Emperor of the Source

Hearing Lara's words, Ignis laughed hard, the sound rolling through the void.

He looked at Lara and the other four Crimson Vital elders as though he were staring at insects that had somehow managed to crawl onto a throne, and the sheer contempt in his burning gaze made it obvious that their ascension did not impress him in the slightest.

"Erasure?" Ignis sneered, his voice dripping with mockery, "Five children playing at gods because they managed to spark a flame. An alchemist wielding a sword is still just an alchemist, no matter how much authority you manage to scrape together."

He did not even bother to draw a weapon. Instead, he waved one dismissive hand toward them as though ordering servants to clean dust from the floor.

"Yselia, Asteria," Ignis commanded, his tone bored, "Sweep these little fries from my sight and make it quick. I do not want their ashes distracting me when I finally dismantle the true target."

Yselia's lips curved into a cruel, venomous smile as her own domain began to unfurl around her. Beside her, Asteria cracked her knuckles, the sound sharp and violent, her battle-hungry eyes locking onto Torvain with open anticipation. Both women floated forward slightly, and the pressure of their Peak Rule Stage authority pressed heavily against the Crimson Vital elders like an executioner's blade hovering over condemned necks.

Before Yselia and Asteria could close the distance, a voice drifted through the void. It was not loud, yet it pierced through the roaring heat of Ignis's aura with chilling clarity.

"You roar with the heat of a dying sun, Ignis," Nightshade said as he floated forward slightly, his robes swaying like living shadows around him, darkness pooling beneath his feet. "But for all your bluster, you still send others to clear your path. Tell me, do the flames blind you to your own cowardice, or are you simply afraid of what waits for you in the dark?"

Ignis's mocking smile vanished instantly. The ambient temperature skyrocketed, and the void around him turned a blinding, incandescent orange as his fury reached a boiling point.

"Cowardice?" Ignis roared, his eyes burning with literal fire as he glared at the Thousand Veils Sect Leader. "Your entire lineage is built upon scurrying like rats in the shadows. You strike from the back because you are too weak to stand in the light. I have waited a million years to tear that mask from your face and burn your wretched sect to cinders." 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

As his words thundered across the void, Ignis reached into his spatial ring. When his hand emerged again, his fingers were wrapped tightly around a pulsing purple token covered in incredibly dense runic inscriptions.

Every Peak Rule Stage being in the vicinity recognized it instantly.

It was a Micro-Dimension Formation Token, an artifact capable of creating a temporary sealed pocket of space strong enough to contain even Peak Rule Stage-level combat. Most ordinary cultivators outside such a dimension would not even be able to detect what was happening inside, much less interfere with it.

Balthazar grunted in approval. Morwenna's pale smile widened slightly.

Ignis activated the token in his grip. The instant it triggered, reality folded inward.

A massive gravitational pull erupted from the epicenter, and space collapsed around them like fabric being violently drawn toward a single, infinitesimal point.

Any Peak Rule Stage being present could have resisted the pull with their authority if they wished, but none of them did.

This was a common practice in wars between sects. In a battle involving Rule Stage beings, multiple domains and authorities usually clashed against one another across enormous ranges. Even the domain of an Early Rule Stage cultivator could cover a star system, and if these kinds of measures were not taken, Peak Rule Stage beings would end up facing a chaotic battlefield similar to a multi-domain suppression strategy, constantly losing authority and space to fight properly.

Because of that, not only Peak Rule Stage beings, but even some wealthy Early Rule Stage cultivators who could afford Micro-Dimension Formation Tokens used them to isolate their battles. It had long become a standard practice across the wider universe.

The purpose was simple: Leaders fought Leaders. Armies fought armies.

Knowing this, and understanding the necessity of separation, the kings and queens of the Andromeda Galaxy surrendered to the spatial collapse without a single word of protest. Their towering figures warped, stretched, and distorted as the folding space swallowed them one by one.

All the Peak Rule Stage combatants gathered at the center of the battlefield vanished into the sealed dimension, leaving only a faint purple shimmer in the void where they had stood.

With the absolute apex powers removed from the board, the open void fell silent for only a fraction of a second.

Then the true galactic war erupted.

"FORWARD!"

"FOR THE ASHEN VORTEX!"

"BREAK THEIR LINES!"

Millions of cultivators roared in unison as their armadas and vanguard forces surged forward like a torrential tsunami. Divine domains bloomed across the battlefield one after another, colliding, overlapping, and grinding against each other in violent contests of authority. The four fronts no longer distinguished between one enemy and another. Every side treated the other three as threats, and the void instantly transformed into a chaotic storm of domain clashes, authority suppression, divine spells, warship bombardments, and screaming cultivators charging through space.

Starships the size of small cities fired concentrated essence beams that tore through defensive formations. Smaller vessels scattered like insects, their pilots desperately weaving through the crossfire. Explosions bloomed in brilliant, deadly flowers across the black canvas of the void.

Some Early Rule Stage beings simply collapsed under the crushing density of overlapping domains, authority, and wills clashing around them. Their own domains flickered and shattered before they could even properly join the battlefield, their minds unable to endure the overwhelming pressure released by millions of cultivators fighting at once. Blood leaked from their eyes and noses as they fell unconscious, floating helplessly through the chaos.

Amidst this chaos, several enemy cultivators charged toward the Crimson Vital Sect's army, which stood alongside the Thousand Veils Sect troops. They wore vicious grins, expecting their vanguard to effortlessly crush the supposedly fragile line of an alchemy sect.

"Finally, some easy prey!"

"Show these pill refiners what a real war looks like!"

To them, the Crimson Vital Sect had risen quickly, but their leaders' and elders' combat power did not mean the same for the disciples. In their minds, these were still pill refiners, plant cultivators, and sheltered disciples who should have hidden behind hired warriors rather than standing on the front line of a galactic war.

But they had no idea what waited for them. More than five hundred years of relentless, hyper-focused training within the Time Formation had forged the Crimson Vital disciples into something the galaxy had never seen. They were not alchemists holding swords. They were an army of monsters.

As the first wave of cultivators crashed into the Crimson Vital frontline, the void lit up with the terrifying efficiency of Adrian's customized weapons. A squad of mid-range fighters raised their spears in perfect unison, their movements synchronized like a single organism. They channeled mana into the inscriptions carved along the shafts, and space distorted instantly, reality bending around the weapon tips.

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The spears extended their reach by hundreds of meters through folded space.

Enemy cultivators who thought they were safely beyond striking distance suddenly found spear points erupting through their chests from impossible angles. Their eyes widened in shock as they looked down at the blades protruding from their bodies, blood crystallizing in the void.

"What—how—"

They died before they could finish the question.

The cultivators behind them suddenly halted in the void, their charge faltering. They had been ready to negate any authority techniques used by the Crimson Vital disciples, their own domains primed to suppress spatial manipulation or temporal distortion. But authority had not been used at all. The spears had simply reached further, empowered by inscriptions that bent space without commanding it, skirting the edge of what authority could easily counter.

Before they could properly understand what had happened, scouts blinked seamlessly through the shadows using customized daggers, appearing in blind spots to deliver lethal, gravity-laced strikes that crushed organs and shattered defenses from angles no ordinary perception could follow.

"They're too fast!" someone shouted. "Break their lines!"

An enemy commander from the Grave-Sky Sect unleashed a massive wave of corrosive poison, the technique spreading like a living thing through the void. The green-black mist washed over a vanguard of Crimson Vital disciples, melting their outer robes and burning into exposed flesh.

The enemy commander grinned, already preparing his follow-up strike.

But before he could press the advantage, a soft starlight-colored glow erupted across the injured disciples' hands.

The Starlight Jade healing rings, meticulously crafted by Lysandra and Selena, flared to life. Emerald essence mixed with silver light flooded through damaged bodies. Within seconds, lethal burns closed, poison was neutralized and expelled, and torn flesh regenerated. The injured disciples floated forward again in perfect, unbreakable unison, their weapons already swinging as though the poison had done nothing more than slow them for a breath.

The enemy vanguard froze in absolute horror.

"They have healing artifacts!" one warrior screamed, his voice cracking. "HOW? How do they have—"

They realized they were fighting an army that simply refused to die. But that realization came far too late.

The Crimson Vital disciples did not pause to admire the fear spreading through the enemy ranks. Their frontline advanced with terrifying discipline, and their customized weapons began to show their true potential. Every strike was supported by inscriptions designed specifically for the wielder, tailored to their combat style, their comprehension, their needs.

Heavy broadswords swung through the void with impossible lightness before crashing down with gravity-enhanced force, shattering defensive barriers like glass and crushing the bodies inside armor. One Crimson Vital warrior brought his blade down on an enemy's hastily raised shield. The shield exploded. The warrior beneath it was flattened into a smear of blood and metal.

Spears extended through folded space, turning safe distance into killing range. A spearman thrust forward, and the tip emerged three hundred meters away, piercing through an enemy's throat before he even realized the attack had begun.

Bladed chains whipped outward from support fighters, their edges carrying pressure and binding concepts that locked enemy limbs for the briefest instant. A chain wrapped around a fleeing cultivator's leg, and the pressure inscription activated. His entire lower body went rigid, muscles frozen. Half a second later, another disciple's sword took his head.

That brief instant was more than enough.

These disciples killed without relying on authority, just like how Adrian did. But they didn't rely on speed; rather, they relied on weapons, formations, artifacts, and combat discipline, preserving their authority for defense, negation, and critical moments. This was not a weakness. It was an advantage. While their enemies wasted authority trying to counter techniques that had not been used, the Crimson Vital disciples cut them apart with physical attacks empowered by inscriptions.

At first, enemy commanders believed they were witnessing the elite core of the Crimson Vital Sect, perhaps a special vanguard prepared for this exact confrontation. It was a reasonable assumption. Every powerful sect possessed elite troops, disciples who received the best resources and stood far above the ordinary members of their faction.

But as the battlefield widened and more enemy forces collided with different sections of the Crimson Vital formation, that assumption began to collapse.

The same pattern repeated everywhere.

No matter which section of the Crimson Vital line they attacked, they met the same unnatural discipline, the same enhanced weapons, the same space rings flaring at critical moments, and the same healing rings pulling wounded disciples back from the edge of death before the enemy could finish them.

A commander from one of the subsidiary sects under the Ironbound Path Sect stared at the battlefield with growing disbelief as his troops attempted to break through the Crimson Vital left flank. He had fought alchemy sects before. He knew their habits. Their disciples usually relied on pills, defensive formations, and support techniques, using hired warriors or allied combat sects to handle direct confrontation.

Yet the disciples before him did not fight like sheltered refiners who had only recently been handed weapons. They fought like veterans who had spent entire lifetimes learning how to kill.

"That one!" he shouted, pointing toward a crimson-robed woman carving through his troops with a long glaive. "She was recorded as Early Rule Stage a year ago. How is she already Mid Rule Stage, and why is her authority so stable? She should be struggling with control!"

His answer came in the form of that woman turning toward him.

Her glaive spun once in her hand, its inscriptions igniting with silver-blue light that traced elegant patterns along the blade. In the next moment, the weapon passed through the void in a horizontal arc, and a crescent of spatially compressed force appeared directly before the commander, materializing faster than thought.

He barely managed to activate his authority in time, his mind screaming the command. A shield of solidified reality formed in front of him, thirty percent of his authority committed to its construction. The crescent struck the shield formed by reality itself and could not move forward, the two forces grinding against each other in a shower of sparks and distorted space.

But the impact still drove him backward through three layers of his own troops, his body tumbling through the void.

Before he could regain his balance, before he could even orient himself, two Crimson Vital scouts appeared behind him through synchronized space-ring activation. They moved in perfect coordination, their strikes timed to the heartbeat. One pierced the joint beneath his shoulder where armor met flesh, the other struck the side of his neck, releasing a thin pulse of pressure that disrupted his concentration for less than a second.

Less than a second was enough. The glaive-wielding disciple arrived before him, her movement fluid and inevitable, her weapon descending with quiet finality.

His head separated from his body without resistance.

Across the battlefield, similar scenes unfolded again and again. A group of enemy warriors attempted to overwhelm a Crimson Vital squad through sheer numbers and authority, eight against three, confident in their advantage. They activated their domains simultaneously, their combined pressure crushing down on the three disciples.

The three Crimson Vital disciples raised their weapons, ready to strike at the enemy.

"Lock Space!" one enemy shouted. "Lock Shadow! Lock Pressure and Force!"

The enemy force already knew about their weapon artifacts and began locking Space, Shadow, Pressure, Force, and any other rule they suspected was involved, committing their authority to suppression.

Seeing this, the Crimson Vital disciples immediately shifted tactics. While the enemy's authority remained trapped in maintaining those locks, unable to activate proper defensive techniques, the Crimson Vital fighters used offensive authority techniques instead.

Afterimages became real, three copies of a warrior striking from three angles simultaneously. Attack trajectories bent mid-swing, blades curving around defenses. Wounds were commanded to widen after a successful strike, a slash across the arm suddenly gaping open to the bone.

Confusion spread rapidly through the enemy formations.

"Shift to defense! Shift—"

If they used their authority to lock the rules, the Crimson Vital Sect disciples used authority techniques while their opponents' authority was trapped in suppression, preventing them from activating proper defensive techniques. If they did not lock the rules, the Crimson Vital disciples overwhelmed them with customized weapons, spatial artifacts, healing rings, and terrifying coordinated attacks.

There was no counter. Every response met a prepared answer.

As the battle expanded, reports began flooding through enemy communication channels in rapid, panicked bursts.

"The Crimson Vital right flank is not breaking. Their defense is regenerating faster than we can damage it."

"Their lower-stage disciples are all Mid Rule Stage or higher. Repeat, we are not finding Early Rule Stage units in their active combat lines."

A different voice cut in, higher-pitched with fear. "Confirmed sightings of High Rule Stage units in the hundreds. No, wait… There are more than that. There are far too many."

"Many of them are using authority only to negate our attacks while relying on weapons to kill. We can see the pattern clearly, but we cannot counter it fast enough."

"Their weapons are not standard issue. Every weapon has different inscriptions, and the effects are changing based on the wielder. They are somehow customized to individual combat roles."

Then a command echoed out loud across multiple fleets, broadcast through emergency channels. "Useless morons! Stop fucking making such a fuss in the communication channels! Those wielding standard weapon artifacts, back off this instant. Only those wielding capable weapon artifacts confront them!"

To this command, many nodded, their faces grim as they withdrew from the frontline. Better to live and regroup than die pointlessly.

But there was one reply that came which spread across all the communication channels, spoken by a veteran cultivator, "How is this an alchemy sect?"

The final question appeared again and again across shattered communication channels, spoken with disbelief, fear, and growing despair by warriors who had entered the battlefield expecting to crush a fragile alchemy sect and instead found themselves grinding against an army that had been forged in silence for centuries.

How was this an alchemy sect?

Nobody had an answer.