[Final Trial of the Second Layer: Descend into the Abyss of Echoes. Devour the corrupted soul of the fallen god that feeds upon decay.]
John landed lightly at the pit's edge. A chill crept down his spine as he peered into the darkness below. The voices were endless, overlapping, forming a chorus of agony that made even his hardened spirit tremble.
He descended.
The deeper he went, the heavier the air became. Each step was like walking through water, dense with old mana and the weight of countless forgotten spirits.
His divine shard from Tessa pulsed faintly in his chest, warning him of the overwhelming energy gathering ahead.
At the bottom of the abyss stood a throne of bones, and on it sat a withered figure—a god's corpse animated by pure decay. Its skin was gray stone, its eyes glowing with sickly amber fire. The whispers all came from it.
"Another who seeks to steal from the dead," it rasped, its voice layered with hundreds of overlapping tones. "You are no god, yet you bear her light. The traitor's apostle."
John's hand twitched. "You mean Tessa."
The corpse leaned forward, cracking like breaking rock. "She defied the balance. Tried to bind life to eternity. So I made her remember death."
Rage flared within him. With a booming tone he shouted, "Then I'll make you remember what it feels like to die."
The abyss shook. John's aura ignited, flames of life and death spiraling into a storm around him. The gods decayed form rose from its throne, each step leaving craters of decay. They collided midair, fist against fist, explosion against explosion.
Black flame met emerald light.
Necrosis met vitality.
Decay met rebirth.
Each clash tore through the abyss, annihilating everything within miles. The god's power corroded the very concept of existence; John's burned its vile aura clean, rewriting it and breathing new life into it.
Finally, with a roar that shattered the ceiling of the abyss, John gathered everythingevery fragment of his Dao's. With every ounce of will, unleashing it in one perfect strike.
"Dao Art: Eternal Harvest!"
A beam of pure creation energy burst from his hand, spearing through the corpse god's chest. The being screamed, a sound like mountains dying and its entire form disintegrated into ash. The throne shattered, the voices ceased, and silence returned to the abyss.
Only the system spoke.
[Trial Three Complete: The God of Decay has been annihilated. Required results far exceeded. Calculating causality…]
[Rewards: Soul Fragment of a Fallen God (Purified). Dao of Equilibrium advanced to 2nd Tier: Ascendant. Divine Rank body refinement +1 stage. Acquisition of title: Keeper of the Cycle.]
John stood amid the ashes, chest heaving. The white flower from before floated down beside him, blooming one last time before dissolving into light. The abyss began to fill with new soil and greenery, the corruption receding into nothingness.
The ring glowed with the same eerie purple glow as it lapped up the last of the corrupted aura. While he felt the soul fragment fuse with him, its power getting consumed by the various Dao's impacting his soul.
A radiant glow emerged from every orifice, as another path of his existence stepped on the plain of the divine. His power was too weak to fully explore said paths anymore. But he felt his existence aiding in the gathering of his power, while he still remained in the energy condensation realm. He had advanced to nearly the peak of said realm, having now acquired 9 circles he only needed to go through some refinement and prepare to advance to the next realm.
When he finally looked up, a faint beam of light broke through the ceiling above. A doorway, carved from pure crystal, descended before him.
He stepped through it.
Moments Later – The Boundary Between Realms
The transition was gentler this time. He emerged on a grassy plateau surrounded by glowing waterfalls of liquid light. The air was serene—neither alive nor dead, but perfectly still. The system's final message for the layer echoed softly.
[The Second Layer of Terra Primordia has been conquered. Next destination unlocked: The Root of Genesis – Final Layer.]
John stood quietly, closing his eyes. Within his dantian, the three Daos—Life, Death, and Equilibrium—spiraled together in perfect unity. His body hummed with creation and destruction both, and for the first time, he felt as though he could truly command the cycle itself.
"Tessa," he whispered, touching his chest where her shard pulsed. "I'm one step closer."
Far below, the ashes of the god of decay faded completely absorbed into the earth. And as they did, the land bloomed anew, its first breath of life in millennia carried upward by the wind.
He stepped forward on the foreign terrain feeling an outstanding resonance from every inch of the plain. The cycle flowed faster as it attempted to resonate with the surroundings.
The ground beneath him wasn't ground at all—it was the illusion of form, a membrane of light woven from concepts older than existence. Each step dissolved soundlessly, the space reforming behind him as if refusing to remember he had ever been there.
John exhaled slowly. His breath became mist, then glyphs—tiny fragments of creation theory—before they, too, vanished into the void. The Root of Genesis was alive, but not in any sense he could quantify. It was the dream of the world before the world had dreamt itself awake.
The Azure Harvest pulsed faintly in his chest, its threads of life-force stretching outward to touch the unseen. The moment they met the Root's essence, the feedback almost tore through his soul. Every ounce of vitality, every fragment of willpower, was mirrored back upon him amplified tenfold. His knees buckled under the pressure.
The Necrotic flames roared instinctively, shielding his core with its dual nature of destruction and rebirth. Flames of violet and blue intertwined across his arms, flickering like celestial veins.
"This place…" he whispered, his voice echoing nowhere. "It wants to deconstruct me."
No answer came. Only the slow rhythmic pulse of the Root the heartbeat of the world itself.
Light gathered ahead dim at first, then growing into a colossal sphere suspended in the emptiness. It wasn't a sun, but an origin-point, radiating the silent authority of all beginnings. Its light was both creation and remembrance, whispering of everything that had ever been born and everything that had died to make room for it.
John walked toward it.
Each step peeled away fragments of himself. Memories rose and vanished—his first fight, the taste of blood, Tessa's laughter, the warmth of her hand trembling in his. The closer he came, the more unreal he felt. The Root demanded no armor, no power, no pretense. It peered through his existence and demanded him to reveal his full being to it.
When he reached the sphere, it responded—not as an object, but as an understanding.
Show me what remains when the names are gone.
The voice wasn't a sound. It was as if his own thoughts became woven into the void.
He closed his eyes and released the protection on the outer layers of his cultivation. Revealing the formal structure of the Sovereign Path. Making his base rhythm harmonize, the pulsing unity of life and flame that defined him the cycle pulsed unabated.
The sphere dimmed, and in its place, the world turned transparent. He saw the architecture of reality as fragments of intention. The threads that pulsed between being and not-being winding together in an endless loop . The cycle within him resonated once more, and his vision shifted.
He was standing upon the outline of a massive tree—its roots spreading endlessly through the void, its trunk made of shifting light. But the branches reached downward, not upward, curling into themselves like infinity reflecting in a mirror.
At its center was a hollow, holding a throne of nothingness.
John approached, but the moment he did, the air cracked with an ancient vibration. A chill laced his veins, followed by an ache deep in his heart, as if the Root itself had plucked the emotion from him to examine it.
Pain. Yearning. Fear of loss.
Tessa's face flickered before his eyes—the way she had looked before the Primordial God C haos took her, before he had ripped her soul apart and stole her essence.
He froze.
The Purgatory Inferno flared in response, sensing his turmoil. But the flame's light dimmed under the weight of the Root's gaze.
You carry life and flame, Sovereign of the Azure Harvest, the void murmured. Yet your heart remains divided.
He dropped to one knee, clutching his chest as images poured through him— every promise, every struggle and the intense desire that drove him hidden beneath the justification of love.
"I know," he breathed. "That's why I'm here."
The Root pulsed once, and the sphere above him collapsed into a spiral of light. It plunged into his chest like a falling star.
His body convulsed as his consciousness was pulled inward. He was pulled into his center, the oscillating edges of the mana circles surrounding him.
His vision faded as the circles became distant, his consciousness still sinking in the deaths of his very existence. The darkness settled in, his mind adrift in a see of emptiness and meaningless void.
There was no sound. Not even self. Only the faint echo of his heartbeat, carried on a tide that didn't exist.
For an instant John floated without meaning to his existence, every thought unraveling like threads stripped from the loom of creation.
Something within the darkness pulsed. It was a glimmer so faint that it was less light than remembrance it projected no colors or sights rather it defined the void.
The nothingness shuddered, and from the ripples, fragments of memory emerged: a sword falling, laughter by firelight, the scent dirt on Tessa's skin. They flickered and died again, like stars drowning in the black sea.
He tried to move, but there was no body. Tried to speak, but there was no voice.
The Root whispered, not as sound. But as the thought that defined his existence.
"Creation is not making. It is bringing forth the desires of the soul, the intent and the remembered."
A single drop of golden light fell before him, sinking into the void. The darkness rippled outward, forming faint waves resonating with the rhythm of his pulse. From those waves, shapes began to form countless versions of himself.
Each stood still, watching him. Some wore his current face, others younger, older, or monstrous. Some bore wings of light, others burned with infernal fire. He felt their compositions, but not their drive.
His head spun and he spoke to no one in particular "Are these… my possibilities?"
The darkness didn't answer. Instead, each reflection began to move. They shifted towards him, not in hostility, but trying to force reflection. Their voices merged into one, an ocean of his own tone speaking a single truth:
"To create, you must first dissolve your form, decipher your meaning and project it onto the world."
The world folded inward. He felt the Root's judgment bearing down upon him. His essence began to peel apart, every Dao he'd mastered—Life, Death, Equilibrium, Pride, Wrath, Lust, Gluttony—fragmenting into their original states.
Pain lanced through his soul, deeper than any wound.
He was being dismantled piece by piece. Yet, amid the disintegration, a faint glow pulsed in his chest—the shard of Tessa's divinity. Its light steadied his unraveling form, anchoring him to his meaning.
Through the haze, he realized what the Root demanded: not death, but acceptance. He had to relinquish everything that defined him in order to understand what creation truly was.
"I… see," he whispered, or perhaps only thought. "You don't want my strength. You want my truth."
The void responded.
Every reflection stepped forward and merged with him, one by one. Each union brought agony and clarity. He felt the timid boy who had once feared power, the wrathful warrior who'd burned worlds, the saint who had tried to save them, the monster who'd devoured them all fragments of himself, all real. But not current, they were possiblities, they were reflections of lists worlds. They shone through meaning as the multiverse manifested under the will of the void. In his silent reflection the last one fused, causing the darkness to collapse inward.
A heartbeat thundered through the void the heartbeat of existence .
Light exploded outward, but it wasn't illumination. It was potential, the meanings of the lost worlds revolved in a cycle. The concepts formed and disintegrated in endless succession: water, flame, sky, sorrow, time, joy, chaos, death.
He stood at the very epicenter of all beginnings, witnessing existence writing itself from raw emotion.
And then, beneath that endless tide, a voice murmured once more—ancient, neutral, vast beyond comprehension:
"You are neither god nor mortal. You are the seed that remembers. The potential that was lost and the rewriter of fate. Your existence is vast and unruly, but you must raise you power to wield it"
A brilliant mark formed at the center of his chest, overlapping the place where Tessa's shard rested. It spiraled outward in golden fractal veins that spread across his body. Engraving the future and his potential into flesh, soul, and Dao.
He felt creation flow through him, in reachable but feasibl. Not as something he controlled, but as something that chose to express itself through him. For a moment while unshackled by his limits he became the conduit of which creation flowed through into the world.
Extended his hand, he manifested the limitless power.
The void responded instantly; causing a flower of pure light to bloom in his palm, its petals woven from thought, memory, and faith.
As he gazed at it, he understood the Root's purpose.
To create meant not to dominate, nor to preserve, but to allow.
"Creation exists because if forces destruction to make room," he said softly.
The flower dissolved into his hand, sinking beneath his skin and fusing with the mark over his heart.
And for the first time, the Root spoke directly, not as whisper, but as decree.
[Trial of Genesis Complete.]
[You have touched the origin of existence. Dao of Creation established: 1st Tier (Genesis Aspect)]