In the Ancient God's True Realm, Martik, the Void Dragon Deity, was suspended beneath the World Tree, tightly bound by the Dragon Binding Cord.
Despite his desperate struggles, which had shredded his dragon wings into mangled flesh, Martik continued his frantic resistance. The reason was clear: the drooling Imaginary Dragon hovering before him.
If he fell asleep, the Imaginary Dragon would surely drag him into eternal slumber.
Martik would rather endure excruciating pain than risk falling asleep.
After parting ways with the Radiant Dragon God, Rosen immediately returned to the World Tree to deal with Martik.
Rosen unleashed the Cloud Dream Law, binding Martik and activating the Primal Dreamscape.
As time passed, Martik's resistance weakened until he sank into despair and finally succumbed to slumber.
Through Dream Entanglement, Rosen gradually merged the Primal Dreamscape with Martik's dreams. Once the fusion was complete, he granted the Imaginary Dragon unrestricted access to the dreamscape, allowing it to take full control.
In just a few years, the Imaginary Dragon would undoubtedly ascend to Sequence 0.
This was not just because it had already experienced one failed attempt at ascension but also because Rosen had reinforced its inherent fate, elevating it to the threshold of Sequence 0.
With the added support of the Dragon God's divine authority, failure would render the Imaginary Dragon worthless.
Given the importance of this process, Rosen decided to stay and guard the World Tree.
But he didn't spend those years idle — the fragment of the Wisdom Dragon God's godhood held immense value.
Even as a fragment, it still contained powerful divine wisdom and the essence of the Law of Wisdom.
Refining this godhood fragment would significantly enhance Rosen's intellect.
A few years would be more than enough for him to develop a second painter skill.
Rosen already had a clear plan for this skill.
[Divine Affixation, Psychic Energy, Mental Command, Illustration Technique, Ed's Palette, Seven Deadly Sins…]
This second skill would require the power of the Hunter Sequence, making it even more challenging to create than Dimensional Canvas.
With the aid of the Wisdom Godhood Fragment, Rosen leveraged the time acceleration of Temporal Sketch to painstakingly craft this new skill.
After five years in the real world, Rosen finally forged his second Sequence 3 painter skill within the transcendent essence of painting.
[Divine Pigments: Through the Divine Palette, all things can be transformed into Divine Pigments.]
This skill was a direct upgrade from Ed's Palette.
Previously, Rosen had used Soul Painter to capture the spiritual essence of beings and then transform that essence into Spiritual Pigments through Ed's Palette. These ethereal pigments, composed purely of spirituality, were ideal for creating five-dimensional paintings.
Ordinary pigments simply couldn't adhere to five-dimensional space.
However, Rosen had always believed that Ed's Palette was insufficiently powerful.
Yet there were no stronger skills below Sequence 0.
Thus, by building upon his strengths, Rosen created Divine Pigments.
So, combining his strengths, Rosen created Divine Pigments. By utilizing Sequence 3 psychic energy, he developed a Divine Palette materialized from psychic energy, allowing him to fully harness the immense power of Divine Pigments.
In the Ancient God's True Realm, Rosen had hundreds of billions of followers whose faith in him was pure.
However, having faith in him didn't mean his followers lost their individuality.
Among them were corrupt politicians, benevolent saints, greedy merchants, and murderers who killed in secret. These people, good or evil, still maintained unwavering faith in him.
In fact, the more negative their nature, the more fervent their faith often became.
People with desires and greed turned to faith seeking benefits; no one naturally enjoyed selfless devotion.
Those who remained faithful without any desires were either simple fools or saints of unwavering piety.
Rosen's Mental Network spanned all the temples, continuously absorbing the faith of these hundreds of billions of beings.
Previously, Rosen never directly absorbed faith but instead filtered it through the Main God Computer, removing the chaotic and negative elements. Otherwise, prolonged absorption would have caused more harm than good.
But things were different now.
Rosen no longer needed the Main God Computer.
All faith tainted with negativity flowed through the Mental Network and into the Divine Palette.
In the Divine Palette, these emotions transformed into special pigments: pigments made entirely of greed, hatred, happiness, or joy.
Whether the emotions were negative or positive, they could all be turned into different pigments.
Using these pigments for painting amplified the power of spiritual artworks to their utmost limit.
Rosen entered the Void Gallery, where a Sequence 6 human prisoner stood before him.
This prisoner had once been a devout believer, but his ambitions were vast.
However, his abilities and faith couldn't match his ambitions.
When his desires went unfulfilled for too long, his once-devout faith twisted into hatred.
Eventually, he went down a path of madness, assassinating church officials until the Holy Tribunal captured and imprisoned him in the Void Divine Prison.
Rosen collected some of the prisoner's blood, using part of it to craft Dimensional Canvas.
With the remaining blood, he combined it with the Divine Palette's goodness pigment, creating Divine Pigment.
Rosen then painted the prisoner's portrait on the Dimensional Canvas.
When the final stroke, the finishing touch, landed, all the prisoner's ambition, hatred, and rage vanished completely.
Only pure kindness remained.
From the inside out, he transformed into a wholly good person.
Such was the power of Divine Pigments—to directly alter the spirituality and thoughts of living beings.
Rosen continued experimenting with the Divine Palette.
This time, instead of absorbing faith, he placed a rock into the Divine Palette, forming Divine Pigment.
Next, he sealed a pound of soil into a Dimensional Canvas.
He then painted a castle onto the canvas.
Upon completion, Rosen threw the painting onto a vacant plot of land.
In an instant, a castle emerged from the ground.
Painters using spiritual artworks to materialize creations in the real world was nothing new.
But no matter how realistic the creations seemed, they were ultimately illusory.
However, this castle was real, not materialized from the painting itself but sculpted directly from reality as the painting absorbed genuine soil and rock to shape it.
This was the most terrifying aspect of Divine Pigments: using the limited reality depicted in the painting to leverage and reshape infinite reality.
Rosen began frantically producing Divine Pigments, integrating everything he could access into the Divine Palette.
This included fortune, even the skills he mastered.
He converted the portrait prerequisite for Death's Verdict into Divine Pigment and then repainted it.
The result? The effects of Death's Verdict were greatly enhanced.
Of all the thousands of Divine Pigments he had formulated, those made from Transcendent Essence were the most potent.
Using this type of pigment, he painted a portrait of the original owner of the Transcendent Essence.
A dead transcendent being was astonishingly resurrected through the painting.
This was entirely different from resurrection via Spiritual Realm Paintings, which relied on the existence of remnants in the Spiritual Realm.
If there were no remnants, the painting couldn't resurrect the individual.
But pigments made from Transcendent Essence, even if the original being had left no trace in the Spiritual Realm, could still revive them through Rosen's painting.
As long as the materials used to craft the pigment were of high enough quality, in theory, Divine Pigments were virtually omnipotent.
The core of Dimensional Canvas was primarily dimensional and sealing authority, with painting laws and other rules as secondary.
Conversely, the core of Divine Pigments was the painting laws, supplemented by other rules.
By leveraging the painting laws' mastery in mimicking and creating everything, and combining this with the boundless adaptability of psychic energy from primitive humans, Rosen had created this miraculous skill.
Sensing the changes in his divine essence, Rosen realized that his divine strength had accelerated to 88 points thanks to the influence of the Wisdom Dragon God's godhood fragment.
He was getting closer and closer to perfecting Sequence 3.
So he decided to seize the momentum and complete the creation of his third and final skill.
The first was Dimensional Canvas, the second Divine Pigments.
The third logically should have been a brush-related skill, but the Divine Brush was already powerful enough.
Thus, for the final skill, he decided to create an offensive painting technique akin to Death's Verdict.
Using components like Mental Canvas, Foresight Painting, Finishing Touch, Fate Eraser, Fate Mark, Food Chain, and God-Hunting, Rosen embarked on this complex endeavor.
Even with prior experience and the aid of the Wisdom Dragon God's godhood fragment, it still took him ten years to succeed.
In the final stages, he incorporated elements from Yinglong's Void Genesis and Life-Birthing Force.
[God's Hand: Miracle Painting Technique]
[Miracle Attribute: Allows paintings created by God's Hand to indirectly manipulate all things.]
[Miracle Traits: Divine Will, Unique in the World, Eternally Indestructible]
Rosen summoned the Divine Brush, opened the Void Sketchbook, and casually painted a scene of York New City.
The moment the painting was complete, the miracle trait Divine Will activated.
Through the painting, Rosen's divine power could descend directly upon the real York New City. By modifying the painting, he could bring about corresponding changes in the actual city. This was how God's Hand and Divine Will manifested in the real world.
Rosen flipped the Void Sketchbook to a new page and began sketching a gaunt young man.
This was a Sequence 5 thief, still wanted by the former Main God Church, now renamed the Radiance Church.
As the master of the Ancient God True Realm, Rosen could easily apprehend this thief.
But if he personally handled every matter, what was the point of having the Radiance Church?
However, since he needed a test subject, it was simply the thief's bad luck.
Rosen did not paint a normal portrait of the thief. In his depiction, the thief broke into the Radiance Church to steal a treasure, inadvertently triggered a trap in the vault, and was dismembered by a spatial rift.
The moment the painting was complete, Divine Will activated automatically.
Rosen had manipulated the thief's future through the painting—soon, he would undoubtedly die in the exact manner depicted.
Strictly speaking, it was a Death Forewarning Painting.
Controlling fate like a god, manipulating all existence as a god—this was the terrifying power of God's Hand.
If God's Hand was combined with Divine Pigments, painted onto Dimensional Canvas, layered with skills like Finishing Touch, the resulting effects would be exponentially magnified.
Rosen put away the Void Sketchbook and looked up at the Void Dragon God Martyck, who hung beneath the World Tree.
The Imaginary Dragon still hadn't ascended to godhood, and it looked like it was about to fail again.
The only reason it hadn't completely failed yet was that the Dragon-Binding Cord was sustaining a fragile thread of life in its dragon soul.
At first, Rosen thought the Imaginary Dragon was simply unfit for ascension.
However, as his divine avatar delved deeper into the dragon species' history, he discovered that there seemed to be only one instance of an Imaginary Dragon ever becoming a deity—there was no record of a second Sequence 0.
This implied that the Imaginary Dragon species might be naturally capped at Sequence 1.
That lone Imaginary Dragon deity likely had some unknown serendipitous encounter.
In retrospect, it made sense.
A godly Imaginary Dragon would naturally intimidate even the Dragon God.
The sheer potential of the Imaginary Dragon was formidable—sometimes too much power becomes a curse, as nature imposes limitations on excessively powerful beings.
Thus, allowing the Imaginary Dragon to ascend was likely far harder than imagined.
Though this attempt had failed, Rosen had gained some understanding of the problem.
Ordinarily, a Sequence 1 transcendent ascends to Sequence 0 by igniting divine fire, forming a godhood, and establishing a divine kingdom.
These steps inherently required faith.
However, the Imaginary Dragon faced inherent obstacles:
First, it was incapable of absorbing faith.
Second, it couldn't ignite divine fire.
Third, establishing a divine kingdom was entirely out of the question.
Despite being the most formidable transcendent being in dream control, it paradoxically couldn't even dream itself.
The Imaginary Dragon seemed to have sacrificed every other aspect of its being to achieve unparalleled power in dream manifestation.
But this extreme specialization weakened it in ways that disqualified it from becoming a deity.
Its failure to ascend was akin to an ordinary Sequence 1 lighting divine fire without forming a godhood—an inevitable failure.
There were only two ways for the Imaginary Dragon to ascend successfully.
The first method was to compensate for the weaknesses, though this would inevitably diminish the Imaginary Dragon's extreme strengths.
As for the second method, it was to continue enhancing its extreme strengths.
Without hesitation, Rosen chose the second method. He used data transmission to bring the Dragon-Binding Cord to the Dragon Realm.
Upon arrival, his first task was to harness the power of the Dragon Realm to grant the Imaginary Dragon a Dragon Pearl, then extract parts of Yinglong's fragmented inheritance to strengthen its primordial soul, making the dragon soul even more formidable.
Sure enough, although the Imaginary Dragon remained at Sequence 1, its overall power had significantly increased.
Both the Dragon Pearl and primordial soul system turned out to be remarkably compatible with the Imaginary Dragon.
Rosen even noticed that the Imaginary Dragon seemed to have a special connection to the Dragon Realm, as if it were a child of the world itself.
Through continuous observation with History Mirror and in-depth investigation of the Imaginary Dragon's past, Rosen gradually unraveled its origins.
The Dragon ancestors were originally transformed from primordial humans, and today's dragons were descendants evolved from those ancestors.
However, the Imaginary Dragon did not originate from the Dragon Ancestor but from the primal life forms of the Dragon Realm.
When the dragons occupied the Dragon Realm, some of their dragon crystals gradually transformed into Dragon Pearls.
Over time, some dragons began to believe that the Dragon Realm was their birthplace, thinking they naturally belonged there.
This delusional belief of the dragons actually led to the birth of the Imaginary Dragon.
Initially, there was only one Imaginary Dragon, and it was born as a god.
After its eventual death, its fragmented dragon soul gave rise to the entire Imaginary Dragon species.
That lone deity-level Imaginary Dragon, which had once brought ruin to its kin, likely inherited the legacy of its primordial ancestor.
Since the Imaginary Dragon was born of the Dragon Realm and nurtured by the delusional beliefs of the dragons, it was naturally suited to become the heir of the Dragon Realm.
If it became a true god, it would have the chance to inherit the entire realm.
Perhaps this very secret was why several Dragon Gods had gone to such great lengths to exterminate the Imaginary Dragons.
Now empowered by the Dragon Pearl and primordial soul, the Imaginary Dragon began its third attempt to ascend to godhood.
This time, there were no complications.
It effortlessly achieved Sequence 0 by usurping a dream.
Now the Imaginary Dragon could perfectly control Martyck's dream, and even manipulate Martyck's physical body through it.
Hiding deep within Martik's dreamscape, the Imaginary Dragon could control the Void Dragon God's body for combat.
Unless Martik awoke, he would forever be a puppet under the Imaginary Dragon's control.
Upon ascending to godhood, the first thing the Imaginary Dragon tried was to break free from the Dragon-Binding Cord.
Naturally, it failed spectacularly and nearly got torn apart by Rosen.
Barely escaping death, the Imaginary Dragon likely wouldn't dare harbor rebellious thoughts until it grew far stronger.
Upon returning to the Radiant King City, Rosen painted a Prevision Painting and discovered a new influx of evil god cultists.
The newly appointed Intelligence Bureau Director was entirely neglecting his duties.
Though this was a dereliction of duty, as long as there was no collusion with the evil god cult and the cult did not engage in large-scale sabotage in the kingdom, Rosen couldn't simply wipe out the Intelligence Bureau.
It was clear that relations between him and the Intelligence Bureau had completely soured.
Rosen chose not to deal with these new cultists for now, as they were behaving quietly and cautiously.
Without absolute certainty, these cultists wouldn't dare cause trouble.
However, the repeated infiltration of cultists made Rosen acutely aware of a major flaw in the Radiant Kingdom—its rapid development had led to a continuous influx of external population, naturally resulting in loosened oversight.
Yet imposing strict regulations would undoubtedly hinder the kingdom's current growth.
After careful consideration, Rosen decided to paint the entire Radiant Continent onto a single canvas.
He would then imbue the painting with Divine Will, granting it the power to monitor the entire Radiant Continent.
If the Intelligence Bureau refused to act, then the kingdom's own intelligence department would fully assume its responsibilities.
Only by doing so could they ensure that no evil god cultist entering the Radiant Kingdom would have anywhere to hide.