Chapter 121 - Baptism of Dawn
He needed something to breathe life into it, a source of Qi that would keep flowing on its own rather than simply sitting there. The Dragon Vein of the scroll was his solution. Planting it here within the space was akin to pouring life into the dead space.
Su Ming reached out toward the Ten Thousand Stars Beneath Nine Heavens scroll. With his divine sense, he located the compressed Dragon Vein hidden under the frozen riverbed.
He pulled out the tiny star-like object and planted it at the center of the floating core.
The dragon vein unfurled. It expanded rapidly, breathing massive spiritual Qi into the landscape.
The space inside the painting shattered. The Frozen World collapsed, its space fusing directly into the newborn construct. The mountains, rivers, and starry night sky of the scroll became the visual scenery of the space. The lingering traces of the painter’s Sorrow Intent wove themselves into the starry night sky.
Outside, the final barrier cracked under the leakage of spatial force. Elder Bai Zhen groaned, his hands shaking. "The spatial and temporal laws are collapsing! The force is too violent... if this leaks out, the explosion will cause a great amount of damage to the peak!"
"What is happening?" Bai Qingxian shouted, her hands trembling as she poured her Qi into the barrier.
But as another barrier layer shattered, despair filled the old man’s face. "But I am a cripple now! I cannot move power beyond the Core Formation realm, and even this is dissipating... I cannot hold on!"
Bai Qingxian gritted her teeth, pushing her Peak Core Formation Qi to its limit to support the collapsing barrier. "Su Ming!"
"Stay back," Su Ming’s divine sense echoed in their minds.
Inside, it was worse.
The collapsing forces created numerous cracks in that singularity. Raw spatial and temporal forces pushed outward through them with no will strong enough to control both at once. Su Ming’s Sovereign Will was already trying to contain the construct’s outer shell. His Dragon Will was anchoring the collapsing temporal current at its core. There was nothing left for him to throw at this chaotic mess.
His meridians were screaming. Blood ran down his nose.
He had miscalculated the risks and had no more cards left to play.
The barrier outside cracked again. Elder Bai Zhen’s breath cut short.
Su Ming needed to push the merging process across the threshold. He pulled out the Samsara Resin.
He had already noticed its odd property to stabilize conflicting forces, but it was not simply that. It carried a certain quality of fate that guided the process to completion.
He drew a steady stream from his soul sea and poured it into the singularity.
The grinding forces did not stop, but they slowed down and stabilised. The spatial tears stopped widening. His Sovereign Will found its strength again, pressing the cracks inward.
But it barely lasted for five breaths.
Then the chaos surged again. The raw forces that radiated from the singularity sent a visible shockwave across the outer barrier. Wang Tian was knocked back a step. Lin Yao cried out.
The cracks were now beyond what his two wills could handle.
Su Ming made himself wait one more breath. Just one.
He had used everything. His Sovereign Will. His Dragon Will. The Samsara Resin. None of it had held.
There was nothing left for him except the Lantern itself. Not one of its abilities, but the direct suppressive nature of it. It had suppressed the Thunder Fire Seed the same way, but that had been within his soul sea.
Using the Lantern’s power directly outside like that was extremely taxing on his soul. He did not know if it would work. But he had no other card to play. He reached for it.
The brilliant white aura of the Twilight Nether Lantern rose from his soul sea. Its pale light pressed down on the chaos, gradually forcing it still. The chaotic forces settled, but that was Su Ming’s limit.
His soul force drained rapidly. His soul sea shuddered with the strain.
But the singularity held, and that was enough for him.
He poured another stream of the Samsara Resin directly into the construct’s core with precision.
The embryonic Seed began to condense.
The cracks sealed from within. The leaking forces vanished.
The World Seed was born.
The Sovereign Will and the Dragon Will governing space and time began to merge with the World Seed itself.
Thus, the World Will was established.
Then something changed.
Not in the world but within him.
It arrived without warning.
It was knowledge, clean and whole, settling perfectly into his mind. Not insight he got from observation. Not a deduction. But simply knowing, as if what he had created had chosen to introduce itself.
He knew what it was.
A World Seed.
He knew its structure, its laws, how the World Will anchored the space and time within it, how to use that Will and govern this pocket world. The knowledge was not vast or overwhelming. It was precise. Exactly what he needed to understand what he had just made.
Thus the Baptism of Dawn completed.
It lasted no longer than a breath. When it faded, nothing in his body had changed. No new Qi, no change in his cultivation base.
The only change was the knowledge that settled into his mind as naturally as memory.
He was not certain of the cause. His Halo of Insight and Essence Sight were still active through all of it. Whether they had drawn in this mystical knowledge, he could not say.
Su Ming did not dwell on it. His body was already at its limit.
The Dragon Vein released its first strands of dense spiritual Qi; the Yang and Yin elements stabilized into a working thermal cycle. The lingering Yang and Fire laws condensed into a tiny sun for daylight, while the Yin laws condensed and scattered into the stars, taking on the night’s role without a moon.
Su Ming tested this new World Will. With a single thought, the daylight shifted into the night of the ten thousand stars, and then back to daylight again.
From the core of the newborn world, the first Breath of Creation emerged, a purple mist of raw energy of creation. It rose and scattered across the White Lotus Peak.