Nyxarin looks at his other self—Minyu—and hears the question echo through the shared consciousness.
"Which plan are we following?"
Before splitting his soul in two, Nyxarin had already laid out every contingency.
His reply is immediate.
"Plan C."
Minyu stiffens, uncertain if this plan means danger or betrayal of their purpose—his concern stemming from the stakes involved.
"What?"
"Why?"
In his understanding, this array is flawless.
With something of this scale and precision, nothing should be able to stop the ascension ritual.
"With this array," Minyu presses, "no one can interfere with your breakthrough. Not even Kong Wuya."
Nyxarin lets out a quiet, self-mocking smile.
"This array was not arranged by me," he says.
"And Isla has already begun her ascension to Godhood."
Minyu's eyes widen.
"Once she succeeds," Nyxarin continues calmly, "she will come for me. So before she arrives, Plan C must be completed—because if we wait, every other path leaves us exposed to Isla's power."
Shock ripples through Minyu's expression.
"Then… what do you need me to do?"
Nyxarin raises his hand.
From the puppet body, several small, intricate objects emerge—dark, rune-etched explosives designed for structural destruction rather than raw force.
"I want you to place these at the nodes of the array."
Minyu freezes.
"Why?"
His confusion is obvious.
"Why destroy the very array that's helping you?"
Nyxarin's gaze sharpens.
"The Nine Martial Art Leaders constructed this array," he says slowly.
"And something about them is wrong."
Minyu frowns.
A memory surfaces—Kong Wuya's warning to be wary of the martial art leaders.
At the time, Minyu had dismissed it as strange.
After all, the Night Dynasty was the true enemy of the Wizard Way.
Why focus on martial artists?
Later discussions with Lin Zian had led to a clearer picture.
Martial arts and wizardry both originated from the human race.
Wizardry is more powerful, more versatile—but harder to master.
Out of a thousand apprentices, fewer than twenty become official wizards.
Martial arts, by contrast, are simpler.
Out of a thousand practitioners, over a hundred can reach the first transcendental stage.
Wizard cultivators live longer, possess more methods, and dominate battlefields—but martial arts remain dangerous because of their sheer accessibility.
And now—
An array so powerful that even Kong Wuya, Nyra, and Issac cannot break it.
Built by the Nine Martial Art Leaders.
A chill runs through Minyu.
A realisation strikes.
"Did they obtain an inheritance from outside this world?" Minyu asks quietly.
"Like our Puppet Lord path?"
A faint gleam flashes in Nyxarin's eyes.
"Perhaps," he answers.
"But that no longer matters to us."
"They will become Isla's problem," he adds.
"And everyone else's."
Minyu exhales slowly, then nods.
"Yes."
Nyxarin sends a complete map of the array into Minyu's mind—every node, every structural weak point.
"With this," Nyxarin says, "they will no longer interfere with our plan."
Minyu accepts the information without hesitation.
Nyxarin withdraws his consciousness from the puppet.
The puppet body begins to revert—its form destabilising—
—and Minyu destroys it in a single strike.
The black mist swallows the remains.
Minyu retracts his inner field and descends to the floor.
For a brief instant, a strange gleam flashes in his eyes.
"The heavens are working for me," he murmurs.
Then the gleam fades.
Confusion replaces it.
"When did I land?" he mutters.
"…It doesn't matter."
He snaps his fingers.
A sphere of light blooms in his palm, illuminating the shifting corridor ahead.
Guided by the array map etched into his mind, Minyu steps forward—and begins searching for the nodes.
While Minyu and the others continue to wander through the black corridors of the maze, Kaelan remains seated outside, unmoving, his consciousness wholly withdrawn.
The third law he is creating is not a simple extension of what came before, but the culmination of everything he has comprehended so far.
Return to Origin.
This path is built upon the accumulation of the previous thirty-five paths.
If even a single one were missing, the Return to Origin could not exist.
At its foundation lies the thirty-fifth path—simulated energy.
Using it as the base and drawing upon the understanding of the other thirty-four paths, Kaelan begins to restructure his law itself.
The storm concept starts to fade.
He does not expel the divinity of the storm from his spirit space.
Doing so would make it difficult to reclaim, and more importantly, divinity can be inherited.
He has three lovers.
Two children.
And he knows now that a being is not limited to a single law.
So instead of discarding it, he lets the storm divinity remain suspended—unchanged, watching.
Slowly, meticulously, Kaelan dismantles the structure of his former law and rebuilds it from the ground up, guided by the Return to Origin.
Days pass.
Then weeks.
Weeks stretch into months.
Time loses meaning as the thirty-sixth path finally takes shape—perfectly aligned with the transformation of his law.
Only then does Kaelan move on.
He does not awaken.
Instead, he begins to draw his inner field.
Within his spirit space, the endless black expanse trembles.
Under the silent radiance of the storm divinity, change begins.
First, darkness condenses—pure, absolute.
Then fire ignites.
Wind stirs.
Earth settles.
Water flows.
Thunder crackles.
Light blooms.
The seven elements emerge one by one, arranging themselves along the outer edge of his spirit space, rotating in vast, harmonious cycles.
At the centre, the energies collide.
They do not clash.
They merge.
From their convergence, a pure white energy is born—calm, boundless, and profound.
It expands.
As it spreads, it subsumes the seven elemental energies, dissolving them into itself, until nothing remains but an endless white sea.
Above it all, the storm divinity hangs—like a sun.
Kaelan observes the scene in silence.
A name forms naturally in his mind.
Ether.
No—
Etheric Sea.
That is the name of his field.
As the Etheric Sea stabilises, his spirit space undergoes another refinement.
The feedback pours outward.
First, his mana transforms, leaping to a higher level.
Then his body follows, reshaped and reinforced by the same fundamental change.
Kaelan senses the Etheric Sea extending beyond his spirit space, permeating outward through his body.
A boundary forms.
A field manifests around him—subtle, invisible, absolute.
The rule network of the world is pushed away.
Blocked.
Separated.
At this moment, Kaelan understands.
He is no longer merely a being within the world.
He has become a small world of his own—
existing inside the greater world, yet no longer bound by it.
As this realisation settles, a thought arises and refuses to fade.
He lets a thread of his true blood stir.
Silence.
No response from the world.
His eyes brighten.
His Etheric Sea fully conceals the fluctuation—his existence, his essence, hidden behind his own field.
That alone is enough to slow his breathing.
With this, he can finally use his true blood without drawing the World Will's gaze.
And more than that—by igniting it, he could leap directly into the fourth stage.
No demigod stage.
No prolonged accumulation.
A shortcut carved by absolute existence.
Within his spirit space, his true blood gathers.
From the vast Etheric Sea, a single drop of crimson condenses.
The moment it forms, the Etheric Sea trembles.
Even restrained, the pressure it releases is terrifying.
But Kaelan does not act yet.
He cannot.
His true blood still carries traces of the Void Monster Law.
If he uses it as it is, that law would devour his current foundation—his Etheric Sea, his cultivated paths, his existence within this world.
Everything he has built here would become meaningless.
Worse, his field would collapse.
And the moment that happens, the world would sense the foreign law within him.
The world might tolerate foreign laws once they are localised.
Such laws strengthen the world.
But his true law is different.
It was forged to stand opposite the world itself.
So first, it must be cleansed.
Kaelan turns inward.
The Void Monster Law answers him easily—it is his, after all.
He strips it away layer by layer.
Yet traces remain.
Those traces cannot be removed without consequence.
When he purges them, the structure of his true blood destabilises.
Its power diminishes, refined into something purer—but weaker.
He releases the drop.
It falls into the Etheric Sea.
The moment it touches the white expanse, power surges outward in reverse, flooding through the Etheric Sea and washing over his soul.
Kaelan's existence shifts.
Not violently.
Inevitably.
—
Inside the black mist maze, the situation reaches a breaking point.
Of the seventy-five third-stage beings who entered, only thirty-one reached the centre.
All are exhausted.
All bear wounds—some shallow, some grave.
At the forefront stand Veena, Ariel, Lin Zian, and Minyu.
Compared to the others, they are almost unscathed.
Before them stretches an army.
Puppets—countless.
From the mortal stage to the third stage, ranks upon ranks of artificial bodies stand motionless, eyes glowing faintly within the black mist.
Then—
They move.
The puppets surge forward as one, the ground trembling beneath their charge.
Death energy stirs.
Desire flares.
Sword intent sharpens.
Light condenses.
The survivors brace themselves.
The final clash inside the array begins.