Enforcing Rules
I vanished from their sight and reappeared at the sacred site of the Nine Stars and Divine Spark. My recent advancement in cultivation had opened new possibilities ~ I could now position the Arc Light Energy directly adjacent to the Divine Spark itself. The array I had constructed contained three placement points, and I carefully inserted the Arc Light Gem into the first position.
The entire structure had been covered in Sanskrit inscriptions, protective of whatever housed inside. But with my impending departure from the cultivation world, and the millions of years that would pass in my absence, I could not risk having my people attempt to study these markings or harness the power of the Nine Stars for their own purposes.
The Creation Energy barrier settled back into place, sealing away knowledge that could annoy me if they try to borrow it.
Over the following days, I worked to establish new systems for my realm's governance. The Reincarnation Hall took shape first, incorporating the memory flames with a stage two reincarnation approach but didn't leave any controlling tool set. But it will give an option for the people at the peak of strength restraint in this world to get an option to reborn with an interval of multiple eras.
Drawing inspiration from techniques I had observed in the God Domain, I crafted Commandment Tablets ~ treasures that could enforce divine law through spiritual authority. I copied the tablets when I wrote rules back in God Domain. It was an other shore treasure, but I have modified it to rely on the energy of the world.
The Prime Tablet required my personal attention. Only I could inscribe rules upon its surface, and the words I chose would govern reality itself within my realm:
"The Will of the Creator is absolute. Prime Tablet rules cannot be changed except by the Creator. No rules can be set against the creator. Any rules inscribed upon subordinate tablets is enforceable only when it isn't aimed at harming the world referring to extinction of species or destruction of continents, world tree or world itself. All rules written upon the 1000, 100, or 10 Commandment Tablets are enforceable within their designated subdomains." There is no need for people here to know about the prime tablet so it was also directly placed below the divine spark within the shield.
For the subordinate tablets, I established a different system ~ one that would allow my people some measure of self-governance. The first rule I inscribed read: "God Martial Coins may be spent to write or modify rules within appropriate scope, with increasing cost to change rules from 10 commandments to 1000 commandment tablet."
" No one can be banned from making the rules if they have god martial coins in quantity to change it." The amount was set based on the coins available in circulation and no of words.
Then, the crucial limitation: "Commandment Slates cannot be used for attacking each other, nor may they be possessed by individuals for purposes of offense or defense by themselves against their enemies. Any rules written in violation of this principle shall be rendered void."
" No race should be hunted down to the last 10 members or less, and left incapable of reproducing offsprings themselves or kept them in captivity and/or forced to maintain just enough to satisfy this rule , else the hunter will be punished to death. "
And a bunch of other rules I have found in God Domain which are practicable for my internal world. And I tested the violation punishment and it was enough to kill a great perfection true God multiple times over by temporarily borrowing the power of the world.
The systems were in place. My people would have structure, protection, and the possibility of growth, but within carefully maintained boundaries that would prevent them from destroying themselves in my absence. At least I need to give them something to do in the mean time.
The things I stored before like Dao Tablets and Refining towers were fully opened to public. The desolate bones I have collected, millions and millions of them cannot be given away like that, since people here are mostly with long lifespan, when will new generation receive the bones back? So the set up of light of extermination and copy of bone tower made of chaos ancient gods remains and strength equalizing towers were still placed in an isolated area for deployment at a later time after fully figuring out the mechanism for confinement.
I send some gifts to those who informed me and as I prepared for my departure, I took one final look at the inner world I had nurtured for so long. Soon, it would need to thrive without my direct guidance.
Primal Chaos
Departure from the Abyss
Standing at the mouth of the cavern in the abyss, I called out into the darkness, "I'm leaving now, but I'll return soon." My words echoed back, carrying with them an odd finality. Perhaps the owner of this abyss heard me ~ perhaps not. It wasn't that I felt obligated to report my every movement, but something about this departure felt different. Like saying goodbye before a long journey. Even though I knew I'd be back. At least, I thought I would be. Who knows how later?
The truth was, I would be returning to my previous world very soon, and that knowledge weighted my farewell with unexpected gravity. With a focused thought, I willed myself to teleport to the location where my internal world resided within the primal chaos.
The World Tree
The transition was instantaneous. One moment I stood in the familiar shadows of the cave, the next I found myself before something that defied comprehension ~ a gigantic tree root that seemed to emerge out of nowhere.
The shield I had carefully applied around my dantian appeared ethereal from my vantage point, yet its deployment is actually in the chaos which was anything but fragile. It devoured everything that approached ~ teleportation attempts, space-time distortions, even the chaos itself seemed to bend around its hunger.
My first task was methodical. I devoured chaos from the surrounding space, drawing it into the barrier in vast quantities. For an entire month, I accumulated this primal energy, watching it swirl and coalesce within my protective sphere. Only when I was satisfied with the density did I begin the delicate process of retracting the world tree root, reforming it with creation energy until it nestled safely within the barrier's embrace.
The moment felt right. I enforced the rule of absolute space-time upon the energy barrier.
The effect was immediate and startling. The space before me simply... stopped. The entire spherical domain of my world was severed from primal chaos as cleanly as if cut by an impossibly sharp blade. My temporary connection to my internal world also vanished, leaving me in a bubble of my own making.
Time to return to my embrace
I applied the rule of absolute immeasurability next, willing it to anchor within my dantian. The space confined disappeared. The response was violent and beautiful ~ chaos swirled inward with the fury of a cosmic hurricane, rapidly filling every available space that was just ceased to exist. Perhaps only Kong, that ancient Chaos God, possessed similar power in this realm.
The Weight of Worlds
Now my dantian housed a true world. The energy barrier, woven from pure creation energy, made it feel weightless despite its impossible mass, spatially compressed to fit within the confines of my mortal form. I had regained complete access to my inner world. The process was complete. I feel like I have achieved a fundamental step that the omnipotent being here failed to achieve, the step to create a perfect world within? May be. At this point I am not sure.
Standing in the empty chaos, a thought that had interested me in that moment in the restaurant returned with renewed force. My inner world, vast beyond most beings' comprehension at twenty-six million miles across, was merely one-fourth the size of a single God Domain. And that God Domain, immense as it seemed, represented only one-tenth the scale of a subdomain like Icy Snow Province. Even that provincial range was just a single realm among thousands within the Mother World.
The Mother World itself ~ the primordial land born from the Energy of Unification is stretched beyond estimation. By rough calculation, a single province would rival Saturn's entire orbital path from my previous life. Now imagine thousands of such titanic regions clustered together like gems on an infinite crown. That was the Mother World.
The birth of these lands followed no laws I had known in my previous universe. Each domain formed as a near-perfect sphere, enclosing ordered reality within bubbles that floated in the surrounding formless chaos like soap bubbles in an endless void. Their suns, moons, and stars weren't fusion-born bodies of gas and fire, but entities forged from condensed elemental laws ~ living expressions of cosmic principles given form.
The lifeforms inhabiting these domains are flesh and blood beings composed of True Essence and low-grade Chaos Qi, shaped and protected by the insulating walls of their reality bubbles. Each domain began small and grew slowly, absorbing and refining chaos, transforming that primal energy into order and law like some cosmic digestion process.
But even this staggering scale paled before the true immensity of primal chaos itself. The chaos was infinite ~ not hyperbole, mathematical infinity. It served as the root energy of this third cosmos, stable and base-layer, initially neutral. From it emerged the lower grade energies, the binary forces of Yin and Yang like the first breath of creation, which then branched into the Five Elemental Energies. These five gave birth to the three thousand Divine Daos ~ the governing principles that wrote the laws of reality itself.
Yet for chaos to evolve to higher order, it required three additional components that the ancients called "flaws" ~ necessary imperfections that allowed progression, like cracks in a perfect crystal that let in the light.
Higher-world civilizations had recognized this truth and sought to create and destroy chaos bubbles across different dimensional spaces for energy extraction. The scale of such manipulation staggered the imagination ~ entire realities born and destroyed for the sake of cosmic farming.
The Instant Civilization
At the very dawn of this Chaos World, a force known as the Instant Civilization had emerged. Their name proved prophetic ~ their presence lasted only a breath in cosmic time, yet their influence would endure until the heat death of everything. They were the architects, tasked with building chaos worlds and seeding their inner domains with the potential for growth.
They weren't a civilization in any conventional sense, but rather a small, specialized unit within the much greater Four Spirit Sect ~ a faction hailed from Abstruse Energy World, the fourth Globe World, their home. Their mission had been elegantly simple and impossibly complex: construct intricate chaos environments that would serve as bait, drawing talent from source worlds upward through the dimensional layers, slowly integrating worthy beings into the Four Spirits hierarchy while simultaneously extracting vast quantities of energy.
Now we existed in the 1447th Chaos Era ~ a single cycle among countless others within this single chaos bubble. Only during the initial instant of each cycle did a perfect energy merger momentarily appear ~ a phenomenon visible solely to beings called the Sons of Truth or Chaos Ancient Gods. Even their understanding remained frustratingly incomplete, for they perceived merely shattered fragments of the original flaw-merged energy. When combined with slivers of comprehension from the three thousand Daos, these fragments formed what they call the Energy of Truth.
As civilizations had advanced over the eons, they had developed three divergent philosophical responses to the End Needle ~ the universal termination event that marked the close of each Chaos Era like a cosmic executioner's blade:
The Dao of End pursued overwhelming force capable of halting the End Needle through sheer power ~ ambitious and direct, but often crushed by interventions from higher dominions who feared such defiance. The Dao of Order favored measured responses involving the preservation or careful reordering of select remnants, aiming for selective continuity rather than futile resistance ~ the path of pragmatic survivors. The Dao of Void or Nihility embraced complete erasure, seeking to return everything to zero ~ a cosmic reset button or an act of universal suicide, depending on one's perspective.
These three paths remained inherently contradictory in both goal and method. No unified pursuit had ever emerged from their philosophical friction, and collaborative efforts splintered before they could bear fruit.
And beyond all these cosmic struggles of this dimensional world? Ten additional dimensional worlds stacked above even this reality like an infinite tower, each layer ascending in complexity, abstraction, and sheer magnitude. This represented just one multiverse among countless others scattered throughout existence like stars in an infinite sky.
The scale of it all made my head spin. And the being who had willed all of this into existence now simply wanted to be reborn through me. How remarkably... lazy.
I reined in these overwhelming thoughts and returned my focus to more immediate concerns.
Time for Return
I hadn't entered the ring world obtained from the TDG universe in quite some time. When I had previously reached the Divine Extremity realm, I had gained complete mastery over the time rules governing the universe within space. The energy powering the temporal array had been nearly depleted, but I had then increased both the scope and time flow rate to one hundred and ninety times normal speed. Although nearly thirty-eight years had passed in my current reality ~ accounting for temporal cultivation and various delays ~ only seven months had elapsed within the decelerated array.
When I first entered that ring world upon my return, the very fabric of reality seemed to struggle and deform simply due to my presence. Curious about the extent of my power, I traveled to the dangerous regions of the zones within, far into the restricted areas where humanoid demonic beasts of deity level prowled. I had expected them to become enraged at my intrusion into their territory.
Instead, the moment they sensed me, they immediately reverted to their original forms and began backing away with obvious terror.
Am I really that frightening? I wondered, genuinely puzzled. It was simply the aura I unconsciously projected that filled them with such overwhelming dread.
"Immortal," one of them managed to speak, its voice trembling with barely contained panic. "What do you want with us?"
"Just a spar," I replied simply, sealing most of my cultivation and deciding it would be best to rely on physical cultivation alone. I activated my desolate cultivation technique, matching my size to their imposing figures. But when I reached out for what should have been the opening strike of our combat, they didn't even attempt to move ~ instead, they simply stood there like beings who had resigned themselves to fate, murmuring pleas for mercy.
My interest evaporated instantly.
I released the full extent of my desolate god form, and my size expanded to nearly thirty-nine thousand and eighty feet ~ almost twelve kilometers from head to tail. The ancient god cultivation in the other shore didn't merely increase physical strength, but enhanced the very size potential of desolate god forms. The once-mighty beasts now appeared as insignificant as insects scurrying beneath my shadow.
Reflecting on my growth, my previous heavenly fate realm power had been comparable to the late limbo realm in this reality. Since then, I had ascended eight or nine stages. My current strength closely resembled that of a peak emperor realm cultivator, possibly even a supreme. But could I actually use the attack methods I had learned here in other worlds? That remained questionable. I doubted divine dao energy would function outside the scope of my personal domain.
Speaking of scope, with each increase in life level, my area of creation energy influence had expanded in a fixed figure. Now it stretched nearly fifteen kilometers in diameter, centered on my position ~ just enough to encompass my desolate god body with a little breathing room. Simply unleashing my cultivation aura in this space would destroy the surrounding reality. If things were like this, I couldn't risk entering other worlds directly in my current state.
Returning to my original human shape, I ignored the kneeling spiritual beasts and teleported to the secluded array chamber.
Familiar Faces
Shen Xiu approached the moment she sensed my presence. "Wow, Chi Tao, you've changed so much. Your hair color is completely different, and the aura you're giving off is..." She paused, seeming to search for the right words. "It's giving me an existential crisis for some reason."
"I've told you many times," I replied with mild exasperation, "unless we are intimate, you need to address me as Lord. Isn't that the custom you learned?"
"No fun," she replied with a theatrical pout, immediately reverting to her usual demeanor.
I had employed subtle transformation techniques to better approximate my original appearance ~ that of the teenager I had been when I first left this place. More importantly, I had converged my aura even further, sealing it deep within my core to prevent any accidental environmental damage.
"It's been so many months," Shen Xiu continued, settling into a comfortable position nearby. "We're getting bored here. Can we leave soon? It's not much fun spending time in this place if you won't let us explore beyond the barriers."
"Actually, I'm about to return," I admitted, then added with a slight grimace, "but I've become a little too strong, so I need to make some adjustments first." I studied her carefully, noting the changes in her cultivation. "You've achieved heavenly fate realm second fate? Congratulations."
I then turned my attention to Yu Yan, who had progressed even further to the heavenly fate fourth stage. My own cultivation of fate souls had been deliberately slowed when I reached the fifth fate soul, but the quality had improved dramatically. A single fate soul of mine was now more than ten thousand times more condensed than when I had first stepped into this reality, scaling proportionally with the power of my soul.
I sealed my soul core too, otherwise when entering the other world, it will resonate with Xiao Ning and Ye Ziyun to whom my soul realm are inter connected sending the energy back as feedback possibly exploding them as watermelons. The heavenly energy had merged seamlessly with chaos qi long ago, creating something entirely new.
The vine that had taken root in my soul sea had grown into something magnificent ~ a giant tree bearing countless fruits and flowers that bloomed with absorbed knowledge from across multiple worlds. It felt connected to some vast comprehension network, much like the Library of Heaven's Path had once been, but infinitely more sophisticated.
Preparation for Departure
Over the following days, I spent my time carefully converging all my scattered strength back into a manageable form. The tiny world of TDG was notoriously difficult for powerful beings to enter, and paradoxically fragile once inside. My ring world is more durable than the very laws that composed divine worlds, yet I could shatter the space around me with casual thoughts. The implications for a more fragile reality were terrifying.
I am also uncertain about the ascension criteria of that space. I had no desire to accidentally trigger some ancient mechanism and find myself face-to-face with the Sage Emperor, who was supposedly sealing the ascension tunnel. That would be... awkward.
Instead, I sealed my strength using a method that would allow me to scale up my power gradually with focused intent when needed. I converged my perceptible level to that of a martial ancestors and created a shield that hugged my form closely.
With my preparations complete, I returned to the chaos outside my ring world and willed a portal into existence.
The Return
My journey materialized at the exact temporal coordinates I had targeted ~ the precise moment and timeline when I had left Xiao Ning'er's side in that other universe. Time travel, when done properly, was less about moving through time and more about selecting which thread of causality to rejoin.
I gave one final look to the empty chaos that had been my training ground, my battlefield, and occasionally my playground. So much had changed since I had first entered.
Then I stepped through the portal, leaving one chapter of my existence behind to begin another.
After the Departure
In the moments following my exit, the higher beings who had been watching from their lofty perches finally got their chance to examine the chaos space again. But they immediately sensed fundamental changes in the fate patterns of the people they had so carefully designed and influenced. Their cosmic chess pieces had been moved by an unexpected player.
Before they could explore these alterations more thoroughly, before they could understand what had transpired in their absence, another portal materialized. It sliced through dimensional barriers like a blade through silk, some one entered .... once again cutting off their perception and access to this particular world.
The watchers were left with more questions than answers.