Emperor of the Source

Adrian floated calmly in front of the opposing forces, his presence solitary yet unshaken. The void around him stretched endlessly, dotted with distant stars that cast pale light across the assembled army. Thousands of cultivators hovered in formation, their collective auras creating a suffocating pressure that would have crushed lesser beings.

He regarded them with quiet composure, his crimson robes stirring gently despite the vacuum of space.

"Let me understand this clearly," he said, his voice carrying effortlessly across the void. "You believe that my people and I should submit ourselves to the Ashen Vortex Sect so that the galaxy can remain at peace. Is that what you are saying?"

As he spoke, his Crimson Vital Dominion expanded outward, enveloping the entire battlefield. The divine concept manifested as a vast sphere of crimson light; his seventy percent authority surged forward like a tidal wave, colliding against the collective presence of the opposing forces.

The two Peak Rule Stage leaders reacted instantly. The woman's domain erupted in silver brilliance, whilst the obsidian-armoured man released a crushing black domain. Their divine concepts clashed against Adrian's, reality itself groaning under the strain as three wills contested for dominance.

In that first heartbeat, the authority balance stabilized briefly. The contest split evenly as 23.333 percent for each of the three Peak Rule Stage cultivators, whilst the remaining thirty percent remained jealously guarded by reality itself.

But the equilibrium shattered almost immediately.

Behind the two leaders, thousands of Rule Stage cultivators activated their own domains in a coordinated assault. Layers of divine domain crashed together, each one fragmenting the rules of reality further. The Multi-Domain Strategy deployed in full force, transforming the battlefield into a maelstrom of overlapping authorities.

Adrian felt the contestation fracture into four distinct brackets as the weight of thousands pressed down upon him.

The Early Rule Stage cultivators, those who had only unlocked twenty-five percent of their divine concepts, contested the lowest tier. Their eighteen percent authority ceiling created the first bracket, a chaotic pool where hundreds of domains collided simultaneously. Adrian's share within this bracket disintegrated into near-nothingness, reduced to a minuscule fraction as countless wills tore at the same piece of reality.

The Mid Rule Stage warriors pushed the contestation higher. Their thirty-five percent mastery created the second bracket, contested by them, the High Rule Stage elders, the Peak Rule Stage leaders, and Adrian himself. Once again, the sheer number of participants shredded Adrian's authority into fragments barely worth measuring.

But then the natural limits of cultivation took effect.

The thousands of Early and Mid Rule Stage cultivators could not touch authority above their thirty-five percent threshold. The third bracket, thirty-five to fifty-one percent, remained isolated from their interference. Only the four High Rule Stage elders, the two Peak Rule Stage leaders, and Adrian contested this tier.

Without the crushing weight of thousands, this pool split more evenly among the seven participants. Adrian retained approximately 2.4 percent of uncontested authority here.

Finally, the apex remained.

The High Rule Stage cultivators were capped at fifty-two percent, leaving the final bracket, fifty-two to seventy percent, completely isolated. This tier split only three ways: Adrian and his two primary opponents.

Here, Adrian retained an additional six percent.

When the fragmentation settled, Adrian calculated his total remaining authority: approximately 8.4 percent.

The Multi-Domain Strategy had succeeded in its purpose. What should have been seventy percent authority, the power to reshape reality with minimal cost, had been reduced to a fraction. Every technique he deployed would now require exponentially more mana and willforce. Every negation, every offensive or defensive authority technique against anyone present would drain him at a catastrophic rate.

Worse still, his two Peak Rule Stage opponents each possessed the same 8.4 percent. If Adrian attempted any authority technique, one could negate it whilst the other struck freely.

This tactical situation was a death sentence.

In this sense, Adrian was at a complete disadvantage now, unless he used his source domain and revealed more of his authority. Or he could deploy Absolute Source Order, stripping their authority entirely and transferring it to himself.

But he chose neither.

Across the Andromeda Galaxy, information networks had deployed recording artifacts. Every minor sect, every analyst, every intelligence operative watched this confrontation. Whatever he revealed now would become common knowledge.

More importantly, he did not consider this force worthy of such measures.

His Source veins pulsed beneath his skin, invisible to external perception. The transformation he had undergone within the time formation had fundamentally altered his physiology. Energy circulated through his body with perfect efficiency, his perception sharpened beyond anything achievable outside Source Form.

The female Peak Rule Stage leader's voice cut through the tension, dripping with anger and self-righteousness.

"Yes, that is exactly what I mean. It is because of your arrogance that we are here! If you had just bowed to the Ashen Vortex Sect—"

Her words ended abruptly.

In a single, incomprehensible instant, Adrian's Source blade had already passed through her throat.

The source essence manifested as a white-grey edge that existed and did not exist simultaneously, phasing through her defensive barriers as though they were illusions. Her head separated from her shoulders, the cut so clean that blood did not immediately spray. Her eyes widened in shock, her mouth still formed around the word she would never finish speaking.

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Her body began to drift, lifeless.

The battlefield fell into stunned silence.

The obsidian-armoured leader's head snapped toward his fallen comrade, his expression hidden behind his helmet but his posture rigid with disbelief. He retreated instinctively, his domain flaring defensively as confusion rippled through his thoughts.

Around them, the thousands of Rule Stage cultivators recoiled.

"What… just happened?"

"Did anyone see that?"

"How did he move?"

"Where did the technique come from?"

"I didn't sense any authority fluctuation!"

The whispers multiplied, panic creeping into voices that had moments ago been filled with righteous fury.

"How…" The armoured leader's voice emerged strained, barely audible. "How did you do that without authority?"

Even at his level, he could not comprehend what had just unfolded before his eyes. His 8.4 percent authority had been fully prepared, ready to counter any incoming technique and negate it the instant Adrian attempted to use it, yet Adrian had not used authority at all in executing that attack. There had been no authority fluctuation.

That was what made it incomprehensible.

A Peak Rule Stage cultivator, a being who under normal circumstances would require days or even weeks of sustained combat to defeat, had been eliminated in less than a second. The sheer disparity between expectation and reality shattered the confidence of the surrounding army, causing visible fractures to form within their formation.

Adrian's gaze swept across the assembled forces, his white-grey eyes reflecting the distant starlight.

"Did you truly believe that reducing my authority would render me helpless?" Adrian asked, his voice low and steady, carrying across the battlefield without effort. "To kill fools like you, I do not even require authority."

The armoured leader's head jerked toward Adrian, his stance shifting into a defensive posture. Around them, the thousands of cultivators tightened their formations instinctively, their domains pressing harder against the fragmented reality between them.

Again, before anyone could react, Adrian vanished from his position and reappeared directly before the armoured leader. The transformation of all his veins into Source veins now revealed its true value. It allowed him to execute his abilities, every spell, every movement, with extraordinary efficiency, drastically reducing the cost and time required for activation. When combined with his Temporal Veil, his movements existed beyond the perceptual limits of those around him, placing the enemy in a state where they could neither track nor comprehend his transitions through space.

The armoured leader's eyes widened behind his helmet, his mind finally processing what stood before him. He began to activate a defensive authority technique.

But it was too slow. He quickly understood, at least in part, that Adrian was employing arcane concepts to achieve this effect, yet the realization came far too late. He did not possess even a fraction of a second to respond, to use his defensive authority technique. While he was indeed a Peak Rule Stage cultivator, not all such beings possessed equal speed or reaction capability, and against an opponent whose movements surpassed the normal threshold, that difference became fatal.

Adrian's Source Blade materialized in his hand. The blade drove cleanly through the armoured leader's stomach, piercing both armor and flesh without resistance. The defensive formations inscribed across the obsidian plates shattered like glass, their protective runes dimming as the blade passed.

The leader gasped, blood spraying from his mouth as his body convulsed.

In a single fluid motion, Adrian withdrew the blade, allowing it to dissipate into motes of white-grey light. Before the leader could even process the pain, Adrian thrust his empty hand forward. The force behind that strike penetrated the leader's body once more, fingers phasing through armor and flesh alike until they closed around something solid.

Adrian extracted the Rule Core from within him.

The sensation was immediate and catastrophic. The armoured leader's eyes rolled back, his consciousness collapsing as the very foundation of his existence was ripped away. His divine domain flickered once, twice, then vanished entirely. His body went limp, drifting in the void like discarded debris.

In Adrian's hand, the core pulsed with dense, dark black essence, radiating the accumulated comprehension of a lifetime. It was beautiful in its complexity, thousands of years of cultivation condensed into a single crystalline structure, each facet representing a fragment of understanding painstakingly earned through decades of meditation and combat.

Around them, the army froze.

"No…"

"The Sect Leaders… they died in seconds…"

Adrian paid them no attention. His focus remained on the core in his hand. It had already started to dissipate.

A dark crimson essence manifested around his fingers, formed from the divine concept he had constructed using the Devour Arcane Concept as its foundation. The energy enveloped the Rule Core like hungry tendrils, wrapping around it completely before pulling it into Adrian's palm. The core resisted for a moment, its dense structure fighting against dissolution, but the Devour essence was relentless.

It consumed the core entirely.

Instantly, Adrian felt the influx of comprehension. The intricate structure of the divine concept unraveled before him as the arcane principles that formed its foundation became clear within his mind.

His Source Seed pulsed in approval, absorbing the new information and cataloging it within the ever-expanding chambers.

His gaze shifted toward the floating corpse of the woman, her headless body drifting slowly in the void, blood crystallizing into dark red ice as it met the vacuum of space.

He repeated the process without pause.

Appearing beside her corpse, his hand reached into her chest cavity, fingers phasing through frozen blood and shattered bone until they found what remained of her Rule Core. It had already dissipated more than 20%, its structure breaking down without the consciousness that had sustained it, but enough remained.

The dark crimson essence enveloped the core and consumed it in the same manner, its knowledge merging into Adrian's expanding understanding.

This act was an experiment that Adrian wanted to try recently. As his source purity increased, it gave him more benefits. But to achieve it, he needed Arcane concepts, which were among the most tightly guarded resources within the universe, hoarded by powerful sects and inaccessible to those without direct exposure. Without access to that knowledge, growth would inevitably slow.

But this… was different.

Through Devour, he had bypassed that limitation entirely. By consuming the Rule Core, he did not merely destroy his enemy; he inherited their understanding. Every arcane concept they had comprehended, every insight they had gained through millennia of cultivation, all of it transferred directly into his Source Seed, where it could be analyzed, refined, and integrated into his own path.

The implications were staggering.

For now, Adrian felt this alone was sufficient. The Peak Rule Stage cores contained the most valuable comprehension; the lower-stage cultivators would offer diminishing returns, their understanding incomplete and their divine concepts still in developmental stages. There was no need to continue harvesting Rule Cores from the remaining cultivators, as the essential knowledge had already been obtained.

However, he had no intention of allowing any of them to leave.

His gaze shifted toward the remnants of the army, where fear had begun to take hold. The cultivators who remained could not conceal their terror as they processed what they had just witnessed. They had seen a being who could eliminate Peak Rule Stage cultivators in an instant without relying on authority, and worse, they had seen him devour their Rule Cores as though it were a trivial act.

The implications of such power were beyond anything they had prepared for.

"He's a monster…"

"What kind of technique is that?"

"We need to leave. Now!"

Some among them had already begun to retreat, abandoning formation in a desperate attempt to escape. Their domains collapsed as concentration shattered, their coordinated suppression falling apart like a house built on sand.

Across the Andromeda Galaxy, countless observers watched the unfolding scene through broadcasts. While it was impossible to detect the authority fluctuation from the broadcasts, everyone heard what was said by the warriors here, including the Peak Stage leaders, and an army of thousands routing in absolute terror.

Among many minor sects, a deep, instinctive fear began to take root. The notion that the Crimson Vital Sect could be an easy target was shattered completely. They had a powerhouse who could kill Peak Rule Stage cultivators within seconds.