In a cave abode in Hunyuan City.
Within a vast, empty expanse of space-time that resembled primordial chaos, the energy concentration had been reduced to its lowest level. Yet with all the disorder removed, the origin fluctuations of the surrounding space-time became ever more apparent.
A blurred figure appeared.
Countless secret patterns revolved around him like nine rivers. Five seemed "real," while the other four were somewhat "illusory."
Within the nine rivers, one "simple" secret pattern after another emerged and was subdivided anew.
For example, the river representing "matter" split into eight branches, while the one representing "time" split into three branches.
With this new division, the four "illusory" rivers came to resemble the "real" ones a little more.
And these branches continued to divide.
They divided again and again, until, at a certain level of subdivision, "runes" from different rivers actually began to overlap.
These overlapping runes also became intersections between different "rivers."
Then the divisions continued until 10,081 basic units emerged, already reduced to their "simplest" form. By now, the original "rivers" were almost impossible to distinguish, having converged into an ocean of secret patterns.
Hum!
A formless mass appeared at the center of this expanse of space-time. Like the Life Core of an innate primal chaos lifeform, it was a manifestation of the origin of this space-time.
Of course, unlike a Life Core, this origin could only be considered a tiny portion split off from the Dark Sacred Realm's origin, or a passage connected to the true origin. All it represented was the cave abode authority Dongguan had exchanged one million battle merits for.
Before beginning, Dongguan had already made it as "pure" as possible. That was why this expanse of space-time was now completely empty.
A "rune" constituting one basic unit imprinted itself onto that formless