The unfettered storm raged within Zac's quantum space. He was the universe, ripped apart and reborn in a Big Bang of his own making. The next minutes would decide whether the road that led him here was paved with discernnt or hubris. The calamitous mayhem mostly adhered to his path, but there were hundreds of discordant notes in the mixdisarray brought from the core's imperfections.
His Cosmic Core may have been High Quality in terms of qualifications, but there were still weaknesses to its makeup. Even he faced the unavoidable problem of incompatibility brought about by using external materials to forge his core. These hidden daggers of heterogeneity were now trying to impose their beliefs on the universe. If left unchecked, they would destroy what he'd created with blood, sweat, and tears. He wouldn't let it.
His first set of ntal Tendrils had already been shredded, so he conjured a second one. Many were destroyed before they even reached his Duplicity Core because of the energies ravaging his body. Each loss felt like a cut on his soul. A few fared marginally better and successfully entered the quantum space. Where the destructive forces of dinsional genesis waited.
A miserable cycle of destruction and reformation began, where Zac desperately tried to connect his Dao and ntal Energy with the struggling barrier to bolster its defenses. With every defeat, Zac's resources dwindled while the opposition grew fiercer. Zac's plight only worsened when the first pieces of his shattered core crashed into the barrier.
The array had already shown incredible resilience withstanding the energy shockwaves. However, it simply wasn't capable of dealing with the monstrous force released from Zac's Trinity Core. Cracks multiplied and spread, worsening the punishnt Zac had to bear. Blood and ichor fell like rain, to the point Zac had to keep his bodies together with willpower and energy. Any other mortal would already have died from the onslaught.
The situation far exceeded Zac's expectations, but treacherous thoughts and seeds of fear were strangled and replaced with determination and purpose. So what if his ignition surpassed any recordings or estimates he'd seen? It only proved his path was one aid at the peak. And like many tis before, he'd prove he had the qualifications to tread this path of supremacy.
Zac roared as Hidden Nodes went into overdrive, and space buckled when he unleashed his constitutions to their limits. Human skin turned resplendent gold as grievous wounds wriggled and closed, and archaic scripts echoing the bottomless darkness of the Abyss covered his Draugr body. The unbreakable strength and conviction of the Vanguard joined the enduring composure of the immutable Void Vajra to turn him into an everlasting kingdom.
Abyssal ponds and lifegiving hurricanes flooded his bodies with primal power, generating an imnse pressure. Errant streaks of spirituality were caught and pushed back into the quantum space, and the mayhem was corralled into a retreat. Following in the wake of the rallied defenses was a storm of Dao-Empowered ntal Energy.
Zac knew grit and determination alone couldn't tide him through this calamity. It would, however, suppress the ignition long enough to connect with the Core Formation Barrier. Stabilizing it would be the first step in creating a stronghold that would let him mount a crusade of reclamation on the quantum space.
Dao descended on failing runes like rain replenishing parched lands. The essence of Zac's Life, Death, and Conflict strengthened and subtly reford the shield, allowing it to better combat the ignition's matching energy signature. The tides were finally turning.
A trendous clap of thunder shook the Temporal Chamber, disrupting the energy streams supplying the Core Formation Arrays. The sudden blast was like a hamr to Zac's consciousness, almost forcing his soul out of his Soul Aperture. The connection with the Core Formation Array was cut, and dozens of flickering runes were destroyed when the array failed to supply the necessary energy.
Zac ca to and desperately slapped a talisman against his chest, generating an imnse gravitational force. Bones snapped, and new imperfections were introduced into the unstable storm. However, it was enough to temporarily force back the escaping energy before he reached a point of no return.
Wrath matching his attacker burned in Zac's eyes as he glared at the ceiling. It felt as though his stare pierced ti and space to gaze upon the storm gathering abovea Heavenly Tribulation, sothing that shouldn't appear when stepping into Middle Hegemony.
The why didn't matter. He'd been targeted, and the Heavens weren't done with him yet. The animosity almost felt personal, and the timing ruined the ace he'd prepared. It wasn't easy to ignite his constitutions to that level, and it cost huge amounts of Vigor. Recreating the effect in the short run was impossible, and both barrier and spiritual storm were in a worse state than before.
Zac gritted his teeth as fury almost overca reason. The burning anger helped rouse his defenses and sowhat stabilize the situation, but it wasn't enough. Zac's mind moved a mile a minute as he went over plans and contingencies, but none of them was suitable. How could he possibly have expected a tribulation to appear, especially when his breakthrough had barely started?
The world had gone insane, so he would embrace the madness.
A primal axe burning with desire to break the chains of fate and tear the Heavenly veil appeared in a hand scarred by endless slaughter. The darkness grew deeper atop the other platform as a gleaming edge released a keening cry filled with such inviolable command neither Dao nor destiny could escape.
Together, they pointed at the Heavens in an undisguised challenge. The Heavens wanted to stop his ascent? It could try. A second clap of thunder answered, resounding like a war drum heralding the primordial forces of abrogation.
Zac's eyes glead with insanity as he swung his companions. Three streaks of Dao and fury ripped apart the lingering woods as they converged in the cave's center. Three Spatial Batteries exploded, unleashing a hurricane of stored energy and compressed space.
Ti and Space converged and collapsed, releasing a paradoxical blue light that led to the crossroads of Destiny. The Dao of Continuum. The flash was gone before it appeared, but Zac's fate and mories refused to be rewritten. An aura older than ti itself had joined Life and Death in Zac's bodies as the illusory Void Mountain declared its defiance against the Heavenly wrath.
A grabbing motion ford Void Vortices where the Spatial Batteries once stood, forcing their way into the echoes of the Spatial Tunnels. Waiting on the other side was the fuel Zac needed to take control of his breakthrough and fate. Pristine Nexus Veins on the other side of the planet collapsed in a puff of paradoxical spaceti as they were dragged out of the river of ti.
Torrential amounts of Life, Death, and unattuned energy poured out of his cells as the Void complied with his demands. There was no Nexus Vein holding the Dao of Conflict on Earth, but Zac didn't need it. Facing the rumbling sky, he embodied the most fundantal conflict of cultivation. Man against Heaven. Desire against fate. He was both source and terminus for his path.
Stolen novel; please report.
Energies wild enough to match the storm raging within the quantum space threatened to rip Zac apart before his ignition could. anwhile, the Soul Cores in his aperture were releasing blinding light. The galactic shrouds surrounding them spun with such speed they'd almost fused with the cores.
"Go!" Zac roared, and his Soul Cores took flight.
Like the previous ti they moved, they crashed into each other with apocalyptic force. Zac's thoughts and mories fractured when a tsunami of ntal Energy was shaken loose. He kept it all together and extracted the spiritual ocean from his Soul Aperture. Soul, Dao, Void, and limitless Energy joined into an unstoppable army with billowing montum.
Even the Duplicity Core seed subdued, turning illusory to not get caught in the crosshairs. Zac's all-out assault flooded the quantum space. The destructive storm that had effortlessly destroyed his ntal Tendrils beca prey to a fiercer predator. Imperfections were swept away, destroyed, or consud. Zac didn't try to control the storm. He beca it, seizing authority to dictate fate.
The chaotic mix of energy and shrapnel was put under control with unprecedented speed, and the imnse infusion of energy added to the virgin dinsion's stability and strength. So long as the space didn't collapse from energy overload, the added spirituality would help him through the next steps.
The Heavens appeared personally affronted upon seeing him continue with his breakthrough. The pressure mounted, and Zac couldn't help but shudder as he saw red strings of distilled extermination form just a few ters away from him. Their appearance was the beginning of the end, and the Temporal Energies keeping his chamber stable began to unravel.
It was the sa sort of sanguine rift that ford just before the final bolt of his previous tribulation. He'd been absolutely helpless before that level of destruction and only survived thanks to his Duplicity Core hiding his location. This ti, the strings actually appeared before the first bolt had ford. Just how much animosity did the Heavens hold against him? What Laws was he violating to elicit such a response?
This ti, no Kayar-Elu barrier sprung up to save the day. The Duplicity Core may as well have beco an empty casing from how it had completely erased its presence. Zac snorted and took out a gleaming crystal covered in golden runes.
"This isn't right! This isn't balance!" Zac roared over Ti's collapse as he infused his will into the portable Nexus Node. "If you want to see the Void Emperor's bloodline reach maturity, you'll block the Heavens for !"
Zac was pissed off, but he hadn't lost his mind. How could he possibly defy the Heavens while the ignition tore him apart and the Temporal Chamber collapsed? His confidence ca from the second presence hiding in the shadows of the heavenly wrath. The System had already descended, attracted by him or Heaven's unexpected appearance.
It hadn't intervened so far, seemingly content to observe the events unfold. Zac wasn't sure what it was waiting for or what it wanted to see. After having so light shed on his origins by Leandra, Zac often wondered if he really was a crop being raised by the System. If that were the case, then the System would have to protect its investnt from the winds until it was ready for harvest.
So Zac had shown his increased control over his bloodline, conveniently using it to deal with the ss with his core. The rest was out of his hands. Zac still held Sendor's seals, but there was no way such an ancient existence was willing to go to bat against the Heavens for him. Interfering with another's tribulation was a good way to conjure one on yourself. And the Realm Spirit had sohow achieved false immortality, which seed to be one of the greatest taboos.
Each second felt like an eternity, but Zac breathed out in relief as an imnse silence swept away the chaos. The heavenly wrath was still there, but its advance had slowed to a crawl. Ti stabilized, and the red strings shifted into purple before disappearing. The System had co through, restraining the Heavens for him. The suppression wasn't complete, but the situation didn't seem hopeless any longer.
It was a stay of execution.
Zac had no idea how long the protection would last, so he was determined to make every second count. The further he got with his breakthrough, the better he would be positioned when all hell broke loose. However, a screen appeared just as he was about to resu his work.
The First Step of Destiny (Void Road): Form a High-quality Middle D-grade Cosmic Core of the Void Road. Reward: - (0/1) [17:00:00:00]
The sudden quest ca with both answers and questions. Most importantly, the System had given him a seventeen-day deadline. It was decidedly less than what his subspace could survive, so there had to be sothing else behind the specific ti. Seventeen days for seventeen Dao Peaks? Even Zac felt the pressure from such a tight schedule. His estimates put him at over 20 days to reforge and reassemble his core, and that was before all these problems cropped up.
The Void Road was the path he chose for himself when rejecting the Imperial and Heavenly Destiny in the Tribulation Throne. It was the source of his only upgradeable Limited Title, but he would have to be a fool not to understand it held deeper implications. Now, the term had beco a quest type, clarifying the System's stance on the matter. It wanted to see where his road led.
The quest had no reward, though protecting him from the Heavens could be considered a reward of its own. Passing it would keep things going, and it was possible the next quest would co with the title upgrade or other benefits.
The quest also provided an important clue to the root of Heaven's sudden antipathy. It no longer seed as though the Kayar-Elu and their Heaven-defying experints were to bla. At least not in the way he previously thought. He'd believed his Duplicity Core was what triggered the unnaturally fierce Tribulation Lightning when stepping into Hegemony.
That may be part of it, but his Technocrat Heritage had been almost completely silent this ti. The only answer Zac could think of was his bloodline, or rather his cultivation of the Void. His tribulations had always been more powerful than the norm because of his heavy foundations. Still, it was only after officially integrating Void into his path that the tribulations felt like no-holds attempts at extermination.
Void and Dao couldn't coexist, so it would make sense if the Heavens wanted to purge his existence to restore balance. If his theory was correct, Zac was in trouble. Utilizing the Void wasn't just a temporary stopgap to get his core blueprint to work. It had beco the glue that held his path together, and his bloodline breakthrough had opened new ways to weave the Void into his cultivation.
He was still far from Monarchy and forming a real Inner World, but seeing the embryonic subspace confird Zac's beliefs the Void was there to stay. Did that an the Heavens would co knocking every ti he broke through, where the tribulations far surpassed what was normal? This ti, the System ca to his aid, but could he put his fate in the System's hands?
Absolutely not.
Zac shook his head, discarding any distracting thoughts as he wholeheartedly focused on his quantum space. He would have to survive this tribulation before having the qualifications to worry about the future. He had seventeen days, and Heaven's lingering presence indicated the System wouldn't completely keep it at bay.
Order had been restored in his subspace thanks to his daredevil gambit. Thousands of shrapnel pieces ford dozens of interlocked asteroid belts, and their trajectories controlled the imnse amounts of energy that still filled the subspace. The cycle was stable, though the unnaturally high energy density created eruptions that rocked the shielding. That much was well within bounds.
The next step was originally to have the Core Formation Array shift from solely defending to also infusing his subspace with energy. There was no point in doing so for the next few days now. Perhaps at all, considering the Core Formation Array wasn't the only source of energy.
His body was instinctively nourishing the subspace with Dao. In addition, energy was being funneled into the quantum space directly by the Cosmos. The subspace was like a true universe, seemingly drawing energy and truth out of thin air. In reality, it ca from other dinsions and lower realms.
Zac ate a handful of pills to nourish his damaged soul and heal his physical wounds. He was exhausted, yet he ford a Dao Braid and delved further into the subspace than he had gone before. The tendril continued unimpeded, thanks to Zac's intuitive understanding of the energy flow, until it reached the subspace's center.
The area was shrouded by a layer of energy so dense it had almost beco liquid. Zac pierced the veil, breathing out in relief upon finding what he was looking forhis Core Nucleus, scarred and disfigured from withstanding the ignition. Despite its wretched appearance, it was whole, functional, and retaining most of its spirituality. A bloody grin spread across Zac's faces, and the devastation around him no longer seed so bad.
Many of his plans were out the window, but this part had worked out just fine.
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