On the Eternal Continent, a shining star in the sky suddenly dimmed.
In Chinon's divine kingdom, his divine avatar calmly watched as Daisy's second personality approached him.
"I'm going to die..."
Chinon spoke serenely. "I can feel my true body being sealed. My true self has chosen to betray the World Government. Soon, they will destroy this divine kingdom. Rather than let them carve it up, I would rather leave everything to you."
"I'll avenge you." Daisy's second personality promised, her expression complicated.
"Don't seek revenge..."
Chinon was slightly moved and shook his head. "Rosen isn't someone you can easily deal with. Perhaps he carries this era's destiny. Your original self may have already realized this, which is why she's ahead of you..."
"I understand what you mean, but I can't do that!"
Daisy's second personality interrupted him.
"You're right; you have your own life. I shouldn't interfere."
Chinon chuckled self-deprecatingly and began dismantling his divine kingdom from within.
Within just a few hours, the most valuable portions of his divine kingdom had been stripped and handed to Daisy's second personality.
Once she left, only an empty shell remained.
Chinon's divine avatar silently ignited his divine essence, burning it with divine fire until he turned to ash, scattering across the desolate land of the divine kingdom.
Through the God-Hunting Magic Eye, Rosen watched this scene but refrained from intervening through data transmission.
Chinon's divine kingdom indeed held immense value, but Rosen couldn't risk the World Government uncovering his data transmission capabilities.
He wasn't supposed to have the power to seize Chinon's divine kingdom.
He was already drawing too much attention, and more visibility would do him more harm than good.
...
Several days later, Serei and Prince fled the Law Chaos Zone in disarray.
Free from the interference of laws, Serei immediately contacted the World Government.
Soon, a true god arrived to escort the two of them. Shortly after, the hollow shell of Chinon's divine kingdom was forcibly taken over by the World Government.
Upon investigation, it was confirmed that Chinon had perished within the Law Chaos Zone.
However, the exact cause of his death remained unclear.
It was speculated that his demise was related to the Evil God Source.
The star realm wasn't the World Government's domain, and their investigation capabilities were limited.
Unable to uncover the truth, Chinon's death ultimately became an unsolved mystery.
No one suspected Rosen, as nobody believed that a Sequence 3 could venture into the Law Chaos Zone and kill a Sequence 0 god.
Rosen, however, knew that he had thoroughly offended the Intelligence Bureau this time.
But compared to what he had gained, that price was insignificant!
...
In the Mysterious Study Room, Rosen personally executed Chinon's true form, extinguished his divine fire, shattered his divine core, and stripped away the Archaeologist Sequence Tree.
He didn't wait for a loot orb to form, instead manually extracting everything from Chinon.
Turning his divine core into a loot orb might have transformed it into a supernormal artifact, but Rosen needed the divine core intact for his divine avatar.
This way, in the future, his divine avatar only needed to seize the incomplete History Sequence Tree to pave the way to becoming a true god.
Compared to that, a loot orb was far less valuable.
Even without a loot orb, Rosen still gained a Sequence 0 miracle skill.
Whenever a god fell, a miracle was always left behind.
Although miracle skills weren't as immediately valuable as miracle artifacts, they held greater potential if nurtured properly, ultimately surpassing artifacts.
Rosen was very satisfied with this miracle skill.
[Historical Lens: Miracle Skill]
[Passive Attribute]: Greatly enhances historical observation capabilities.
[Active Attribute]: When activated, allows the user to peer into the historical information of all things.
[Miracle Traits]: Historical Archive, Unique in the World, Eternally Indestructible.
Originally, Rosen intended for his divine avatar to inherit the skill since the avatar was a Historian.
However, upon closer examination, he realized that the Historical Lens was more compatible with the God-Hunting Magic Eye.
Although his divine avatar could share the Historical Lens skill after mastering it, sharing was inherently less effective than direct mastery.
Currently, with his divine avatar and true body at the same transcendental level, the difference wasn't noticeable.
But in the future, if his divine avatar were one level lower, the gap would be significant.
Weighing the pros and cons, Rosen decided to incorporate Historical Lens into the Hunter Sequence.
The skill's passive attribute significantly strengthened all history-related abilities.
As for the active attribute, it was essentially a unique identification skill.
Neither the passive nor active attribute was top-tier on their own.
What truly made Rosen resolute about mastering this skill was the miracle trait: Historical Archive.
It allowed him to allocate a portion of his divine essence to archive a piece of history.
He could then choose to either publicize or conceal this historical record.
If publicized, the history would become widely known through various channels.
If concealed, the history would gradually fade from people's memory.
At first glance, the benefits of publicizing or concealing history might not be apparent.
But upon deeper thought, the terrifying potential of Historical Archive became clear.
Imagine making the history of Viska's alchemy laboratory public—letting the world know that during the early days of the World Government, humans were raised like livestock for potion materials.
That alone would shake the World Government's rule and destabilize its foundational civilization fortune.
Alternatively, he could craft a historical archive of his early days selling printed paintings at low prices and make it public.
In a short time, he would easily gain an overwhelming reputation.
The same logic applied to concealment—he could effortlessly erase scandals detrimental to himself or wipe out an enemy's glorious past.
In a way, Historical Archive had the terrifying power to distort history and manipulate destiny.
Due to the skill's immense power, it required the use of his divine essence.
The amount of essence occupied depended on the strength of the archived history.
All divine essence used for historical archives weakened his foundation unless he chose to release the archive, which would return the divine essence.
The first historical archive Rosen created was his low-price sale of printed paintings.
It consumed five points of divine essence, and he chose to publicize it.
For the next two months, Rosen's spiritual paintings suddenly became wildly popular due to countless coincidences, setting record-breaking prices at auctions across various countries.
Even the printed paintings he had sold over the years became highly sought after—those who owned them bragged endlessly, while those who missed out joined in the hype.
The skyrocketing reputation directly fueled the Glory Authority, further strengthening the Glory Bloodmark attribute.
The boost to character portraits from Glory Bloodmark increased from 510% to 960%.
Though it seemed like only a modest improvement, it was significant.
Each additional increase became exponentially harder.
If doubling a painting's attributes had a difficulty level of 1, then enhancing it tenfold wasn't just five times harder but five hundred or even five thousand times harder.
Half a year later, the boost finally reached 1000%, hitting the cap for Glory Bloodmark.
This wasn't the limit of the Glory Authority but merely the maximum that Glory Bloodmark could harness from it.
To further enhance character portrait attributes, he would need to strengthen Glory Bloodmark.
"It's time to master new skills for the Painter Sequence," Rosen remarked with satisfaction as he assessed the current state of Glory Bloodmark.
For the Noble and Hunter Sequences, he chose to inherit existing skills.
But starting from Sequence 3, he planned to create his own skills for the Painter Sequence.
Since he wielded the complete Painting Law, conventional painter skills were insufficient to unlock its true power.
Thus, he decided to pursue the legendary Simplification Path—a route of skill fusion and creation.
All sequence skills fundamentally involved the application of authority over rules.
Thus, it wasn't about having more skills but stronger ones.
Skills sharing the same origin could be combined to form more powerful abilities.
Over the past six months, Rosen had drafted a preliminary skill fusion plan:
[Void Sketchbook + Rune Painting + Glory Bloodmark + Soul Painter + Five-Dimensional Painting + Dimensional Art + Time Sealing Technique = ???]
First, the Void Sketchbook was fundamentally about containing and sealing spiritual paintings.
Next, Rune Painting involved integrating spiritual runes into artwork.
Glory Bloodmark primarily contributed sealing authority.
Soul Painter allowed the capture and sealing of spiritual entities.
Five-Dimensional Painting enabled artwork across multiple dimensions, while Dimensional Art allowed multi-dimensional paintings to be collapsed into points and lines.
Finally, Time Sealing Technique could capture and seal fragments of time.
Rosen had no intention of fully merging all seven skills—it was impossible.
Different skills often involved distinct rule authorities and couldn't be entirely fused without descending into chaos.
What Rosen truly sought was to extract the powers of dimension, sealing, and spirituality from the seven skills and use these as the foundation to carry the strength of the Painting Law.
He only needed parts of each skill.
The core was Void Sketchbook, upon which he would create a complementary skill.
...
Ten years passed.
Even without focusing on training, his divine strength naturally rose to 87 points.
Yet, his efforts to create a composite skill had repeatedly failed.
Even when success seemed near, he had often halted the process himself because the final skill didn't meet his expectations, forcing him to start anew.
Now Rosen truly understood why each sequence only had so few skills.
Even in sequences with the most skills, like the Wizard and Hunter Sequences, the total number per sequence didn't exceed two thousand.
It wasn't due to a lack of creativity but because weaker skills had been weeded out over time.
Still, two thousand skills seemed too few given the vast number of transcendents in the human world, including countless predecessors from history.
Those who successfully created sequence skills that stood the test of time were as rare as pandas.
Thanks to Time Simplification, Rosen could accelerate the skill-creation process by up to 96 times.
Otherwise, most would give up after centuries of failure.
Despite the challenges, Rosen felt he was close to success.
Initially, he had fixated on the seven skills but later realized they merely served as a framework.
To fill this framework, he needed resources from other painter skills.
Over the past decade, he had purchased nearly every available painter skill and inheritance.
Through Mind Canvas, he had also glimpsed countless painters' insights into their skills and their development.
Even for the same skill, different painters had vastly unique interpretations and applications, all of which provided invaluable inspiration for his creative endeavors.
Not only was his first self-created skill nearing completion, but he also had ideas for several others.
...
In the fifteenth year of seclusion, Rosen finally succeeded in creating his first Sequence 3 painter skill.
To his surprise, the moment it was born, it became a miracle skill.
[Dimensional Canvas: Miracle Skill]
[Passive Attribute: Greatly enhances the capacity to carry rules and laws]
[Active Attribute: Can seal and transform all things into special canvas paper]
[Miracle Traits: Dimensional Sealing, Unique in the World, Eternally Indestructible]
While the Painter Sequence was lucrative, it was also notoriously expensive.
Starting from Sequence 3, the costs of canvas and paint skyrocketed.
To maintain combat power, painters had to spend long periods creating enough spiritual artworks.
During that time, expenses piled up with little return—no fortune could withstand it.
Since becoming a Sequence 3 painter, Rosen had rarely painted except for Prophetic Paintings.
The reason was simple: canvas capable of bearing the Painting Law simply didn't exist.
It wasn't that it was unavailable on the market—it had never existed, as there had never been a need for canvas to bear the Painting Law before.
After nearly 1,500 years in accelerated time, he had finally created the Dimensional Canvas skill.
Its exceptional strength qualified it as a miracle skill.
Rosen took out several divine crystals and activated Dimensional Canvas, targeting them.
The divine crystals, wrapped in his divine power, quickly dissolved and transformed into a translucent, crystal-like rigid canvas.
[Crystal Canvas: Can bear double the divine power]
If Rosen were to use this Crystal Canvas for painting, not only would it easily bear the Painting Law, but the resulting artwork would naturally gain a baseline attribute boost of 100% due to its capacity to hold twice the divine power.
Rosen continued experimenting with sealing techniques, quickly converting various types of special canvases:
Canvases formed by sealing space became Spatial Canvases, which greatly enhanced the strength and size of spatial properties in spiritual paintings.
Canvases formed by sealing time became Temporal Canvases, significantly boosting the time-related properties of the paintings.
Canvases created from the sealed remains of abyssal demons became Abyssal Canvases, allowing the depicted abyssal demon to inherit part of the original demon's power.
All these special canvases were not only cost-effective but also easy to make.
Rosen made one final attempt using the miracle trait Dimensional Sealing. The passive and active attributes of Dimensional Canvas were the core of his self-created skill, but the miracle trait had been an unexpected bonus.
Within the range of his divine power, everything instantly collapsed into a dimensional seal, becoming a painting.
Rosen had mastered dimensional collapse long ago.
By painting within five-dimensional space and then collapsing it into a two-dimensional plane through Dimensional Art, he had used this method during his ambush on the Church of the Mother of Flesh.
However, that process was slow because painting in five-dimensional space took time.
Now, with Dimensional Sealing, he could instantly seal an entire area into a painting without needing to draw—essentially transforming the slow painting-based "two-dimensional foil" into an instantaneous two-dimensional seal.
Since mastering the Dimensional Canvas skill, Rosen had gone on a painting spree, focusing primarily on angels and demons.
He created a thousand Sequence 3 spiritual paintings of each.
The angels and demons manifested from these paintings turned out several times stronger than their authentic Sequence 3 counterparts.
...
One morning, after finishing his daily training with Fala, Rosen prepared to tackle his painting tasks for the day.
He was often surrounded by people, but Fala and Li Shiqing accompanied him the most.
Fala effectively helped him govern the Radiant Kingdom, while Li Shiqing looked after his meals and was always by his side.
At noon, as Rosen held Li Shiqing while having lunch, Fala, who should have been busy with state affairs, returned to the palace looking anxious.
She ignored her usual jealousy and handed Rosen an urgent report from the kingdom's intelligence agency.
It turned out that just yesterday, a spiritual realm had emerged within the Radiant Kingdom.
Initially classified as Sequence 9, it hadn't warranted reporting.
The town that discovered it had planned to handle it independently.
However, in just one day, the Sequence 9 spiritual realm had evolved into a Sequence 6 realm.
All Sequence 9 transcendents who had ventured inside were predictably killed, and the realm showed signs of continued elevation.
While spiritual realms leveling up was normal, such a rapid leap was unheard of.
This anomaly was quickly reported and delivered directly to Rosen.
Releasing the Gluttonous Thought Beast, Rosen had it devour the remaining spiritual delicacies in one gulp.
He then used data transmission to locate the kingdom's Snowy Mountain Town—a settlement nestled within the snowy mountains, primarily known for raising Sequence 9 spiritual creatures: snow hares.
Rosen directly entered the spiritual world.
The physical world might be snowy mountains, but the spiritual world was entirely different.
The Radiant Continent's physical environment had been extensively altered, with much of it consumed by a fragment of the Mother of Flesh.
As a result, the spiritual world counterpart of the Radiant Continent was far larger, and the environments of the two were vastly different.
The spiritual realm corresponding to Snowy Mountain Town was a swamp replicating the environment from fifty thousand years ago.
Using the History Spyglass, Rosen saw that the strange spiritual realm was situated within this swamp, which currently belonged to the surface layer of the spiritual world.
This was highly unusual.
Under normal circumstances, the surface layer should replicate the environment from twenty thousand years ago.
Each layer of the spiritual realm typically spanned ten thousand years.
Logically, the fifty-thousand-year environment should appear three layers deeper.
Its presence on the surface suggested a dimensional confusion between different spiritual layers.
Such confusion usually only occurred due to a collapse of dimensions.
The fusion of the spiritual and physical worlds represented the most severe form of dimensional collapse.
According to the report, this area had still been a normal twenty-thousand-year-old lake just yesterday.
Now it had transformed into a fifty-thousand-year-old swamp, indicating that the rapidly evolving spiritual realm was likely the key to causing the spatial confusion across multiple layers of the spiritual world.