Adrian floated in the silent expanse of the Virelith galaxy void, his Source Form unmoving. To any observer, he would appear as nothing more than a radiant star of white-grey essence suspended in the pitch-black vacuum of space. But beneath that tranquil exterior, Adrian was practicing his willforce techniques again and again, pushing the boundaries.
He let the Source help him and kept immersing himself in the intricate weave, repeating the exact feeling of the technique again and again. He summoned thousands of willforce needles, watching how the Source perfectly aligned the structural anchors, calibrated the mental weight, and optimized the flow of intent without wasting a single drop of energy.
After experiencing this for some time, he then switched back to his physical form and used the willforce technique with just his own Anchor-stage mind.
Hundreds of needles materialized around him. They were still not the thousands of perfect constructs the Source had created, but he was slowly learning and improving. Adrian repeated this same step again and again. Each time he came back to his physical form and cast the willforce technique, he could see the improvements.
He was determined to bridge the gap between himself and the ancient titans with this repetitive immersion as his ultimate shortcut.
Tens of light-years away from his isolated position, the silent void of the Virelith Galaxy was briefly illuminated by the thruster lights of several massive transport starships.
These vessels bore the emblem of the Crimson Vital Sect. The disciples aboard were tasked with moving vast quantities of construction materials, void alloy, and graviton-steel composites around the galaxy to supply the new hidden manufacturing bases Elder Varcain was establishing.
Inside the command deck of the lead starship, the atmosphere was one of relaxed routine. There were no enemy armadas or rival sects looking to plunder their cargo here.
But suddenly, that quiet routine was shattered. As the lead starship adjusted its trajectory to navigate around a cluster of asteroids, the sensory arrays on the command deck emitted a chime.
"Commander, visual contact with an unknown energy manifestation in sector seven," a disciple reported, his voice with sudden alarm as his hands moved across the glowing interface of the ship's scanners.
The lead disciple, a seasoned veteran who had recently ascended to the High Rule Stage during the sect's grueling training in the time formation, stepped quickly toward the main viewport. His brow furrowed in confusion. There was not supposed to be anything alive in this sector of the Virelith Galaxy. "Magnify the projection," he ordered.
The holographic display floating in the center of the deck flickered as it zoomed in across the vast distance. A moment later, the image resolved, revealing a blinding white-grey silhouette floating alone in the void.
"It's someone floating in their energy form," The lead disciple said, "Move closer, we need to check who it is."
They had no idea who it was. To their knowledge, they had never seen Adrian wielding this white-grey energy form before, nor had they ever sensed the Source essence that composed it.
The very instant their starships moved closer, an instinctual reverence washed over every single disciple. Deep within their bodies, their Rule Cores began trembling, instinctively bowing in submission to the energy radiating from the distant figure.
"By the heavens..." the lead disciple whispered, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead as he gripped the edge of the console to keep himself standing. He felt an overwhelming, almost magnetic urge to drop to his knees and press his forehead to the deck plating.
The crew was paralyzed with awe and terror. In their minds, this could only be a cosmic anomaly, or perhaps an ancient cultivator from an unknown epoch meditating in the space of Virelith. In the wider universe, disturbing an ancient, slumbering monster during its meditation was a guaranteed death sentence for an entire fleet.
"Do not engage. Do not emit any scanning frequencies!" the lead disciple commanded urgently, his voice cracking slightly as he fought through the trembling of his own Rule Core. "Just record the visual data and divert full power to the engines. We need it to inform the Sect Leader. Come on, move fast towards the relic planet, now!"
The pilots scrambled to obey, pulling back on the controls. The Crimson Vital starships banked sharply in the void, their engines flaring with blinding heat as they fled the sector at maximum velocity, terrified of disturbing the slumbering titan resting in the dark.
Hours later, the silence of that same sector was disturbed once again.
An armored warship sliced through the darkness. Inside the command deck stood Octaven, who was currently overseeing the transport of resources and the stabilization of his people across the newly restored, lush worlds of the Virelith Galaxy.
As his ship charted its course through the designated coordinates, Octaven's gaze caught the distant, radiant glow of the white-grey figure suspended in the vacuum of space.
Unlike the inexperienced Crimson Vital disciples who had fled in terror, Octaven did not feel confusion when he saw the light. The moment his eyes locked onto that white-grey silhouette, a visceral memory flashed through his mind. He was instantly transported back to the throne room of the tyrant, Morka. He remembered with crystal clarity the moment when Adrian had revealed this same form, unleashed his one hundred percent authority, and forced two True Peak Rule Stage beings to their knees without a single physical gesture.
A shudder ran through Octaven's muscled frame. Without a second of hesitation, he immediately dropped to one knee right there on the command deck, his fist pressed firmly over his heart in a gesture of reverence.
"It is the Lord," Octaven murmured.
He understood instantly what was happening. Adrian was not a threat to be feared by them; he was in the midst of a cultivation session.
"Kill the main thrusters," Octaven ordered his bewildered crew, his tone brokering no argument. He remained kneeling, refusing to lift his head toward the blinding light. "Engage the stealth dampeners and alter our course immediately. Maintain absolute silence. We will not disturb the Lord's meditation".
The crew, driven by the command of their leader, scrambled to execute the commands. The warship's thrusters died down to a faint hum. It glided away like a phantom in the night, altering its trajectory smoothly and leaving Adrian completely alone with the silence of his own mind.
...
Back within the relic planet, safely nestled inside the inner-zone base of the Azure Garden, Sect Leader Hestia sat within her private chamber.
Hestia's attention was consumed by the urgent priority transmission that had just been routed directly to her local network interface.
She opened the file, and the report from the construction fleet automatically played, projecting a magnified visual footage of the anomaly they had encountered in the deep void.
The moment Hestia saw the white-grey silhouette floating in the endless darkness, her eyes widened. While the disciples on that transport fleet had been completely ignorant of the entity's identity, Hestia knew what she was looking at. She had seen Adrian's memories, and she had seen him using this energy form from his early days. To Hestia, even though she still did not know the true nature of the Source itself, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was Adrian's prime arcane concept's energy form.
And that sudden realization terrified her.
As a cultivator who had personally suffered the backlash of energy body arts in her past battles against Yselia, she understood the unforgiving laws of the universe better than anyone. Energy body arts demanded a devastating price. Dissolving one's physical flesh to merge more deeply with a divine concept elevated a cultivator's authority and conceptual purity to unnatural heights, but it actively burned the Rule Core to sustain the transformation. Maintaining such a highly volatile and dangerous state for prolonged periods in the void was practically suicidal.
"Why is he doing this?" Hestia thought, her hands trembling slightly as she gripped the edges of her desk. "Why is he risking his foundation by holding an energy form out in the open void?!"
A protective anger mixed with concern surged within her chest. Her instincts as a leader and as a partner screamed at her to intervene immediately before he caused irreparable damage to his core. She couldn't just sit here and watch him burn his own foundation to ash.
She stood up abruptly, her crimson robes swirling around her as she prepared to move and drag him back to safety herself.
But right at that exact moment—
CHIME!
Hestia froze in her tracks.
A clear, ethereally resonant chime echoed through the room. It bypassed all physical walls, spatial barriers, and defensive formations of the base, ringing directly within her consciousness.
The clarity of the sound sent a shiver cascading down her spine. Her crimson aura flared, defensive protocols engaging within a fraction of a second, but she then recognized the phenomenon for what it was.
It was the same sound she had experienced on the day Adrian successfully fused Crimson Vital Dominion and Verdant Genesis. It was the cosmic resonance that signaled a cultivator had successfully stepped upon the first stage of consciousness mastery.
Hestia turned on her heel, her eyes darting away from the holographic projection of the void and staring toward a particular direction within the planet itself.
The resonance had not come from the deep void where Adrian was floating. It had blossomed from within the very borders of the Azure Garden. Someone within the Crimson Vital Sect had just broken through the threshold of the mind. Someone else had just reached the first stage of consciousness mastery.
Hestia's concern for Adrian was momentarily paralyzed by the magnitude of this new development.
"Who is it?"