The Ruins City of the Eternal Continent sprawled with thousands of ancient ruin sites.
These ruins varied in size—some stretching only a few miles, while others spanned tens of thousands of miles.
Some ruins lay directly on the surface, forming the foundation of the city, while others existed within spatial anomalies.
These ruin sites were largely remnants of ancient civilizations discovered by the World Government through various means.
Many were excavated entirely and relocated to the Ruins City for easier archaeological work.
The Archaeological Institute's primary responsibility was to help the World Government unearth the hidden history and secrets behind these ruins.
However, these ruins had now become bargaining chips in a deal between the World Government and the Historians' Association.
Ownership of these ruins would soon be transferred to the historians.
In the meantime, all the archaeologists had become frenzied in their excavations, scrambling for any last bit of profit before the transfer.
Protective excavation had turned into destructive digging.
Almost every archaeologist wanted to extract as much value as possible from the Archaeological Institute's "corpse."
Rosen had no intention of missing out on this opportunity either.
He headed straight for the most valuable Zero Ruins, located within a separate spatial dimension.
Previously, only Chinon and a handful of Sequence 1 archaeologists had been qualified to explore this site.
Now, over half of the half-god archaeologists had gathered there.
Crossing the spatial portal, Rosen first saw the archaeologists' makeshift camp.
Beyond the camp lay the ruins of an ancient city.
Further out were countless massive beast skeletons, all long since decayed. Judging by the extent of decay, they were at least hundreds of thousands of years old.
These colossal beasts were undoubtedly half-gods when they were alive.
Whether they had been Sequence 3 or Sequence 1 could only be determined through detailed bone analysis.
Though not a formally trained historian, Rosen possessed a powerful combination of resources:
The Bronze Dragon Sequence,
The Eternal Chronicle (a miracle artifact),
The miracle skill Historical Lens,
And the authority of an Ancient Scholar.
Combining these elements, Rosen's expertise in historical research arguably surpassed even Chinon's.
With Chinon's partial memories, Rosen's understanding of the Zero Ruins was unparalleled.
According to Chinon's archaeological findings, this civilization was dubbed the Calamity Civilization.
It had no traces of true gods, with its most powerful beings only reaching Sequence 0.
This lack of a divine presence meant that the Calamity Civilization wasn't particularly formidable.
But what made it worthy of being labeled Zero was that Chinon had never found any connection between this civilization and the Main World.
There was no genetic similarity between the remains of these beasts and any lifeforms related to humans.
There were two possibilities:
This civilization was created by a Great True God.
This Calamity Civilization came from outside the Main World.
If the first possibility were true, then a Great True God had painstakingly crafted a unique civilization distinct from the lifeforms of the Main World, making these ruins potentially linked to divine secrets.
If the second possibility were correct, then the ruins' value was even higher.
The existence of worlds beyond the Main World was a divine-level secret—common knowledge only among true gods.
According to records from cosmic civilizations, numerous traces indicate the existence of mysterious universes beyond the Main World. However, qualifying to leave the Main World requires starting at the level of a Great True God. Many True Gods even suspect that the missing Great True Gods have already departed from the Main World.
This suspicion is correct but incomplete—Rosen was certain of this.
The secrets he heard through the Ancient Divine Bell involved those missing Great True Gods.
However, he didn't know the full details. He only knew that this part of his memory had been extracted and tightly sealed within a painting, which now hung on the wall of the Mysterious Study Room.
The painting bore a solemn warning: unless he became a True God or encountered an unavoidable situation, he must not unseal the memory contained in the painting.
Rosen trusted himself and would never carelessly unseal it, much less do so outside the Mysterious Study Room.
That didn't stop him, however, from using the limited information he had left behind to seek clues through other means.
There was a good chance he could uncover even more secrets about the Great True Gods at the Zero Ruins.
Rosen quickly left the safe camp and ventured into the surrounding ruins of the city.
The construction materials for the city were generally nothing exceptional.
Most of the buildings were residential and had no need for high-quality materials.
In most cases, constructing a city with Sequence 9 extraordinary materials was already extravagant.
Though every building in the city of Divine Paint was adorned with high-level spiritual paintings, that was the result of countless painters' work over 20,000 years.
This city before him had only a handful of buildings constructed with extraordinary materials.
Logically speaking, with the Sequence 1 beast skeletons outside already decaying into rubble, the city should have long since crumbled to dust.
Yet, despite being a ruin, the city seemed to have only decayed over the past few hundred years.
Clearly, some force within the city was preventing further decay.
Rosen wandered the ruins for half a day but unsurprisingly found nothing.
If it were that easy to discover something, Chinon wouldn't have spent centuries exploring these ruins with such limited results.
The World Government had assigned the Zero Ruins to Chinon over three centuries ago.
While Chinon had been diligent in his excavations during the first hundred years, he had rarely returned to the ruins over the past two centuries, realizing that continuing his efforts with current capabilities would be a waste of time.
The World Government hadn't pressured Chinon either, indicating they had no better ideas.
Everyone knew there was something valuable here, but desire wanes when you can't claim it after so long.
Rosen withdrew into the Mysterious Study Room at a secluded corner of the ruins, ready to explore alternative approaches for potential discoveries.
He successfully transformed fragments of bricks from the ruins into a sheet of Dimensional Canvas.
Then, using time and history, he crafted divine pigments known as God's Paint.
Unrolling the canvas, Rosen activated God's Hand and began painting.
Back then, limited by time constraints, he could spare at most one day on a painting. Even with the accelerated time of Simple Time Painting, that gave him no more than 99 days—insufficient for creating a highly intricate spiritual artwork.
All he could do was sketch a surface depiction of the city ruins.
A day passed swiftly.
Staring at the completed spiritual painting, Rosen activated God's Will.
His divine consciousness descended upon every inch of the ruins depicted in the painting.
The mysterious veil shrouding the city ruins was successfully lifted, revealing its hidden truth.
Astonishingly, the ruins of this city could transfer the damage it should have suffered to external targets.
In other words, the decay that should have affected the city had been entirely redirected to the beast carcasses outside the city. That explained why the beasts' remains had withered into decayed bones, while the ruins themselves remained intact.
"There's a conceptual miracle here…"
Rosen was in utter disbelief as he shouted inwardly.
Anything could become a miracle. Conceptual miracles, in essence, were the nascent forms of laws that had yet to be born.
All laws, without exception, were miracles—the most powerful type of miracles.
Rosen, guided by God's Will, continued to sense deeply, and soon made a new discovery.
In a broken brick from a ruined building within the city, he found a concealed eyeball.
The eyeball had completely withered, but traces of ash clung to its surface.
If he wasn't mistaken, this was the remnant ash of a lost civilization.
Rosen reached through the painting with his hand, pulling the eyeball directly from within.
The well-hidden eyeball in the real world vanished simultaneously.
Rosen collected the civilization ash from the withered eyeball and used the miracle artifact, the Kindling Hearth, to convert it into fuel.
With the miracle flame ignited, the Ashen Veil immediately reflected the final glimmer of the civilization remnants.
In that fleeting brilliance, he saw the city restored to its prime.
He saw countless beasts surrounding the city.
Standing atop the highest point of the city was a majestic figure—not a Great True God, but a True God.
This True God appeared to be attempting to create a Disaster Law to take the final step to ascend.
But ultimately, he failed.
The nascent Disaster Law, a conceptual miracle, had shattered everything and scattered across the city.
The Main World already had its natural Disaster Law.
For a normal True God to ascend to Great True God, artificially creating a Disaster Law was simply unthinkable.
There was only one possible truth: the True God revealed in the Ashen Veil was not from the Main World but from a world beyond it.
In that world without a pre-existing Disaster Law, he had tried to create one to ascend to a Great True God.
But for some unknown reason, just as he was about to succeed, he arrived in the Main World.
Then came the fatal problem—the Main World already had a native Disaster Law.
When this foreign nascent Disaster Law attempted to take its place, the backlash was unimaginable.
Thus, a True God who had been on the brink of ascension met ruin solely because he came to the Main World.
Rosen took out his Divine Brush, intending to use the miracle attribute, Kindling Eternal, to recreate what the Ashen Veil had revealed.
However, as he stared at the unchanging scene reflected in the Ashen Veil, the power of Kindling Eternal had failed.
The reason was simple.
Normally, civilization remnants were born when a civilization's kindling backfired and burned it to ashes.
However, the ruins here, despite being broken, hadn't been incinerated by any civilization kindling.
The civilization kindling had incinerated part of the True God's eyeball. What Rosen had glimpsed through the Ashen Veil was merely the last scene seen by that eye. This was far from enough to activate the power of Kindling Eternal to recreate the long-vanished civilization.
Rosen carefully examined the withered eyeball in his hand. As expected, it was the vessel bearing the embryonic form of the Disaster Conceptual Miracle.
With the loss of this eyeball, the city ruins outside could no longer stave off decay or transfer its corrosive damage. The most valuable treasure hidden within Zero Ruins was now in his possession.
While it remained outside, the eyeball had long been suppressed by the Main World's Disaster Law.
Now, isolated within the Mysterious Study Room and shielded from the Main World's laws, the Disaster Conceptual Miracle inside the withered eyeball was free from suppression. It would soon fully merge with the eyeball, ultimately becoming a miracle artifact akin to the Yunmeng Grotto-Heaven.
Its grade wouldn't be exceedingly high—not reaching the True God level—likely capping at Sequence 0.
The reason was simple: neither the Yunmeng Law nor the disaster law within the eyeball belonged to the Main World. Even with the Eternal Indestructibility trait of miracle artifacts, the internal law power would remain confined within the artifact.
After some contemplation, Rosen left the Mysterious Study Room with the withered eyeball.
He then placed the mysterious eyeball into the Godly Palette, intending to harness the power of the Painting Law to transform the eyeball and its embryonic Disaster Conceptual Law into law-level Godly Pigments.
Even the Disaster Law of the Main World had been unable to eliminate this foreign law embryo.
Naturally, Rosen's Painting Law was powerless against it too.
However, it could convert the destructive energy contained within the Disaster Law into Godly Pigments.
Laws weren't immutable. Take the Spatial Law, for instance: the larger the Main World, the stronger its Spatial Law. If the Main World were reduced to the size of a fist, its Spatial Law might be so weakened that even a Sequence 9 could break it.
Thus, the strength of a law depended not only on its essence but also on the quantity of its source.
Rosen couldn't change the law's essence, but he could transform the source energy contained within the Disaster Conceptual Miracle.
Hours passed as the Godly Palette drained the Disaster Law's source energy, producing a small amount of Godly Pigments of True God quality.
Depleted of its law source, the withered eyeball still transformed into a miracle artifact, though it failed to reach Sequence 0, ending up as only Sequence 1.
[Eye of Disaster: Miracle Artifact]
[Level: Sequence 1]
[Miracle Attribute: Absorbs disaster energy to generate Disaster Law source energy]
[Miracle Traits: Disaster Ritual, Unique in the World, Eternally Indestructible]
Testing the miracle attribute, Rosen found that it essentially involved stealing and siphoning disaster energy from the Main World.
As for the Disaster Ritual, it allowed individuals to transition into a special sequence as a Disaster Apostle—an extraordinary sequence recognized by the Main World for mastering and wielding disasters.
One only needed to undergo the Disaster Ritual to dual-class as a Disaster Apostle.
Naturally, Rosen had no interest in such a transition. Instead, he summoned a thousand Abyssal Shadow Demons and transported them to a deserted area near the World Tree.
He then activated the Disaster Ritual, causing the Eye of Disaster to project a thousand fragments that fused into the foreheads of the Abyssal Shadow Demons.
Merging with these projections didn't mean immediate transition into Disaster Apostles.
Rosen manipulated the World Tree's authority, generating countless natural disasters around the thousand Abyssal Shadow Demons. Normally, these Sequence 3 entities would easily withstand such threats, but the Disaster Ritual had sealed away all their extraordinary powers.
Aside from their inherently powerful physical bodies, they were now incapable of using any other means to resist the disasters.
Torrential floods, droughts, extreme cold—wave after wave of natural calamities ravaged them. When these ran their course, Rosen unleashed man-made disasters such as plagues and famine, relentlessly subjecting the Abyssal Shadow Demons to unspeakable torment.
Under this relentless barrage, the Disaster Eye projections embedded in their brows absorbed a vast amount of disaster energy, gradually converting it into Disaster Law source energy.
By this point, over a hundred Abyssal Shadow Demons had perished.
Rosen showed no mercy, nor did he intervene at the last moment to save those that perished.
This was because only one Disaster Apostle could exist, a unique extraordinary sequence limited to a single practitioner.
Thus, 999 of the thousand Abyssal Shadow Demons were destined as sacrifices for the Disaster Ritual.
With the external disasters dissipated, the remaining nearly 900 Abyssal Shadow Demons, driven by the ritual, began mercilessly hunting each other.
Each slain Shadow Demon had its Disaster Eye projection devoured by the victor.
Over the course of half a month of brutal combat, a single victor finally emerged.
[Abyssal Shadow Demon: Miracle Lifeform]
[Level: Sequence 1]
[Sequences: Shadow Demon Sequence 1, Disaster Apostle Sequence 1]
[Divinity: 108]
[Talents: Disaster Eye, Body of Darkness, Shadow Manipulation, Possession]
[Skills: Disaster Affinity, Disaster Mark, Disaster Mastery, Natural Disaster Decree, Man-Made Disaster Decree, Natural Disaster Curse Seal, Man-Made Disaster Curse Seal, Natural Disaster Avatar, Man-Made Disaster Avatar, Darkness Affinity, Shadow Affinity, Void Shadow Realm...]
Rosen examined the victorious Abyssal Shadow Demon, astonished that it had advanced to Sequence 1 through the Disaster Ritual.
This creature now embodied a living catastrophe, capable of wielding the Main World's authorities over disaster, darkness, shadow, and parasitism.
Although it couldn't rival gods in direct combat, its destructive potential far exceeded that of most deities.
Rosen now understood the true purpose of the Disaster Apostle's existence.
The Disaster Conceptual Miracle within the Disaster Eye couldn't directly compete with the Main World's Disaster Law.
Thus, a Disaster Apostle was created to harness the Main World's disaster authority.
If a Disaster Apostle grew into a True God and fully mastered the Disaster Law, the Disaster Eye could then usurp control through the Apostle.
As Rosen encountered more miracle artifacts, he began discerning a common pattern.
All miracle artifacts either pushed their strengths to unparalleled extremes or compensated for critical weaknesses.
The creation of these miracles must follow specific rules, deeply intertwined with the foundational principles of the Main World.
The yield from Zero Ruins was astonishing, but Rosen wasted no time exploring the remaining ruins.
Although he made significant gains, none compared to the treasures of Zero Ruins.
After nearly two months of preparation, the Historical Realm finally descended upon the Eternal Continent.
While a few archaeologists fled in advance, most remained, prepared to transition to becoming historians.
The World Government didn't completely abandon the situation—they dispatched a deity to mediate the transition.
(End of Chapter)