The power of the Authority of Change took effect immediately upon activation.
Although the physical universe showed no outward sign of change, a long, narrow branch of time, its beginning and end anchored to a single point, swiftly grew along the surface of the vast River of Time that transcended infinite realities.
This isolated branch, existing solely for Seraphine, spanned a full one hundred million years, stretching far longer than the previous "one year" and "ten thousand years" time branches.
Looking down from the upstream or downstream of the surging River of Time, or gazing from the distant reaches of countless parallel timelines, one would see this strand trailing across the river's surface like an unbroken dragon, oscillating incessantly yet holding firm.
VROM ——
Within this "lost" branch of time, the torrent of eons surged forward, carrying Seraphine across one hundred million years of self-cultivation before its purpose was finally fulfilled, instantly dissipating into nothingness.
Meanwhile, in real-world time, merely a single fleeting Planck second had elapsed.
Having departed that "lost" pocket of time and returned to true reality, Seraphine's aura skyrocketed madly countless times over in a split second.
Her interference field scale surged from 10^10512104910 Great Boundaries straight to 10^105130512104910 Great Boundaries.
Her attribute values also blasted through their previous baseline of 10^14454149821 Great Boundaries, rocketing up to 10^116084454149821 Great Boundaries.
Under the weight of a hundred million accumulated years, the [Self-Surge] trait underwent its second qualitative evolution, pushing the daily growth multiplier for both her interference field and attribute values up to 10^28800.
Factoring in the system's baseline daily multiplier, her attribute values were now multiplying by 10^29100 every single day.
"Still not enough. It still can't hold a candle to 10^37218383881977644441306597687849648128. Not even close."
Seraphine hesitated in contemplation. "Even after a hundred million years of deduction, the Skyroot Codex and the Dawn remain mostly out of reach.
Well, there are a few breadcrumbs, but not many. So... let's keep going."
Just as she was about to erase another chunk of her own time, she suddenly paused.
"Wait. Did I just... completely forget about the citizens inside my dimensional cells?"
Extending her perception slightly, Seraphine realized that the hundreds of quintillions of citizens of various races living inside her dimensional cells had also endured that full one hundred million years right alongside her.
For species with ancient civilizational histories, the shift was barely noticeable, they simply grew a bit more ancient.
However, for the majority of species whose histories spanned only a few thousand or tens of thousands of years, the crushing weight of elapsed time triggered profound transformations.
Take the human race, Seraphine's clear favorites, as an example.
Blessed with endless lifespans, immunity to pain and disease, and backed by a custom-built resurrection failsafe.
Throughout those one hundred million years, aside from a fragile minority who couldn't bear the psychological weight of immortality, rejected resurrection, and allowed their lifespans to quietly burn out alongside their fading minds, the vast majority lived extraordinarily fulfilling lives.
There was no mandatory labor, no class oppression, no artificial resource scarcity, and no forced cultivation regimens.
Seraphine held absolute respect for individual autonomy.
Want to indulge in boundless gluttony?
Go ahead.
Want to live in drunken stupor or binge sweets forever?
Granted.
Or just sleep all day and do absolutely nothing?
Permitted.
Want to roam the cosmos, surround yourself with countless beauties, or even indulge in reckless slaughter, blowing up planets and erasing civilizations just for the rush?
Yes, absolutely, anything goes, so long as it brings genuine joy.
The Ayla intelligent system, evolved across countless iterations like the supreme Heavenly Dao of a grand cosmos, perfectly processed every single desire, satisfying every individual whim without disturbing the peace of other citizens.
If someone wanted to spend their entire existence gaming, a single spoken command was all it took for Ayla to generate a fully tailored virtual world matching their exact desires in less than a second.
On another front, human society across Emberlight had completely shed any sense of temporal urgency.
Anxiety and impatience were relics of a forgotten past.
In a society where everyone enjoyed true immortality, time had become entirely worthless.
What could be done today could easily wait for tomorrow, this year's tasks could slide into the next year, and projects started this century could stretch comfortably into the next.
Those genuinely passionate about a craft could dive in with pure enjoyment, freely dedicating thousands or tens of thousands of years to see it through at their own pace.
Throughout those one hundred million turbulent years, Emberlight's elite scientists sharpened their intellects even further under the weight of accumulated time.
Driven by an insatiable hunger for discovery, they continuously pioneered cutting-edge technologies, providing steady fuel for the ongoing evolution of the Ayla system.
Beyond the scientific minds, formidable practitioners advanced as well, Kael, for instance, steadily closed the gap over the hundred million years to match the Godshell standard, ascending to the Peak Sage level.
However, because Seraphine's internal dimensional cells lacked a direct connection to the Realm of Phantasm, Kael needed to forge an entirely new path if he hoped to break past Peak Sage and step into the Sage King tier or its equivalent.
As for the eldest disciple Vale, shackled by rather ordinary aptitude, even a hundred million years of cultivation had only brought him to the threshold of a peak Milky Way Overlord, still trailing far behind a Half-Sage.
Then there was Selene, the once coldly cybernetic girl who, after integrating countless pinnacle technologies and undergoing continuous iteration over a hundred million years, achieved a true mechanical ascension. Returning to an organic human semblance on the surface, she was fundamentally constructed from hundreds of quintillions of hyper-intelligent micron particles and programmable quantum phenomena, emerging as a supreme mechanical lifeform capable of rivaling Kael in sheer combat power.
In terms of population growth, the Emberlight Empire saw far less dramatic shifts.
Their numbers merely grew from several billion to tens of quintillions.
The reason for this relatively mild population growth was straightforward.
Due to absolute immortality, even the traditional concept of marriage was gradually and completely discarded by Emberlight society across the endless flow of time.
As a result, the traditional concept of family disintegrated, leading to a sharp decline in overall reproductive rates across Emberlight.
Under normal circumstances, a conventional marital bond could last decades or perhaps a century.
But what about across thousands of years? Tens of thousands of years? Millions of years?
No matter how legendary a romance might be, or how sworn one was to love for ten thousand years, the relentless grind of infinite time would eventually reduce all passion to utter mundanity.
Furthermore, the Emberlight Empire no longer housed true, desire-weary elders.
Everyone was perpetually youthful, once the initial flame and novelty cooled, each naturally drifted toward their own pursuits.
Consequently, the choice of companionship became entirely fluid and free.
No one could bind another, no one belonged permanently to anyone else, and no one was treated as another's possession.
Having experienced a hundred million years of hyper-evolution on all fronts, Emberlight's citizens indulged in the absolute abundance of material and spiritual prosperity. Barring a microscopic fringe whose psychological distortions were too severe even for Ayla to fully rehabilitate, everyone was truly equal, and everyone was genuinely fulfilled.
Beyond the dissolution of marriage, another core factor was biological. Having advanced their bodies and souls to such absurd heights through endless evolution, humanity naturally suffered a significant drop in baseline fertility.
Perhaps this was an unwritten cosmic law, an intelligent race wielding potent Root Spirituality could never multiply with the unbridled speed of bacteria or viruses.
Not that it mattered, if Seraphine wished, she could inflate the Emberlight Empire's population by a factor of 10^3003 in a single thought.
Yet doing so held no real meaning.
She merely wanted her people to live in joy and genuine happiness.
"A hundred million years is manageable, but if I push it any further, my citizens might not be able to bear the weight of it."
Taking this dilemma into account, Seraphine willed into existence a three-dimensional unit cell right before her eyes. It appeared to be merely a hundred million light-years in size on the surface, but its true scale and internal volume matched a static Great Boundary perfectly.
Within it lay 10^252 Matter Seas, with dense webs of super-space-time corridors connecting each sea, more than enough to satisfy the boundless exploration and roaming desires of humanity and every other citizen race.
VROM ——
At the very instant this dimensional cell materialized, the hundreds of quintillions of intelligent beings originally residing within Seraphine's body, along with all their belongings and the core Ayla system, were instantly transferred into this new universe to embrace their new lives.
Behind them, the colossal, ancient world of Eden was left to drift in serene isolation.
"Hmm?"
As Seraphine swept her senses across the unit cells within her body, she suddenly picked up a specific presence, Primordial Demon Mattu · Erice.
"Over one hundred million years have passed in real time, which translates to over a hundred trillion years in subjective time. So..."
Driven by curiosity, she extended a strand of perception into the blazing sun imprisoning the Primordial Demon. "Stripped of hearing, touch, sight, taste, smell, and spiritual sense, unable to sleep, hallucinate, fracture your mind, or let your consciousness fade into nothingness, incapable even of going numb or dazed, forced to endure a hundred trillion years in crystal-clear lucidity... just how agonizing has it become for you?"
SWOOSH ——
The moment she breached that 'prison,' Seraphine was struck by the sheer density of agony, despair, and hatred roiling within.
The terrifying magnitude of this surging emotional tempest was so immense that all human language fell hopelessly short of describing even a fraction of it.
Even if a Three-Dimensional Ungrateful Son were struck in the mind by this wave of emotion, it would instantly detonate on the spot in sheer despair and pain.
It was a boundless torrent of wrath and hatred so concentrated in quality and volume that even the Karmic Hindrance of All Beings (Seraphine's clone) would drool over it with glowing eyes.
As for Mattu · Erice, who had continuously churned out these colossal waves of agonizing torment, his cognitive framework and conscious sanity remained remarkably intact, exactly as designed.
This was precisely the core purpose behind Seraphine's architecture of this 'prison'—to ensure that Mattu · Erice 'thoroughly' savor this dreadful isolation without squandering a single drop.
"However, this guy's lifespan is only around three billion years... far too short."
After a brief pause, Seraphine casually willed Erice's lifespan to silently expand, ratcheting it all the way up to a full googol years.
With that settled, she activated the Authority of Change once more:
"Erase... ten quintillion years of my time."
VROM ——
In a fraction of a second, Seraphine's aura exploded, expanding countless times over.
Her interference field scale surged from 10^105130512104910 Great Boundaries to 10^105120000105130512104910 Great Boundaries.
Her attribute values swelled from 10^116084454149821 Great Boundaries all the way to 10^106215000116084454149821 Great Boundaries.
Most crucially, the growth multiplier of the [Self-Surge] trait underwent its third qualitative evolution.
Leaping from its previous daily doubling rate of 10^28800 times, it abruptly skyrocketed to 10^288000 times per day.
"Even so, compared to the String Sovereign's scale of 10^37218383881977644441306597687849648128, the gap remains vast.
However, regarding the next realm of the Cosmic Dawn Decree... I have finally pieced together the initial framework."
Sighing leisurely, Seraphine pushed forward without hesitation, activating the Authority of Change again:
"Erase... 10^32 years of my time."
VROM ——
While a mere single Planck second elapsed in reality, Seraphine genuinely experienced the passage of 10^32 years of eons within that fleeting moment.
Her interference field scale skyrocketed from 10^105120000105130512104910 Great Boundaries to 10^10512000000000000105120000105130512104910 Great Boundaries.
Her attribute values surged from 10^106215000116084454149821 Great Boundaries all the way to 10^10522950000000000106215000116084454149821 Great Boundaries.
The growth multiplier of the [Self-Surge] trait underwent its fourth qualitative evolution.
Leaping from its previous daily doubling rate of 10^288000 times, it abruptly exploded to 10^2880000 times per day.
This left the daily scaling ceiling of the [Infinite Attributes] system, 10^300 times, miles behind in the dust.
At this very moment, Seraphine thoroughly surpassed the String Sovereign tier, completely crushing the threshold of 10^37218383881977644441306597687849648128.
No, it was more accurate to say that a String Sovereign now appeared as insignificant as a speck of dust before her.
More importantly, relying on the sheer accumulation of eons, Seraphine forcefully and completely deduced the seventh realm of the Cosmic Dawn method, also known as the first of the three post-celestial dawn realms.
This realm was named [Divine Deduction to Absolute Truth, Wondrous Encompassing of the Myriad].
According to Seraphine's calculations, once she stepped into this realm, Root Divinity would evolve to its absolute terminus, becoming Supreme Divinity.
Supreme represented the very end of the divinity path.
Unlike sixth-realm Divinity, or sixth-realm Greater Divinity which was merely formed by stacking sheer quantity.
Supreme Divinity would wield a power founded upon the Light of Infinity, an extreme evolution manifesting as the [Force of Absolute Truth].
The so-called Force of Absolute Truth dictates: I am the absolute truth, all else is falsehood.
The so-called Wondrous Encompassing represents the authority of absolute definition.
According to Seraphine's deductions, one who masters the Force of Absolute Truth is like a supreme sovereign whose word is cosmic decree.
It is no longer a matter of twisting or modifying an existing reality.
Rather, it is: I am reality itself.
I alone define what constitutes the truth.
To put it plainly, the Force of Absolute Truth no longer requires a universe's space-time to possess pre-existing fundamental operating laws to serve as a "stage," as the Light of Infinity once did to perform varying depths of reality distortion.
The Force of Absolute Truth can self-generate laws from nothingness.
No matter the universe or space-time, so long as it falls under this Wondrous Encompassing, its native laws must yield entirely.
By comparison, while the Light of Infinity could achieve seemingly absurd degrees of reality distortion.
It still required the raw baseline information and underlying rules of the host universe as a foundation, meticulously piecing together distortions and modifications like an intricate scientific experiment or building blocks, bound by operational limits and ranges.
The Force of Absolute Truth, however, casts aside all such constraints when forging rules.
It can crudely, almost nonsensically, redefine the entire operating system of an entire cosmic space-time on a whim.
For example, she could redefine the foundational building blocks of a universe to no longer be fundamental particles, but the five elements, magical mana, cement bricks, various flavors and volumes of milk tea, or plastic toy blocks of every color and size.
Once decreed, the cosmic space-time must unconditionally obey and adapt to this new set of laws.
As for the native laws, along with everything that existed under them, they could rot wherever they pleased, far out of sight.
Furthermore, laws forged by the Force of Absolute Truth would dynamically self-regulate as if possessing hyper-intelligence, instantly forming a self-consistent and airtight logical loop.
Most crucially, regardless of how massive that cosmic space-time might be, even a Non-Static Global-Inflation 3D universe that had expanded for 10^37218383881977644441306597687849648128 years, or a high-dimensional universe whose scale far exceeded Seraphine's sensory reach and interference limits, such as a 4D or 5D eternally expanding realm, so long as it remained bound by a finite count, falling short of a true actual infinite.
Under the absolute decree of the Force of Absolute Truth, the entire universe, from its cosmic macro-structures down to the microscopic realm beneath the Planck scale, including its fundamental operations, would instantly shift, snapping into flawless logical consistency in a heartbeat.
However... to formally step into this realm, Seraphine still needed to fulfill a multitude of prerequisites.
"Forget it, time to head back to real-time reality."
The very instant Seraphine stepped out of the collapsing "lost" branch of time and returned to true reality.
BOOM!!!!
Her violently surging aura instantly tore apart and vaporized the entire boundless, static 3D universe.
Out of nowhere, she plunged straight into the opposite of all "existence," the incomprehensible, imperceptible nothingness of the Negative Dimension.
SWOOSH ——
The flow of time ground to a dead halt.
Seraphine froze as if encased in absolute ice, all perception of external reality vanishing in a flash.
Only her Transcendental Perception, buried deep within her Greater Divinity, flared to life, slithering out to scour the formless, shapeless void of the Negative Dimension, a boundless nothingness lacking light, dark, size, interior, exterior, and utterly defying every metric of measurement.
If Seraphine were forced to describe what the nothingness felt like through her Transcendental Perception.
The explanation was surprisingly simple, simple enough for an ordinary carbon-based mortal to grasp.
The state of nothingness could be compared directly to the difference in visual perception between a person with normal sight and someone who is completely blind.
Ordinary people generally assume that a blind person's visual experience is one of pitch-black darkness.
In reality, that assumption is entirely wrong.
A blind person's true visual experience is total, absolute void.
Experiencing this void is remarkably easy.
First, open your right eye wide and look forward, then raise a hand to firmly cover your left eye.
Finally, keep your right eye open, do not shift your gaze to the left, keep your full attention locked on what your right eye sees, and try your absolute best to "look" forward through that covered left eye.
Well? Can you see anything at all?
Does it have anything to do with what we call darkness?
Can you feel only an absolute void, as if a massive chunk of "existence" has been completely erased from perception?
Precisely: that total sensory blankness, weightless and drifting aimlessly in pure nothingness, is the daily reality of the blind.
Likewise, that was exact sensation Seraphine experienced in this moment.
She felt like someone truly blinded, drifting aimlessly within a "boundless blankness," unable to sense anything or interact with anything whatsoever.
Naturally, the sheer scale of the "blankness" brought on by the nothingness of the Negative Dimension went far beyond what a simple mortal analogy could convey.
The gulf between the two was utterly infinite.
Based on Seraphine's firsthand experience, any lifeform at or below the semi-materialized Spirituality tier that had the misfortune of plunging into this nothingness would likely have its mental will shattered in a fraction of an instant by this horrifying "blankness," followed by immediate soul collapse and total annihilation.
Even those with far stronger materialized Spirituality could probably hold out for less than a Planck second before this overwhelming "blankness" eroded their minds completely, leaving them to perish miserably within the Negative Dimension.
Without an incomprehensible sensory power like Transcendental Perception, both types of entities would, upon plunging into nothingness, find themselves frozen forever within the empty Negative Dimension due to the total absence of time's operational framework, drifting until the potentially existent or non-existent end of time, without even the privilege of dying.
Only positive-dimensional lifeforms that had reached the Divinity stage, like Seraphine, could accidentally fall into the nothingness of the Negative Dimension and still maintain their sanity over an extended duration.
"As expected..."
Completely immobilized, Seraphine mused silently to herself. "Nothingness is an unknown far smaller and emptier than 0D, the absolute smallest concept any intelligent lifeform could ever conceptualize."
Within this unknown, even her Transcendental Perception failed to gather any meaningful data.
Because this nothingness seemed completely devoid of any existence whatsoever.
No, that wasn't entirely true... there were still things that existed.
For instance...
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!!
As if bypassing the passage of time entirely, countless singularity-like clusters materialized out of nowhere around Seraphine, exploding in tandem with violent expansion.
CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK!!!!
Incapable of mounting any evasion or defense, Seraphine could only passively endure the onslaught of countless Genesis Big Bangs crashing into her in the very same instant.
Yet it was precisely this barrage of Big Bangs, each potent enough to birth a colossal Matter Sea, that snapped Seraphine out of that dreadful sensory blankness.
Movement of matter brings forth the creation of explosions, and movement gives birth to time.
Enveloped by countless Genesis explosions and the violent motion of matter, Seraphine found herself once more submerged in the vast torrent of time, instantly regaining her mobility.
VROM ——
With a single thought, centered upon her position, a bounded yet borderless enclosed space-time snapped into existence, a static, "empty" 3D universe possessing flawless structural integrity across all dimensions, with an effective diameter spanning 10^132 light-years.
"Phew..."
Reining in her aura to the absolute minimum, Seraphine shook her head and chuckled. "Drifting inside the nothingness of the Negative Dimension is a truly miserable experience."
Still, that was the outcome of her own deliberate choice.
Had Seraphine wanted to depart the nothingness, she could have done so at any moment.
Yet for the sake of firsthand research and experimentation, she chose to linger after tumbling into the Negative Dimension.
Pioneering research always carries its share of hazards.
Even if being submerged in nothingness was far from comfortable.
Then again, that was only natural.
A higher-dimensional entity descending into a lower-dimensional space-time is bound to suffer intense disorientation.
Take dropping a 3D otaku into a literal, physical 2D dimension to meet his beloved paper-thin waifus, for example.
Within moments of arrival, the otaku would be crying his eyes out, begging to return to his 3D home.
In a 2D space, everything within line of sight is reduced to nothing more than a series of flat [Straight Lines] across the visual field; aside from slight variations in color, one cannot discern shape or depth, let alone snuggle with a 2D waifu, God only knows how one would even attempt such a thing.
Perhaps only native 2D lifeforms could decipher the rises, falls, colors, and hues of those [Straight Lines] to mentally construct what those lines form, their approximate surface area, and their distance from the viewer.
Just as native 3D lifeforms can view the surface-level [Planes] of objects and instantly visualize their full three-dimensional geometry, rapidly estimating size, volume, depth, height, and distance in a split second.
Unlike positive spatial dimensions such as 2D and 3D, the Negative Dimension lacked conceptual foundations like [Categories] or [Territories].
Consequently, all notions of interaction, movement, collision, or direct assault were utterly meaningless against the nothingness of the Negative Dimension.
Yet, this rule was not absolute.
Within the memory fragments left behind by Genarkrail, Seraphine had seen that while ordinary String race members usually perished without exception upon falling into the Negative Dimension, exceptions existed.
A specialized suit known as the [Pioneer Engine] existed; once fully equipped, it allowed ordinary String race members to remain relatively safe and operate for brief periods within the nothingness of the Negative Dimension.
While the specific technical schematics were incomplete in Genarkrail's memories, the underlying operating principle was straightforward.
The [Pioneer Engine] primarily utilized complex higher-dimensional and idealistic technologies to replicate specific traits of Divinity, allowing the wearer to shield their cognition and Spirituality beneath a synthetic barrier, preventing them from being erased by the suffocating "blankness" of nothingness.
Depending on the local dimensional coordinates, the [Pioneer Engine] could also project micro-scale empty universes across 3D, 4D, or 5D frameworks around the user, granting them temporary mobility within the nothingness of the Negative Dimension.
Within the sociotechnical hierarchy of the String race civilization, this gear served the working class, specifically the [Negative Boundary Pioneering Teams], as standard safety equipment for harvesting and excavating various types of [Singularity-like Cryster] adrift within the Negative Dimension outside the space-time fabrics of normal dimensions.
These so-called [Singularity-like Cryster] were precious "minerals" condensed from massive swarms of nascent singularities that failed to expand, collapsing together and crystallizing under anomalous catalytic interactions.
From the memory archives of Heavenly Hegemon's thousands of security operatives, Seraphine knew that these vastly diverse "minerals" were the indispensable raw materials required for manufacturing higher-dimensional weaponry, munitions, and critical components...
VROM ——
Right then, the [Infinite Attributes] system nestled deep within her Divinity gave a silent, imperceptible tremor.