The simplest way for Rosen to accelerate the rooting of the Eternal Source onto the Starshot Ballista was just one.
Become a Great True God, create a compatible law, and forge an exclusive skill for the Eternal Source. Once that was done, both the Root and Source abilities of the Eternal Source would naturally receive at least a severalfold boost. At that point, continuing to root into the Starshot Ballista would become much easier.
Creating a law wasn't hard—what was difficult was creating a law that satisfied him.
Many powerful laws either already existed in the world or had already been claimed by other Great True Gods.
When Rosen advanced to godhood, he had already preemptively created a Source Law.
With this Source Law in hand, he could ascend to become a Great True God at any time.
But advancing this way would be a huge loss—a lifetime of regret after just one ascension.
Because his Source Law, in essence, was just a fusion of different laws.
Root could be broken down into a combination of parasitism, fusion, plundering, growth, creation, and other laws.
As for Source, it consisted of laws like energy, regression, time, and so on.
Though this composite Source Law was very strong, could it truly be stronger than the all-encompassing World Law?
Probably not. After all, it was merely the prototype of a Source Law created when he reached Sequence 0.
Now that Rosen had reached the peak of godhood, his accumulation of knowledge, understanding of laws, and command of power had all far surpassed his past self at the time of advancing from demigod to Sequence 0. So the Source Law that had once satisfied him more and more fell short in his eyes.
The so-called Source Law, which claimed to return all things to their origin and root them to bloom and bear fruit, was at least partially an exaggeration.
Because there were just too many things in existence—there were definitely entities even the Source Law struggled to handle.
The Starshot Ballista was exactly such an existence. Some of the materials used to construct it left the Eternal Source completely at a loss.
Not to mention, the Source Law's effects of origin-returning and rooting were still mainly focused on the material realm.
Using the Source Law to control the Eternal Source against something as intangible as fate wasn't impossible—otherwise it wouldn't dare claim to affect all things—but just because it could affect fate didn't mean it was efficient at doing so.
Thus, Rosen needed to further expand and strengthen the Source Law, allowing it to rival the might of the World Law.
Only then could he see even a glimmer of hope to contend with the Ancient Gods.
Otherwise, he might as well sleep on it. Dreams had everything—there'd be no need to painstakingly research and invent a stronger Source Law in reality.
Through the Main God Network, Rosen began gathering all things from both the new and old worlds.
No matter what it was, if it could be gathered, he collected a copy of it.
For every collected item, he used the Source Law to plant a seed of the Eternal Source, and then began the rooting process without allowing it to bloom yet.
As more and more things grew roots, those roots generated by the Eternal Source began to interweave, fusing and evolving together. Once all things had rooted and every root fused, the eventual flowering and fruit-bearing would maximize the power of the Source Law.
That way, the Source Law could truly encompass all things, and the efficiency of rooting them would drastically improve.
Of course, that alone wasn't enough. The strength of a law wasn't just determined by itself—it was also affected by external factors.
The Ice and Snow Law was undeniably stronger in a freezing, snowy environment.
If the entire new world were frozen over, the power of the Ice and Snow Law would definitely surpass most others.
Likewise, the strength of the Painting Law depended on the number of painters and the extent of its artistic spread.
So, Rosen began crafting a super-simplified version of the Source Pathway, specifically to support the Source Law.
It consisted of only two Sequence abilities formed from Root and Source. Root was growth, but could only accelerate the growth of Beyonder plants and animals, or convert energy into various pathway-type Beyonder materials.
As for Source, it was decomposition—it could break down Beyonder artifacts and fragments into raw materials, or extract refined ores from raw ones.
Whether growth or decomposition, both were very practical for Beyonders of all races.
The key was that users didn't need to master them on their own. Every user of the simplified Source Pathway only had access to growth and decomposition, and had to rely on the Main God Network to use these two skills for free.
As long as everyone used them, the Source Law would naturally be affected and grow stronger.
Now that the Arcane Web had been integrated into the Main God Network, and the Gods' Network was reserved only for deities, while the Deep Web of the Spirit Realm had fallen under the World Will's control and wasn't suitable for lower-level Beyonders or ordinary lifeforms, and the Mechanical Network was exclusive to machine life…
So the conditions for using the Main God Network were the most lenient—now, even ordinary people were qualified to log in to the network.
As a result, people in the New World, from gods to mortals, quickly discovered that they could use the Main God Network to access the Growth and Decomposition of the Root Source Sequence. The shrewd ones had already started collecting various extraordinary scraps or purchasing abandoned mines at low prices.
At a time when resources were becoming increasingly scarce, the shared Root Source Sequence temporarily alleviated the shortage.
But this could only serve as a short-term solution. Damaged extraordinary items were limited, and the extraordinary ores in abandoned mines that were difficult to extract were also limited. The only seemingly infinite resources were extraordinary plants and animals, but their growth also required supernatural nutrients and feed.
Thus, the current revelry of the New World's beings was merely the last afterglow before the apocalypse.
As countless people utilized the Root Source Sequence, the core Root Source Law also began to grow in sync. It fully merged into the root tendrils that extended from the Eternal Root Source as it parasitized all living things, using the Root Source Law itself as nourishment for the Root Source Fruit.
The transformation of the Root Source Law would take at least several years. Rosen happened to take advantage of those years to assist all his avatars in ascending to True God.
The Bronze Dragon avatar still lacked time-based materials required for the True God level. However, among the known beings who had mastered the Law of Time, the only one was the Little World Tree. He couldn't exactly turn the Little World Tree into potion ingredients, so he could only artificially create a True God that wielded the Law of Time.
The method was actually quite simple. Mastering the Law of Time was as hard as reaching the heavens, but gaining authority over time was not that difficult.
Rosen first created a large number of bronze dragons. He sent most of them into the King's Game, while extracting the bloodline from a few and fusing it into some human extraordinary criminals. He then nurtured these individuals to gain authority over time and forced them to hunt each other in the King's Game.
With the help of the Eternal Game's origin power, Eternal Compatibility, and Eternal Plunder...
He finally used the Player Sequence's monster-slaying leveling system. With time accelerated a thousandfold, in just a few days in the real world, a True God-level Bronze Dragon God who had mastered the Law of Time was cultivated. Although it was already a True God, this Bronze Dragon God still couldn't defeat a Forbidden God.
Leveling up through monster slaying could certainly improve one's strength quickly, but the price was a lack of depth and foundation.
Without years of deep research, it was impossible to bring out the true power of the Law of Time.
With no strong foundation and relying entirely on monster-slaying to grow, the result was excessive dependence on the King's Game. Once removed from the game, progressing through personal cultivation was nearly impossible. The Twilight Battlefield and the Destiny Clay Tablet weren't significantly better than killing monsters in the game.
So whether it was the Twilight Battlefield or the Destiny Clay Tablet, those who laughed until the end were almost always the veteran True Gods.
The gods who had risen quickly through slaughter and shortcuts were mostly just making desperate struggles. Of course, there were rare individuals who could fully digest the power they obtained through shortcuts—but they were exceptions and not the norm.
Although the Bronze Dragon God looked impressive, Rosen never intended to raise it as a fighter.
Less than an hour after the Bronze Dragon God ascended, Rosen had already skinned it and disassembled it, extracting its origin bloodline, Time Godfire, and Time Godhood. These became potion materials for his Bronze Dragon avatar to steadily ascend to True God step by step.
When the Bronze Dragon avatar successfully ascended, the Yinglong avatar followed suit and reached True God as well.
The main ingredients needed for the Yinglong avatar's potion involved materials of Creation and Destruction. Now, leading the 3,000-strong Celestial Principality across the Old World, he was slaughtering the Dark Sun's followers. Many affiliated worlds had also been destroyed in the process, so once the Old World affairs were resolved, he could ascend at any time.
Next was the Death God avatar. This avatar was limited by the "Rebirth in Hell" scroll.
This was a miraculous painting, and ascending from Sequence 0 to True God wasn't that easy.
However, Rosen was confident he could enhance this painting to True God level. The King's Game had destroyed countless kingdoms and empires, resulting in the deaths of trillions, directly or indirectly. The Rebirth in Hell scroll had long absorbed a massive number of souls and spiritual essences.
With these spirits nourishing the Death-Hell Divine Kingdom inside the painting, it only lacked a bit of Eternal Miracle origin to ascend to True God.
As long as the Miracle Spark transformed into a Miracle Seed, the Death God avatar could ascend at any moment.
While two avatars ascended to True God in quick succession, Rosen himself had also been occupied with another matter.
Back when he merged the Miracle Pouch into the Miracle Sequence, he discovered a mysterious space within the pouch.
Inside that space were resources and treasures collected by the pouch's equivalent exchange feature over countless years.
To retrieve anything from the mysterious space, one had to consume Miracle Coins generated from converting resources within the pouch.
Aside from dozens of miracle treasures that were hard to extract, there was also a mysterious clay jar sealed by innate fate.
Over the years, the miracle treasures had already been taken out and burned away by Eternal Holy Radiance, but the mysterious jar had never been touched. The more it was studied, the clearer it became that the three portions of innate True God-level fate were only supplementary—the jar itself was part of the seal.
The outer support was already at the True God level. The jar itself had to be at least a Great True God-level artifact.
And the entity sealed inside... was at the very least a Great True God-level being.
Because the risks were unknown, Rosen had never considered dealing with this clay jar all these years.
This time, after obtaining the complete All-Knowing Origin Seed, he finally remembered the jar and planned to use the Eye of the Creator to examine its true nature. If there was value in it, he'd break it open and take the contents; if not, he'd just leave it alone again.
The more Rosen appraised it, the more he felt this clay jar was a hot potato.
Because he discovered that the seal wasn't just two layers—within the innate fate and the clay jar itself, there was a small golden jar. Shockingly, this golden jar was also a Great True God-level extraordinary artifact, just like the clay jar. Whether there were even more layers of seals within the three already identified remained to be further appraised.
Under the unraveling insight of Eternal All-Knowing, Rosen discovered a total of nine layers of Great True God-level seals.
As he continued deeper, the seals even transitioned into the level of an Immortal Godfiend—a clay jar of that tier.
Rosen went on to appraise and see through five more layers of seals, but had no choice but to stop at the sixth.
Of the fifteen known layers of jar seals: the outermost nine were Great True God-level, and further in were six Immortal Godfiend-level layers. How many deeper layers there might be was entirely unknown.
Even the already known fifteen layers of sealing had given Rosen quite a fright.
What exactly lay within that was worth such meticulous and excessive sealing?
Rosen's Eternal All-Knowing couldn't probe further, so he could only analyze the existing seals in more depth.
Very soon, he noticed something wrong. Normally, seals were meant to trap something, making it far more difficult to break the seal from the inside than from the outside. But the mysterious clay jar was the exact opposite.
It was nearly impossible to tear open the seal from the outside, yet from the inside, it could be easily undone.
So the truth was obvious. The mysterious clay jar and all its internal seals weren't meant to imprison whatever was inside. On the contrary—it was the being buried deep within that had sealed itself from the outside in. The purpose of these seals wasn't containment, but protection.
Rosen had more or less deduced the possible origin of this mysterious clay jar.
First of all, it was unlikely to be related to the likes of the Old Fisherman or any other Immortal Godfiend. For them, even Immortal Godfiend-level artifacts were incredibly precious—there was no way anyone from the Ancient Gods' World would be so extravagant as to leave something like this behind.
So, most likely, this mysterious clay jar came from the universe, brought into the Ancient Gods' World by other Eternal beings.
Not all Eternal beings created life—but some definitely did.
So the Eternal beings that entered the Ancient Gods' World weren't necessarily alone. If a being that followed an Eternal entity into this world had some Immortal Godfiend followers, then what would those followers do if the Eternal being they followed was killed by the Ancient Gods?
They certainly couldn't win in a fight. So their only option would be to hide like turtles.
Rosen pondered this for a long time before beginning to peel away the seals. As long as the innermost sealed being wasn't an Eternal entity, even if it turned out to be an Immortal Godfiend and he couldn't defeat it, he could always throw it into the Spirit World and let the World Will deal with it.
The outermost seal of True God-level innate fate was broken in an instant—it was an extra layer added using the power of the Miracle Pouch.
Next were the nine layers of Great True God-level jar seals, and the difficulty of peeling through them was beyond imagination.
Even with Eternal All-Knowing seeing through the seals—like having the answer sheet to an exam—it still took decades under accelerated time to fully strip them away, revealing the nine jars: a clay jar, a gold jar, a silver jar, an iron jar, a porcelain jar, a glass jar, a wooden jar, a bamboo jar, and a mud jar.
These nine jars, each made of different materials, were actually a complete set of Great True God-level extraordinary artifacts.
[Myriad Beast Demon Coffin: Extraordinary Artifact][Grade: Great True God][Property: The nine coffins combined can capture and seal origin beasts][Extraordinary Trait: Demon Coffin Devours Heaven]
Rosen never expected that these would turn out to be nine coffins forming a set.
Only they weren't coffins for humans, but for bizarre and varied origin beasts.
A single Myriad Beast Demon Coffin, in terms of quality at the Great True God level, was quite poor.
But when the nine were combined, they absolutely reached the top tier among Great True God-level extraordinary artifacts.
Rosen had already concluded that the Myriad Beast Demon Coffin was not a native creation of the Ancient Gods' World.
The reason was clear—the law powers contained within it were entirely different from those of both the old and new worlds.
Rosen continued to spend a hundred years peeling away the remaining jars, all of which, like the Myriad Beast Demon Coffin, were nine jars made from different materials.
However, their quality was higher, upgraded from Great True God to Immortal Godfiend quality.
[Myriad Beast Demon Coffin: Extraordinary Artifact][Grade: Immortal Godfiend][Property: The nine coffins can be combined to capture and seal origin beasts][Extraordinary Trait: Demon Coffin Devours Heaven, Demon Coffin Seals Heaven]
Rosen studied it carefully. The Demon Coffin Devours Heaven worked by using the Myriad Beast Demon Coffin's layered nesting to form a special sealing formation that forcibly drew the origin beasts into the innermost layer. The Demon Coffin Seals Heaven was used to seal the origin beasts that had been pulled into the coffins.
As the outer layers of seals were peeled away, more and more details were revealed by Eternal All-Knowing.
After fully stripping the eighteen outermost layers, the core of the seal finally became visible.
It was a jade gourd, about the size of a thumb, its surface covered in cracks.
This item gave Rosen the impression that it was of much higher quality than the ones crafted from Ancient Godstone.
So, it could be confirmed that this was a heavily damaged Eternal Treasure.
Through the cracks in the jade gourd, Eternal All-Knowing saw a broken inner world.
There were no living creatures to be seen—only some corpses with snake tails, human bodies, and snake-like hair, all of which were gathered around a shattered Eternal Origin Seed, crawling on the ground. Clearly, even though they had sealed themselves away in this place, they had eventually died.
In front of one of the corpses, Rosen noticed some text engraved on a stone slab beneath it.
Since the inner world of the jade gourd was completely silent, with no air movement, the text on the stone slab wasn't covered in dust, and the slab itself showed no signs of decay. The writing was special—clear and understandable upon reading it.
After reading it, Rosen's heartbeat quickened, and it took a long while before he calmed down.
These beings were the followers of the Eternal Serpent Mother, who had come to the Ancient Gods' World with her.
The awakening Ancient Gods had slain the Eternal Serpent Mother. Realizing the vast difference in power, the Serpent Mother led the Ancient Gods away, then secretly ordered her followers to hide with her Origin Seed. However, even so, the Ancient Gods had eventually found them.
The Ancient Gods didn't break the seals, but merely gazed at them through them.
That single glance had heavily wounded them, causing their injuries to worsen and ultimately leading to their deaths.
The strongest follower left a final message on the stone slab before dying. Countless years had passed, and the Eternal Serpent Mother still hadn't been revived using the Origin Seed. The fact that the Origin Seed was still cracked showed that the Ancient Gods' power had likely remained within, preventing the Seed from self-repair.
At the end of the stone slab's message, instructions were given on how to refine and control the Eternal Holy Item, the Serpent Mother Gourd.
The Origin Seed could not be completely destroyed, and it remained inside the Serpent Mother Gourd, unable to repair itself.
Anyone capable of breaking the outer seals would be an Immortal Godfiend. Such a being would undoubtedly covet the Eternal Holy Item and the Eternal Origin Seed before greedily attempting to refine the Serpent Mother Gourd and the Origin Seed. Should this be done, the Eternal Serpent Mother would have a chance to revive using the Seed.
(End of chapter)