Elisa sat upon the clouds, tens of thousands of beasts and rare lifeforms arrayed around her, when a barren, desolate stretch of land came into view — several thousand kilometers from the trial space. Legend named it the site of the ancient war against the levians, a conflict whose bloodshed had seeped into the earth itself, contaminating every herb and lifeform that dared take root there since. Elisa vanished from the clouds and reappeared standing at the land's center. She raised a single finger, and source-defying flames bloomed to life around her, consuming every trace left behind — bloodstains, discarded weapons, forgotten bodies, the lingering karma of the fallen — though she preserved a handful of treasures and artifacts, ones she judged useful for cultivating the beasts and lifeforms under her care.
An hour later, the contamination and killing intent had been scoured away entirely, leaving behind a cleansed patch of ground, less than a hundred meters across, where the beasts and lifeforms could settle to temper their minds and willpower — most of them, after all, still weak in spirit. Elisa began tracing seals with her flames, and with each one completed, a pillar rose from the earth, lemon-gold engravings gleaming across its surface. Eight in total.
Then she turned her internal world's resonance outward, and the land itself began to answer her will, bending and reshaping according to law she alone dictated. What had been a stretch barely a million kilometers across swelled outward at a staggering pace until it spanned eight billion kilometers, eight pillars marking the cardinal directions from the point where she stood. The transformation didn't stop at scale — the land split into eight distinct continents, each with its own ecosystem and terrain, every detail deliberately shaped by Elisa to suit the needs of the beasts and lifeforms she meant to house there. She wove further seals, and portals bloomed across each continent, threading back to the core land where she would remain. Her voice carried out to all of them:
"You will be sent to one of these continents. On each stands a pillar bearing the complete ancestral beast transformation arts. Any who comprehend the first three levels of the eight arts will earn a decade within the core land, learning directly from me. There, you'll find a spot of contamination where you may temper your willpower — but know this: if you die within it, it means you were never fit to stand among the ancestral beast sect."
The beings listening were overcome with joy. Never before had anyone taken it upon themselves to guide their growth — the one exception had offered only fragments, incomplete and difficult to parse. Now they had not just a path forward, but a leader willing to shepherd and shield them until they could stand on their own.
Elisa dispatched the bulk of the gathered beings to the new continents with barely a thought. The ground beneath her trembled and split open, stone transmuting into rare metals and crystal that rose skyward, interlocking piece by piece like children's building blocks. Together they formed a vast castle around her — she hadn't moved an inch through any of it. A throne of crystal rose at her back as she settled onto it, and by the time she was seated, the castle stood complete, eight pillars arranged before her throne room, four to a side.
She lifted a hand, and the remaining beings still waiting on the clouds outside — Solanky among them — appeared before her at once. The beast emperor's former disciples dropped to their knees in greeting. Elisa nodded.
"From this moment, you are no longer disciples of the beast emperor," she said. "You are Beast Apostles. You will remain here, under my guidance, until you rise to the level of entry-level generals among the transcendents. Behind you stand eight pillars, holding the complete ancestral beast transformation arts. What was scattered across the holy land carried none of my true intent, none of my full aura — but any among you who masters what stands here will earn the right to call yourself apostle, and may yet surpass those who came before, should they grow careless in their training."
The apostles saluted once more and dispersed to study the pillars, each one carved with intricate engravings. Elisa then called Solanky forward.
As he approached the throne, the world around him began to shift — subtly at first, then unmistakably, until the scenery had transformed completely by the time he stood ten meters from where she sat. Inwardly, he reeled. He hadn't imagined a transcendent entity's grasp on reality and space could be refined to such a degree — especially since none of the apostles before him had shown any sign of noticing the warp at all. He asked her directly: "Can every transcendent entity bend reality this seamlessly?"
Elisa laughed. "Not even close. Only the five venerable ones can warp space and reality at this level — carving out an entirely new domain around themselves, one where they alone decide the laws, and who becomes trapped within it. To them, it might appear as nothing more than ten meters, five meters of space. But to whatever's caught inside, it could stretch across thousands of light-years. Any transcendent being outside that circle of five struggles just to hold such a space together — they can only fake it through illusion, and any soul with weaker willpower who stumbles into one of those illusions is doomed. Trapped forever, completely at the mercy of whoever cast it, used as nothing more than a tool to sharpen their warping craft." She paused. "And you understand, surely, that anything below commander-level, below 800,000 times the strength of an Infinite Source God, stands no chance at all against a transcendent's attack."
Solanky absorbed this in silence, a chill settling over him as pieces clicked into place — more reasons, now, why Supremo had warned him so sharply about the transcendent entities upon their arrival in the forsaken realm. He turned his attention to the eight pillars before him, each holding a piece of the ancestral beast transformation arts.
The first pillar detailed the transformation of will alongside the refinement of body and essence — ten distinct methods, none carrying the risk to life that the beast emperor's original writings had. In that moment, Solanky understood: the beast emperor himself had never truly deciphered these arts. He'd relied on his own limited interpretation instead — an interpretation that, remarkably, had still elevated him above nearly every other transcendent entity, falling short only of the five venerable ones, and matching them, at least, in raw physical strength.
The second pillar addressed stance and readiness before combat, offering ten techniques of its own. The third — Solanky corrected himself as he moved to it — actually held movement techniques, more than five hundred variations, the top ten standing above the rest, with the Void Shadow Steps ranked second and a technique called the Ancestral Beast Dance holding the pinnacle. A separate pillar, dense with offensive techniques — over a million variations scattered across it — revealed moves he recognized instantly: the tail whip, the void-tearing claw, techniques he'd watched Elisa unleash in battles past.
Solanky exhaled slowly. No wonder the transcendent beings in the trial space believed I practiced the ancestral beast transformation arts. I never even realized — I'd already absorbed most of Elisa's techniques, long before she claimed her place as the ancestral beast. A thought struck him. I should bring the king ape here, have him join the sect. With his talent, he'd surpass every current apostle within seasons.
He turned back to Elisa. "It seems the remaining arts have already reached me, one way or another. I'll head back to the trial space to train. Do you need me to prepare jade slips for you?"
"I'm not like the venerable ones," Elisa said. "Creating techniques at the peak of the transcendent level comes easily to me. What I need is to refine my own skills, break through my current shackles, and forge something beyond the transcendent level entirely — enough, perhaps, to glimpse the tier where the forsaken god and the Levian Progenitor stand. My path isn't theirs, either. Abandoning my ruthless, beastly nature would unravel everything I've built toward. But techniques like these — they'll serve you well. You haven't reached transcendence yet."
Solanky took this in, then asked, carefully, whether she knew anything about the level occupied by the forsaken god, the Levian Progenitor, and Supremo. Elisa's hands moved through a series of seals, and a sound barrier sealed them off from everything around them. She waved a hand, and Solanky found himself pulled from the throne room entirely, deposited instead within her internal world. There, she shaped an avatar from her own world energies and spoke, her tone leaving no room for argument.
"This is the last time you ask me about beings at the forsaken god's level — unless you're eager to meet a permanent end. Once you reach the transcendent level yourself, the tier above it will become clear to you naturally. But to actually reach that level, you'll need a being who already stands there to personally guide you, or to mark you as their own — proof, a guarantee. Without that, anyone who's crossed into that level will hunt you down and consume you outright. The stage above transcendence is called the Nine Peak Revolutions, or Nine Peak Turns. We know almost nothing of it — not even how many stages it holds, though I suspect nine."
With that, Solanky was sent back out of her internal world. Elisa instructed him to study the jade slips carefully — with his talent alone, she told him, he stood a real chance not just at transcendence, but at surpassing the first venerable one himself.