Solanky felt a jolt of shock ripple through him. The golden statue, though fully visible here, bore an uncanny resemblance to the blurred, half-glimpsed golden statues within the forsaken god's cave back in the forsaken realm. But something was off — the aura radiating from this statue was noticeably weaker than the eight he'd encountered there.
"The being who forged this statue has never once set foot within the beyond realm," the desolate god said. "It's believed he exists entirely outside it — the sole guardian standing between this realm and the forces of evil, the calamitous lifeforms. Study the statue carefully, and it will draw you into an independent world of its own, one that will teach you every law and mechanism governing the beyond realm, and open the door to the higher spiritual planes."
The seedlings arranged themselves in a circle before the statue, closed their eyes, and projected their spiritual bodies outward — though this time, those forms shrank to only a few meters in height. The instant their spiritual bodies made contact with the statue's surface, they were pulled inside completely, emerging in a realm that existed parallel to the beyond realm itself.
Each of them glanced down to find golden chains coiled around their lower bodies. A voice echoed through the unfamiliar space:
"This is the threshold to the higher spiritual planes. Do not stray beyond five kilometers from the golden radiance — doing so means the death of your spiritual body. Don't assume nothing here can kill you simply because you're spirit and not flesh. Even peak-turn beings have fallen within the higher spiritual plane; certain regions here are lethal even to true peak-turn beings. I've brought your bodies here deliberately, to train them, to help your spiritual forms break their shackles and achieve their first turn at the peak-turns level — a feat that, through your spiritual body alone, could earn you the right to claim, or vouch for, a true peak-turns being."
Solanky paused mid-motion, his attention drawn to the mysterious woman's spiritual form. It resembled a woman of Earth, save for two pairs of wings — one shielding her face, the other wrapping her entire figure. He recognized what she was: a special lifeform, born with a hundred and ten times the strength of an ordinary being at her level. Unlike him — who had forged a defying body early, while still weak, and left his spiritual cultivation neglected — she had clearly poured her effort into refining spiritual power, honing it until she could wield her extraordinary physical form with total precision, never clumsy, never caught off guard by real danger.
Though I was born an ordinary lifeform, Solanky thought, I've climbed to become a source-defying lifeform — a tier above even the special lifeforms — and I owe every bit of that to Supremo. So why can't I sense him at all, now that I've entered the beyond realm? I need to know — is he truly a true peak-turns being?
The instant the thought formed, a voice answered within his consciousness. "Pass this test, and I'll tell you everything you need to know about the peak-turns level — including how to execute techniques at its first or second stage, once you reach transcendence."
Supremo. Reaching him through their shared consciousness link, as always.
Solanky asked how he was supposed to pass. Supremo's answer was blunt: figure it out himself.
Sometimes I wonder if we're really so different, coming from where we do, Solanky thought bitterly. If your only goal is to strengthen me, why withhold help now?
Supremo's reply came without hesitation. "You need nothing from me here. Worry less about yourself and more about that special lifeform beside you — the mysterious woman, who for reasons I can't disclose, carries a peak-turns spiritual body. The moment you reach the transcendent entity level, she won't be able to match you any longer. The gap in basic lifeform energy and strength between your tiers becomes insurmountable at that point — visible, undeniable."
"Aren't we all fundamentally the same?" Solanky pressed. "Some born powerless mortals, others born into special forms that can live thousands of years without ever cultivating at all?"
"Yes," Supremo said, "but special lifeforms don't hold a monopoly on absolute power. Once born with that gift, they're capped — they cannot push their strength beyond a hundred points, by design, by the laws and beings who govern such things. Take the mysterious woman: her baseline peak entity strength sits at 850,000 times an I.S.G.'s power, without even drawing on her special-lifeform abilities. Given her makeup, she could unlock, at most, eighty times that when tapping into her true privileges."
"Above special lifeforms sit the calamitous lifeforms — and not the diminished ones you encountered in the void region. Those were distant descendants, pale shadows of the true calamitous lifeforms, which are genuinely terrifying. Only the strongest peak-turn beings can stand against them, relying entirely on spiritual power and raw energy, and even they're forced to retreat when facing one of the true leaders among them."
"Above the calamitous lifeforms are beings like you and me — vanishingly rare. We belong to the source-defying category, the apex tier above everything else. But there's a catch: either you're born one, which almost never happens, or you cultivate your way there by restructuring your entire being from the ground up. That's how I became one, before I entered my long slumber. Before that slumber, I built several statues to track my own progress — the one you're standing inside now is the very first I ever made. Back then, I was what you'd call an immortal god lifeform, a notch below the special forms. I destroyed my own life deliberately and reincarnated, using that statue as my anchor point. With each reincarnation, my life energies deepened, grew more profound, and the statue recorded every transformation along the way — until I reached the absolute peak of the special lifeform tier. From there, wielding a body far more powerful than most true peak-turn beings, I rose to become the absolute being of the beyond realm. That's when I crossed paths with the desolate god. I saw his future, recognized his worth to me, and gifted him the statue holding my earliest transformations. The statues in the forsaken god's cave came later — gifts I gave once I'd grown comparable to the calamitous lifeforms themselves. That's why their aura runs so much stronger, so much harder to comprehend."
Solanky stood in stunned silence. Never, in his wildest imagining, would he have guessed that Supremo was the very absolute being the two peak-turn beings he'd once met had spoken of in hushed reverence.
He pressed on, his own power still capped at 980,000 times an I.S.G.'s strength despite the source-defying body armor meant to push him further. He wanted to know why.
"Because of the restrictions I placed on you," Supremo said, "to keep you from drawing unwanted attention. Without them, full integration with the source-defying body armor would have made you a true source-defying lifeform outright. And if that had happened — a peak entity capable of matching a powerful saint emperor blow for blow, technique for technique — it would have shaken the entire beyond realm. Only lifeforms above the special-lifeform category can achieve that kind of feat, and it would have drawn the attention of powerful disembodied spiritual beings eager to seize your body for themselves. I had no choice but to restrict your growth. You're a defying cultivator, same as I once was — but at your current level, only beings at the peak-turns tier or above pose any real threat to you."
"Since you won't reveal the statue's full mysteries," Solanky said, "then tell me about the true peak-turns beings instead. We're safe here, for now — and who knows, maybe I can fully integrate some percentage of the source-defying body armor while we are."
"I'll tell you about the peak-turns level," Supremo said. "And if you manage to integrate with even part of it, this golden statue will lose its use to you entirely — and the eight golden statues back in the forsaken realm will finally make sense. You'll need to return there, once you become a transcendent."