Once the target space-time was locked, Coo's will dissolved the infinite 3D universes layered around them.
The scene shifted back to the boundless Radiant Continent below, dominated by the majestic sight of the massive Matter Sea chandelier hanging above.
Standing nearby, Genarkrail, who had overheard Coo's mumble, asked blankly, "Arena? What game arena are you talking about?"
"Wait, shut up for a second. Let me take another look," Coo said, waving a hand to silence him.
He focused, reactivating the All-Spectrum Eye to peer deep into that faint, colossal parallel universe.
After a few seconds of intense observation, he broke into a relaxed grin. "Ah, so that's how it is. What a crazy coincidence."
"What's the coincidence? A coincidence about what?" Genarkrail asked again, looking totally lost. "Coo, what the hell are you talking about?"
"What I'm saying is..."
Coo turned to Genarkrail with a smirk. "The 3D space-time you're hunting for happens to be a splintered parallel world, born from a 3D playground I built eons ago."
"Oh? What are the odds?"
Genarkrail's heart skipped a beat, but he kept his cool and forced a laugh. "Actually, it makes sense. 3D universes are constantly splitting into infinite parallel timelines. It's an endless, unpredictable mess."
"True, true. So..."
Coo watched his facial expressions closely, then suddenly added, "Why are you so tense? Afraid I'll tag along?"
"Not at all," Genarkrail replied, frowning with feigned confusion. "Why would you even think that? By the way, is that old playground of yours still running?"
"Haha... whether it's running or not doesn't really matter anymore."
Ignoring Genarkrail's attempt to change the subject, Coo let out a strange laugh and waved him off. "When I first designed that game, I didn't optimize the core rules properly, so it was riddled with glitches.
After running it for maybe ten million years, those bugs turned into total failures. Fixing it was too much of a headache, so quadrillions of years ago, I just tossed it aside."
"I see."
Genarkrail offered a helpful smile. "Well, Coo, want me to go check on it for you?"
"Are you stupid or just not paying attention?"
Coo mocked him with a thin grin. "The All-Spectrum Eye sees through everything. Nothing can be hidden from me. Did you forget that?"
"Oh, right."
Genarkrail slapped his forehead and let out a loud laugh. "My bad, I forgot. Anyway, Coo, let's catch up later."
With a wave of his hand, he opened a shimmering, distorted space-time portal, stepped through, and vanished.
Coo remained alone on the endless Radiant Continent, whispering with a cold sneer:
"On one side, a [ True String ] level entity carrying an Average Grade Sacred Descending Form. On the other, a rare 5D spatial lifeform with a Brilliant Games quasi-reality field. I wonder... when these titans clash, who's actually going to walk away with the win?"
...
Beyond the tail end of the 20-trillion-light-year-long River of Primordial, as if to emphasize the sheer scale of the cosmos, there lay a mysterious and perfectly shaped Great Void, a massive expanse of darkness spanning thirty-six trillion light-years.
This silent, pitch-black deep, devoid of starlight or even the smallest subatomic particles, was impossibly vast.
It was so massive that if a Big Bang were to occur at its very center, the explosion wouldn't be enough to light up even a fraction of the darkness for quite some time.
Within this gargantuan cavern that defied the limits of common sense, the laws of physics and the delicate fabric of space-time, even the universal speed limit of light, seemed to blur and stretch.
Due to the fragmented structure of space-time in this terrifyingly empty expanse, countless bizarre and eerie phenomena manifested constantly across the void.
Driven by these anomalies, which affected areas spanning hundreds of millions of light-years, the danger level of this Dark Void was unfathomable.
A structure as colossal as the Laniakea Supercluster wouldn't last a minute here. It would be torn apart and pulverized in seconds by the dancing, titanic distortions, reduced to a brilliant firework of burning stardust.
Yet, deep within this dark abyss, thousands of massive lifeforms had silently gathered. Each had a unique, grotesque appearance and radiated a titanic aura capable of snuffing out millions of galaxies.
Divided into eight major sectors and spaced over a billion light-years apart, these powerful beings were all at the Top-tier Sage King level.
Standing at the center of these eight sectors were eight behemoths, their sizes far exceeding that of stars. They pulsed with power capable of annihilating trillions of galaxies.
These were the eight Perfected Ungrateful Sons.
Hovering around them at various distances were numerous regular Ungrateful Sons, their sizes a notch smaller than the perfected ones.
This assembly of Perfected Ungrateful Sons, regular Ungrateful Sons, and thousands of Top-tier Sage Kings represented the ruling forces from various Gravitational Primeval Rivers.
Among them was the Lord of the River of Celestial Star. Leading 8 regular Ungrateful Sons and 700 Top-tier Sage Kings, his form was humanoid, towering and powerful with six legs and four arms. His body was encased in thick layers of ice crystals, shimmering with a brilliant, shifting azure light;
The Lord of the River of Phantom Vibrations. Leading 5 regular Ungrateful Sons and 600 Top-tier Sage Kings, his body was a slender, snake-like form millions of kilometers long, covered in a billion shimmering spots like glowing novae;
The Lord of the River of Celestial Shore. Leading 8 regular Ungrateful Sons and 800 Top-tier Sage Kings, he appeared as a headless, limbless suit of silver armor, riddled with gaps that revealed a writhing, indistinct substance within;
The Lord of the River of Star Sea. Leading 10 regular Ungrateful Sons and 970 Top-tier Sage Kings, his form was an irregular spiral of cannons, with countless pink, gelatinous limbs protruding from every port;
The Lord of the River of Cyan Firmament. Leading 11 regular Ungrateful Sons and 900 Top-tier Sage Kings, his body was composed of stacked spheres covered in sharp, scaled spikes;
The Lord of the River of Ancient Times. Leading 9 regular Ungrateful Sons and 800 Top-tier Sage Kings, his form was hazy and indistinct, surrounded by layers of vibrant, petal-like wings;
The Lord of the River of Universal Void. Leading 12 regular Ungrateful Sons and over 1,000 Top-tier Sage Kings, his body was a collection of space-time vortexes with millions of withered, colorful giant hands reaching out from within;
The Lord of the River of Primal Bind. Leading 10 regular Ungrateful Sons and 800 Top-tier Sage Kings, he resembled a massive brain with flaming, nerve-like limbs that radiated heat trillions of times hotter than a stellar core.
Each of these forces possessed the power to level the observable universe multiple times. They stood silent in the void, waiting.
Suddenly, a billion light-years away, the void twisted, and a massive light gate a trillion kilometers wide roared into existence.
While the Ungrateful Son level entities remained as still and cold as the void, every Top-tier Sage King in the area turned their gaze toward the massive light gate.
HUMMM!
The fabric of space-time rippled, and the firmament vibrated.
In a flash, nearly 2,000 Top-tier Sage Kings emerged from the gate. Their long, sharp bodies were as smooth as mirrors, resembling giant shurikens.
Following them were twenty-two Ungrateful Sons, also shuriken-shaped but adorned with intricate, shifting fractal patterns across their surfaces.
Finally, two Perfected Ungrateful Sons appeared, their massive forms radiating an aura that seemed to press against the very universe.
Indeed, the 43.6-trillion-light-year-long River of Primordial Beginning was ruled by two leaders.
At that moment, three more colossal light gates erupted in the void, spaced between ten and eighty billion light-years apart.
From the first gate came 3,000 Top-tier Sage Kings. They were cylindrical, ten-kilometer-wide beings that looked like solid stone but felt as heavy as tungsten-titanium, their surfaces scarred with deep grooves and pits.
Next came 30 regular Ungrateful Sons and 3 Perfected Ungrateful Sons. These were the rulers of the River of Celestial Net, the Three Emperors of the Net.
From the second gate stepped 2,000 Top-tier Sage Kings shaped like twisted polyhedrons. They appeared to be made of brilliant, transparent diamond, with light circulating within their cores.
Following them were 30 regular Ungrateful Sons and the Lord of the River of Vast Expanse, who possessed a Single Soul, Dual Body. This meant a single consciousness simultaneously inhabited two Perfected Ungrateful Son bodies.
The Perfected Ungrateful Son stage is the evolutionary peak for 3D lifeforms, yet the Expanse Lord had somehow bypassed this limit to control two such bodies at once.
Due to a mysterious resonance and perfect coordination, these two bodies functioned with a terrifying effectiveness where 1+1 was far greater than 2, approaching the power of 3.
This was the primary reason the Expanse Lord could dominate an entire River single-handedly.
HUMMM!
At that moment, from the third light gate, 3,600 Top-tier Sage Kings surged forth. Their bodies were nearly transparent, shimmering with shifting colors and patterns like radiant, ethereal clouds. They resembled colossal, magnificent jellyfish drifting through a celestial court.
Finally, entering this void were 40 regular Ungrateful Sons and the absolute strongest of the Verdant Ancient Matter Sea, the Lord of the River of Colossal Marsh. He possessed a Single Soul, Triple Body, meaning one consciousness occupied three separate Perfected Ungrateful Son bodies.
As the Marsh Lord descended, the void within a radius of nearly two hundred billion light-years began to heave and boil, reacting to the resonance field of his three perfected forms.
Through some unknown, profound technique or logic, the Marsh Lord had pushed his three bodies to an efficiency where 1+1+1 was far greater than 3, nearing a power level of 8.
This expanded his interference field to eight times its original volume and nearly doubled its diameter. In other words, his single presence exerted a cosmic influence equal to eight Perfected Ungrateful Sons.
The Marsh Lord scanned the vast, endless darkness and chuckled lazily:
"Heh, so this is the graveyard that failure Primordial Lord left behind after his ascension flopped? Impressive view."
The massive, radiant 'jellyfish' then 'glared' at the other Primeval River Lords in the distance, mocking them:
"You pieces of trash have some nerve. What the hell are you all doing here?"
"Fuck you!" a sharp, cold voice barked back.
It was the Expanse Lord, ranked second in the power hierarchy of the Verdant Ancient Matter Sea.
He glared at the Marsh Lord from nearly a hundred billion light-years away, sneering: "You arrogant piece of shit! Marsh, do you really think you can hoard all of Primordial's legacy for yourself? Pure delusion!"
"Oh?" the Marsh Lord sneered with a raspy voice. "Wanna go, noodle monster? I'll beat the living shit out of you."
"You?!" The Expanse Lord flared with rage, his entire form pulsing with blinding light.
"Alright, alright."
At that moment, the Three Emperors of the Net and the Beginning Dual Kings spoke up in unison to intervene: "Calm down, Expanse. Just throw a few more insults at that rotten jellyfish and be done with it. Don't let your temper ruin our efficiency when we gank him later. We don't care if you die, just don't mess up our loot drop."
"Ganking me?"
The Marsh Lord's three bodies simultaneously raised a long tentacle, pointing at himself with mocked surprise. "Between you, there are 7 Perfected Ungrateful Sons... and you're ganking just me? That's a bit shameless, isn't it?"
"Shameless? How is it shameless? It's common sense. You want the Primordial Lord's 'Legacy,' but so do we," the Three Emperors and Beginning Dual Kings replied in unison. "Blame your own power level. You're so strong that the seven of us have to team up just to gain a slight edge. Honestly, it's all your fault!"
"Fine, fine. So we're all transmigrators, but you're gonna play it like that, huh?"
The Marsh Lord let out a cold, sharp laugh. "Whatever. When the time comes, let's see who's got the real skills."
After he finished speaking, the vast void fell silent once again.
The weaker Primeval River Lords, who were relatively isolated, hadn't made a single 'sound' during the entire argument.
Even though they clearly 'heard' the Marsh Lord blabbering about 'transmigration,' they offered no reaction.
It wasn't that they lacked curiosity; it was just that such curiosity was meaningless in the face of the current situation. They weren't necessarily afraid of the Dual Kings, the Three Emperors, the Expanse Lord, or the Marsh Lord.
After all, any lifeform that had clawed its way to the Perfected Ungrateful Son stage wouldn't easily feel fear toward those of the same level, unless the power gap was unimaginable.
The rulers of these mid-sized Primeval Rivers were simply waiting. They were waiting for the lords of the large Primeval Rivers to start clashing, hoping for a fatal opening to appear in the heat of battle.
Similarly, Marsh and the others knew exactly what these smaller lords were planning.
The trash talk earlier was a mix of truth and lies, part argument, part performance. When they would get serious depended entirely on how the situation developed and which way the tides of victory leaned.
HUMMM!
Suddenly, surrounded by over 17,100 Top-tier Sage Kings, 195 regular Ungrateful Sons, and 15 Perfected Ungrateful Sons, the very center of the massive Dark Void... began to boil and surge. A space-time vortex appeared, miniscule in size, yet extremely twisted and chaotic.
The moment it appeared, it acted like a Singularity that had been gathering infinite energy for eons. It exploded, expanding outward in all directions at countless times the speed of light.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
As it violently ballooned, the surrounding 3D space-time buckled like the Pacific Ocean struck by a planet-sized asteroid. It triggered massive, overlapping space-time tides that roared across the cosmos, crushing and pushing through the void like a wave of falling dominoes, sweeping toward the furthest reaches of the universe.
The Primeval River forces anchored in the void were swept away like petals in a torrent, involuntarily drifting quadrillions of light-years in an instant.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
As the bucking space-time tides gradually settled, the forces crossed hundreds of billions of light-years in seconds, returning to where the vortex had first appeared.
The vortex was gone.
In its place was a massive, rotating, contracting, expanding, vibrating, and surging geometric entity, a tangled structure formed from hundreds of millions of barren continents, each trillions of light-years wide, intersecting and overlapping without any clear pattern.
This colossal structure resembled a dynamic, magnified, and far more complex version of a Calabi-Yau manifold. It couldn't be categorized by simple 2D, 3D, 4D, or even 5D geometry. It was a shifting conglomerate of multiple dimensional structures fused together.
From across the vast void, the Marsh Lord 'gazed' at this bizarre, unparalleled geometric structure and mused:
"Heh, so this is the Sacred God Territory, the legacy Augustus left behind after his ascension failed ten million years ago. What a bizarre, indecipherable mess."
"Fix your trash memory!"
The Expanse Lord, catching the faster-than-light information flow from ten billion light-years away, mocked him: "Ten million years? Has your brain shriveled into a raisin? The Primordial Lord's failed ascension was clearly five million years ago."
"That's not right," the Beginning Dual Kings said in unison from thirty billion light-years away. "We distinctly remember Augustus dying seven and a half million years ago."
"Wrong, wrong, all of you are wrong," the Three Emperors of the Net barked from twenty billion light-years away. "Have you gone senile? The three of us clearly remember Augustus failing his ascension and dying four million six hundred thousand years ago."
"Shut the fuck up, I said ten million years, so it's ten million years!" the Marsh Lord snapped back.
"Stop blabbering, it was five million!" the Expanse Lord sneered.
"I can't believe you guys. How can you mess this up? It was seven and a half million!" the Beginning Dual Kings said, shaking their massive heads.
For a moment, the titans argued, each convinced their memory was the correct one.
Meanwhile, further out in the void, the eight mid-sized Primeval River Lords were also deep in discussion. They soon discovered that their memories of Augustus's downfall didn't match either. Some remembered it being eight and a half million years ago, others four and a half million, and one even claimed it was fifteen million years ago.
Stranger still, it wasn't just the Primeval River Lords whose memories differed. Their regular Ungrateful Sons and Top-tier Sage Kings all had different accounts. There were nearly a thousand versions of when Augustus had fallen.
Once Marsh and the others stopped arguing and began to investigate, they made a shocking discovery. The Super Void, the thirty-six-trillion-light-year-wide crater created by Augustus's failed ascension, had apparently begun affecting the structure of the various Primeval Rivers at completely different points in time.
The situation was bizarre.
There was a catastrophic event from "eons ago," but how long ago was "eons"? No one could agree. The impact of this disaster on the universe, from the macro to the micro scale, appeared to have manifested at different points across a ten-million-year span.
Faced with this anomaly, the Primeval River Lords felt their long lives, and the history of the massive Matter Sea, becoming shrouded in fog. It was as if the moment Augustus truly fell was a ghost, drifting aimlessly between four and a half million and fifteen million years ago, refusing to settle into a single reality.
"This is completely illogical!"
The Marsh Lord dropped his usual mocking tone, his voice now deep and solemn. "If our memories and perceptions of the past were truly this different, then over all our eons of communication, we would have noticed the discrepancies long ago."
"He's right."
The Expanse Lord's voice, suddenly calm and sharp, cut through the tension. "There is only one explanation. This inexplicable temporal chaos... it just happened. Otherwise, we wouldn't have just realized it now."
"That's even more insane," the Beginning Dual Kings said in unison.
"If that's true... then some being or force, standing in the [Present], can rewrite segments of the distant [Past]. Not just one part of the past, but hundreds of thousands of moments have been altered.
But how could such an impossibly powerful force exist?! And if it did, how could our world possibly survive such a change?"
"I know what you mean."
The Marsh Lord swayed his tentacles and said in a deep voice, "You're saying that even if some unfathomable, time-transcending power existed and rewrote the [Past] for some reason...
Then according to the logic of cause and effect, that change should have flowed downstream from the moment of alteration. It should have rewritten every detail of history from the [Past] all the way to the [Present]. Every fact would be consistent with the new reality, errors become truths, darkness becomes light.
If the change was perfect, it would be as if nothing had changed at all. We would have no way to detect any anomalies.
But what we're seeing now... is that everyone's history is different. Yet these conflicting timelines are somehow cobbled together on a single axis, coexisting in one reality.
It's not just us; this entire objective material world, different Gravitational Primeval Rivers with different histories, is somehow stable. There are no signs of reality collapsing. This... is just too bizarre. It defies logic."
The void fell silent again.
Time has always been a mystery. Anything involving its manipulation is bound to be baffling.
Worse, no one could think of a way to resolve this. It was far beyond the capabilities of these Three-Dimensional Ungrateful Sons.
"Forget it," the Expanse Lord broke the silence. "If we can't solve it, let's set it aside. Right now... the priority is Augustus's legacy."
As soon as he spoke, every Perfected Ungrateful Son began silently watching the others.
"Heh heh heh..."
The Marsh Lord let out a chilling laugh. "Don't act all dead. I told you already, it's survival of the fittest! Everyone goes in together. Success or failure, life or death... it all depends on your own skills!"
"Fine!" the Expanse Lord barked his agreement.
"Agreed," the Beginning Dual Kings said.
"Agreed," the Three Emperors added.
The other eight Perfected Ungrateful Sons glanced at each other before responding one by one:
"Fine." ... "Let's do it." ... "I agree."
"Good." The Marsh Lord cast a cold glance at the mid-sized lords, then led his regular Ungrateful Sons and four thousand Top-tier Sage Kings toward the bizarre geometric structure.
In that same instant, every Perfected Ungrateful Son led their subordinates toward the geometric structure from various directions.
But as they crossed hundreds of billions of light-years in a flash, the vast void within a trillion-mile radius suddenly... froze.
Every Top-tier Sage King, regular Ungrateful Son, and even the Perfected Ungrateful Sons were like mosquitoes trapped in amber. They were completely permeated and enveloped from head to toe, inside and out, by an infinitely vast and domineering force.
This force was so absolute that everyone was fixed in place, unable to interfere with or react to the outside world. They could only vaguely perceive their surroundings.
Yet, this force was also so subtle that it completely bypassed the powerful defensive fields that protected the Ungrateful Sons, saturating both their bodies and souls instantly.
HUMMM!
The frozen space-time rippled slightly, and massive phantoms of light manifested within the blurred perception of the Primeval River Lords.
These phantoms took on various grotesque shapes, yet they all shared the same heavy, cosmic aura.
The Primeval River Lords realized with horror, these were 999 Perfected Ungrateful Sons!
"How is this possible?! It can't be!"
The Marsh Lord, frozen and unable to move, roared in terror in his mind, "The Verdant Ancient Matter Sea only has 36 Gravitational Primeval Rivers! Where... where could nearly a thousand Perfected Ungrateful Sons have been hidden?! This makes no sense!"
The other Primeval River Lords were equally shocked and terrified.
No one had ever imagined a scene where nearly 1,000 Perfected Ungrateful Sons existed simultaneously within the Verdant Ancient Matter Sea. It was impossible, there simply weren't enough Primeval Rivers to sustain so many.
Nor did these lords consider whether these strangers came from another Matter Sea.
In their traditional understanding, beyond their own Matter Sea lay an infinite, bottomless, absolute vacuum, a place where even the Dirac Sea was as still as a stagnant pool, and where nothing existed.
While the Primeval River Lords were panicked and lost, an infinitely majestic aura, one that caused their hearts to skip beats, suddenly descended.
Under this aura, even the vast 3D space-time seemed to tremble, as if it wanted to prostrate itself before the newcomer.
The terrified lords caught only a glimpse of a radiant, ten-million-light-year-tall divine figure before their consciousness was extinguished, plunging them into total oblivion.
Seraphine had arrived, without even bothering to communicate.
With a single thought, she activated her Hegemony Domain, instantly shredding and vaporizing every Top-tier Sage King, regular Ungrateful Son, and Perfected Ungrateful Son on the scene until not a trace remained.
In that same instant, all the memories and information of the Primeval River Lords and their subordinates were thoroughly plundered by Seraphine.