Chapter 1490: True Bloodlines, Originless & Bloodline Ranks

Phei had not got this knowledge neither from some ancient scripture nor the memories taken from Marcus Heavenchild.

The understanding had awakened alongside the Genesis Angel Bloodline, entering his consciousness with the certainty of an instinct his Soul had possessed long before his mind became aware of it.

Yes, Phei had just found himself knowing what others might spend ages seeking through ancient and forbidden records, assuming such knowledge had survived anywhere they could reach.

Naturally, he had begun wondering where World Essence stood among the ranks of the other greatest powers.

An Essence present at the Beginning, from which creation’s other energies had sprung, deserved such consideration.

Eira, however, had corrected him.

For all its sacredness and its role to creation, World Essence remained far beneath powers that had existed before creation itself.

The Void was one, Nothingness another— and Nothingness belonged among the oldest of all.

Phei watched the final golden traces of the sun with growing contemplation.

Void and Nothingness sounded almost deceptively simple when spoken aloud.

He already possessed Void Essence, yet the ancient existence behind that name continued revealing depths his present understanding could scarcely reach. His awakening had opened powers that would once have seemed impossible even by the outrageous measure of his Cosmic Dragon Bloodline.

He had learned to perceive the hidden hollows threaded through existence and cross distances through True Void Steps. He had touched the True Void itself, survived battles against World Transcendents who were about ten realms above him and escaped through spatial hollows when ordinary movement would have been hopeless. His concealment had eluded senses powerful enough to examine vast stretches of the world around him.

These were things he had done with his own power, and yet his understanding of the Void still amounted to the Baby Steps Phase.

His lips twitched at that.

All those accomplishments, all those abilities including the ability to negate other powers, and he was apparently an infant learning to walk.

What the fuck would happen when he finally learned to run?

The thought almost made him laugh, although he could hardly imagine what running phase would mean for a power that already allowed him to slip beyond the perception of World Transcendents.

A year inside the Primordial Frozen Zone had advanced his cultivation, refined his body and deepened his command of Void and Void-Ice far beyond what he once believed possible.

He knew how much work and training, the killing survival and carnage those upgrades had required. Yet they had brought him only this far into a power whose true depths still escaped him, leaving him to wonder what lay beyond the hollows he could perceive and the passages he could already traverse.

He wanted to discover what the next stages of mastery might reveal, how much farther his senses could reach and whether his understanding of the Void itself would change as he descended deeper into it.

A thousand possibilities came easily enough to mind.

He could confirm none of them, and the thought of learning something his present imagination could not even grasp made him all the more eager to continue.

Nothingness remained farther beyond his reach.

His Genesis Angel Bloodline carried a connection to it through Genesis Weaver and the Light of Nothingness, but that connection had yet to grant him command over the ancient power.

He had not even touched it.

The System’s words remained clear in his memory, offering a condition whose fulfillment he could scarcely begin to measure:

[Genesis Weaver (Light of Nothingness)]

[Master the Void, to touch Nothingness.]

Phei understood what the words asked of him.

What he lacked was any way of knowing how far he stood from that mastery, or whether it would require ascending through countless higher Realms. There might be something within his present understanding he had yet to discover.

He did not even know precisely what touching Nothingness would mean once he finally did touch it.

He had read enough novels which gave him countless imagination of what Nothingness was.

Some described the absence of all things; others gave it a power so ancient that existence became insignificant before it. Those stories supplied plenty for his imagination and nothing he could trust about the actual power connected to Genesis Weaver.

Phei had no intention of mistaking novelist’s invention for knowledge of something that preceded creation.

Even with his Primordial Soul and awakening as Genesis Angel, he remained bound to that uncertainty.

It fascinated him that he could carry a connection to something so far beyond his comprehension.

The Void was already within him, awaiting a mastery he had scarcely begun to approach, while Nothingness lay beyond it, hidden behind a condition the System had given without explaining how difficult fulfilling it might become.

The warm breeze brushed across his face, and his smile returned.

Phei had time to learn, or at least he sincerely hoped the universe intended to give him some.

But with the way his life had been unfolding lately, he would hardly have been surprised if some ancient bastard appeared tomorrow with their power demanding him to progresses through all sixteen Soul Ranks before breakfast if he wanted to defeat them.

His gaze drifted toward the darkening heavens as he recalled another question he had put to the System yesterday.

The Genesis Angel Bloodline and the Genesis Soul Rank shared a name, which had led him toward what seemed a reasonable conclusion. Since Genesis occupied the thirteenth position among the sixteen recognized Soul Ranks, Phei had wondered to the system whether Genesis Angel Bloodline too held the thirteenth Rank among Bloodlines as well.

The System had explained that Souls possessed their own order, each Rank describing how powerful a Soul had attained after attaining that Rank.

The sixteen recognized Ranks culminated in Originless as the said last rank of the Soul Ranks.

But even that final rank did not encompass every Soul in existence:

[Beyond Originless exists Souls whose very being transcends the hierarchy known by cultivators and awakened, Host. The sixteen Soul Ranks encompass only those Souls that dwell within their bounds; they do not mark the utmost and absolute power a Soul may attain. However exalted its final Rank, existences remain beyond its summit, their Souls too extraordinary to be confined within those sixteen Ranks.

[You have yet to fathom the depths of your own Primordial Soul, Host. What you have glimpsed thus far is insufficient to comprehend all that lies within it, much less understand it through the sixteen known Ranks alone.]

(A/N: Soul Ranks reminder; Mortal Soul, Spirit Soul, Earth Soul, Heaven Soul, Sacred Soul, Divine Soul, Sovereign Soul, Eternal Soul, Ancient Soul, Primordial Soul, Origin Soul, Genesis Soul, Progenitor Soul, Cosmic Soul, Boundless Soul, Originless Soul.)

Bloodlines followed a separate order too.

And just like the Soul Ranks, certain true Bloodlines possessed origins and Ranks so exalted that ordinary classifications could not encompass them at all. The Cosmic Dragon and Genesis Angel belonged among them, as did the Endless Void Bloodline, Eternal Primordial Night, Myriad Beast Bloodline and Originless Bloodline.

There were others whose names he had yet to discover, Bloodlines so powerful that their rank could not be determined by placing them beside the Ranks of lesser Bloodlines.

At least that had settled his question about Genesis Angel.

He could hardly judge it by being own the same Rank merely because the names resembled one another, however reasonable the idea had first sounded in his mind.

His Primordial Soul and his two true Bloodlines already left him with enough to understand without drawing false conclusions about them, especially when he still could not explain why both such powerful and rankless Bloodlines resided so peacefully within him.

He had learned that possessing more than one true Bloodline was possible.

Surviving their coexistence was another matter.

Such formidable bloodlines could clash within their bearer, even their Soul, and a violent enough conflict that could destroy the body that held them. Cosmic Dragon and Genesis Angel each possessed an origin and Rank beyond ordinary classifications, yet they now shared his body without tearing him apart.

Phei had scarcely had the chance to consider why.

Their harmony might endure as both grew stronger, or their growth might reveal complexities he had yet to encounter. He knew too little to decide, and surviving their coexistence hardly made him an expert on it.