The kinetic wave of heavy, primordial Origin Qi did not simply fade into the cosmic ether; it expanded to the absolute boundaries of the 3rd Plane, touching the very fabric of its dimensions.
For a fraction of a microsecond, the entire world held its breath.
Then, the wave inverted. It began to shrink back toward its source with a tyrannical, all-consuming pull.
Ever since Soren's mortal vessel had shattered in the Sword Graveyard—the final anchor of the fate well's destruction—the sky had shattered like glass struck by a hammer forged from eternity.
The Chaos of the Infinite had begun.
But then came the Spark.
Soren shattered the Medallion of Awakening.
The Origin Qi imploded.
And as the pervasive sensation that had clamped upon the cosmos met its violent, irreversible conclusion, the stolen energy of the various realms and dimensions began to merge and mutate with each other.
Then with a soundless, universally felt CRACK, the existential reset was completed.
The shattered sky froze.
The cosmic breath exhaled, and the 3rd Plane shuddered. Then, it inhaled.
The jagged fissures in the firmament slammed shut, sealing the dimensions with a deafening finality.
The Heavenly Laws of the 3rd Plane—the very foundational restrictions of existence—snapped back into place with an amplified, dictatorial density.
The geopolitical trap had sprung.
The smartest, highest-tier clans of the upper planes had managed to ascend just in time, reading the omens of the resetting plane.
But the greedy, the arrogant, and the slow were suddenly caught.
The colossal entities, fallen gods, and 3rd and 4th Plane leviathans still tumbling through the air suddenly screamed in a new, deathly horror.
As the Planar Restrictions locked, the crushing gravity of a sealed lower plane struck them.
However, amidst death lies the opportunity for new birth, amidst sorrow lies the opportunity for joy.
The heavens never dole out judgement without leaving a path for redemption.
As such, it didn't take long for these trapped entities to realize that to survive the immense atmospheric and karmic pressure of the 3rd Plane, they would need to actively seek a solution, and it didn't take long for them to find one.
The heavens gave them a choice; either violently dilute your noble bloodlines and rebuild your spiritual foundations or totally renounce them entirely.
These choices appeared within their consciousness instantaneously, just as the planary restrictions snapped back into place.
It was a lifeline extended to them just as they were plummeting into the dirt; their golden halos having shattered into mortal dust, stripped of their divinity, and reducing them to crippled husks scrambling for survival in a desperate, chaotic scramble.
Simultaneously, the bleeding dimensions physically stacked and locked into the human realm.
Beast Minor Worlds smashed into the mortal minor world, creating permanent Sub-Dimensional Zones.
The sightings of Grave-Stalkers roaming the physical plane no longer remained an anomaly; it became one of the symptoms of the overlapping hunting grounds, permanently etched into the geographical strata of the 3rd Plane.
When the wave of Origin Qi violently retracted, it didn't just repair the fractured laws of the dimension—it taxed them.
Every living being, from the lowest mortal insect to the highest trapped Hegemon, felt a microscopic fraction of their foundational essence violently ripped away to feed the Spark.
Across the societal ladder, the phenomenon triggered waves of localized terror and calculated ambition.
The reactions varied from calculated awe to ravenous, apocalyptic panic, and just like that, the oblivious Soren suddenly became the most wanted entity in the 3rd plane.
---
Location: The Conquered Ignis Territory - A Sub-Dimensional Beast Zone.
The air screamed as a 4th Plane Beast —a colossal, multi-armed simian draped in necrotic lightning—was violently slammed into the earth.
Just moments ago, the Beast Immortal had been enjoying the lawless vacuum of the 3rd Plane, treating the Ignis territory as a mere buffet.
Now, the Planar Laws had snapped shut like a steel trap. The gravity of the 3rd Plane multiplied exponentially, specifically targeting its higher-dimensional cells.
The Beast Immortal coughed up a lungful of silver-tinged blood. The planar restrictions were suffocating it.
Then, it felt the tug.
The cosmic theft.
It turned its massive, burning eyes toward the distant Wastelands. It didn't just feel anger; it felt the pure, unadulterated scent of pure essence.
To the Beast Immortal, the nature of the source of the essence was inconsequential.
It only saw a biological life-raft.
Consuming that Spark was the only way to evolve its bloodline to the next state, which would grant it the mass required to withstand the 3rd Plane's crushing laws.
It immediately abandoned the burning ruins of the Ignis territory, letting out a roar that shattered the clouds, and began a heavy, earth-quaking march toward the Sword Graveyard.
---
Location: The Royal Spire - Planetary Capital
Right at the center of the planetary surface, within throne room of the rulers of this world, the reigning King; a man whose very skin seemed to be forged from condensed sunlight, leaned forward on his throne.
He had felt the theft within his own Dantian.
"A World-Thief," His voice resonated with absolute, planetary authority, carrying the weight of a ruler who controlled multiple destinies.
"The dimensional mesh collapses, beasts invade our borders, and now a parasite attempts to drain our foundational reserves?
Dispatch a troop to the Eden Clan, relay my intentions to them and have them identify and capture the source of this theft.
I don't care if it's a fallen deity or a mutated artifact. Bring it to me or glass the entire region from the surface of the planet."
---
Location: Eden Clan Core Territory - Continental Hegemon
Patriarch Eric stood on the balcony of his ancestral peak, looking out over the sprawling, continent-spanning cities of the Eden Clan.
To the rest of the 3rd Plane, he was merely a Continental Overlord.
But as the wave of Origin Qi washed over him and attempted to steal his essence, Eric's aura flared—not with 3rd Plane Qi, but with the suffocating might of a transcendent being.
He effortlessly shielded his entire territory from the rippling thief, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed the kinetic signature of the retracting wave.
The moment he felt the Spark ignite; he instantly recognized the violent, heavy kinetic mass of the Ryu-Gene, as well as the terrifying, heavy purity of his own Eden lineage becoming exponentially purer.
Patriarch Eric slowly smiled. It was a terrifying, cold expression.
He knew his grandson had survived the experiment.
The crucible of the Wastelands, the manipulation of the Oman Tribe, the brutal sacrifice of his daughter's clone—it had all worked perfectly.
The boy had forged the necessary foundation.
"Let them hunt him," Eric whispered to the empty air, actively ignoring the frantic reports from his generals about the Beast Minor Worlds crashing into their borders.
He was playing a multiverse-level game, and the 3rd Plane was just the board, and now the board had perfectly reset itself.
"Bleed him, crush him, force him to grow and evolve faster. Only the heaviest of hammers can forge a sturdiest of weapons capable of piercing the 9th Plane."
Then He issued a silent, telepathic command to his high command.
'Pull back the border guards near the Wastelands. Let those rabid idiots in.'
---
Location: The Withered Hand's Sanctum -
The Chieftain of the Oman Tribe, the Withered Hand, was thrown to his knees as his own cultivation base violently shuddered.
He was at the absolute peak of the Neo-Dimension tier, desperate to push his Tribe into a Clan capable of ruling a continent.
He had sensed something inexplicable rip a part of the latent talents of every resident of his estate away, stolen by the retracting wave, never to return.
When he felt the origin of the energetic shockwave, his eyes widened in sheer disbelief.
The Wastelands... The exact location they had dumped the "failed" Eden boy after their brutal experiments.
"It wasn't a failure," the Chieftain rasped, his mind racing with terrifying implications.
If the boy had awakened something of this magnitude, the power within him was the key.
If the Oman Tribe could harvest that boy's mutated core, they wouldn't just defeat the Eden Clan—they could challenge the Royal Household itself.
Not that the 3rd Plane had just become an apocalyptic cage filled with the remnants of fallen gods, he sprang into action, looking to exploit the overwhelming opportunities it presented.
But panic quickly set in. He could already sense the terrifying auras of the Pseudo-Invaders shifting their attention toward the Wastelands.
The window was closing.
"Deploy the Iron-Wing Vanguards! All of them!" he screamed into his transmission jade, his voice cracking with desperate ambition.
"Lock down the Wastelands! I want that anomaly brought to me alive. If the others or those beasts gets to him first, our entire Tribe will be erased from history!"
---
Location: Subterranean Hollows beneath the Wastelands.
Within a chain of caves hollowed into the underground channels of a mysterious, unnamed mountain range, a circle of zealots with tattoos of an eye sewn shut with thorned vines etched on their foreheads, felt the vibration in the earth.
However, they did not panic.
Neither did the seem to covet the power of the source of the phenomenon.
Their robes simply rippled in the absence of air; their auras, untouched by the chaos.
They had read the omens in the blood of sacrifices decades ago.
The leader, an ancient entity whose body was entirely composed of heavily compressed, ash-grey runes, bowed his head to the stone floor.
"The Herald has drawn breath. A New Dawn is here."
Then He raised a single, decaying finger, plucking at an invisible, karmic string suspended in the air.
Miles above, in the Wastelands, invisible geographical arrays subtly shifted.
A mountain pass widened, prompting a toxic river to change its course.
They were not moving to protect Herald. They were curating the slaughter needed to stimulate its growth.
They manipulated the pathways so that the various converging powers and powerhouses would collide at precisely the right moments, ensuring the ensuing chaos on the Herald was absolute, but survivable.
"Let the blood water the Dao Tree," the zealots chanted in unison, sporting smiles of varying vibes even as a crippled god's crimson essence flowed through their landscape in trickling underground streams.
---
Elsewhere, blindfolded figures wearing scholarly robes wrote furiously.
They did not speak. They simply parsed and transcribed the foreign laws of the trapped entities onto pages that rewrote themselves.
The apocalypse had come in, and the doors of the 3rd Plane had been shut; for the prepared few, it was not an ending, it was the greatest harvest the multiverse had ever offered.
And at the center of it all, oblivious to the universe-spanning war he had just set into motion, the stolen, compressed energy of the world raced back toward a glassed-over crater in the Sword Graveyard.
It rushed back towards Soren, ready to wash over every fibre of his being, activate his pores, supercharge his brain, and forcefully evolve his Dao Seed into a Sapling.
The Herald was about to consume the world's Qi and use it to establish his Spiritual Foundation.