Chapter 40: Five Centuries & the Void’s Order

Chapter 40: Chapter 40: Five Centuries & the Void’s Order

Five hundred years later.

Whoosh! BUUUUMM!

BOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Across a vast, open grassland plain, eleven rapid silhouettes were locked in a fierce, high-speed battle. Ten of these shadow figures were coordinating their strikes together, throwing their entire attacks against the eleventh opponent.

These were the specialized training shadpw dummies fighting directly against Aeon. It had officially been five hundred years of internal time since he had first stepped inside his Infinite Omniverse Dimension.

Ever since that day, his life had turned into a non-stop cycle of cultivating his cores, training his martial arts, studying ancient scripts, and taking his time to carefully explore the massive layout of his fast- OmniverseDimension.

Although five centuries had ticked past within this isolated realm, Aeon never once felt the crushing loneliness of time or any form of time erosion.

It was as if the dimension itself simply did not allow its master or its residents to feel the psychological and physical weight of aging—and in truth, the absolute laws of the domain functioned exactly that way.

Whoosh! Clank!

At this precise moment, Aeon was regulating his power to use an A-rank level strength threshold, giving him the physical capacity to effortlessly destroy up to thirty massive mountain peaks if he went completely all out.

Naturally, his automated training partners had been specifically modified to match that exact strength class.

Some of the dummies fought using the martial traits of the Warrior Path, others channeled the elements of the Arcane Path, while the rest targeted his mind using advanced Spiritual Path arts.

Aeon’s cosmic eyes flared with a faint light as he directed his telekinesis toward one of the Warrior shadow dummies, violently lifting its form clean off the ground.

The dummy struggled fiercely to shatter the invisible mental grip, but its hole body were completely pinned in place.

Aeon didn’t waste a single second waiting for the target to break out from the ordeal, nor did he grant the surrounding dummies the time to rush to their teammate’s aid.

He immediately crushed the ensnared shadow dummy into pieces, tightening the telekinetic pressure around its torso with a sharp flex of his thoughts.

CRRUNCH! KRRRSH!

Witnessing their front-line member get killed in a a second, the remaining shadow dummies displayed a brief flicker of tactical weariness.

They rapidly adjusted their formation. The Warrior dummies stood firmly at the front lines, the Arcane dummies took up flanking positions at the corners, and the Soul Path dummies retreated to cast their soul art from safely behind the front-line shield.

The squad coordinated in perfect synchronization, truly believing they were placing Aeon in a highly difficult defensive position. But they were entirely wrong.

With a single casual thought, Aeon cast hundreds of different higher-tier spells simultaneously. Void spear, lunar arrow, solar beam, absolute frost, and a dozen other elemental magic circles manifested instantly across the air.

The moment Aeon released the barrage, the spells tore across the plain, assaulting the shadow dummies’ formation.

Some of the targets were heavily struck and left severely injured, two of them were completely killed on impact—instantly dissolving away into fine dust particles. While the rest barely managed to survive the blast.

Aeon didn’t grant them a single moment to rest or regroup. Manifesting his spear directly into his palm, he lunged toward the nearest survivor, the heavy shaft of his weapon entirely covered in a glowing, thick radiant layer of multi-colored primordial energies.

Executing a powerful, lightning-fast thrust, Aeon drove the weapon forward. The exact millisecond the sharp tip of the spear made physical contact with the shadow dummy’s forehead, the concentrated force detonated.

In the very next second, the dummy’s entire head and absolutely everything positioned in a straight line for kilometers behind its coordinates were completely swept away.

Booooooooom!

The entire sector was instantly blanketed in a massive cloud of dust as Aeon’s piercer destroyed a massive chunk of the landscape.

Two of the rear-line Soul Path shadows were caught directly in the path of the destructive blow, their forms entirely obliterated.

As the dense dust cloud gradually cleared from the plains, the remnants of the three killed shadows slowly dissolved into harmless dust particles.

Only four targets remained standing from the original squad. One Soul shadow dummy, two Arcane variants, and a single Warrior. The automated constructs rapidly regrouped, shifting their weights as they got ready to launch a final desperate attack.

Aeon merely stood his ground, letting his spear disappear back into particles of light with a flick of his wrist.

Left completely weaponless, Aeon simply raised two fingers, executing a swift horizontal cutting motion through the empty air before him.

SHHHHK! SHKRRK!

In the very next millisecond, the attacking shadow dummies froze mid-motion, their momentum cutting off instantly. A brief second later, their upper and lower bodies cleanly separated, sliding apart before hitting the grass and turning entirely into dark dust particles.

THUD! SPLAT!

Finally done with the training simulation, Aeon turned his back on the ruined battlefield and vanished from the grassland plain.

He reappeared instantly within a completely different sector of his domain. Manifesting cleanly inside the inner courtyard of his majestic palace, where a series of pristine stone seats and tables were located.

With a small, fluid motion of his hand, Aeon materialized a hot cup of tea over the table. Taking a slow, relaxing sip to enjoy his tea, Aeon addressed his system interface.

"System, show me exactly how many total sign-in chances I currently have available."

[Ding]

[You have 11x Annual sing-in chances]

[You have 14x daily sing-in changces]

"Hmm. That is a highly respectable number," Aeon murmured, tracing the edge of his cup. "System, use two of my available Annual sign-in chances right now."

Over the course of the five hundred internal years he had spent inside this sanctuary, he had already drawn upon eight yearly sign-ins and four monthly sign-ins.

Of course, this did not mean his system automatically granted him five hundred separate yearly updates all at once.

The temporal progression governing his system rewards only calculated active calendar time based on the external reality of Nexos Earth, completely ignoring the accelerated time-dilation flow inside this private dimension where time moved vastly faster.

[Ding]

[Using 2× Annual sing-in chances]

[Drawing...]

[Drawing completed]

[You have gained: Sunfire Divine cauldron (Divine)]

[You have gained: Abyssal Death Scythe (Mythic)]

A faint, satisfied smile played across Aeon’s lips. "As expected, drawing from the Annual sign-in chances carries a significantly higher probability of gaining top-tier rewards. Although I’ve definitely hit a few unlucky and highly frustrating dry streaks over the centuries, the overall baseline remains excellent."

He could still clearly recall a few annoying instances where his yearly sing-ins had rolled terrible results, granting him nothing but common and uncommon rank rewards.

Shifting his attention down the screen, he asked the system to pull up the descriptions for his two new treasures.

[Item: Sunfire Divine Cauldron]

[Rank: Divine]

[Description: A divine cauldron containing an eternal golden flame that can refine anything placed within it, purifying impurities and transforming materials, treasures, and energies into pills, elixirs, and other Alchemy materials.]

[Item: Abyssal Death Scythe]

[Rank: Mythic]

[Description: A mythical scythe capable of severing the connection between a soul and its physical body. Able sever whether it is a body or a soul.]

Scanning through the properties of the items, a deeply satisfying smile spread across his face.

Lately, due to the extreme length of his isolation, rarely anything in the universe carried enough novelty to make him smile. Over the past five hundred internal years, his rigorous cultivation efforts had only managed to push his rank up to the mid C-rank threshold across all three of his individual paths.

As a cultivator steps into higher, more advanced ranks, the developmental difficulty and energy requirements scale exponentially, making it take a massive block of time just to achieve a single sub-stage breakthrough.

Aeon could have likely forced his progression to move significantly faster if he had followed standard scripts, but because he chose to completely re-engineer his cultivation system within every single rank, his developmental path had transformed into a vastly longer and more grueling journey.

"I guess the system’s initial warning stating that my Infinite Talent would force me to cultivate exactly one hundred times slower than a regular person was definitely no joke," Aeon muttered with a low chuckle, deeply amused by his own history.

"And I went ahead and doubled that exact difficulty gate by aggressively using my own crazy, borderline suicidal cultivation methods. hahaha"

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While Aeon remained fully immersed inside his private domain, a massive, far-reaching conspiracy was silently unfolding deep within the physical shadows of the outside world.

Inside a dimly lit, pitch-black chamber, a shrouded figure sat perfectly still upon a colossal throne. Resting directly on a stone table positioned in front of his seat were five dark, hollow orbs.

After a long period of absolute silence, the glassy surfaces of the orbs began to pulse with a low, ominous energy. The figure on the throne slowly leaned forward, his voice sounding incredibly heavy and menacing.

"Welcome, my fellow brothers and sisters."

The glowing orbs remained dead silent for a brief moment, before a raspy, hoarse voice finally rippled out from the first orb on the left.

"Hello, Number 1. It has been a long time since our paths crossed. What urgent situation forced you to initiate direct contact with us today?"

The remaining four orbs held their silence, waiting for the leader to explain the briefing. Number 1 tapped his fingers against the throne, his eyes dark. "I assume every single person in this council is fully aware of the massive golden pillars of light that could be clearly seen slicing through the sky during the mass Awakening Ceremony that occurred last year."

From another orb further down the table, a highly seductive, smooth female voice slithered into the room. "Yes. We are perfectly aware. The phenomenon detonated all across the global grid. More precisely, our specialized intelligence networks confirmed that the golden light pillars punched into the sky from inside every major sovereign nation simultaneously.

We have already determined that those lights mark the birth of new Divine-rank talents. What exactly about it requires our immediate attention?"

Number 1 leaned forward into the light, dropping a shocking piece of classified information that none of the hidden members had expected to hear. "The Eternal Void has directly commanded us to hunt down and uncover the exact identities of these newly awakened Divine-rank talents.

Naturally, our mandate includes executing any new children discovered holding a Transcendent-rank talent or above, but our primary priority is to locate and eliminate these specific Divine-rank targets before they can mature."

He paused, letting the terrifying weight of the order echo off the walls. A smooth, calculating voice quickly chimed in from the third orb, supporting the command. "Number 1 is entirely correct. We must hunt down and slaughter those wretches immediately, before their growth can disrupt or ruin our millennium-old invasion plans."

The remaining hidden cultists murmured in perfect, synchronized agreement. Number 1 stood up from his throne, his majestic, dark pressure filling the room as his voice turned completely ominous.

"Then the decree is officially settled. From this exact moment onward, utilize every single resource, asset, and spy at your disposal to locate their coordinates. We must completely rid the world of their presence for our plans to succeed. HAIL THE VOID. EMBRACE THE VOID."

Hearing the final closing salute, the five orbs flared with a dark light, their voices answering together in a fanatical chant.

"HAIL THE VOID. EMBRACE THE VOID"

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