Inside a silver palace floating within black clouds and surrounded by golden lightning, thousands of golden-armored figures patrolled its halls.

  Thunderous, loud noises from outside seemed to be blocked by an invisible barrier, while the lightning coiled around the palace like snakes guarding their nest.

  In the middle of this monumental palace, on the middle floor, there was a room that lacked doors. Inside, faint, delicate notes could be heard—a calm melody, relaxing and engaging, making the listener recall flashes of a lover caressing their hair.

  There, sitting on a massive silver throne, was a creature that could be mistaken for a female human. She wore no cloth, only hundreds of silver bracelets, rings, and necklaces, letting anyone who gazed upon her take in her silver skin, silver hair, and silver eyes.

  Her hands moved, touching the air as if playing an invisible harp. Each time she stroked, a silver cord would appear and produce a note before vanishing.

  Beside her stood a human clad in golden armor, without a helmet, nodding along to the music.

  His skin was bronze and healthy, his short black hair neat. However, his golden eyes flickered with sparks of electricity from time to time, crackling softly.

  Suddenly, this peaceful scene was interrupted by the sharp sound of a metallic twang cutting through the air.

  For a split second, there was a high-pitched whine, followed by a vibrating echo before the room fell into silence.

  One of the silver strings had just broken.

  The woman on the throne stopped playing, her silver eyes flashing with light, while the armored man stood still.

  Hours passed. Neither of them moved.

  Then, finally, the woman’s eyes returned to normal, and she spoke in a metallic voice.

  “A few Unique Lifeforms were born, Jin Rong. But their Fate Lines are difficult to grasp.”

  The man in golden armor, Jin Rong, raised his hand, and a spear of golden lightning surged into existence. Smiling, he asked, “Empress, should I bring them here for your inspection?”

  As the naked silver woman nodded, a flash of white light appeared in the room, lingering only for a moment before vanishing.

  Both she and Jin Rong watched it, their gazes lingering there but for a moment before glancing at each other.

  The Empress reclined on her throne, once again playing the invisible harp.

  “Do you think it was Her doing? Or maybe one of His plans?” Jin Rong asked, his lightning spear dissipating.

  “Neither. Both. I can find out later. What matters is that She promised they wouldn’t be a problem and that we could get a better piece of Origin if we didn’t interfere,” the Empress said in her mechanical tone, her voice breaking in places.

  Jin Rong nodded. “So does this mean we won’t interfere?”

  The Empress closed her eyes and smiled softly.

  Jin Rong smiled back.

  And both returned to their rhythm: one playing notes, the other nodding along.

  In a pitch-black space, no sound could be heard, and not a single speck of dust could be seen.

  Endless darkness stretched as far as the eye could see—formless, tasteless, and without a scent.

  Then, a scarlet dot appeared.

  Slowly, it stretched into a scarlet line before stabilizing at an unknown size.

  From the center of the scarlet line, a bulge formed, expanding outward.

  Fingers emerged, pressing against the line, stretching it until it widened into an oval form.

  A portal.

  From the scarlet portal, a figure resembling a male human stepped through. He carried the scent of blood, yet his face exuded beauty and calmness. His skin was beige, and he wore a pair of blue jeans, a cotton pink shirt, and a black plastic band on his wrist.

  But most striking of all were the scarlet horns protruding from his forehead, paired with long, silk-like blonde hair.

  His lean build and casual clothing clashed, creating an eerie sense of wrongness.

  As the scarlet portal closed behind him, the glow in his scarlet eyes dimmed. He remained floating in the dark space, a thin smile on his lips.

  His mouth moved, but no sound escaped.

  Scowling, his entire body flashed scarlet, and a bubble of the same color expanded around him. Then, he spoke.

  “What are you planning?”

  His gaze was fixed on the darkness beyond his bubble. When nothing responded, he smirked.

  “In the past few universal days, millions of Unique Lifeforms have appeared, most of them dying shortly after. But! My Clones detected a few interesting ones with shrouded Fate Lines. So? What’s the plan?”

  Still, the darkness remained still.

  The horned man raised an eyebrow.

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  A second later, a pompous cushioned chair appeared behind him, and he sat down. Casually, he rested his right leg over his left knee, supporting his chin with one hand on the chair’s armrest.

  His long blonde hair moved on its own, as if a breeze were passing through.

  He started whistling.

  Slowly, the scarlet bubble around him expanded, growing brighter and less transparent.

  It stretched wider and wider—first the size of a mountain, then a nation.

  The horned man smirked.

  Yet, without his notice, a white figure sat in front of him, starkly contrasting the surrounding darkness.

  It was a perfect copy of him, but completely white, except for the black voids where its eyes should be.

  The horned man leaned back and gave a thumbs-up. “We’re on the same side. I’d appreciate it if you included me in your plans.”

  Suddenly, the scarlet bubble shrank, collapsing around them.

  From the void, black tentacles emerged, shifting between a gaseous and liquid state, slithering against the bubble, akin to starving beasts licking their meal.

  The horned man scoffed.

  “What do you mean ‘focus on my next stage’? You two freaks never share how to advance.”

  He jabbed a thumb at his own chest.

  “I shared my discoveries, didn’t I? The Cloned Core, the Artificial World, even the Rune Circle! And let’s not forget the lesser techniques.”

  The tentacles outside the bubble stirred calmly.

  In response, the blonde man slammed his fist on the armchair, making it dissolve into scarlet light as he stood up.

  “Don’t give me that bullshit! I’m the strongest in the Heavenly Field Stage. People call me the Heavenly Demon! I came here to your little game as a player, not as another shitty piece.”

  The white figure smirked, tilting its chin up.

  The tentacles coiled tighter.

  “Arrogance?” The Heavenly Demon’s scarlet eyes flared. “I’m trying to find my own path forward, just like you old freaks did. Am I not the youngest Star Being? I’m a genius! If you keep gatekeeping me, I’ll ask Her to help me!”

  The tentacles tightened further, pressing against the scarlet bubble.

  The Heavenly Demon frowned. He glanced at his clothes, sighed, and shook his head.

  “Did you know,” he muttered, “that after creating billions of artificial races, I found only one Pathway that’s impossible to cultivate? Your Darkness Pathway.”

  The white figure stared at him.

  The Heavenly Demon smiled.

  “I believe if I combine all sixteen Pathways, something will happen.”

  The white figure shook its head. Then, with those black, hollow eyes, it locked its gaze onto him.

  Time passed.

  The Heavenly Demon’s grin widened.

  “That’s a deal! I won’t ask about those Unique Lifeforms, then.”

  Cheerfully, he touched the bubble’s surface, making it pop. Glancing up, darkness greeted him.

  No tentacles.

  No white copy of himself.

  His scarlet eyes gleamed, and a scarlet dot appeared before him. He pressed his hands against it, dragging them downward to form a scarlet line, then pulled it apart into an oval portal.

  The Heavenly Demon stepped through and vanished, as the portal itself dissipated.

  Once more, the dark space fell silent.

  On the peak of a mountain larger than a planet, a tiny brown speck of dust floated swiftly and alone. A second later, another appeared, and the two began to dance together.

  Soon, three more emerged from the mountain’s peak, joining the silent rhythm. Five became ten, then twenty, multiplying rapidly until they numbered in the hundreds.

  Hours passed, and soon the entire peak shone with a brown glow, as millions upon millions of dust specks floated and danced, swaying from one side to another.

  But the rhythm changed.

  The specks began to rotate on their own, colliding into each other. Each impact sent out powerful shockwaves, and fleeting images flickered in the bursts of energy.

  The movement continued, their numbers dwindling while the energy they created gathered at the center.

  After years, only energy remained, and it had taken shape—a humanoid brown silhouette.

  It drifted weightlessly above the mountain’s peak, uncontrolled and aimless until it suddenly stopped.

  Three holes opened on its face, there were two for eyes and one for a mouth.

  The creature laughed.

  "I'm alive! I'm alive!" it cried, its voice like the crackling of raw energy, given meaning by the powerful intent behind it.

  As it danced, the mountain shook beneath it.

  Joy overflowed from its being as it called out to the mountain. "Join me! Join me!"

  The ground trembled, glowing with a deep brown hue.

  "Let's dance! Let’s d—"

  Its words were cut short as a colossal palm made of earth erupted from the mountain and slammed the entity into the ground, sending a deafening shockwave across the peak.

  A second palm struck.

  Another followed.

  And another.

  Hundreds of massive hands of stone descended with crushing force, flattening the peak.

  Silence fell.

  A moment passed.

  From the dust, the brown entity emerged, trembling. Its energy was nearly depleted, and it desperately absorbed the essence seeping from the mountain to restore itself.

  It said nothing. Every bit of its will was focused on survival.

  But survival was impossible.

  The mountain shifted.

  Slowly, it tilted downward, revealing an incomprehensibly vast eye staring back at the struggling entity.

  From an outsider’s perspective, the mountain was not a mountain at all—it was a horn. A single horn of an earth-formed colossus, sitting in an endless desert. Both the giant and the desert itself were impossibilities made real, for the horn alone dwarfed planets.

  The brown eye blinked, and rage filled its gaze. A powerful intent boomed through the silence.

  "A Spirit? A new kind of Spirit? Don’t care. Die!"

  Without a single movement, without a technique, without the use of essence, the energy-born being—no, the Spirit, still in its early stages, formed purely from Soul Force and being a unique lifeform itself ceased to exist.

  The giant moved its horn back to its forehead and kept cultivating on this galactic-sized desert, gathering Earth’s essence and making more and more sand with it, expanding its domain.

  A bright orange star stood alone in the dark expanse—other stars, similar to it, were mere dots, far, far away.

  Powerful flares pulsed across its surface as catastrophic, yet soundless, explosions erupted around it.

  For thousands of years, it burned like this.

  Until suddenly, millions of explosions ignited at once.

  The star shrank rapidly, the space around it seeming to cry out as multicolored cracks tore into existence, only to close hastily as if sealing a wound.

  Then, in the place of the vanished star, a colossal being emerged.

  It had a human-like body, muscular and masculine, with long, fiery wings stretching behind it and a bird-like head. The creature’s entire form was made of orange fire, burning intensely yet leaving no sound in the endless void.

  As it remained suspended in the starfield, the firebird-man turned its head from side to side before sharply fixing its gaze downward and to the left.

  Space rippled, bubbling as if molten metal were reaching its limits. The void warped into an orange hue, curling inward before finally it ruptured

  And an orange hole opened on it.

  Through this tear, the firebird-man saw a tiny lone rock hurtling through space.

  At first, he nodded, muttering, "Origin’s convergence," and was about to close the hole, bu then, his instincts screamed at him.

  His entire being flared, burning hotter as he focused on the flying rock.

  Time passed, but he couldn’t discern what had drawn his Astral Self’s attention.

  Concerned about wasting any more time in his cultivation but unwilling to leave unfinished business, he came up with an idea.

  Opening his beak, the firebird-man vomited three blazing spheres into the orange passage.

  The fiery orbs grew larger and larger as they passed through, each expanding until they formed three massive stars.

  Satisfied, he waved his hand, and the hole in space sealed shut.

  Then, his body exploded on a final calamitous, soundless eruption, before reforming into an orange star, drifting once more in the solitude of the starfield.

  On the other side of the starfield, the three newborn stars continued their slow pursuit of the flying rock

  They were weaker and smaller than the birdman’s star, but still colossal compared to any planet.

  Though it would take days to reach their target, each star’s consciousness had already recognized what the rock was:

  A world overflowing with Earth’s essence, where some cultivator had used a technique to transform most of its surface into a colossal tree, flooding it with Nature’s essence.