Inside the ruined, glassed crater of the Sword Graveyard, Soren sat motionless, serving as the biological singularity for the returning tide of Origin Qi.
The air around him grew impossibly dense. It tasted of ozone, evaporated iron, and the raw, unadulterated terror of billions of living entities.
The stolen essence did not return as a gentle breeze. It crashed down upon the Wastelands in a torrential, invisible pillar of kinetic mass.
~ BA-DUMP! ~
Soren's Octochambered Heart met the descending column of stolen power with a deafening, rhythmic thunder.
The physical organ, a biomechanical marvel of absolute creation, roared to life.
The Upper Auricles, governed by the tyrannical sentience of the Ryujin Gene, immediately recognized the sheer volume of chaotic, conflicting signatures within the descending tide, instantly prompting Ryu-Gene to begin sorting them.
Upon sorting and marking the heavy kinetic laws within the tide of energy, it shunted them downwards.
The Eden Gene met the flow in the Lower Auricles, aggressively pacifying the foreign, furious wills embedded within the stolen Qi, washing it in a pure, regenerative light.
Then came the execution.
The Tranquil Poison Essence, seated in the Primary Ventricles, ruthlessly corroded the impurities, burning away the ego and cosmic debris of the 3rd Plane.
Finally, the Mimic Drakon Gene seized the hyper-purified result, attempting to hybridize and dominate the flow before it was violently blasted down through his newly forged, impossibly wide Star-Iron arteries.
Soren did not scream, though the pain of filtering the tax of an entire Plane would have shattered the soul of a 7th Plane Hegemon.
His physical nerves, having been entirely rewritten by the esoteric glyphs of the Origin Codex, only translated the sensation as a profound, burning weight.
Deep within his spiritual nexus, the spot where his absolute equivalent of a Dantian would be formed, awaited the harvest.
Within his mind, the Origin Codex booted up with terrifying, systemic precision.
The abyssal black void of his Origin Pupils spun, their fractured, prismatic halos analyzing the internal and external shifts at a speed that transcended mortal comprehension.
Golden-white glyphs cascaded across his vision, projecting the absolute mathematical "Truth" of his existence directly onto his consciousness.
[Warning: Planar Laws Locked. Ambient Gravity Coefficient: Amplified by 400%.]
[Event Triggered: The Infinite Retraction. Processing stolen Planar Mass...]
[Systemic Hub: Octochambered Refinery Operating at 120%.]
Soren watched the internal readout with a cold, detached sovereignty.
The pure, violently refined energy began to stream through channels Soren never knew existed, unblocking and editing their structure as they barrelled along before eventually crashing into his spiritual nexus.
Because he was a fundamental blank slate with a void spirit (Black Sun), an anomaly cultivating the progenitor Origin Qi, the Nexus did not reject the myriad of elemental truths hidden within the stolen heritages.
Instead, it assimilated them.
The absolute Equilibrium of his Origin Qi balanced the heavy, warring Chaos of his physical physiology and the profound Mysticism of his Soul World.
[Omni-Affinity Confirmed. Spiritual Nexus expanding.]
[Primordial Core: Solidifying.]
[Meridian Channels: Networking]
In the center of his Nexus, a sphere of hyper-compressed, star-heavy matter began to form.
It was not the fragile, crystalline core of a standard 3rd Plane cultivator.
No, it was dark, dense, and exuded a gravitational pull that slightly warped the localized space around his being.
This was the Primordial Core; his spiritual foundation and dantian equivalent.
It was still the same heavy, unstoppable, Black Sun; however, now stripped of all properties by the drop of Origin Essence, except its kinetic and vibrational capabilities, thereby providing Soren with a foundation of absolute control.
As the Origin Qi evaporated out of the drop of Origin Essence, they gradually began to latch onto the Black Sun (now Primordial Core or Dantian), strengthening and expanding it inwardly.
Simultaneously, the Primordial Core kept releasing Origin Qi steams that travelled back through the channels they initially came through (Meridians), strengthening, expanding and configuring them into a holistic system of perfection.
Soren flexed his right hand. His flawless, pale skin of a seven-year-old rippled over the indestructible Bone-Jade skeleton and tensile, Star-Iron coiled muscle fibers.
He didn't just feel stronger; he felt "heavier".
He felt the underlying physics of the world—the exact momentum of the toxic wind, the resonant vibration of the shattered swords jutting from the earth, and the latent force resting within his own marrow.
He was beginning to perceive the world entirely through the lens of his Paradox Dao.
Everything began to appear relative.
The 3rd Plane had just increased its physical laws to crush the invaders, and yet, here he was with a body that had simply grown denser than the laws themselves.
However, while the visible side of creation was forging Soren into an immovable object, the absolute invisible part of it was currently forging his shadow just a few yards away.
Buried beneath the carbonized earth and shattered obsidian, Liora's physical form was undergoing a horrific, yet breathtaking metamorphosis.
The silver karmic thread that irrevocably tethered her fate to Soren's pulsed with the violent, shifting energy of a dual personality.
Within her Sea of Consciousness, the boiling bloodlines of the Dark Elf, the Shadow Fairy, and the Primal Succubus were no longer warring. They were being violently braided together by the chilling, ancient will of the Renegade Goddess, Ji Min.
"The boy builds a fortress of absolute law," Ji Min's voice echoed within Liora's soul, dripping with millennia of cunning and survival. "Let him be the blinding sun, child. You will be the eclipse."
Liora's shattered bones knitted together, suffused with the ethereal, weightless essence of the Shadow Fairy.
Her skin took on a flawless, porcelain pallor, contrasting violently with the abyssal, consuming darkness that began to bleed from her pores.
The Primal Succubus bloodline did not manifest as mere allure; it manifested as a predatory, conceptual hunger.
It was the absolute desire to consume life-force, to drain the kinetic energy of her enemies until they were nothing but husks.
"Do you feel it?" Ji Min whispered.
"The Plane is screaming. The beasts are coming. Wake up, little shadow. Your Herald needs his executioner."
Beneath the rubble, Liora's eyes snapped open.
Her irises rippled like pools of liquid midnight, ringed with a terrifying, predatory violet light.
The carbonized earth above her did not shatter as Soren's had. Instead, her body simply dissolved into pure, conceptual darkness, bleeding upward through the microscopic cracks in the obsidian glass.
She re-formed at the edge of the crater; her presence entirely masked from the violently shifting laws of the 3rd Plane.
She made no sound.
She displaced no air.
She had become the perfect, hyper-mobile anomaly, the exact geometric counterweight to Soren's crushing presence.
The suffocating silence of the Sword Graveyard was suddenly broken by a sound that did not belong to the ambient environment.
It was the wet, ragged sound of tearing flesh and maddened, starving exhales.
The geographic arrays of the continent had locked down, but the borders of the Ignis House had already been breached.
The massive, Sub-Dimensional Beast Zone overlapping with the south had unleashed its lowest denizens.
Fleeing from the terrifying, crushing expansion of the Green-Tier Immortal Beast behind them, a pack of warped, low-level beasts had breached the perimeter of the Wastelands.
They had been robbed.
The cosmic retraction had stolen a fraction of their essence, leaving them in a state of rabid, agonizing starvation.
And directly ahead of them, radiating from the shattered crater like a beacon of infinite nourishment, was the Spark.
Soren's head tilted slightly. His omnidirectional sight picked up the spatial distortions instantly.
Four mutated Iron-Mane hounds, each the size of a carriage, with jagged, rusted blades protruding from their spines in place of fur, crept to the edge of the glassed crater.
Their eyes were bloodshot, oozing toxic wood Qi.
Soren slowly stood up.
The physical act of him rising caused the shattered obsidian beneath his bare feet to groan under his immense mass.
His Origin Pupils spun, the prismatic halos locking onto the pack.
Then it happened.
[Threat Detected: Warped Iron-Mane Hounds. Cultivation Equivalent: Peak Body Tempering.]
[Variable Analysis: Subjects are operating under severe essence-starvation.]
[Mental state: Rabid.]
[AutoFocus: Engaged.]
Instantly, Soren's vision shifted.
The world leached of color, replaced by cold, systemic geometry.
The four beasts were highlighted in a dull, gray threat-level.
But more importantly, it also painted glowing crimson targets on their exact structural weaknesses—the micro-fractures in their rusted spinal blades, the asymmetrical beating of their corrupted hearts, the exact angle of their kinetic approach.
[Priority Target: Beast 3. Alpha mutation detected in vocal cords. Capable of sonic intimidation.]
Soren didn't need to make head of tails of the properties or capabilities or abilities in display.
The moment he lay eyes on them, every single information was sent to the Origin Codex, which filters them into comprehensible information that appears within his mind in fractions of a microsecond.
For someone with thousands of years of memories, transcribed into the esoteric glyphs of the Origin Codex which had now become his thought processing language, Soren understood everything uncannily quick.
With multiple other sentience and instincts also interpreting this information and relaying reflexive countermeasures back to him via instinctual feelings or intuition, Soren's duty was reduced to simply picking any of the several responses available and executing it with surgical precision.
As such, Soren ignored every other source of power within him. He didn't need them at this moment. He wanted to test the raw, physical Truth of his nigh complete Quaternary System.
He looked across the crater, his eyes meeting the abyssal, violet-ringed gaze of Liora, who stood perfectly still within the shadow of a massive, broken sword hilt.
She now seemed matured beyond her years. Her eyes gave Soren a different impression, her logic seemed elusive as well, she had totally become a different person entirely.
As to what aspect of her had changed and the extent to which they had done so, Soren will eventually find out.
However, since just like him, she would have also been exposed to memories and knowledge beyond her years in several lifetimes, Soren understood the resulting Liora was inevitable.
After all, she didn't have an Origin Codex which could instantly transcirbe the new bank of knowledge into the mundane native language her mind was used to for her to gradually comprehend in bits.
The duo almost tactically read eachother's minds, and a subtle sense of relief washed over them both.
It was the sense of relief that stemmed from the sudden collapse of the burden of translation.
Normally, when two beings carry immense, layered knowledge, the challenge is not just in having the knowledge but in communicating it—compressing vast, esoteric truths into words that another can grasp.
This process can be taxing, burdensome and overwhelmingly exhausting; as if trying to pour an ocean into a cup.
However, Soren and Liora could bypass that struggle.
They had both have lived through lifetimes of memories and transformations. Even though their methods differ (Soren's Origin Codex vs. Liora's raw assimilation), the result is that they both stand on the same plane of understanding.
As such, instead of explaining, justifying, or teaching, they can simply recognize and mirror each other's depth instantly.
It is the same relief one feels when someone "just gets it" without needing context.
Their silence wasn't emptiness but fullness.
The karmic thread vibrating between them ensured that their minds are aligned, so words would only dilute the purity of that connection.
For Soren, who is used to parsing infinite glyphs and orchestrating instinctual responses, this moment is a pause—he didn't need to work at understanding.
For Liora, who has matured through raw exposure, it's validation that she isn't alone in her altered state.
So, their relief was essentially the joy of mutual recognition without effort.
It's the lifting of the weight of explanation, the comfort of knowing that the other person already inhabits the same impossible vastness one did.
The crushing complexity of their inner worlds versus the simplicity of their shared silence, made their level of relief feel almost sacred.
They shared no words. The karmic thread vibrated with absolute understanding.
The alpha Iron-Mane hound roared, its jaw unhinging to unleash a toxic, sonic wave.
Soren leaned forward, the Bony-Iron-Jade chassis of his skeleton fully bearing the weight of his intent, and vanished in a sonic boom of pure, unadulterated physical force.
The harvest had begun.