Emperor of the Source

Back within the center of the Andromeda galaxy, Adrian's eyelids fluttered, and he slowly opened his eyes.

For a fleeting moment, Adrian blinked, his brow furrowing in genuine confusion.

He was standing in the open expanse of the Andromeda Galaxy's central battlefield. Distant stars flickered against the pitch-black canvas of space, and the ambient lighting of thousands of drifting warships and millions of cultivators painted the void in harsh, fractured colors.

He looked around, his mind struggling to bridge the gap between his last conscious thought and his current reality, "Where is the micro-dimension?"

For the entirety of his ascension process, his awareness had been plunged so deeply within his own Source Seed, entirely focused on forcing the two divine concepts to merge, that he had been completely detached from the physical world.

When he started his ascension, he had been inside the sealed, isolated space where the Peak Rule Stage beings were fighting.

And now, when he opened his eyes, the sealed space was simply gone. He was floating in the open void, exposed to the sprawling, endless theater of the galactic war. He had absolutely no idea what had transpired outside while his mind had been submerged in his ascension.

His gaze swept across the immediate vicinity, searching the darkness.

A short distance away, he found Hestia. She floated gracefully in the void, her presence different from before. The Crimson Vital Dominion that had once defined her aura had evolved, completely replaced by the stabilized pressure of a Higher-tier concept.

Beside her hovered Nightshade. Flanking them both like immovable pillars were Octaven and Kaelar, their high-tier Peak Rule Stage domains compressed tightly around them in a vigilant, protective stance.

Adrian drifted toward them, and he stopped in front of Hestia, his confusion evident. "What happened?" he asked, "Where is Hazel? Where is the micro-dimension?"

Hestia turned to him, her pale golden eyes studying his face intently. She did not answer his questions immediately. Instead, she asked, "Did you successfully ascend to the Astral Stage?"

"I did," Adrian agreed, nodding once. "The fusion was successful. We can talk about it later. Tell me what happened here."

"When you ascended," she began, her tone reflecting the lingering shock of the event, "a sound... a strange chime resonated directly inside the consciousness of every single person present."

"When that phenomenon happened, an intangible wave of energy erupted from your body. The micro-dimension could not contain it. The dimensional walls simply shattered like glass under the pressure, throwing all of us back into the main battlefield."

"The moment the dimension broke and Hazel felt the effects of that chime, she completely lost her composure. She retreated from the battle, and she grabbed Ignis and Pyros, used some kind of spatial teleportation, and ran away. She abandoned her entire army without a second thought."

Adrian stared at her, slightly shocked.

His mind raced as he processed her words. He clearly remembered the chime. He had felt it violently echoing within the deepest layers of his own mind, disrupting his focus at the very climax of his divine concepts' fusion. He had assumed it was merely an internal anomaly that he needed to study deeper. And he thought only he had heard it, because it had originated entirely from within him.

"How did everyone here hear it?" Adrian thought, "How does a sound born inside my own consciousness echo across the minds of millions of cultivators? What kind of energy was that? What is going on here?"

The phenomenon defied everything he understood about mana, authority, and divine concepts. The implications were staggering, and a dozen questions flooded his mind all at once. Was this a natural occurrence for all Astral Stage ascensions, or was it something unique to his path?

Adrian opened his mouth to ask, but there was no one who could provide him with the answers. Hestia also ascended to the astral stage, but even she was just as bewildered as he was, and the others were only Peak Rule Stage cultivators who had never even touched the boundaries of the Astral realm.

Before Adrian could voice his frustrations, a dark, raspy voice cut through his thoughts.

"We can discuss the mysteries of this later," Nightshade interrupted, "Right now, we first need to take care of the battlefield."

Adrian paused, pulling his attention away from his internal reflections, and agreed. He turned his gaze outward, sweeping his perception across the endless void.

The entire battlefield had come to a grinding, eerie halt.

The millions of cultivators who had been engaged in a brutal struggle for survival had stopped fighting. The catastrophic clashes of domains, the blinding flashes of divine spells, and the relentless bombardment of warship artillery had all ceased.

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Instead, millions of eyes from every faction, the Ashen Vortex Sect, the Grave-Sky Sect, the Ironbound Path Sect, and all their countless subsidiary sects, were fixed squarely on the small group floating in the center of the void.

More specifically, their attention was locked onto the space where the micro-dimension had just violently shattered.

For the enemy disciples, the reality of the situation was beginning to set in, and it was a reality composed of pure nightmare.

The disciples and elders of the Grave-Sky Sect scanned the void desperately, searching for the familiar, comforting pale mist of Morwenna's domain. There was nothing.

The warriors of the Ironbound Path Sect waited for the crushing, immovable gravity of Balthazar to assert his dominance over the battlefield. The void remained empty of his presence.

And the millions of disciples belonging to the Ashen Vortex Sect, along with the countless minor sects who had joined them under contracts, were thrown into a state of disarray. They had seen Ignis and Pyros briefly when the micro-dimension shattered, battered and bleeding, only to watch them vanish instantly alongside a unknown woman.

On top of all this, they saw many of the peak rule stage leaders appearing from the micro-dimension unconscious. Even those who were conscious, like Yselia of the Everlasting Pill sect, were confined by the elders of the Crimson Vital sect.

Most of the cultivators present were veterans of war. They did not need anyone to spell out the grim truth for them. When a sealed battlefield shatters and your sect leaders do not emerge, or in the case of the Ashen Vortex Sect, when your leaders flee without issuing a single command of retreat, there is only one conclusion.

The victory belonged to the survivors standing in the void.

The realization hit the enemy forces like a physical blow. Frustration, disbelief, and a creeping, paralyzing fear began to spread through their ranks like a plague.

It was not just the die-hard disciples of the three dominant sects who felt the terror. The battlefield was filled with hundreds of subsidiary minor sects who had joined the war out of fear, greed, or the simple belief that they were aligning with the inevitable victors of the Andromeda Galaxy.

Now, they looked at the empty void where their invincible leaders should have been, and a collective, horrifying thought echoed through their minds: We made a huge mistake.

"They're gone..." a commander from a subsidiary sect whispered, his weapon trembling in his hands. "Ignis ran away. Morwenna and Balthazar are dead!"

"It's over! The war is lost!"

The fear quickly mutated into blind, uncontrollable panic. The fragile cohesion that had kept the massive alliance together shattered completely. Without the terrifying presence of their sect leaders to enforce order, the contracted minor sects realized that staying on this battlefield meant annihilation.

"Retreat! Fall back to the ships!" a commander roared, abandoning his position and turning his back on the Crimson Vital frontline.

But retreating in the middle of a densely packed, multi-faction galactic battlefield was never a simple matter. As the minor sects broke formation to flee, they collided with the die-hard loyalists of the Ashen Vortex, Ironbound Path, and Gravy-Sky sects who still blindly attempted to maintain the front lines.

"Hold your ground, you cowards!" an Ashen Vortex elder screamed, unleashing a wave of golden fire to block a retreating warship. "Anyone who runs is a traitor to the alliance!"

"Screw your alliance! Your leader abandoned us!" a subsidiary elder screamed back, launching a spatial disruption spell directly at the Ashen Vortex elder to clear a path.

Chaos broke out instantly. The fragile truce between the allied factions dissolved into violence as terrified cultivators attacked their own supposed allies just to secure a path of escape. Spells fired indiscriminately into the void. Warships rammed into one another in their desperation to turn around and flee. The fear of dying at the hands of the Peak Rule Stage beings looming in the center of the battlefield drove them completely mad.

The war raged again, but this time, it was a senseless, mindless slaughter. The enemy forces were tearing themselves apart, while simultaneously pushing forward in a panicked frenzy that threatened to crash like a tidal wave into the disciplined lines of the Crimson Vital and Thousand Veils disciples.

In their terror, the routing millions completely forgot that the Peak Rule Stage beings they feared were floating just a short distance away, watching the entire pathetic spectacle unfold.

Adrian stood in the void, watching the millions of cultivators devolve into a stampeding horde of frightened animals. He watched as they trampled each other, burning their own allies, screaming and dying in a meaningless display of panic.

And it started to affect the front lines of the Crimson Vital and Thousand Veils sect.

Adrian drifted forward in the void and shouted, "STOP!"

The moment the word left his lips, something incomprehensible happened.

Without Adrian even intentionally directing it, an intangible, invisible wave of energy erupted from his body. It was completely formless, yet it crossed the vast expanse of the galactic battlefield at a speed that defied the known laws.

It bypassed physical armor as if it were not there. It ignored the layered defensive barriers of massive warships. It even slipped effortlessly through the active divine domains of everyone present here.

The invisible ripple struck the consciousness of the warring army directly.

The effect was instantaneous and apocalyptic.

Across the void, the chaotic roar of battle was silenced as if a blade had severed the throat of the universe.

Millions of cultivators, nearly half of the entire enemy armada, simply stopped moving. Their eyes rolled back into their heads. Their hands released their weapons, allowing swords, spears, and artifacts to drift aimlessly into the vacuum of space. The blazing domains that had illuminated the darkness snuffed out simultaneously, like a million candles blown out by a single, powerful gust of wind.

Even the few remaining Peak Rule Stage enemy leaders were not spared. Yselia, already weakened from her earlier battles, felt the ripple strike her consciousness and had no strength left to resist. She had survived Hazel's roar, but Adrian's unintentional wave was far stronger, purer, and deeper. Her eyes widened for a fleeting instant before her mind blanked, and her body went limp in the void.

Other conscious Peak Rule Stage beings suffered the same fate. Those whose willforce had already been damaged inside the micro-dimension fell unconscious without even understanding what had touched them.

A terrifying silence descended upon the Andromeda Galaxy.

The remaining half of the enemy army, those who had been far enough away or whose minds were just barely resilient enough to endure the edge of the ripple, froze in place. They stared at the millions of unconscious bodies floating around them, their weapons shaking uncontrollably in their hands. They could not even scream. Terror had paralyzed their voices, their bodies, and their thoughts.

A single word from Adrian had effortlessly incapacitated half of a galactic army!