Chapter 1424: A Beautifully Adorned Catastrophe.

Sienna, Ashworth, Dragon Lady, Eira, Cassiopeia and the Undead Queen stood beneath a sky that no longer seemed to belong to Hell’s Paradise Island’s Endless Forest, all of them were watching Phei with different shades of fascination while the Primordial Lotus continued its slow, magnificent work above the Endless Forest. T

he ancient woodland beneath them had been drowned beneath white-gold radiance until trees old enough to have watched countless winters pass looked like dark silhouettes beneath a celestial sea.

Amber mist drifted between their crowns, threads of World Essence moved through the air like rivers of liquid sunlight and innumerable golden motes wandered through the night with the lazy grace of stars that had descended too far and forgotten the road back to heaven.

The Undead Queen remained closest to Sienna among them with her head bowed almost instinctively despite the occasional reminder she gave herself that she was still a World Transcendent and therefore should possess some measure of dignity while standing beside other beings.

What unsettled the Queen even more was Sienna herself.

When they had first met only two weeks earlier, the Nether Goddess had stood at Divine Empress. That Realm alone had been frightening enough when joined to the impossible depth of her Soul, the old stillness carried by her presence and the way Death itself seemed to bow her before—

Sienna had possessed the cultivation of a Divine Empress but cultivation was merely the smallest part of what stood before her. Now she had become a Lesser God, and the difference could not be dismissed as another step along some ordinary path.

Sienna’s presence had deepened in ways the Queen struggled to measure. It felt quieter and somehow heavier, as though something ancient behind the young woman’s violet eyes had moved closer to the surface and allowed one more fragment of itself to breathe through her mortal form.

The Undead Queen remained a World Transcendent, still powerful enough to make entire nations of cultivators lower their heads, yet standing beside Sienna now made the gulf between them feel greater than it had two weeks ago.

Two weeks!

The thought itself almost offended her.

The Undead Queen had lived long enough to watch monsters and geniuses cross Realms in years where others required centuries to made ordinary cultivators question whether Heaven had ever intended fairness to exist.

She had long accepted that talent allowed certain existences to treat time with casual cruelty.

Yet this household was beginning to make the word talent feel embarrassingly small. Sienna had crossed into Lesser God. Phei had disappeared into the Primordial Frozen Zone for what amounted to only weeks outside, returned as a Sky Sovereign, enslaved a Original Progenitor almost immediately— something she’d believed to be a metaphor— how was even an Angel Progenitor on Earth?— and was presently floating beneath a sacred phenomenon she couldn’t understand what it was!

The Queen lowered her head a little farther while a single thought passed through her mind.

’Monsters.’

She meant it with reverence.

High above the Endless Forest, Phei turned slowly within the immense white-gold sanctuary of the Primordial Lotus. Rivers of luminous World Essence wound around him in vast spirals, some moving with enough violence that the surrounding air trembled and the darkness seemed to bend away from their passage, only for those same torrents to become perfectly serene the instant they entered the region nearest his body.

Great curtains of translucent radiance descended from the Lotus overhead and folded around him again and again, their surfaces alive with innumerable golden filaments that moved through the light like veins beneath celestial silk. Amber haze filled the spaces between those curtains while countless motes drifted lazily around his white hair, shoulders and hands before continuing along unseen paths as though Phei had become the center of some vast heavenly orbit.

The sight was beautiful, but beauty alone was too shallow a word for what pressed against every Soul beneath it.

There was ceremony within the air—

—the unmistakable sense that something some Great Realms if not older than some races and even many Ancient beings like her Empress back in her realm had just chosen Phei if not awakened from within him after slumbering in his soul for so long.

The Primordial Lotus did not seem content merely to pour power into him.

It was wrapping him in something deeper, clothing his existence in meaning while every white-gold current carried the quiet promise of life protected beneath a hand strong enough to keep it from being extinguished.

Yet beneath that gentleness rested something absolute, an unyielding might suggesting that whatever could nurture life could just as easily erase anything that threatened the lives placed beneath its protection.

The Primordial Lotus bathed Phei in something deeper than any divinity!

Righteousness seemed to live within it, although even Sienna hesitated to reduce the feeling to a word like righteousness that can so easily be abused by lesser beings. It was not the brittle righteousness of sects that slaughtered rivals while declaring themselves pure, nor the self-serving morality of rulers who wrapped ambition in sacred language and called it justice.

The force surrounding Phei felt older like the very beginning of Creation and his presence was that of a ruler who might shelter creation beneath a vast hand without crushing it, gentle enough to nourish whatever deserved to flourish and yet so absolute enough to destroy anything that threatened the lives under his protection.

As another current moved through the radiance— was when certainty became uncomfortable.

Something within the white-gold Essence felt almost corruptive—

The word itself seemed wrong before him!

Nothing surrounding Phei was impure.

The Primordial Lotus remained so pristine that ordinary sacred Essence would have appeared faintly stained beside it, while World Essence moved through every petal with a clarity difficult to endure for long.

Yet beneath that impossible purity existed something capable of changing what purity itself meant!

Sienna’s violet eyes narrowed slightly as she followed the contradiction.

It was not corruption born from rot, poison, darkness or filth.

It was transformation taken to such an extreme that whatever had existed before could one day become the impurity by comparison.

That distinction settled uneasily across those capable of sensing it.

Phei appeared to be awakening into something that could preserve creation while possessing the means to violate its present order, something capable of restoring what was broken while still carrying the potential to overwrite whatever it judged unworthy of remaining as it was.

A guardian—

—a ruler.

And, if the wrong mood ever caught him— a beautifully adorned catastrophe.

Eira stared upward at her Master and wondered whether the Primordial Lotus possessed even the smallest sense of humor. If some sacred will had genuinely looked upon Phei Ryujin Tiamat, considered the things he thought, the women he shamelessly teased, the enemies he enjoyed terrorizing and the general lack of restraint governing half his personality, then decided righteous ruler of creationbelonged anywhere near the result—

Eira suspected a celestial council somewhere had skipped a very important inspection.

The Primordial Lotus continued without showing the slightest concern for her opinion.

Something changed inside the golden brilliance surrounding Phei.

At first the disturbance was so faint that only Maya saw it clearly.

The others noticed movement within the layered radiance, vague distortions passing through Phei’s silhouette whenever the celestial curtains shifted around him. His outline stretched strangely behind his shoulders. Two large shapes began pressing against the back of his shirt, growing slowly enough that the fabric resisted them for several breaths while World Essence gathered around the swelling forms. Golden-white light thickened across his back until nothing beneath it could be distinguished, hiding every trace of flesh and bone while the pressure continued building.

Then the shirt finally tore.

The sound never escaped the sanctuary.

The result did—

Two enormous shapes began emerging from Phei’s back.

Instead of bursting outward with violence they unfolded through the radiance with an almost unbearable slowness, layer after layer extending farther while white-gold Essence flowed over them and concealed whatever physical shape was being born beneath. Their span broadened with every pulse of the Genesis Core until the transformation resembled Phei growing fragments of heaven directly from his spine.

Dragon Lady leaned forward without realizing she had moved.

Eira’s eyes narrowed.

The Undead Queen’s reverence deepened into undisguised fascination.

Other changes continued across Phei’s body, most buried beneath the celestial brilliance too deeply for anyone outside the Lotus to distinguish clearly but Maya. Fine markings began surfacing beneath the golden glow of his skin, they spread across his shoulders, chest, arms and back in delicate luminous paths that looked neither carved nor painted upon him. They seemed to rise from somewhere inside, like they were following the awakening bloodline as it flowed into him as naturally as veins carried blood.

Some vanished whenever the surrounding World Essence thickened, only to return brighter during the next pulse.