Chapter 36: The Birth Of The Infant Soul

Chapter 36: Chapter 36: The Birth Of The Infant Soul

Ten years later.

Aeon sat deep within the tranquil rows of the Archive tower, readinv ancient texts, when his brow suddenly twitched in deep frustration. He slammed the leather-bound book shut with a quiet snap, leaning his head back against the plush velvet seat.

"Ten full years, and that egg remains completely unchanged," Aeon muttered to himself, gently massaging his temples. "When is it ever going to hatch? I fully expected it to take some time, but a whole decade is getting ridiculous."

For the past ten years of uninterrupted internal time within his isolated domain, Aeon had absolutely no intention of sitting idle while waiting for his Infant Soul to hatch.

Although he deliberately chose to halt his active rank breakthroughs on his Warrior and Arcane paths to maintain his perfect balance, he didn’t waste a single day.

He spent the years searching, learning, and ultimately comprehending the absolute highest, most optimized methods required to cultivate every subsequent stage of his three paths.

Because of this intense comprehension and theoretical mapping, the completion status of his custom-made, unrecorded technique percentage jumped significantly.

[Name: ???????]

[Rank: Origin]

[Current Completion Status: Incomplete(10%)]

He was taken aback when it showed only 10 percent for all ranks of every path. And so he asked his system, but the answer shocked him.

[Master has only created the cultivation system of the mortal realm. If you want to increase the percentage, you have to understand the cultivation system of the other realms, such as Constellation, Divine, ?@?#$, @?#&, and #$^?]

Aeon was shocked to his core when he found out that there were actually three more realms beyond the Divine realm. It is common knowledge in the Nexus World about the existence of Constellations and Gods. So, it is assumed that they have their own realms to reside in.

But not everyone knows how to become one of them or that. Although they know it is possible to become one.

But that didn’t distract him. He knew that his system level was low, and he wouldn’t get answers now even from the Archive, so he focused on other things he could do at the moment.

He didn’t stop there. He continuously pushed his combat masteries, designing and mastering thousands of advanced martial styles and high-tier spell circles.

During the extensive research breaks, he thoroughly unraveled the fundamental laws governing Alchemy, Blacksmithing, and various auxiliary mystical professions.

Yet, despite his limitless memory and advanced understanding, he had never expected his Infant Soul formation drag things out this massively. For an ordinary, high-tier genius attempting to manifest an Infant Soul at the C-rank, the standardly required time are only a few months, or a couple of years at the absolute maximum, depending on their innate talent.

But for him who has an Infinite Talent—the process had dragged on for ten continuous years without a single sign of hatching.

Aeon deduced that this anomaly was either a direct side effect of forcing a C-rank evolutionary process into a baseline F-rank stage, or because the sheer density of the multi-colored energies he had fused into the seed required a vastly longer gestation timeline.

Regardless of the delay, his instincts told him this extended compression was an exceptionally good omen for his foundation.

Rising smoothly from his seat, he vanished from the polished white marble halls of the Archive, materializing back over the tranquil, glowing waves of the golden ocean world before dropping into his rock-solid meditative posture.

"I need to see exactly what is happening inside that shell," Aeon murmured, closing his eyes to project his awareness inward.

----

With a slight pull of his will, his consciousness broke through the mental veil, manifesting cleanly within the boundless blue waters of his Sea of Consciousness.

Resting quietly right beside his translucent Soul Core was the massive, multi-colored draconic egg, its surface still shimmering with starlight.

Aeon walked forward across the internal sea, reaching out his arm to place his palm against the smooth, warm surface of the shell. "Hello, me. When exactly are you planning to hatch, bro?" Aeon chuckled softly, deeply amused by the bizarre, surreal concept of talking directly to his own soul.

But the exact millisecond the words left his mind, the massive egg convulsed violently. A series of deep, spider-webbing fractures instantly tore across the thick shell, releasing a blinding torrent of multi-colored light from the cracks.

Crack!

Aeon was taken completely aback, his mind reeling. "Seriously? Right now? The exact second I choose to talk to it? If a casual verbal trigger was all it took for it to hatch, I would have done this a years ago..."

He wasn’t even granted the time to finish his internal thought. The multi-colored shell violently exploded inward, unleashing a brilliant, soul-shattering flash of multi-colored light that momentarily blinded his spiritual vision.

When his perception finally adjusted and his sight returned, Aeon immediately noticed an anomalous shift—his localized center of gravity felt significantly lower to the sea, and his field of vision had shrunk.

Startled, he quickly looked downward to scan his reflection in the crystal-blue water below.

Staring back at him from the liquid mirror was a magnificent, multi-colored, and beautifully transparent Western Dragon.

The creature possessed small, elegant wings, sharp dragon horns, and every single defining trait of a pure dracon. But instead of holding the solid, dense muscles of his physical form, this new body was entirely ethereal and see-through, glowing with a soft, cosmic spectrum.

Aeon was stunned for a brief moment before his rational mind rapidly calmed down, processing the transition. "Ah... I almost forgot, not that it is possible. This is precisely how the soul is supposed to manifest."

Under the standard laws of cultivation, when a practitioner is navigating the first three baseline ranks of the Spiritual Path, they can only perceive their sea of consciousness using the internal inspection technique.

But the moment a master successfully scales into the C-rank and form their Infant Soul, it means their soul has officially achieved an independent, autonomous shape.

From that exact intersection onward, they are no longer restricted by basic sensory projection—their soul is their active consciousness.

Aeon spent a few quiet moments shifting his new, transparent draconic limbs, checking the flexibility of his wings and tail before redirecting his attention to the second last most dangerous phase of the stage.

He had to permanently anchor his primary Soul Core directly inside his Infant Soul forehead. Floating fluidly above the blue water without even needing to flap his wings, he hovered right in front of the floating white sphere, opened his transparent jaw, and cleanly bit down on the core.

Instead of swallowing it, he skillfully manipulated the energy pathways, guiding the translucent core to slide smoothly up through his transparent dragon skull until it locked perfectly into the center of his forehead.

The moment the core settled into its designated position, Aeon focused his intent to initialize the next step.

He needed to re-create his four costume cosmic runes from scratch. He dubbed this runic technique as the [Cosmic Ouroboros Runes], because he could not utilize the original runes he had created for his physical paths—those initial process were created using pure cosmic energy, which would not work for his soul.

To guarantee success, he had to make the runes using a mixture of pure Spiritual Energy and his sixteen primordial energies.

Aeon simultaneously gathered both forces simultaneously into his control, compressing the contrasting tides into tight, rotating energy spheres before manifesting his conceptual Rune Chisel to carve the required runic patterns.

Following three grueling hours of relentless, hyper-focused carving, he successfully finalized the four custom runes, guiding the completed [Cosmic Ouroboros Runes] straight into his soul core.

The moment they entered the core’s gravity, the master runes began to rotate in a rapid orbit, casting out thousands of tiny, identical sub-runes that migrated to embed themselves across every single transparent part of his Infant Soul dragon form.

in his Infant Soul dragon body, Aeon steeled his consciousness, preparing himself for the unimaginable wave of agony that was about to hit his mind. In the known history of the cosmos, attempting to simultaneously destroy and re-create one’s own soul was a level of absolute torment that defied any form of pain. Not that anyone can do that.

But before he triggered the loop, he needed to maximize the energy quantity to complete the process as quickly as possible.

Activating his active physique ability, [Infinite Void Glutton], he forced his mind to vacuum the dense ambient Spiritual and Primordial energies floating across the atmosphere of his domain.

The isolated pocket omniverse was so uniquely overpowered and magical that even unknown, untouched energies like the primordial energies could be freely harvested from everywhere. ’I will definitely have to run a full experiment on the limits of this dimension later,’

Aeon noted to himself, tracking the thick currents of power flooding straight into his Sea of Consciousness.

Without a single moment of hesitation, he started the process, and activated the Cosmic Ouroboros Runes.

The Rune of Absolute Destruction flared with an apocalyptic black-and-purple radiance. Feeding on the massive influx of twin energies, it mercilessly and instantaneously atomized both his Soul Core and his transparent Infant Soul dragon body into absolute nothingness.

Aeon didn’t even have the luxury of time to scream. The sheer scale of the pain was an utterly horrific, unimaginable sensation that transcended the physical boundaries of the nervous system.

But before his awareness could completely fracture and dissolve into true oblivion, the Rune of Cosmic Genesis detonated. Within the same millisecond, his entire transparent draconic form and core were flawlessly re-synthesized from scratch, emerging noticeably denser and more refined than before.

And then, without a single microsecond of a pause, the destruction loop triggered again.

Over and over, the relentless cycle of absolute consumption and perfect rebirth rolled through his mind. With every single rapid repetition of the runic cycle, his Soul Core expanded and his Infant Soul dragon form grew exponentially harder, purer, and structurally unyielding.

Aeon felt every single microscopic second of the prolonged torment, his awareness locked in a purgatory of pure agony.

’Fuuuuck...the very first thing I do when I get out of here is hunt down a permanent pain-resistance a...’

Before his screaming thoughts could even finish the word, the runes flared again, and his soul was instantly reduced to nothing.

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