"One of the world's Origins?"
The sudden system notification that rang out in her mind brought a hint of surprise to Satsuki's face.
It had been a long time since she had heard that voice. Ever since entering this world, although she had paid some attention to its Origins, she had mostly been acting according to her own plan.
She looked at the Shikon Jewel above. Although this Shikon Jewel contained power even more exceptional than the original, there had been no fundamental change in its nature.
If the trigger for a notification regarding the world's Origin had been related to it, then the alert would have sounded the very first time she encountered that Child Shrine Maiden in the Demon-Hunting Village.
Then—the world's Origin the system is referring to is not the Shikon Jewel.
If it was not the Shikon Jewel, then it could only be the Cauldron of Resonance.
With that thought, Satsuki sank a portion of her consciousness into her sea of awareness. Within it, the system's light point emerged from the void once more.
"Host, you've discovered one of the world's Origins?"
"This was not part of my plan..." Satsuki shook her head lightly, projecting the events of the outside world into her sea of awareness. "I did not expect the Cauldron of Resonance itself to be one of this world's Origins."
"Since you've found it, shall we extract its Origin power?" The system's light point seemed unusually eager.
"Of course. That is precisely why I entered my consciousness."
Satsuki spoke calmly. "Extracting a world's Origin is not something I personally carry out. I am rather curious how you, as a system, intend to accomplish it."
"Then—let us begin now."
Upon receiving Satsuki's consent, the system's light point transformed in midair into a massive display screen. Upon it appeared several large characters that had not been seen in a long time:
[The Strongest System Across All Worlds]
Beneath that, more words appeared:
[Running World Origin Absorption Program. As this is the first activation of the related procedure, verifying program integrity. Please wait...]
10%... 20%... 30%... 40%...
In terms of operating speed, the Strongest System Across All Worlds was indeed impressive. Within only a few seconds in the sea of awareness, the verification progress reached 100%.
Another system window promptly appeared.
[Program integrity verified. All functions normal. Ready to initiate. Start immediately? Yes / No]
"Yes."
After Satsuki gave the verbal command, the "Yes" option flickered several times before the entire system window vanished.
In its place, at the center of her sea of awareness, a vast spacetime vortex materialized.
With the emergence of that vortex, Satsuki's Tenseigan detected a peculiar silver-gray force spontaneously manifesting within the void of her sea of awareness. The energy was extraordinarily strange. Although she could observe it, she could not record it with the Tenseigan.
Since the Tenseigan could not record it, Satsuki attempted to manipulate the Sacred Wheel in her hand, intending to use the authority of Status Manipulation to scan the structure and attributes of this unusual power.
Very quickly, however, she received a notification.
[Insufficient authority. Unable to obtain target status.]
The result caused Satsuki to frown slightly.
"My authority reached the Terminal Level back in the world of YGGDRASIL. In theory, only an existence of equal Terminal Level should be able to block it. Aside from that encounter with the Enlightened One, this is only the second time such a situation has occurred."
This meant that her idea of directly acquiring a world's essence by recording the system's extraction of its Origin through Status Manipulation had failed.
She would still have to rely on Māra's power of Vipralopa to slowly erode this world.
Even so, although her attempt at exploiting a loophole had fallen through, witnessing the extraction of a world's Origin was an exceedingly rare occurrence. It still held great observational value for her.
The mysterious force connected directly from the vortex within her sea of awareness to the outside world.
Immediately, a phenomenon erupted.
Above Hōraijima, where Satsuki stood, the sky began to twist violently. A black vortex formed in midair, accompanied by rumbling thunder and flashing lightning.
The silver-gray force descended vertically from the black vortex.
Wherever it passed, whether Kaguyayo, Shrine Maiden Kanade, the residents of Hōraijima—or even Kaguya Ōtsutsuki—
All of their movements froze.
They entered a state akin to complete stasis.
The sight caused Satsuki's mind to stir.
Does this force also contain authority related to time?
It could even affect Kaguya Ōtsutsuki, who could freely traverse space. That alone proved that the temporal authority contained within this power was anything but ordinary.
However, there was no time to dwell on it.
The silver-gray energy seemed to have an extremely clear target. The moment it appeared, it rushed directly toward Satsuki's current location—the Cauldron of Resonance.
At that moment, the Cauldron of Resonance seemed isolated from the entire world. Everything else was frozen, and only the cauldron and Satsuki within it could perceive what was happening.
Very quickly, the silver-gray energy enveloped the entire Cauldron of Resonance.
Then, a peculiar red spherical mass of energy emerged from within the cauldron. It was seized and wrapped by the silver-gray force before being rapidly drawn back into the black vortex above.
With the loss of that red energy, the crimson glow on the surface of the Cauldron of Resonance began to dissipate swiftly. The surging scarlet magma within gradually stagnated. As the temperature plummeted, it darkened and oxidized.
The silver-gray energy moved with astonishing speed.
From its appearance to the extraction of the world's Origin contained within the Cauldron of Resonance, and finally to its disappearance—
The entire process was completed within the span of only a few of Satsuki's blinks.
Only when time in the outside world resumed flowing did Satsuki realize that the system's extraction of the world's Origin had concluded.
"So that was one of the world's Origins?!"
Floating above the central vortex was a red energy sphere roughly the size of a basketball.
With its appearance, the entire space of her sea of awareness seemed to undergo a subtle transformation.
Although Satsuki had already replaced her sea of awareness with the Black Domain Buddhakṣetra, aside from herself and the system, there were no other living beings within.
In essence, it had not differed much from the still, dark pool it once resembled.
Yet with the emergence of this world's Origin, the space seemed to gain a trace of vitality—
Or perhaps it was more accurate to say it now possessed a sense of being alive.
At the center of her sea of awareness, Satsuki's true form focused intently on the red energy, attempting to discern how such a change had come about.
However, even when employing the three thousand wisdom eyes of Māra, what she could perceive was extremely limited.
Why this transformation occurred, and how exactly this world's Origin should be utilized—she had yet to conceive any effective method.
As she contemplated, the system's light sphere drifted over, a luminous exclamation mark representing excitement forming above it.
"Host—could you give this world's Origin to me? I have a feeling it is very important to me."
"Important to you?"
Satsuki turned her gaze toward the excited system light sphere before her and spoke softly. "Even if this world's Origin is important to you, I have no method of using it myself."
"Host, that is precisely my role. My task is to help you utilize it." The system light sphere bounced up and down proudly in front of her. "Just now, another function of the system was activated. That is why I need it."
"A new function?"
Only then did Satsuki recall that the so-called Strongest System Across All Worlds had once been rather underwhelming—it had not even known how many functions it possessed.
Just as it had only activated its world-traveling ability after obtaining the Space-Time Medal, perhaps now that it had acquired a world's Origin, it had unlocked yet another capability.
Since she herself had no way to make use of this world's Origin, handing it over to the system was likely the only viable course of action.
With that thought, Satsuki waved her hand. "Very well. You may use this world's Origin first."
"Yes!"
Upon receiving her approval, the system leapt upward in excitement. Its former appearance as a simple sphere of light abruptly transformed. Within the sea of awareness, it manifested as a massive purple-furred fox with nine enormous tails swaying behind it.
This form was modeled after Satsuki's Ruri incarnation in her fully demonized state.
From a purely visual standpoint, the colossal nine-tailed fox was no less imposing than the resurrected Ten-Tails Divine Tree from before. With its nine immense tails spreading wide, its sheer presence was even more overwhelming.
The system, now in its nine-tailed fox form, seemed quite satisfied with its new appearance. After letting out a smug cry, it opened its jaws wide and swallowed the world's Origin in a single gulp.
Compared to the enormous body of the nine-tailed fox, the red sphere of Origin was almost negligible in size. Yet the moment it was swallowed, the fox's body began to tremble violently.
At the same time, a flickering red glow began to pulse at its throat.
As the system swallowed, the red light traveled downward—from the throat to the chest, then swiftly further down, finally reaching the fox's lower abdomen.
There, something already existed.
The Swirl of the Root.
Through the Tenseigan, its image was clear: at its center lay something resembling a black hole. Around it coiled blue, nebula-like substances intertwined with crackling strands of lightning.
The black hole at its core represented the realm known as "Emptiness."
Its circular form signified boundlessness—not finitude, nor infinity.
For in order to define "infinity," one must first define "finitude." Without finitude, infinity does not exist.
Philosophically speaking, "existence" inevitably stands in opposition to "non-existence," and "non-existence" to "existence." These are dualistic principles.
But Satsuki, as a Demon Buddha, did not follow the dualistic path of Daoist doctrine. The Buddhist path she embodied was non-dual. Thus, any doctrine founded upon duality was not true Dharma.
True Dharma was neither existence nor emptiness, neither increase nor decrease, neither life nor death, neither impurity nor purity, neither truth nor falsehood, neither neither good nor evil.
It transcended all positive and negative distinctions.
This was why Satsuki's actions could not be judged by the moral frameworks of ordinary beings.
However, the system's decision to use the Swirl of the Root to fuse with the world's Origin had taken her by surprise.
Her understanding of the Akashic Records was not particularly deep. In her view, it was more akin to an immeasurably vast archive in which countless prototypes of existence could be found.
The Swirl of the Root was the ultimate goal longed for by all magi in that world—a dreamlike realm forever beyond human reach. Unable to attain it, many had projected upon it beautiful fantasies, believing that entering it would grant mastery over the fundamental causality and laws governing all things.
With such mastery, one could supposedly reshape the world's structure and order at will, effortlessly create new worlds, or destroy old ones.
But that was not the truth.
Historical records of the Swirl of the Root stated that several individuals had reached it. Yet the instant they did, all evidence of their existence in that world was erased. They vanished completely, never to return.
Only one magus both reached the Swirl of the Root and continued to exist in the world.
That individual was exceedingly unique. He lost his ability to perceive and judge phenomena, yet possessed language and manipulation abilities nearly equivalent to True Magic. He was fluent in every language throughout history. His perception of the world existed only in textual form within his mind.
Thus he could be regarded as both omniscient and ignorant.
Yet if ignorance became the necessary condition for approaching the Swirl of the Root, then approaching it itself lost all meaning.
The greatest power of the Swirl of the Root was its ability to elevate beings who had reached the "Root" to a higher realm—"Emptiness."
However, the prerequisite for nearing the Swirl of the Root was already to attain a state akin to "Emptiness."
And once one possessed the realm of Emptiness, seeking the Swirl of the Root became meaningless.
Absurd, was it not?
The ultimate truth pursued by all magi was, at its core, nothing more than an eternal paradox.
The realm of "Emptiness" was synonymous with Nirvāṇa in Buddhist thought—a state realized only by those who had transcended time and space and entered the realm of Suchness.
For Satsuki, this was already a state she had attained. Thus, the Swirl of the Root held limited value for her.
Moreover, because in the world of Fate she had reached an agreement with Gaia's will that resulted in the fusion of the Swirl of the Root with the system, it was in fact the system—not she—that possessed deeper understanding of this so-called Truth that countless magi had sought.
The strange transformation now unfolding before her was something she was witnessing for the first time.
Inside the system's nine-tailed body, as the world's Origin slowly approached, the black hole at the center of the Swirl of the Root sensed the arrival of another world's Origin.
It began to grow restless.
A formless vortex of force emerged from the core of the Swirl of the Root.
That was the Counter Force.
Whenever an external factor threatened the Swirl of the Root, the Counter Force would manifest simultaneously to eliminate the primary cause.
But this time was different.
What the Swirl of the Root sensed was not a threat—but a vital fragment meant to complete itself.
That intense necessity likewise stimulated the Swirl of the Root to generate the Counter Force. It began to actively draw the red Origin power, pulling it step by step toward its core.
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