Emperor of the Source

Adrian and Hestia stepped through the portal and arrived within the endless expanse of the Virelith Galaxy. Before them floated a planet that had once been a thriving world filled with life, civilization, and countless generations of ordinary existence, but now it was nothing more than a barren husk drifting silently through the void.

Adrian had extracted the exact coordinates of this world from the vast streams of memories he absorbed after devouring Morka. Through those memories, he now knew the locations of every ruined planet scattered across the Virelith Galaxy, and with that knowledge, he could move directly to the places that mattered most.

From the void above, they could see the planet's surface clearly. It was a desolate sphere of cracked, desert-like earth, its once-fertile lands now reduced to lifeless plains of dust and fractured stone. The withered husks of ancient trees stood like skeletal fingers reaching helplessly toward the sky, and the crumbling remains of dead cities lay scattered across the continents like forgotten tombs of a civilization erased by time and greed. There was no sign that life had ever belonged here except for the ruins themselves.

The silence pressed against them, heavy and absolute.

Hestia looked down upon the dead world, and her expression hardened.

"This confirms why the mortals of this galaxy went completely extinct," she said quietly. "Maybe cultivators at the SSS-Rank or Stellar Stage could manage to survive here by relying purely on ambient mana and essence, but mortals… and even lower-ranked cultivators who still depend on food, water, and ordinary life… they would never survive in a place like this."

Adrian nodded slowly. Morka had not merely conquered this galaxy. He had hollowed it out. He had stripped these worlds of every form of vitality and turned an entire galaxy into an endless machine of production, where life itself had become a luxury reserved only for the useful. Mortals had been the first to disappear, and over time, even the idea of ordinary living had vanished with them.

He looked at the dead world below and said, "Let's begin."

Adrian activated his Verdant Genesis divine domain. Green-gold light rippled outward from his body in a smooth and brilliant wave, spreading across the void like the awakening breath of spring itself. The divine concept of Verdant Genesis unfolded with quiet majesty, and the essence of life began to resonate with the dead world beneath them.

Beside him, Hestia did the same. Her own green-gold essence flared outward, mirroring his perfectly. The two divine domains expanded together, stretching across the planet below until the entire ruined world was blanketed beneath their influence.

As their essences met in the void, they did not clash like separate authorities fighting for dominance. Instead, something else happened.

The two domains blended seamlessly. The two forces intertwined, weaving together with such perfect compatibility that it felt less like two separate cultivators working together and more like one shared conceptual truth expressing itself through two different souls.

Hestia's eyes widened slightly, her breath catching. She could feel it, the way their comprehension merged without resistance, the way their wills moved in perfect harmony.

The synchronization was so natural that it carried an intimacy beyond physical closeness. It felt almost like dual cultivation, not through bodies, but through the direct merging of comprehension itself.

Adrian felt it too. The sensation was strange, profound. Their authorities didn't contest or divide. They unified.

The combined might of Verdant Genesis descended upon the dead planet. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Adrian guided the rules of the Water concept embedded within Verdant Genesis first, initiating large-scale moisture stabilization across the dry atmosphere. The skies darkened almost immediately. Thick storm clouds gathered above the cracked deserts, and moments later, heavy rain began to fall upon soil that had not felt moisture in millennia.

The first drops struck the cracked ground like a forgotten blessing.

Hestia pushed the rules of Growth Initiation and Cellular Regeneration deep into the earth itself. Beneath the endless rain, the barren ground trembled. The withered, blackened husks of dead trees began to absorb the green-gold essence. Dead cells revived, fresh bark spread across ancient trunks, and vibrant green leaves erupted from branches that had stood lifeless for millennia.

Across the continents, the earth itself began to change. Through the Light concept embedded within Verdant Genesis, energy flooded the surface, accelerating metabolic restoration and stimulating every dormant possibility hidden within the land. Seeds buried beneath centuries of dust awakened, and vast plains of grass began to spread like a rising tide of emerald, sweeping outward in waves of green that consumed the emptiness.

"These are ordinary plants and grasses," Hestia murmured, maintaining her concentration as her essence continued breathing life into the world. "If these were alchemical herbs or mana-dense flora, then even with Verdant Genesis, restoring a planet of this scale would have taken years."

Adrian silently agreed. The plants they were restoring now carried no dense mana units and no extraordinary value. They were simply ordinary plants, the basic foundation of a living ecosystem. Because of that, the restoration could move at a visible and rapid pace.

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Even so, planetary restoration was not a simple task. It was monumental.

Hours passed. The green tide spread, continent by continent. Rivers carved themselves into ancient valleys, filling with water that sparkled beneath the renewed atmosphere.

Adrian adjusted the flow of essence, guiding moisture toward the driest regions whilst Hestia coaxed root systems deeper into the soil, stabilizing the newly formed ecosystems.

Their movements were synchronized without words. When one shifted focus, the other compensated instinctively.

Twenty hours passed in continuous, unrelenting effort.

Even with their overwhelming cultivation and perfect synchronization, they had only recovered half the planet. Entire continents were turning green, rivers had begun to form naturally again, and the atmosphere was stabilizing, but vast stretches of barren stone and dead land still remained untouched.

Hestia's mind began to form a fog. Her concentration started breaking apart slowly. Covering half a planet with a divine domain was not significantly draining her mana reserves, but the constant, delicate manipulation of life, growth, restoration, and balance was placing an enormous burden on her consciousness. Her willforce was being consumed at an alarming rate.

Adrian noticed the slight tremor in her aura immediately.

Without interrupting the flow of Verdant Genesis, he extended his free hand toward her and cast the willforce recovery spell he had created. A stream of soft golden essence flowed from his palm and gently entered Hestia's body. The golden light circulated smoothly through her, rising toward her mind and accelerating the recovery of her scattered consciousness.

"Thank you," she said softly, her focus stabilizing once more.

Adrian's expression remained calm. "Don't push past your limits. I'll carry more of the burden."

"No." Her voice was firm despite the exhaustion. "We do this together."

With her willforce recovering, their intertwined essence surged forward again. Adrian adjusted his output, subtly shouldering more of the conceptual weight whilst maintaining the illusion of equal contribution.

The restoration continued.

Two days later.

The once-dead planet now spun beneath them as a vibrant jewel of blue and green. Forests blanketed the continents, rivers flowed freely across the land, and lakes shimmered beneath the light of distant suns. The atmosphere moved with the natural rhythm of a living world once more, and the silence of death had been replaced by the quiet breath of restored life.

They slowly withdrew their domains.

The green-gold light receded, pulling back into their bodies like an exhalation after holding breath for too long.

Hestia slumped slightly in the void, exhausted. Even with Adrian's continuous recovery spell supporting her, the sheer duration of the restoration had pushed her willforce dangerously low. Her consciousness felt heavy, and even floating in the void required deliberate effort.

She steadied herself with visible concentration, refusing to show weakness.

Adrian, however, remained steady. His willforce reserves had expanded enormously after establishing countless connections through the [Crown of the Source]. Compared to before, his reserves were now on an entirely different scale, allowing him to endure long-term conceptual strain far more easily than Hestia.

As they hovered above the world they had restored, Adrian closed his eyes and searched within his Source Seed, reviewing the progress of his comprehension.

He traced the newly formed insights, measuring them against the vast structure required for an Ultimate-level divine spell.

A few moments later, he frowned. Despite two full days of pushing Verdant Genesis to its absolute limits, the new insights he had gained regarding the ultimate truth of the divine concept were almost nonexistent. The progress toward forming an Ultimate-level divine spell was so small that it was nearly meaningless.

"The growth is too slow," Adrian said quietly. "At this pace, it could take thousands of years and the restoration of thousands of planets to fully master this divine concept."

Only now did he truly understand how difficult it was to reach the absolute peak of a divine concept without inherited legacies, sect foundations, or direct conceptual inheritance. To carve out an Ultimate-level truth through nothing but repeated action and gradual realization required an almost absurd amount of time.

Hestia looked at him, fatigue obvious in her expression, but her eyes remained sharp.

"Yes," she said. "Both of us working together makes it much faster, but even then, this is still a process that would need at least a few hundred years. What do we do now?"

Her question hung in the void between them.

Adrian remained silent for a moment. He had wanted to ascend to the Astral Stage using Crimson Vital Dominion and Verdant Genesis for a reason. If he did that, then he would not need to reveal the Source. To everyone else, he would simply appear as a genuine cultivator who had mastered a second divine concept and ascended naturally. When those within the Andromeda Galaxy saw his domain properties, they would reach the obvious conclusion on their own, and with Astral Stage strength established without suspicion, they could finally move freely without inviting deeper scrutiny.

But now, it seemed that the plan could fail. And if it failed, then the only remaining options were dangerous.

He could use the Source directly, but that would register as an unknown Ultimate-tier concept, something that would instantly create questions.

Or the only other way was for him to use the divine concepts he had devoured from Morka's mercenaries to show himself as a true peak rule stage being, but that carried its own risk. The sects those mercenaries came from could potentially identify the concepts, and with the war in Andromeda being observed by countless information sects and premium networks, too many variables existed.

Every path carried consequences.

Shaking his head slightly, Adrian said, "We still have some time. Our disciples can manage for now. We will keep trying, planet by planet. But if the war in Andromeda begins and we see that the situation is worsening, and crossing this threshold is still impossible, then we will set this plan aside."

His gaze turned toward the distant void. "We will deal with the Ashen Vortex Sect and their allies using our current strength first, and return to this later."

For now, it was the only realistic path.

Hestia gave a firm nod. Survival always came first. If they could not force the breakthrough before war arrived, then they would fight with what they already had.

"Then we keep going," she said, her voice steady despite the exhaustion still clinging to her.

With their path decided, Adrian raised his hand. Space folded before him, twisting and tearing open to reveal another portal threaded with violet light. The coordinates for the next dead planet were already locked in from Morka's memories.

He looked at Hestia and said, "Let's move to the next one."

Together, they stepped through the portal, leaving the newly breathing world behind as they vanished once more into the endless void.