The time for next robbing...Ahem. I mean borrowing knowledge and power has arrived. Exploration beyond the confines of our universe: Godly Forbidden Lands.
It's a universe-sized cavern, created and overseen by the Turtle Dove Saint, a Saint from the God Domain. It has one fundamental rule: no extraordinary exits allowed via space-based treasures or teleportation for natives. For others from main families in God Domain sending representatives to enter and train within the grounds were paying appropriate price for maintenance and obtain trial talismans in return.
Without informing Af'u of my intentions, I activated the Xun token and materialized outside the mansion's protective walls.
The reaction was immediate. The moment I appeared, the assembled figures of world lord realms spotted my presence and began weaving their spatial techniques, their hands moving in calculated patterns as they worked to stabilize and lock the spatial fabric before me.
But I had anticipated this. I momentarily entered the Divine Spark state once more, feeling the familiar surge of transcendent energy coursing through my being. With deliberate focus, I unleashed the full potential of the Great Expanse Divine Dao, channeling it through my soul abilities like a river breaking through a dam.
The effect was instantaneous and absolute. Every single one of them found themselves suppressed, their abilities rendered ineffective against the overwhelming spiritual force I had unleashed. I know that engaging them in direct combat was unnecessary ~ such confrontations were left for our main character, not mine.
Instead, I activated my shielding, pushing it to maximum capacity. The protective barrier enveloped me completely while simultaneously nullifying all perception of my presence. This was no ordinary concealment ~ it was as if I had stepped into a state of existence where I became transparent to all forms of resistance and sensing. Like dwelling within hyperspace itself, my presence carried no tangible or sensible effect upon the reality around me unless I chose to withdraw from this ethereal state.
With my intent clearly focused, I conveyed my desire to teleport directly to the source of the saint's strength. I left the Great Expanse Universe.
Godly Forbidden Lands
I materialized near the Divine Spring Mountains, the ancestral home of the Mountain Ruins Clan. The sight that greeted me was the spring of life itself floated suspended in the air, contained within what appeared to be an upside-down reservoir that defied conventional understanding of gravity and physics.
The place was not yet opened for the yearly ceremony.
Though the temptation to drink from this legendary source directly was strong, I resisted. Instead, I employed my recreating abilities to their fullest extent, drawing upon every source energy within my five-mile scope to recreate in an isolated space within my internal world.
The gravitational forces here were staggering ~ nearly a thousand times greater than what I was accustomed to ~ yet my shield rendered these crushing pressures to nothing making the real world feel like nothing more than an elaborate illusion.
Rather than waste time adjusting to the environmental conditions, I proceeded directly to the trial grounds. The familiar sensation of creation energy responded to my call, forming its protective cocoon around me before I teleported to my next destination.
The Tower of Heart Refining, belonging to the Primordial Fusion Clan, stood for the cultivation of willpower and mental fortitude. Here, countless practitioners had come to sharpen their resolve and strengthen their inner determination from across many universes.
Using the chaos energy within and true essence of surrounding area, to fill the reserves of creation energy, everything within my five-mile radius of creation ~ every mechanism, every energy pathway, every intricate array and soul crystals that allowed the tower to function, memories of personnel involved in manipulating them ~ I meticulously copied and transferred to my internal world.
The recreating process required careful attention to detail when materialized in internal world as, ensuring that even the tower's energy sources and operational arrays were preserved intact within protective shields to prevent them from dissolving into chaos.
My journey continued to the Divine Soul Ancestral Land, the sacred domain of the Soul Seal Tribe where generations had come to cultivate their divine souls. The copying process was repeated with the same methodical precision, each element of their cultivation system being preserved and integrated into my growing collection.
The Soul Cliff proved to be particularly valuable, its surface adorned with numerous secondary dao tablets that had been specifically designed for certified God martial artists. These ancient inscriptions contained knowledge and techniques that had been refined over countless ages.
The absorption process took several days of concentrated effort, but I managed to record and internalize everything of significant value including the frost fire Sanskrit inscriptions from snow valley.
As I worked, I could feel my creation energy reserves steadily depleting from the constant use of my abilities. Similary consuming chaos and surrounding energy to replace it: The process was exhausting, requiring me to repeat the consumption and restoration cycle multiple times, but it was necessary.
The Qi soul of turtle dove saint has appeared in the middle of the process once, since I have absorbed a lot of true essence during the process. Usually on average there would be a bit of bit of reduction due to external people cultivating but it won't be this much and for no explanations. From his point of view, energy seemed to disappear into oblivion in large quantities for no reason near trial areas.
Well his coming only helped me, instead of stopping the process or be alert about it, I have employed to transfer nearly 20 billion era worth of knowledge from memory of saint directly. I couldn't hold all of them directly but LoHP was working on its own memory space rapidly assembling and labeling information useful to me.
Finally, with my mission complete and my internal world enriched beyond measure, I made the journey back.
Return
However, instead of returning to the immortal mansion as originally planned, I made the decision to venture into the divine flame realm. I set the shield to cover the realm and then took out the objects from the internal world via cross world transfer. Setting up the towers were pretty easy considering each of them were in fully self contained working situations.
With that I first entered the Tower of Heart Refining. It questioned my heart, Why do you cultivate? What drives your endless pursuit of power? Illusions materialized around me, phantom images of Xiao Ning telling me she doesn't like me, questioning every self doubt under the sky.
"I don't love you," her illusory form whispered, the familiar features I had cherished now twisted with rejection. "What will you do now that you know the truth?"
The tower's psychological assault continued for months, each trial designed to break my resolve and expose the contradictions within my heart. Yet through six months of relentless questioning, I had grown strong enough to make the heart answer itself. The interrogator became the interrogated, and in that reversal, I found my victory.
Although I have to say the the scene of flying footballs and cyclists hitting me was somehow most difficult initially for me to cross. But I challenged it gained ultimate victory.
The Divine Soul tower presented an entirely different challenge. Here, under the crushing pressure I imposed upon myself, my soul underwent its final transformation. The barrier that had long constrained my spiritual development finally shattered, and my soul ascended to become that of a True God.
The moment this threshold was crossed, the emperor's engraved seal manifested naturally, engraving onto my soul and my great manipulation technique surged toward completion of the Great Manipulation Divine Dao.
It gave off a royal aura when connected with practice of great expanse divine dao. The internal potential of Great manipulation divine dao that had long remained dormant merged seamlessly with my ruler abilities, creating a synthesis of power I had never before imagined.
Internal World
Having extracted every benefit from these divine structures, I made the decision to dissipate the towers back into their constituent creation energy. The knowledge I had gained during my time within the Tower of Heart Refining was invaluable ~ my mind had completed the comprehensive blueprint for constructing similar towers in the future.
Within my internal world, I exercised my authority as world master to rapidly manifest two such towers for the cultivation of those who dwelt within my domain. These structures would operate through the exchange of genuine energy crystals or jade crystals, their power accessible to those willing to pay the price.
I also made the place isolated from mainland as a separate zone. From among the many witnesses who had observed my earlier creations, I selected ten individuals to receive the memories necessary for proper operation of these divine constructs and allotted them the operation when they agreed.
The creation of new tablets followed, each one inscribed with the engraved information of divine dao that I had recreated from the soul cliff town's archives. These profound truths would remain sealed from public access for now ~ the concepts they contained were too advanced for my people to comprehend in their current state. Once I succeeded in condensing a divine spark within my internal world, their minds would be better prepared to receive such knowledge.
From these accumulated treasures, I successfully obtained the internal potential of Snow Imprint Divine Dao, Snow Seal Divine Dao, and even managed to merge the formidable Strength Divine Dao with my infinity ruler. Each integration expanded my capabilities exponentially, adding new dimensions to my already considerable power.
The process of comprehending all this accumulated knowledge became my next great undertaking. The memories obtained from the Qi soul, the techniques obtained from both the Heart Refining and Divine Soul towers, and the turtle dove saint's extensive studies of Sanskrit all demanded careful analysis. From the synthesis of these disparate sources, entirely new concepts began to emerge, each one adding to my growing mastery of the divine arts.
Every significant location within my internal world ~ from the divine spark condensation array to the Nine Stars formation and the world tree itself ~ had been protected by creation energy shields. Yet as I delved deeper into the techniques of various clans and studied the new Sanskrit formulations acquired from the turtle dove saint's internal world, I discovered the means to replace these over the top protections with far more simple and compatible Sanskrit runes.
The immortal mansion's library pavilion had contained numerous Sanskrit texts referencing the mother world, the other shore, and higher realms beyond mortal comprehension. However, these archives had been notably deficient in divine dao knowledge ~ a gap I had now thoroughly filled.
A total of eleven Divine Daos now flowed freely through my consciousness, some developed to their third layers like the Great Expanse Divine Dao and the Severing Emotions Divine Dao.
Throughout this entire process, my cultivation technique continued its relentless work, internally collecting the copied source strength and channeling it through my body to condense the nine stars.
The technique itself had been modified to incorporate the Strength Divine Dao directly into my physical form, creating a synthesis of body and cosmic principle that transcended normal cultivation methods. The completion of this process required a full year, during which the source energy I had copied from the saint was gradually transformed into nine brilliant stars that replaced the simple god rune I had previously used for gang energy conversion to the Tao Pillars of body.
The final rune served as both collector and transformer, channeling this refined energy through my body in place of the crude gang energy I had relied upon before. While still preliminary in nature, this represented a significant evolution.
The cultivation realm itself had evolved alongside my personal growth. When I had first begun establishing civilizations within my internal world, the realm had already reached the middle stage of development. The rapid acquisition of multiple divine daos had accelerated this progression dramatically, and now, with the achievement of a True God's Soul and emperor seal engraving, the realm's advancement could no longer be suppressed or controlled.