Baby with Daoist Monarch System

This Seed may very well be erased soon.

But perhaps...

It will take root and sprout within that seemingly perfect ”High-Dimensional Matrix,” and one day grow into a towering tree vast enough to rip apart the entire ”System”!

”This... is not the end.”

”It is... a new beginning...”

Xu Ran’s final shred of consciousness, along with this murmur, completely dispersed into that endless light of ”erasure.”

His body, his traces, together with the last mote of dust of this Cosmos, all were utterly converted into ”nothingness.”

Everything came to an end.

...

...

No one knew how long had passed.

Perhaps it was but an instant, or perhaps billions upon billions of eras.

Deep within the ”High-Dimensional Matrix,” upon that skeletal earth where countless ”Wall Breakers” were buried.

A plain, unremarkable finger bone, belonging to some strong one of an unknown era, suddenly, gently... trembled once.

A wisp of grey, so faint it was almost undetectable, seeped quietly out from the cracks of the finger bone.

That breath was steeped in Deathly Silence, in ending, and in... ravenous hunger.

It had come alive.

This Seed may very well be erased soon.

But perhaps...

It will take root and sprout within that seemingly perfect ”High-Dimensional Matrix,” and one day grow into a towering tree vast enough to rip apart the entire ”System”!

”This... is not the end.”

”It is... a new beginning...”

Xu Ran’s final shred of consciousness, along with this murmur, completely dispersed into that endless light of ”erasure.”

His body, his traces, together with the last mote of dust of this Cosmos, all were utterly converted into ”nothingness.”

Everything came to an end.

...

...

No one knew how long had passed.

Perhaps it was but an instant, or perhaps billions upon billions of eras.

Deep within the ”High-Dimensional Matrix,” upon that skeletal earth where countless ”Wall Breakers” were buried.

A plain, unremarkable finger bone, belonging to some strong one of an unknown era, suddenly, gently... trembled once.

A wisp of grey, so faint it was almost undetectable, seeped quietly out from the cracks of the finger bone.

That breath was steeped in Deathly Silence, in ending, and in... ravenous hunger.

It had come alive.

This was an indescribable feeling; it was not Resurrection from death, but more like once again stealing a shred of the authority of ”being” out of absolute ”nothingness.” Xu Ran’s consciousness was like a guttering candle in the wind, wavering amid boundless Deathly Silence and frost, liable to be snuffed out at any moment, yet stubbornly burning on.

He had no eyes, yet could ”see” the surroundings. This was a world of ashen white—desolate, deathly still, vast without boundary. Beneath his feet stretched a skeletal earth reaching to the edge of his vision; some bones were colossal as mountain ranges, winding and undulating, the Dao Principles’ fissures upon them still narrating their former owner’s unwillingness and sky-toppling battle intent. Others were crystalline like jade; though they had lain dead for who knew how many eras, they still emanated the Immortal radiance of divinity.

This was the final resting place of the strong, the graveyard of those who defied.

And he, Xu Ran, at this moment was lodging himself within a single... finger bone in this endless necropolis.

This fragment of bone was utterly ordinary, mixed among billions of remains like a grain of sand in the Ganges. Its owner had long since been obliterated; only this hardest shard of remnant remained, bearing the final imprint of that life’s cultivation.

If not for that strand of ”Desolation” Source, if not for the fact that in his last moment he turned his will into virus and reverse-contaminated the ”Dao” of that High-Dimensional Matrix, he would long ago, like his Cosmos, have been completely formatted, without leaving the faintest trace.

It was that desperate incursion that reserved for him a sliver of chance. His main will was ground to dust under the ”antivirus” program’s strangling, but that planted ”Desolation” virus carried his most core memory brand, like the humblest grass Seed, drifting down upon this skeletal earth and, within this finger bone, finding a warm bed where it could lie dormant and hide.

”I am still... alive.”

Xu Ran’s fluctuations of consciousness were feeble, yet carried a tenacity tempered by myriad calamities. He did not sink into dejection over his ”failure,” nor into Despair over his present straits. To escape from under ”Reset to Zero,” to survive under the eyelids of that supreme Matrix—this in itself was a victory without precedent!

He examined his ”new home”—this fragment of finger bone. The bone was hard; within it there pulsed a thread of Energy so faint it could almost be ignored, as well as some shattered, systemless Law Fragments. To this skeletal earth, this bit of Energy was nothing. But to Xu Ran as he was now, it was his only hope of rising again.

He would devour it!

Just as he had once devoured black holes, devoured the wreckage of Cosmos! This was the instinct of his Dao of ”Desolation”!

Yet when he tried to stir that frail wisp of will to draw upon the Energy within the bone, an unprecedented weakness and stagnation washed over him. His will was like a rusted gear: every turn brought with it soul-rending pain.

Too weak.

As he was now, he could not even drive this fragment of bone, much less devour it.

Just as he sank into stillness, prepared to use time as long as eternity to slowly accumulate strength, a cold, emotionless mechanical voice abruptly rang out in the deepest layer of his consciousness.

”Anomalous logical variable detected... Initiating adaptive reconstruction...”

”Reconstruction complete.”