The Void Emperor stared at Adrian for a long moment, and then he laughed, the sound deep and resonant enough to make the thick fog around them ripple outward in slow waves.
It was not the laugh of a ruler mocking an ignorant junior. It carried amusement, appreciation, and a trace of genuine approval. "I like your madness, kid," the Void Emperor said, his violet eyes gleaming like twin galaxies folding inward. "Even some young anomalies these days do not have such madness in them."
Adrian smiled slightly. To be called mad by someone like the Void Emperor was not necessarily an insult. In a universe where the highest powers had remained stagnant for billions of years, perhaps only madness could still produce movement.
The Void Emperor's amusement slowly faded, and when he spoke again, his voice carried a grave seriousness that pressed down upon the quiet grassland. "You need to believe in yourself, Adrian, but do not let that belief become arrogance. If you had said the same thing to a different Divine Stage being, you would have already been dead."
Adrian nodded, accepting the warning without argument. He understood the brutal truth in the Emperor's words. The Void Emperor might be strange, ancient, lonely, and driven by a desire to see transcendence, but he was not petty.
Another being at his level might not have been so tolerant. To other Divine Stage existences, Adrian might not be a key to the ultimate truth, but a threat, a treasure, a variable, or a future enemy to be erased before he could grow too dangerous. The fact that he could sit across from the Void Emperor and speak his ambitions openly did not mean he could treat every cosmic titan the same way.
The Void Emperor then rose from his seat. He extended one hand toward Adrian, and from the center of his palm, a sleek purple card appeared. It was thin, simple, and smooth, shaped almost exactly like a UNI-Credit card, yet the violet surface carried a depth that made it feel as though an entire galaxy had been compressed into a piece of polished card.
"Have this as a little payment for showing me transcendence in the future," the Void Emperor said, his tone once again light, though the object floating above his palm carried a significance Adrian could not easily dismiss.
Adrian extended his hand and accepted the card. The card felt cool between his fingers, neither heavy nor light, and at first glance, it seemed almost ordinary. There were no elaborate inscriptions on its surface. Yet the moment Adrian's skin touched it, he sensed something terrifyingly deep sealed within.
The Void Emperor watched him examine it and said, "If you are ever in real danger, break that card, and I will be there."
Adrian's gaze lifted from the card to the ancient sovereign.
"I am not joking, Adrian," the Void Emperor continued, "You are the only key I have, and I do not wish to see your life lost because you did something crazy or arrogant before you could show me the ultimate truth of existence."
Adrian's fingers tightened slightly around the card. He did not like relying on another person's protection, especially not after rejecting the Void Sect so firmly, but he also understood the value of what had just been placed in his hands.
A single card that could summon the Void Emperor was perhaps more valuable than the accumulated treasury of an entire major power. In any situation where even Adrian's Source, his willforce, his mana, and all his contingencies failed, this card could be the final line between survival and destruction.
Whether he ever intended to use it was another matter, but refusing it now purely out of pride would have been foolish.
"And here is a little warning for what is to come," the Void Emperor said, his voice lowering slightly. "Three Astral Stage envoys from different Major Sects are already heading toward your Andromeda Galaxy. They should arrive in a few weeks, and they are coming for you. To hire you, just as I did."
"I may have let you go," the Void Emperor continued, "but they are not me. To a Major Sect, an anomaly of your magnitude, someone who commands a Prime Arcane Concept and awakens the Chime of Consciousness upon ascension, is an asset that must be controlled. If they cannot recruit you, they will not simply walk away and allow a rival sect to claim you. If you reject them, they could destroy your entire galaxy just to erase the variable you represent."
The words settled between them.
"This is how the universe works, Adrian," the Void Emperor stated. "I hope you will survive. For your sake, and for the sake of the answers I have waited billions of years to see."
Adrian looked at the ancient sovereign, the purple card resting between his fingers. "I will survive," he said. "And I will not need to break this card to do it."
The Void Emperor's lips curved with faint amusement. "We shall see," he said with a low chuckle, as if Adrian's stubbornness was exactly what he had expected and exactly what he found entertaining.
Then the Void Emperor slowly raised his hand. He extended a single finger toward the empty air between them. Just as he had done when pulling Adrian across the vastness of space before, the Void Emperor tapped his finger lightly against the invisible fabric of the void.
TAP!
The sound was impossibly soft, a single gentle tap that should not have carried beyond the small wooden table, yet it shattered the world. The damp green grass, the thick impenetrable fog, the wooden table, the steaming cup of tea, and even the pale sky above fractured into millions of jagged pieces, dissolving like a mirror breaking apart and falling into the abyss.
Adrian blinked.
His vision was blinded for a fraction of a microsecond. When his vision cleared, the damp grass was gone. The wooden table, the cup, the Void Emperor, and the vast isolated world had vanished entirely.
He found himself back inside the Crimson Spire, standing in the exact same place where he had been before everything began.
Before Adrian could fully process the transition, firm hands gripped his shoulders and shook him. Hestia was already in front of him, her pale golden eyes wide with genuine alarm, her crimson robes fluttering slightly as she desperately tried to rouse him.
"What happened?" Hestia demanded, her voice tight with an uncharacteristic panic. "Why are you standing like a statue? Is something wrong, Adrian?"
Adrian stared at her, his mind reeling as the terrifying truth of the situation crashed into him. He looked down at his own hands, seeing the purple card in his palms, then back at Hestia.
Adrian realized what had happened. His body had been here the entire time. He had not physically vanished from the Crimson Spire. The damp grass beneath his feet, the warmth of the cup against his palms, the chill fog curling around the wooden table, the oppressive yet calm presence of the Void Emperor, and the entire conversation that had felt utterly real had not been physical teleportation.
It had all happened purely within his consciousness.
Adrian's breathing hitched slightly as the sheer magnitude of what had occurred settled over him. To forcibly pull someone's consciousness across billions of light-years, to construct a mental reality so perfectly flawless that it was indistinguishable from the physical world, to make touch, warmth, scent, distance, pressure, and presence feel completely real without the target realizing their body had never moved, required a level of mastery that defied everything Adrian currently understood.
"This should be the power of Divine Stage beings," Adrian thought, his gaze sharpening as the pieces connected in his mind. "The true power of mastering consciousness, mana, and the physical body."
He had just glimpsed the kind of existence standing beyond the Astral Stage. For the first time since ascending, Adrian understood that his path toward the Origin Sect would not simply be difficult because of enemies and politics.
It would be difficult because the beings already standing near the top of the universe were far more terrifying than he had imagined.
Hestia's grip tightened slightly on Adrian's shoulders when he did not answer her immediately. The fear in her pale golden eyes did not fade, and even though she was now an Astral Stage being, even though she had just stood above the Andromeda Galaxy as its new sovereign, in that moment she looked only like someone terrified that the person before her had been touched by something she could not fight.
"Adrian," she said, her voice softer now, but still edged with fear. "Talk to me."
He slowly raised his gaze to meet hers, "I am fine," he said, though even to his own ears, the words sounded far too simple for what had just happened.
"Fine?" Hestia repeated, her brows drawing together as she studied his face. "You were standing like this for some time now, completely unresponsive. Do not hide it from me, Adrian. Tell me what is going on."
Adrian looked at her for a long moment. There were too many things to explain, and ordinary words felt insufficient for what had just happened. How was he supposed to calmly summarize that the Void Emperor, a Divine Stage ruler of a Great Sect, had pulled his consciousness into a perfectly constructed mental reality, spoken to him about the history of cultivation, revealed the stagnant ceiling of the universe, explained why Adrian might be the key to transcendence, and warned him that three Major Sect envoys were already coming toward Andromeda? Even if he explained everything, it would take time, and some parts would sound almost unbelievable.
Instead of answering her directly, Adrian reached forward, gently pulled her into his arms, and leaned toward her.
Their lips met.