In the endless darkness, the solar jellyfish transformed into pure light and fled at high speed.
Rosen hadn't expected that capturing one Child of the Dark Sun would provoke an entire group of them to hunt him down.
Fortunately, the solar jellyfish was fast, and when things became truly dire, it could retreat into the Mysterious Study. Otherwise, Rosen would have been cornered long ago. After a prolonged chase, he gradually approached the Immortal Ruins of the Sacred Court of Ten Thousand Paths.
Strictly speaking, the Immortal Ruins were not located within the territory of the Sacred Court of Ten Thousand Paths.
This was because the Immortal Ruins were not stationary; they moved around the Sacred Court, maximizing their ability to attract civilizations from all directions to come and trade. This also meant Rosen had to take a rather roundabout route to get close to the Immortal Ruins.
From the outside, the Immortal Ruins resembled a golden cauldron radiating endless sunlight.
As Rosen approached, the pursuing Children of the Dark Sun hesitated and lingered at the edges.
The golden cauldron had no lid. It wasn't so much like a Dragon Realm but more akin to the Cloud Dream Paradise.
However, the absence of a lid made this paradise incomplete, resulting in a fragmented world.
Rosen entered the cauldron's inner world through the opening above and soon arrived at an ancient city floating atop endless fiery clouds.
The Immortal Ruins did not prohibit the arrival of any civilization or transcendent being, but the cost of living here was exceptionally high.
Without the strength of a deity, it would be difficult to survive here for long.
Having specifically inquired about the Immortal Ruins from Hou Feng, Rosen wasted no time renting a Fire Cloud Cave upon arrival. After securing a place to stay, he began exploring the Immortal Ruins.
However, before half a day had passed, countless flames suddenly erupted outside the ancient city.
Everyone in the city immediately took shelter in the various buildings.
Those who had rented Fire Cloud Caves returned to their dwellings as quickly as possible. Without the cauldron's lid to stabilize it, the furnace flames often went out of control, engulfing the entire paradise. The city and its buildings were protected by formations, and the Fire Cloud Caves could even manipulate a portion of the furnace flames using these formations.
Whether it was a Child of the Dark Sun or one of its minions, all could be refined into divine pills using the Immortal Ruins' Fire Cloud Caves.
Rosen wasn't just lucky to encounter a furnace flame eruption, which occurred only once every few years, shortly after his arrival.
Rather, it was because he had been followed by numerous Children of the Dark Sun to the Immortal Ruins. Although the Children of the Dark Sun dared not directly attack the Immortal Ruins, they took the opportunity to send minions below Sequence 0 to assault it. The rulers of the Immortal Ruins, of course, wouldn't miss the chance to capture these minions.
Thus, they accelerated the furnace flame eruption to refine a batch of Immortal Ruins Divine Pills.
After returning to his Fire Cloud Cave, Rosen tossed the painted card containing the sealed Child of the Dark Sun into the cave's alchemy furnace.
The furnace automatically activated, extracting the essence of the Child of the Dark Sun and fusing it with the Immortal Ruins' furnace flames to form Immortal Ruins Divine Pills.
The greatest value of these pills lay in their ability to allow the user to travel to the surface and appear during the day.
The higher the grade of the pill, the longer one could remain in the daytime.
It was worth noting that while the sun during the day also had its issues, all its problems were hidden beneath the surface. The sunlight it emitted appeared normal, and under these conditions, it was possible to gather faint traces of the sun's origin from the sunlight and condense them into origin fragments.
In addition to enabling travel to the surface during the day, the Immortal Ruins Divine Pills also had another function: temporarily enhancing divinity.
Since the enhancement was temporary rather than permanent, its practical value remained incredibly high.
Rosen refined the Child of the Dark Sun alive, successfully producing over a hundred Immortal Ruins Divine Pills. On average, a single unit of divine essence could be refined into one Sequence 0 Immortal Ruins Divine Pill—one of the most stable and valuable high-tier currencies in the Old World.
The violent flare-up of the Immortal Ruins' furnace fire soon subsided—after all, the eruption had been deliberately triggered.
The previously silent Immortal Ruins returned to its usual bustle in less than half a day.
Extraordinary beings from various nations gathered into teams, venturing outside the ruins to hunt Children of the Dark Sun and their minions. Those unable to afford the cost of staying had no choice but to leave with regret. Meanwhile, even more extraordinary beings were arriving from all directions.
The weakest individuals traveling to the Immortal Ruins were always led by a Sequence 0 commander, followed by groups of Sequence 1 subordinates.
Without a Sequence 0 leading the way, it was impossible to navigate the endless darkness beyond the ruins' sunlight-covered domain.
Rosen had never imagined witnessing such a sight—where gods walked the streets as if they were ordinary beings.
However, it wasn't entirely surprising. While these deities seemed powerful, the vast majority of them were significantly weaker than those of the New World at the same level. Their strength did not fully belong to them; it was granted through divine positions, making them inherently inferior in direct combat.
That said, the divine position system had a crucial advantage—it was easy to replace a fallen deity.
Whereas in the New World, replacing a dead god was an extraordinarily difficult task.
After strolling through the Immortal Ruins' marketplace, Rosen discovered numerous extraordinary resources that had long gone extinct in the New World.
Bringing these resources back to the New World could increase their value by ten to a hundred times.
After making some inquiries, Rosen decided to rent a shop long-term.
He left his Yinglong Avatar in charge of the store—strictly speaking, the Yinglong Avatar's power was better suited for the Old World. With the combined strength of the Yinglong Avatar, the Solar Jellyfish, angels, and shadow demons, he could carefully hunt Children of the Dark Sun and refine Immortal Ruins Divine Pills.
He would then use these pills to acquire rare extraordinary resources from the New World and trade them through the Main God Hall.
In a short period, Rosen had already amassed countless rare and precious extraordinary resources.
After establishing a stable trade route between the two worlds, Rosen was finally ready to focus on more important matters.
He had been drawn to the Sky-Piercing Pillar because of the World Tree's interference.
Now that he had confirmed the Sky-Piercing Pillar offered no further benefits to the Painter Sequence, it was time to advance.
Like with the Noble Sequence, Rosen did not follow the established path left by his predecessors.
Since he had already mastered the Painting Law, he should be the one to pioneer the Painter Sequence.
For his advancement to Sequence 1, Rosen planned to use a potion-based approach.
Although the Four Golden Sequences of the World Government seemed to require no potions—advancing solely through the Golden Sequence Trees—in truth, the potion's power had already been integrated into those trees. Since he had chosen not to rely on the Artist Sequence Tree, he needed to configure the potion himself.
And the core ingredient of his potion would be a painting he personally created.
Seraph Continent—one of the continents ruled by the angel race.
It was not particularly large, spanning only a few tens of thousands of miles.
Despite lacking a resident true god, the continent was divided among five competing Angel Empires.
Each of these five Angel Empires was backed by a deity.
The five empires waged constant wars, their conflicts so brutal that they rivaled those of the Abyssal World.
As one of the primary races opposing the Abyssal Demons, angels lacked the terrifying reproductive abilities of demons. However, they compensated with some of the top three most powerful resurrection techniques in the Main World, as well as extraordinary structures like the Angel Rebirth Pool, which allowed them to return from death.
Although reviving wasn't entirely without cost, the price was negligible compared to the benefits gained.
Through constant internal wars, every surviving angel on Seraph Continent was battle-hardened.
However, excessive resurrections limited their potential, preventing them from surpassing Sequence 1.
Continents like Seraph Continent were, without exception, used to train the angel race's lower-tier soldiers.
Thus, despite the never-ending wars between the five Angel Empires, the scale of their conflicts remained under the strict control of the angelic deities.
Disguised as an angel, Rosen secretly infiltrated the Holy Battlefield at the center of the five nations.
The battlefield was enclosed by five Sequence 3 Angel War Cities, with countless angels endlessly slaughtering one another within.
Rosen found the sight unsettling—such battles, knowing one wouldn't truly die, were far too dull.
Flapping his wings, he ascended into the sky. Under the concealment of Wolf Totem, he quickly reached the uppermost skies above Seraph Continent.
Using telekinesis, he materialized the Divine Palette, which had already absorbed countless lingering resentments from fallen angels on the Holy Battlefield.
While angels possessed various resurrection methods, not all were successfully revived.
Moreover, not every angel willingly set foot on the Holy Battlefield.
As intelligent beings, most angels understood that they were merely disposable pawns raised by their own kind. Many had long grown weary of this endless fratricide.
Yet, under the weight of the grand design, they lacked the power to resist and could only fight desperately to survive.
Most who were successfully resurrected left, only to be sent to even harsher battlefields. But some failed to revive, leaving behind nothing but lingering resentment.
Having gathered this divine resentment, Rosen began his painting—using Seraph Continent itself as his canvas.
For the medium of his artwork, he directly used the entire Seraph Continent.
Rosen traveled across every mountain and river, cutting forests, reshaping landscapes, and gradually altering the very topography of Seraph Continent. Using the land as his canvas and all things in nature as his pigments, he created the most authentic painting—one that embodied the essence of nature itself.
By all rights, such large-scale interference should have long drawn the attention of the five angelic deities.
However, Rosen was not acting alone—he had brought the Miracle Stone Golem with him.
One by one, the five angelic deities were ambushed and captured alive before they even had the chance to send out a distress signal.
Originally, using the entire continent's land and resources as his medium would have been extremely difficult.
But with the Miracle Stone Golem—whose sculpting skills surpassed Sequence 0 and who possessed absolute control over earth and stone—transforming Seraph Continent's terrain became significantly easier.
Even with all these measures in place, Rosen's painting still took a full fifty years in real-world time to complete.
From the perspective of the Astral Realm, Seraph Continent had now become a painting—an immense depiction of countless angels massacring each other, leaving behind nothing but a landscape filled with corpses and death.
A Canvas of Angelic Suffering, created from mountains, rivers, and the very resentment of fallen angels.
The five angelic deities, working together, severed Seraph Continent's connection to Heaven.
They then mobilized all five Angel Empires, leading their entire angelic populations into an all-out war of extinction.
Having grown accustomed to endless conflict, the angels of the five nations found it strange that the war had spread beyond the Holy Battlefield.
But with their deities personally overseeing the war, even if they sensed something was amiss, they lacked the authority to question the grand design.
Thus, under the divine decree, billions of angels—from Sequence 9 all the way to Sequence 1—descended into an apocalyptic slaughter.
Countless mountains were littered with the corpses of angels, countless plants were stained white with angelic feathers, and countless rivers ran red with angelic blood. The angels fought, died, and resurrected repeatedly until they could no longer be revived, ultimately falling forever on the Seraphim Continent.
If one were to look down at the Seraphim Continent from the astral plane at this moment, they would see that the "Angelic Suffering Painting" had become increasingly vivid.
Rosen used the world as his canvas and the deaths, wails, sorrows, anger, despair, fear, and resentment of countless angels—along with all their negative spiritual energy and remains—as his pigments. Together, these elements formed a painting of angelic suffering that now existed as a tangible reality in the world.
When the last angel fell, the painting was still missing its final touches.
Rosen expanded his divine domain and released the Angel Rebirth Pool and its accompanying structure, the Heavenly Mountain.
He then shattered the Angel Rebirth Pool, slaughtered all the angelic soldiers, and erased the five angelic deities, transforming everything into angelic pigments. Afterward, he revealed his ancient god form, becoming a giant tens of thousands of miles tall. Holding an equally massive brush, he began to paint the final part of the masterpiece.
At the center of the Seraphim Continent, an Angel Rebirth Pool appeared, surrounded by the five angelic deities.
However, what emerged from the pool were no longer normal angels but death angels shrouded in endless death.
The moment Rosen completed the final stroke, he activated the Original Painting Sealing Technique.
The entire Seraphim Continent began to collapse dimensionally. Everything on the continent was compressed into a single painting, which gradually shrank until it finally merged into Rosen's forehead, integrating into his Mental Canvas and becoming part of the "Hell Soul Reaping Painting."
Originally a Sequence 0 artifact, the "Hell Soul Reaping Painting" had risen to the level of a true god multiple times before falling back. Now, it underwent another transformation.
[Hell Reincarnation Painting: Miracle Artwork]
[Level: Sequence 0]
[Miracle Attribute: The Death God who rules the Death Hell, commanding Death Hunters and Death Angels to harvest the souls of all beings.]
[Miracle Traits: Death Judgment, Soul Harvest, Death Hell, Unique in Heaven and Earth, Eternal and Indestructible.]
While the overall changes seemed minor, the "Hell Soul Reaping Painting" had evolved into the "Hell Reincarnation Painting," a miracle artwork capable of growth.
Moreover, by fusing with the Seraphim Continent, the corpses of billions of angels, the Angel Rebirth Pool, and the Heavenly Mountain, the Death Hell within the painting could now produce not only the special unit Death Hunters but also Death Angels of up to Sequence 1.
In essence, Rosen had strengthened the Death Hell while simultaneously enhancing the Angel Rebirth Pool, a unit-producing structure.
Along the way, he had also collected an immense amount of negative emotions from the angels.
Rosen took out his Potion Vial and poured all the angels' negative emotions into it. Finally, he tossed the Hell Reincarnation Painting into the vial as well. Soon, the Sequence 1 Painter Potion was complete, and from the vial emerged the Hell Reincarnation Painting encased in black crystal.
He directly integrated the potion into his Mental Canvas, merging it with the Painter Sequence's transcendent essence.
In an instant, his divine origin and transcendent essence completed the transformation to Sequence 1.
This transformation not only successfully elevated the Hell Reincarnation Painting to the status of a unique spiritual artwork, on par with the Divine Brush, but also further integrated the Painter Sequence with the Noble Sequence through the Angel Rebirth Pool.
Finally, by leveraging the Hell Reincarnation Painting, Rosen further strengthened the transcendent essence of the Painter Sequence, transforming the Death God within the painting into his third self-portrait clone. At the same time, the abundant origin of the transcendent essence gave birth to an unprecedented and powerful innate skill.
[World of Painting Descent: The ability to perfectly integrate a dimensional world from a painting into reality.]
Though the skill's description seemed simple, its simplicity implied fewer restrictions and greater versatility.
Through data transmission, Rosen instantly appeared on the Light Seraphim Continent.
Unlike the Seraphim Continent, which primarily served as a training ground for cannon fodder, the Light Seraphim Continent was focused on harvesting faith.
Spanning hundreds of thousands of miles and home to tens of trillions of inhabitants, the continent was populated almost entirely by ordinary angelic beings. Aside from the small, underdeveloped wings on their backs, they were indistinguishable from ordinary humans. However, the continent was overseen by a divine avatar of an angelic true god.
Should the Light Seraphim Continent come under attack, the angelic true god could descend upon it in a very short time.
Rosen took out a pre-prepared map of the Light Seraphim Continent, a Sequence 1 artifact drawn by the Hand of God.
At this moment, his divine consciousness and painting domain, channeled through the map, descended upon the Light Seraphim Continent from a god-like perspective. What was originally limited to covering an area of ten thousand miles now enveloped the entire continent.
Using his painting domain as a medium, Rosen activated the Sequence 1 skill, World of Painting Descent.
Suddenly, the Hell Reincarnation Painting, which had existed within his Mental Canvas, began to manifest in the real world through the painting domain. Across the countless cities and mountains of the Light Seraphim Continent, innumerable angelic corpses appeared.
Even more terrifying, the hundreds of millions of transcendent angelic corpses began to revive under the power of the Hell Reincarnation Painting.
However, the Hell Reincarnation Painting could not provide enough energy to permanently resurrect all of them. At most, it allowed the corpses to briefly return to life. These temporarily revived angelic corpses began a frenzied slaughter of the tens of trillions of angels across the continent.
Every ordinary angelic being became nourishment for the resurrection and transformation of the angelic corpses into Death Angels.
Rosen intended to use the World of Painting Descent to bring the Death Hell from the Hell Reincarnation Painting into the Light Seraphim Continent. By using the tens of trillions of angelic beings as fuel, he would permanently resurrect the hundreds of millions of angels within the Death Hell as Death Angels.
The divine avatar of the angelic true god, which should have had absolute control over the Light Seraphim Continent, was unable to detect Rosen's presence. Normally, any enemy setting foot on the continent would be instantly sensed by the true god.
But this time was different. The Death Hell's descent onto the Light Seraphim Continent had merged the painted world with reality through the World of Painting Descent, creating a completely new world. The angelic true god could not locate Rosen and could only do its best to purify as many Death Angels as possible before its true form descended.
In the blink of an eye, five Death Angel deities surrounded the divine avatar of the angelic true god.
Though they had become Death Angels, the true god immediately recognized them as the deities who had once guarded the Seraphim Continent.
It didn't take much thought to realize that the Seraphim Continent no longer existed.
Combined with the pervasive painting laws enveloping the entire Light Seraphim Continent, the angelic true god understood what had happened. Without hesitation, it sacrificed its divine avatar, burning all its sacred light divinity to accelerate the descent of its true form through the Gates of Heaven.
Only the true god's full descent could save the Light Seraphim Continent. Otherwise, not a single living being would be left.
Such large-scale slaughter was typically seen only in wars between racial civilizations, where true gods of various races would unleash their full might.
As the true god descended, it began contacting other angelic true gods to prepare for a potential racial civilization war.
(End of Chapter)