosen, leveraging his identity as the Celestial Holy God and his control of the Heaven-and-Earth Source Seed, easily became the first Speaker of the Divine Temple Council.
His selection was simply because the Heaven-and-Earth Source Seed could assist in shaping the miniature cosmos of the Divine Temple.
Although the role of Speaker was nominally just a figurehead, Rosen was already very satisfied.
As long as his goals aligned with the collective interests of all the eternal lifeforms in the Divine Temple, his position as Speaker would make it easy to sway them to support him. At the very least, if he proposed a campaign against the Chaos Holy Gods, everyone would undoubtedly vote in favor.
Rosen knew this expedition against the evil lifeforms was bound to fail, but he raised no objections.
With so many eternal lifeforms joining forces, even if they couldn't win, retreating intact wouldn't be difficult.
Treating this failure as experience-gathering was acceptable. After enough defeats, even if they still couldn't kill evil lifeforms wielding the Undying Will, there was still a chance they could find a way to trap them and bring them back to the Sea of Universal Origin.
When that happened, and the Heart of the Universe struck back and killed the evil lifeforms, surely they would at least get a share of the rewards—even if it was just scraps.
So, after the proposal passed the council with near-unanimous approval, the Divine Temple began traveling through the void that very day, heading toward the fourth stellar ring.
(End of chapter)