Navira looked at the vanishing spatial ripples and moved swiftly toward the collapsed ruins of a nearby tower. Beneath a pile of shattered void alloy, Tenyz was struggling to push himself up. His robes were torn and soaked in his own blood, his arm still bleeding from the Elyrian's desperate strike, and his chest bruised where the force of Adrian's flick had nearly caved in his ribs.
Navira raised her hand, a soft wave of golden essence sweeping the debris aside. She reached down, gripping Tenyz by the uninjured shoulder, and hauled him to his feet.
Tenyz staggered, coughing as he clutched his chest. He looked around, his eyes darting across the devastated Inner Continent, searching for the monster who had so effortlessly swatted him aside. Finding nothing but empty air and the lingering traces of spatial distortion, the reality of their escape finally sank in.
"Damn it all!" Tenyz roared, his voice cracking as he slammed his uninjured fist against a jagged slab of void alloy. The metal groaned under his strike, but the physical outburst did little to quell the burning humiliation in his chest.
He spun toward his mother, "Mother, we cannot just let them walk away! Millions of wandering cultivators in the Outer Continents saw this entire event. By tomorrow, the premium networks will be flooded with news that the Ethereal Providence Sect was made a fool of in the heart of our own territory. If we do not hunt him down, our sect's name will be dragged down."
"Shut your mouth, Tenyz," Navira snapped.
Tenyz froze, the remaining words dying in his throat. He had rarely heard his mother use that tone with him.
"The reputation of our sect means nothing when our very lives are hanging by a thread," Navira reprimanded him, "Let the wanderers whisper. Let the other sects gossip. Do you think I care about the opinions of ants when there is a cosmic leviathan circling our borders? We have to deal with that ancient entity first. And even if we wanted to, we cannot afford to deal with this brat right now."
Tenyz gritted his teeth, the pain in his chest throbbing in rhythm with his racing heart. "Why, Mother? He is strong, but he is just one person. We have an entire Major Sect at our disposal! If we mobilize the grand array—"
"Don't you see it already?" Navira interrupted, her voice lowering into a harsh whisper. She stepped closer, forcing him to look at the bloodied, ruined state of the plaza. "Look at what he did. He copied my willforce technique after seeing it once. He possesses second-stage consciousness mastery while acting with the reckless arrogance of a sheltered junior."
Navira's hands tightened at her sides. "He definitely has a powerful background, Tenyz. A background so deep that they allowed him to wander into a Major Sect's hub just to play the hero for a flock of winged slaves. If we track him, if we mobilize our forces and hunt him down, we will not just be fighting him. We will be declaring war against whatever unfathomable lineage stands behind him. And we truly do not have the time or the strength for that. Not when the shadow of that ancient entity is already suffocating our fate."
Tenyz stared at his mother, his breath catching as the pieces of the puzzle began to collide in his mind. The throbbing pain in his head seemed to sharpen his focus, and the scattered anomalies of the past few days suddenly aligned into a single, horrifying picture.
"But Mother... what if..." Tenyz swallowed hard, his throat dry as dust. "What if this person is connected to that ancient entity?"
Navira's eyes narrowed, but she remained silent, allowing him to speak.
"Think about it," Tenyz urged, "We checked with all our elders and disciples. No one had done anything to provoke someone powerful in recent days. The only major incident that happened right after we felt that premonition of eradication... was this. The Elyrians suddenly started to attack our factories. They somehow possessed two Astral Stage beings, which makes no sense for a race we have kept caged for millions of years. And then, just when I was defeating them, a stranger in the Anchor stage descends from the sky, possessing impossible power, and helps them escape."
"It aligns too perfectly. What if the ancient entity didn't come here to destroy us for a trade dispute? What if it came because of him? What if he is the emissary of that very same monster?"
Navira stood perfectly still. The ambient mana around her seemed to freeze as she processed his words.
She had already considered this exact logic. Deep down, her instincts as an Astral Stage diviner had whispered this very same conclusion to her the moment the boy had unleashed his willforce. But she had subconsciously ignored it. She had buried the thought beneath layers of rationalization because she simply did not want it to be true. If this stranger, this arrogant, powerful brat, was truly connected to the ancient entity that had shattered her divination array and nearly collapsed her Astral Core, then the Ethereal Providence Sect was not just in danger. They were already walking corpses.
"Let's not panic, Tenyz," Navira said, her voice dropping into a chillingly calm register. She closed her eyes for a brief second, pushing down the creeping dread that threatened to paralyze her. When she opened them again, her pupils burned with resolve. "Assumptions will only cloud our judgment. I will check this once and for all."
Navira raised her right hand. Between her slender fingers, she held the slim golden sword she had used during the battle. Along the edge of the blade, a few small drops of blood still lingered, the blood she had drawn when she sliced across Adrian's shoulder and chest.
With a subtle manipulation of her mana, a single droplet of that dark red blood detached from the blade and floated upward, hovering in the space between her and Tenyz.
Navira immediately began to draw upon her divine concept. Her hands moved in rapid incantations, her fingers weaving through the air as streams of brilliant golden essence erupted from her core. The energy spread outward like liquid light, intertwining and folding until it formed an intricate rune circle hovering in mid-air, the exact same scrying array she had used in her private chamber.
"I will look into his past," Navira murmured, "I will follow the thread of this blood to learn about his future, to see his origin, and to uncover whatever stands behind him."
The runic circle stabilized, its center flattening into a smooth, mirror-like surface. Within the golden boundary, images began to flicker into existence. The scrying spell latched onto the fate resonance of the blood, pulling visuals from the immediate past.
The screen displayed the clash that had just occurred. It showed Adrian's white-grey sword descending, the flurry of willforce needles, and the moment Navira's blade bit into his flesh. The spell was working flawlessly.
"Show me," Navira commanded, pouring more of her mana into the array, forcing the threads of fate to look deeper, to trace the boy's existence back to its root.
The images on the screen began to blur, shifting rapidly as the timeline attempted to reverse.
But then, the golden mirror froze.
The ambient mana in the Inner Continent abruptly vanished, sucked away into an impossible void. The golden light of Navira's runic circle flickered, turning a sickly, corrupted violet.
A presence descended upon the plaza.
It was not a physical arrival, but a conceptual weight so unfathomably vast that it eclipsed the very idea of reality. It was the exact same cosmic horror Navira had felt in her subterranean chamber, an endless, swirling abyss that stared back through the threads of fate with an indifferent gaze.
Before Navira could even attempt to sever the connection, the terrifying will surged through the scrying array.
CRACK!
The golden rune circle shattered into a million pieces of dying light. The backlash of peering into a fate guarded by the Source detonated with apocalyptic force.
"AARGH!"
Navira was violently thrown backward through the air, and she crashed through the reinforced walls of a nearby building, reducing the structure to dust.
"MOTHER!" Tenyz screamed, throwing his arms up to shield his face from the blinding explosion of light and debris.
The dust plumed high into the artificial sky, slowly settling over the devastation. From the wreckage of the collapsed building, the sound of shifting metal echoed. Navira pushed a massive slab of void alloy off her body and staggered to her feet. Blood poured from her nose and mouth, staining her robes. Her face was ashen, her breathing ragged, and her Astral Core trembled within her chest, completely destabilized by the magnitude of the backlash.
She wiped the blood from her chin with a shaking hand, her eyes wide with a terror that had entirely stripped away her sovereign pride.
Tenyz rushed to her side, his own body shivering so violently he could barely stand. He looked at the shattered remnants of the divination array fading into the air, and his mind completely broke.
"It's done!" Tenyz cried out. He grabbed his mother's arm, his eyes wide and panicked. "We are doomed. That stranger is truly connected with that ancient entity! What are we going to do now, Mother? If that stranger went back and informed the ancient entity about what happened here... if he tells them we tried to kill him... we will die. Our entire sect will be wiped from existence."
Navira stood still as she listened to Tenyz's words. The reality of their situation clamped down around her throat.
Before this encounter, when they had only felt the premonition of eradication, Navira and Tenyz had formulated a desperate plan. They had intended to wait for the ancient entity to arrive, lower their heads, and offer whatever wealth, resources, or sacrifices the monster demanded to buy their lives. Submission was the ultimate survival tactic of the universe.
But if that ancient entity was directly connected to this stranger... the possibility of escaping this alive was infinitesimally thin. What if the Elyrian princess demanded revenge? What if this stranger asked the ancient entity to erase the Ethereal Providence Sect as retribution for the blood spilled today? There was no negotiating with a cosmic titan when the grievance was deeply personal. There was no going back against a verdict of eradication.
Navira looked at her son. Seeing him reduced to a shivering, broken mess triggered something deep within her. The cold, calculating Sect Leader was momentarily overshadowed by the instincts of a mother.
Navira stepped forward and pulled Tenyz into her arms. She raised her bloodstained hands, gently cupping the back of his head, holding him firmly to ground his spiraling panic.
"Do not fear, Tenyz," Navira whispered, her voice surprisingly steady despite the violent trembling of her own core. "I will not let anything happen to you. Do you hear me? I will not let you die. We will survive this."
Tenyz gripped her robes tightly, his breaths coming in short, panicked hitches. He looked up at her, "How? How can you say that? Even you cannot stand against that ancient entity, Mother. You nearly died just looking at its shadow!"
Navira released him slightly, keeping her hands firmly on his shoulders.
"Yes, I cannot stand against this," Navira replied, "But that does not mean we do not have anyone who can."
Tenyz blinked, confusion piercing through the fog of his panic. He stared at her, uncomprehending. "What do you mean? We are the highest authority in the Ethereal Providence Sect. There is no one above you."
Navira shook her head slowly. She looked around the ruined plaza, ensuring that no stray disciples or guards had dared to approach the perimeter, before lowering her voice even further.
"Our race, the Yiphraen, has survived for millions of years in this ruthless universe, Tenyz," Navira explained, "We did not just appear out of the void. We have slowly grown from a weak, little race on a small planet, clawing our way up to eventually establishing our own Lesser Major Sect and claiming this intergalactic hub. Our history spans far longer than the lives you and I have lived. And in that vast, bloody history, our race has produced beings that are far stronger than any of us..."
Tenyz's jaw dropped slightly. "Even stronger than you? But... if we have ancestors that powerful, why are they not here with our race? Why are they not ruling the sect? And why have you never said a single word about this to me?"
Navira let out a tired, bitter sigh. "Not every individual who reaches the apex of cultivation wishes to stick with their race and rule a stagnant territory, Tenyz. Hear me fully first."
She released his shoulders and took a slow step back, her gaze distant as she spoke of the sect's greatest secret.
"In our distant past, there were beings among our bloodline whose talents were monstrous, and whose dreams stretched far beyond what our race and our limited sect could contain. So, they left. They abandoned their titles and journeyed into the deeper universe to seek true supremacy. Actually, there is one specific ancestor of ours who was so incredibly talented, so extraordinarily gifted in his comprehension, that his existence caught the eye of the heavens themselves."
Navira paused, locking eyes with her son to ensure he grasped the magnitude of what she was about to say. "He was taken in by an elder from a Great Sect."
Tenyz physically stumbled backward, his eyes widening to the point of tearing. The air seemed to leave his lungs. "Grea... a Great Sect?!"
"Yes," Navira replied, her voice solemn. "But this is not recorded in any of our archives, nor is it spoken of in our history. I did not even reveal it to you until now, because according to our race's sacred tradition, this information can only be shared with the heir when they ascend to become the Sect Leader."
"Why?" Tenyz asked, his voice breathless, overwhelmed by the revelation. "Why impose such restrictions? Having a connection to a Great Sect... that is the ultimate shield! We could rule dozens of galaxies with that kind of backing!"
"This is exactly what Great Sects dislike!" Navira snapped, her tone turning sharp and reprimanding. "The Great Sects view themselves as the absolute apex of existence. They are gods among mortals. They do not care about the petty, mortal families or the lesser factions their disciples leave behind. If anything, they view such attachments as weaknesses."
She stepped closer to him, her expression grim. "A Great Sect does not want its name to be dragged or used as a cheap bargaining chip by lesser powers. If we had ever announced that our ancestor was a disciple of a Great Sect, we would have been treated differently by the surrounding powers. We would have essentially been borrowing the Great Sect's name to hoard wealth and intimidate rivals."
Navira's eyes darkened with a chilling fear. "That is the one thing they do not tolerate. The Great Sects' absolute rule is that their disciples' descendants must sever all ties and never reveal the connection to the outside universe. That is why our race has been protecting this information for eras. If this secret ever leaked, if the Great Sect believed we were using their name to bolster our own authority, things would spiral out of control instantly. One day, an envoy from that Great Sect would simply appear in our sky and destroy us entirely, wiping our civilization from the universe just to protect their dignity."
Tenyz stood in stunned silence. The pieces clicked together in his mind. The Great Sects were not benevolent protectors; they were indifferent titans who demanded absolute separation from the mortal world. To claim their protection uninvited was a death sentence.
He swallowed hard, the trembling in his hands finally beginning to subside as a desperate, fragile hope took root in his chest.
"So, Mother," Tenyz asked, his voice wavering, "you are saying that our ancestor, who is in the Great Sect, is as strong as the ancient entity? And... would he actually save us if we ask for help?"
Navira looked at her son, and for the first time, a look of uncertainty crossed her features. She shook her head slowly.
"To be honest, Tenyz, I am not sure," Navira admitted quietly. "We have securely stored the private UNI-OS account of our ancestor, passed down from leader to leader as the ultimate contingency. But in our long history, no one has ever dared to contact him. We were too afraid of bringing the Great Sect's wrath upon us."
She looked down at her bloodstained hands, then up toward the artificial sky of the Providence Hub.
"Even I do not know how powerful he is now, or if he even remembers the bloodline he left behind. But right now, he is the only path left for us to survive this. If he answers our call... if he still holds even a sliver of mercy for his descendants... we might just have a chance to stand against this ancient entity."