"The essence of the Ancient God's Heartfield cannot escape the principle of Equivalent Exchange..." Rosen mused inwardly.
The Heartfield could cultivate all things, effectively doubling them. Yet, just as crops in ordinary fields deplete nutrients and water, the Heartfield's primordial essence would gradually diminish with each planting. This lost essence would automatically replenish itself by drawing from the surrounding sea of blood's primordial power.
For a long time, the Ancient God civilization paid no heed to this. From their perspective, if the essence was being replenished, what did it matter? After all, it was the primordial essence of the blood sea—formed from the Ancient God's heart—that was being consumed, not their own.
No one saw it as a problem. Instead, they exploited the Heartfield even more ruthlessly. The Ancient God civilization was eager to drain the Ancient God's heart dry, hoping to ensure the slumbering deity would never awaken.
They even used resources obtained from the Heartfield to venture beyond it, locating a section of the Ancient God's cardiovascular system at the blood sea's edge. With this, they constructed the altar world connected by the Ancient God's Staircase, artificially creating a blood river.
While the civilization's elites could access the Heartfield, its ordinary members could not. Thus, the blood river and altar world became a "beginner's village" for nurturing new blood into the Ancient God Sequence.
Just as the civilization flourished, with the "village" producing more and more Ancient God Sequence members, another side effect of the Heartfield emerged. Those who had planted themselves in the Heartfield began to encounter a horrifying phenomenon—their duplicates gradually developed abnormalities.
The duplicates devoured their originals, silently taking their place. Since the copies were identical in every way, the civilization remained oblivious to the replacements. By the time the truth came to light, the duplicates' strength and influence had grown formidable.
The Ancient God civilization was plunged into a nightmarish civil war. The records within the small altar ended here. The outcome of the war remained unknown, but it must have been catastrophic.
The Ancient God's Sacrificial Artifact had four components. One resided in the main altar, another in the small altar. Possessing the remaining two would grant access to the Heartfield via the altars. If all four were united, one could enter and leave the Heartfield freely, bypassing the ritual entirely.
What transpired afterward in the Ancient God civilization was a mystery—perhaps only the Abyssal Will could explain.
Rosen swiftly scoured the 3,000-mile-radius Heartfield. No anomalies or remnants were found. Everything—soil, water—contained traces of the Ancient God's primordial power, though it was too dispersed. At most, it might elevate an 89%-pure Ancient God bloodline to 100%.
Further bloodline sublimation would require extracting concentrated primordial essence from the Heartfield. But first, Rosen intended to gather the complete artifact.
At its peak, the Ancient God civilization boasted numerous elites—likely over five Great True Gods. Under such circumstances, no single individual could monopolize the artifact, necessitating its division.
Now, with no competitors, Rosen could collect all four fragments. He first extracted the artifact's third fragment from the small altar. Empowered by two existing fragments, a bell soon emerged from the altar. Without it, the teleportation link between altars would soon fail, so Rosen immediately activated the return ritual.
Back at the main altar, he used the three-merged artifact to retrieve the final fragment. As the four parts united, the main altar began to crumble. Rosen seized debris from the collapsing structure, only to realize the altar had long been a spent force—its imposing facade maintained solely by the embedded artifact fragment.
With the altar's destruction, the entire altar world and Ancient God's Staircase started disintegrating. Rosen retreated into the Mysterious Study. His Yinglong Doppelganger in the Dragon Realm altered spatial anchors to retrieve his true self.
The four fragments took centuries to fully merge. Thanks to time acceleration, Rosen delivered the complete artifact to the Sapling World Tree within half a year. The prolonged fusion stemmed from severe damage to the main altar's fragment. Only after investing vast amounts of divine crystals did the artifact finally restore itself.
[Ancient God's Sacrificial Artifact: Miracle Treasure]
[Rank: Immortal Divine Demon]
[Miracle Attributes: Quadruple enhancement—Spirit, Life, Matter, and Primordial Essence]
[Miracle Traits: Key of the Ancient God, Singular Existence, Eternal Indestructibility]
Generally speaking, the unique traits of miracle treasures outweigh their attributes.
But for the Ancient God's Sacrificial Artifact, its miracle attributes surpass its miracle traits.
The sole function of the Key of the Ancient God is to allow unrestricted entry and exit to the Heartfield from anywhere in the new world, bypassing all seals and distances.
Rosen also confirmed one thing: the rank above Forbidden Divine Demons is Immortal Divine Demons.
And beyond that—perhaps—lies the realm of Eternal Lifeforms like the Ancient God.
The artifact's enhancements to Spirit and Life Origin no longer cap at +9, but now reach +14. Moreover, these boosts are permanent and no longer require chiming the artifact within his heart—though the upper limit cannot exceed 182 points.
Why? Because 182 points marks the maximum threshold for Immortal Divine Demons in both Divine Power Intensity and Life Origin.
As for its enhancements to Matter and Energy, these don't apply to the user directly.
Matter Reinforcement can imbue ordinary materials with immortal properties. This was why the main altar—despite being at death's door—showed no outward signs of decay. However, this "immortality" was only skin-deep.
Finally, Primordial Essence Enhancement stands as the artifact's most formidable power.
Granting immortality to one's primordial essence is of paramount importance to Rosen.
Many of his abilities require permanent consumption of divine essence.
If he uses the artifact to make his divine essence indestructible, his reserves would never deplete—only accumulate. The implications are self-evident.
Currently, his expended divine essence takes about half a month to recover naturally.
But in reality, he's been cultivating for decades under time acceleration.
Repeated losses have become a significant burden.
Activating the Key of the Ancient God, Rosen willed the artifact—now anchored in his Sea of Consciousness—to transport him back to the Heartfield.
Learning from past mistakes, he didn't immediately use the Heartfield to evolve his Ancient God Bloodline.
Only after confirming he could come and go freely did he revisit the World Tree's Eternal Will's Lingering Consciousness.
Upon hearing his description of the Heartfield, the remnant will exposed the Ancient God's scheme:
"The replicas cultivated in the Heartfield are forever fakes."
Even if a duplicated supernatural relic functions identically, even if a copied lifeform shares the same divinity and memories—they remain counterfeits.
Unless...
The fake devours the original.
With the original gone, the replica can become real by default.
The Heartfield isn't a natural phenomenon but a carefully laid trap by the Ancient God before he transformed into the world.
The Ancient God civilization's "discovery" of the Heartfield was likely orchestrated by the World Will under the Ancient God's command.
By replacing key figures with replicas, the Ancient God orchestrated his civilization's collapse. The survivors—now supplanted by fakes—became Forbidden True Gods, with some possibly ascending to Immortal Divine Demons.
Should the Abyssal Will awaken and reconstitute the 99 layers of the Abyss into its body...
It too might reach Immortal Divine Demon status.
Every drop of the Heartfield's primordial essence carries the Ancient God's Eternal Will.
Though faint, accumulation spells disaster.
Thus, Rosen was right to avoid evolving his bloodline there. Instead, he'll use the outer blood sea—though less efficient, it's the only safe path.
On his third visit to the Heartfield, Rosen pushed through its golden mists to reach the endless blood sea.
At a prudent distance, he deployed his Divine Domain—equipped with Flesh Law and the Holy Land of Blood trait—and sank it into the crimson tides.
Combined with the Primordial Vampire Sequence shared by Farla, his domain began filtering the sea's infinite Ancient God's Blood.
The extracted essence—minuscule traces of the Ancient God's primordial power—was sent to the Flesh World Fruit for further refinement.
Within days, his bloodline purity broke through to 90%, unlocking a terrifying new ability:
"Reincarnation Curse of the Ancient God."
At 80% purity, he'd gained "Origin of All Things"—the power to dissolve into the Ancient God's Primordial World, including his divinity, which could split into countless sentient lifeforms.
Due to the Reincarnation Curse of the Ancient God, these spawned lifeforms are destined to slaughter each other over time.
When most have perished, Rosen can resurrect via the curse, reclaiming all the deceased's spiritual energy to massively amplify his own. This makes the Reincarnation Curse the core cultivation technique of the Ancient God Sequence.
Whether it's the Ancient God transforming into the new world, or the Ancient God Sequence behind the Abyss reshaping it into the Abyss—
At their core, both are utilizing the Reincarnation Curse for cultivation.
For now, Rosen has no use for this ability. Activating the curse would leave him at his weakest.
If the Ancient God were awake...
If the Ancient God weren't currently employing this very curse...
Who in the new world could possibly resist him?
Only when his strength has peaked with no room for growth should he consider invoking the curse to break through.
Months later, Rosen's Ancient God Bloodline naturally reached 100% purity.
To his surprise, he gained the ability: "Heartfield of the Ancient God."
Within his Ancient God's Heart lay the Heart Chambers—a sea of blood formed from Ancient God's Blood. Now, he could construct his own Heartfield within this sea, capable of cultivating anything not exceeding his divine essence's potency.
While possessing a personal Heartfield should be advantageous, Rosen felt uneasy.
Why wasn't this mentioned in the small altar's records?
Unless... he's the first in the Ancient God Sequence to ever acquire it.
This "first" left him deeply unsettled.
He used Time Reversal to regress his bloodline, then purified it back to 100% again.
The result? Heartfield of the Ancient God—again.
A second reversal yielded the same outcome.
On the third attempt, Rosen left the blood sea and the new world, retreating to the old world.
This time, at 100% purity, he finally obtained a different ability:
The Godhead of Bloodline—though merely a prototype, not the complete form.
At 100% purity, his bloodline was indistinguishable from the Ancient God's own.
What the Ancient God considered ordinary blood was, to the Sequence, their primordial essence.
Thus, the prototype Godhead could form. The next step required compressing his Ancient God Bloodline further—accumulating quantity to trigger quality, transforming it into True Blood of the Ancient God to fully forge the Godhead.
Returning to the new world's blood sea, Rosen relentlessly siphoned its power into his Heart Chambers.
His Heart Chambers already possessed the ability to generate one drop of True Blood per Sequence.
Now, he simply accelerated the process.
Years passed. The True Blood multiplied—only to be immediately absorbed by the developing Godhead.
Despite decades of effort, he couldn't intercept even a single drop.
The Godhead remained in its prototype state.
Meanwhile, his Primordial Human Bloodline had fully regressed into Primordial Stone Bloodline—its power to assimilate all bloodlines now at its peak.
Most supernatural beings struggle to master multiple Sequences simultaneously.
The more one cultivates, the greater the mutual rejection and backlash.
The same applies to Laws.
However, these are non-issues for the Primordial Stone Bloodline. Rosen could now freely fuse any bloodline, and master any Sequence—no restrictions, no conflicts.
(Though ordinary bloodlines were beneath his notice. Only Ancient God-tier ones warranted integration.)
Another few decades slipped by. Rosen's Ancient God Bloodline had been sublimating for over a century.
Finally, the Godhead of Bloodline transitioned from prototype to true form.
The Primordial Stone Bloodline seamlessly merged into it—
Or so it should have.
Instead, the Godhead began fracturing.
The Primordial Stone Bloodline—renowned for universal compatibility—was rejecting the Ancient God Bloodline.
A chilling realization struck Rosen:
Both bloodlines are flawed.
He wasn't the origin of these two bloodlines. The World Tree and the Ancient God—the true sources—were mortal enemies. Their hatred had seeped so deeply into their bloodlines that even the all-encompassing Primordial Stone Bloodline couldn't reconcile with the Ancient God Bloodline.
Watching his newly formed Bloodline Godhead teeter on collapse, Rosen decided to gamble.
He directly extracted the Dark Sun Bloodline from the Dark Sun Slime's Bloodline Godhead and funneled it into his own. Then he let the three bloodlines—Primordial Stone, Ancient God, and Dark Sun—tear into each other, devouring one another while he focused solely on preventing the Godhead's disintegration.
This process no longer required the physical blood sea. Rosen entered the Historical World Fruit, accelerating time within.
Millennia passed. Tens of millennia. Another century in real time slipped by.
Finally, after an eternity, the three Eternal Bloodlines—each derived from an Eternal Lifeform—reached their conclusion within the Godhead.
Originally, all three bloodlines contained traces of their progenitors' Eternal Will. Had Rosen ever faced these three Eternal Lifeforms directly, they might not have been able to control him through the bloodline connection, but suppressing his abilities through their shared origin would have been trivial.
But now, after endless conflict, the three bloodlines had utterly annihilated each other's Eternal Will.
"Eternal"—what a relative term.
Miracle treasures claim to be eternal, yet even they crumble when their Eternal Origin is exhausted.
To an Immortal Divine Demon, Eternal Lifeforms seem truly eternal. But when pitted against each other, even their so-called indestructible wills can only achieve mutual destruction.
Freed from the interference of Eternal Will, the Primordial Stone Bloodline easily assimilated the other two.
But Rosen no longer wanted mere compatibility—he sought their complete fusion, a metamorphosis into something entirely new.
Taking advantage of the bloodlines' exhaustion after their hundred-thousand-year war, Rosen began forcibly merging them through the Godhead.
Another hundred thousand years passed before the fusion stabilized.
What remained was a single bloodline—the Primordial Bloodline.
Rosen named it such because it could harness the fundamental nature of all bloodlines.
The Primordial Bloodline now possessed three core abilities: Assimilation, Plunder, and Evolution.
The World Tree's essence was Assimilation, enabling it to master the all-encompassing Stone World. Even the Ancient God had borrowed this to grasp World Laws.
The Ancient God's essence was Plunder—hence its transformation into a world, its cultivation of civilizations, and its eventual harvest of all life. Its true power was never World Laws but the primal act of taking.
The Dark Sun's essence, surprisingly, was Evolution—not darkness or corruption, as assumed. Those were merely byproducts of its relentless advancement.
With mastery over these three primordial forces, Rosen's bloodline undeniably elevated him to the Eternal Sequence.
His divine essence cap, originally 117 points, now rose to 135—a direct result of the Primordial Bloodline.
All that remained was to:
Ignite his divine spark,
Fuse faith into his simulated godhead,
Transform his Divine Domain into a true Divine Kingdom.
Only then could he ascend to Sequence 0 in perfect form.
But first, one final task awaited.
Rosen reclaimed the Bloodline Godhead, merging it with his heart to let the Primordial Bloodline suffuse his entire being.
Then, via data transmission, he arrived in the Dragon Realm—ready to claim it entirely.
Establishing a Divine Kingdom demanded vast resources. Though his current reserves were substantial, a Divine Kingdom was a bottomless pit—especially since he planned to create two:
A material Divine Kingdom for his bloodline,
And a spiritual Divine Kingdom born from faith.
The Dragon Realm was non-negotiable.
The two Dragon Gods no longer posed a threat.
With the Primordial Bloodline, his power had surged. Moreover, over these three centuries, the Main God Computer had infiltrated the Dragon Realm's laws through the Infinite Signal Tower.
All he needed was to briefly sever the Dragon Gods' control over their realm—and the opportunity to eliminate them would follow.
(End of Chapter)