As preparations entered their third month, the Alliance's various efforts had begun to bear fruit. All one hundred thousand elite Desolate Guards had mastered the foundational methods of the Desolate Origin Fusion Chapter, and their Dao auras now carried a faint gray hue; the ten thousand sets of Origin Fusion Desolate armor and weapons forged by the Rock Spirit Race had been fully distributed, gleaming with steady luster; the Star Sea Guardian Array's dual-warning system had been fully activated, and the defensive lines across the Star Sea's northern and southern territories had also been reinforced.
Yet Shen Hao did not relax because of this. He knew full well that the threat of the Desolate Realm lay not only in its military strength, but also in the erosion of Dao Hearts caused by its path of "unification." Dark energy was external destruction, while desolation was internal assimilation. Once a cultivator's Dao Heart wavered and they accepted the concept of "Desolate Unification," the Alliance would collapse without a fight.
That day, Shen Hao went alone to the Enlightenment Hall of the Myriad Origins Pavilion. Unlike before, he did not immediately sit cross-legged in meditation. Instead, he walked to the Origin Jade Platform at the center of the hall and placed the Origin Siphoning Crystal in its middle. The crystal's gray patterns echoed the platform's seven-colored runes, and the energy throughout the Enlightenment Hall became subtly altered—the inclusive force of the Star Sea Origin intertwined with the unifying force of the Desolate Rules, forming an energy field that was both contradictory and balanced.
Shen Hao sat cross-legged before the jade platform and slowly closed his eyes. He was about to temper his Dao Heart, deliberately drawing in the intent of the Desolate Rules to test whether his Great Dao of Origin Fusion was