Merin opens his eyes in bewilderment.
He fails to cultivate the Saint world's method.
No matter how he tries, the exercise will not respond.
He cannot understand why.
One thought comes to him—Mia's mother may know the answer.
His body fades from his palace.
He reappears before the residence he prepared for her long ago.
He sends a message to Mia.
A moment later, she steps out.
Her eyes widen in surprise.
For eight hundred years, Merin has remained in retreat.
Not once did he leave his palace.
She asks, "What brings you here?"
Merin answers, "I have come to meet your mother."
Mia nods.
"Follow me," she says.
They walk through the palace.
On a patio overlooking the garden, Aurora waits.
She does not hide her curiosity.
"Why are you here?" she asks.
Merin speaks slowly.
He tells her of the sliver of consciousness he sent to the dream world a thousand years ago.
He explains how he lost it, and how only yesterday it returned.
He tells her that consciousness reached Stage Four.
But when he attempted to cultivate the same method, he failed.
Aurora studies him in silence.
She says, "Your consciousness has fallen into the inner space of the dream world, where everything is between dream and real."
Merin lowers his gaze.
"So the cultivation method is useless," he says with disappointment.
Aurora shakes her head.
"It is not completely useless," she says.
"It holds truth. Between dream and reality, you can still transform the technique using the rule of the world. Then you can cultivate it."
Merin's eyes flicker with hope.
"Thank you," he says.
"And the sliver of consciousness—should I disperse it?"
Aurora's voice is firm.
"No. If you cultivate to the limit within the inner dream world and break the barrier, you can enter the core of the Dream World."
Merin listens in silence.
Before he leaves, Aurora's words stop him.
"If you advance to Stage Four with this body, you aren't truly advancing. To truly advance, you must break through Stage Four with your main body."
Merin nods.
He turns and vanishes from the patio.
Back in his palace, his decision is firm.
He will first advance to Stage Four in this body.
He will return to his main world.
Back in the palace, he sits in silence.
There is no time to fully transform the saint cultivation method, so he fuses it with his existing blood cultivation.
The blood path stops at Rank-10.
It begins with the Blood Realm, then the Blood Mist Realm, the Blood Liquid Realm, and the Blood Crystal Realm.
From Rank-11 to Rank-15, it is no longer simple cultivation—it is the transformation of the body.
He must begin from Rank-10 and advance.
The blood crystals in his dantian tremble and gather.
His spiritual power surges into the dantian and ignites as spiritual fire, burning the blood crystals.
They melt, refine, and compress until only one crystal remains.
That crystal drinks in the spiritual energy, and his cultivation breaks through to Rank-11.
A crimson field spreads around him, heavy and oppressive.
He names it the Blood Field Realm.
To reach Rank-12, he must merge a fully understood principle with the blood crystal in his dantian.
He has already mastered sixty-two principles.
He must choose one.
He chooses the principle he himself forged—Dreamization.
The blood crystal fuses with the law of dreams.
When he opens his field again, the crimson veil breathes with strange power.
Through it, he sees the souls of men, their dreams as they sleep, and a link forms with his dream world.
He has stepped into Rank-12.
Now the path toward Rank-13 awaits.
Again, he chooses a principle of his own making—Array Spirit.
It is an intelligence born from arrays, a mind shaped from runes.
He fuses it with the law of arrays, and a new field forms.
This field does not merge with the Dreamization field but stands apart, alive with shifting runes.
Within it, rune spirits awaken, and his speed in shaping arrays multiplies.
He has stepped into Rank-13.
To advance further, he turns to the Rune Painting principle he forged.
A law born from the runes, where drawings give birth to living monsters.
He fuses it with his blood crystal, and another field opens.
From this new field, painted beasts step forth, fighting as though alive.
He has stepped into Rank-14.
For Rank-15, he chooses the Virtual Clone principle, a technique to create a clone identical to himself with seventy per cent of his strength.
He combines it with the blood crystal.
A field spreads, and beside him stands another self, eyes bright with the same crimson light.
He has stepped into Rank-15.
From there, he presses toward half-step Rank-16.
He draws upon the principle of Pocket Space from the World Law.
The blood crystal absorbs it, and a new field opens.
Within it lies a hidden space, a pocket detached from the real world.
When he enters, even heaven and earth cannot find him.
He has reached half-step Rank-16.
To break through, he must combine the five fields.
He chooses the Pocket Space field as the base.
With the Rune Painting field, he draws a vast landmass surrounded by endless waters.
With the Array Spirit field, he weaves runes together until they form a spirit.
With the Illusion Clone field, he turns the spirit into his own clone.
And last, with the Dreamization field, he connects the space to his Dream World.
The five fuse into one.
The field transforms into a true domain, and he advances to Rank-16.
Now, within his domain, he can hijack and bend the laws of the world itself—limited only by the reach of his domain.
He releases it, and it spreads across the entirety of his capital city.
In her palace, Aurora senses it and whispers, Merin has formed the base of a demi-plane.
Merin retracts the domain at once.
He feels malice from the world itself.
His domain can hijack the world's law, but the moment he does, punishment will descend.
Aurora's voice sounds in his mind: Turn the domain into a demi-plane. Then take your citizens and leave this world.
Merin asks, Will they allow me?
Aurora replies, The experiment is for those walking the Divine Way. You are not. They will permit your departure.
Merin answers, Then it is settled.
Aurora says, I will inform the other gods of your choice. They will cease their attacks.
Merin nods silently and cuts the link.
His domain is only an energy space. To become a demi-plane—a half-step, low-level material world—he must master the conversion of energy into matter.
He begins.
While Merin's main consciousness delves into the conversion between energy and matter, his conscious clone hides in the new world.
Only five years have passed in the Divine World since the two consciousnesses linked. But for the clone, only a single year has gone by.
He fell into a forest where his cultivation was useless, yet his half-step Emperor Rank body carried him through.
Monsters of his rank stalked the woods, but he fought his way out.
Reaching a town, he was attacked almost instantly—three half-step Emperors with the stench of Evil Cultivation radiating from them.
They tried to capture him.
He didn't stay to learn why.
An array bloomed, trapping them, and he vanished back into the forest.
When he first arrived, he saw countless continents floating in the void.
Now he suspects this continent is a stronghold of evil cultivators.
To leave, he must recover his cultivation.
To recover, he must first grasp the fundamental laws of this world.
He releases his Dream World, letting it spread through the fabric of this realm.
Slowly, the laws begin to reveal themselves.
And then he senses it—something that changes everything.
The continent itself has a consciousness.
It is chaotic.
But it can be refined.
If he refines it, the continent will become his.
And in the process, the fundamental laws of this world will open to him.
But he cannot refine it by force.
If he does, the continent's will shall resist and fight back.
It will twist the people into weapons against him.
He must first understand the continent's laws to refine the continent's spirit.
So he begins.
His mind sinks into the law of the continent, tracing the hidden patterns.
He senses the heavy stench of an evil aura corroding the marks.
The aura of the evil gods is reshaping this land into a nest for their people and followers.
Merin avoids these corrupted marks.
He first comprehends those untouched by the evil gods.
When his comprehension completes, clarity strikes.
This continent is woven from the five elemental laws—and the Law of Curse.
Now he can absorb spiritual energy from this land.
But he holds back.
The energy is tainted with evil.
Instead, he continues.
One by one, he dives deeper into the remaining law marks.