Chapter 388: Blue print of the new cultivation system

Chapter 388: Blue print of the new cultivation system

Ethan Hunt stood upon the desolate, silent world, staring into the cosmic void. The memory of those crimson eyes was burned into his mind like a brand on a soul. He had played their game.

He had climbed their ladders. He had been a "genius" by their definitions. But now, he knew the truth. He was a goldfish in a bowl, and the bowl was sitting on a table in a room he was never meant to see.

He did not just want to jump out of the bowl. He wanted to shatter the glass.

For the next month, Ethan became a ghost across the realities. He moved with a cold, mechanical efficiency that bordered on the divine. He slipped between the layers of reality, hunting the candidates of the Eternal Domain with the focus of a predator.

In thirty days, he had traversed thousands of realities. Two thousand candidates, beings who were considered the pinnacles of their respective worlds, fell before his blade. Their blood, rich with primordial power and unique genetic codes, was absorbed into his Omni-Bloodline.

But the universe, or the system that governed it, eventually pushed back.

Space itself seemed to thicken around him. A crushing weight settled on his shoulders, and the colorful tunnels of reality travel turned gray and stagnant. The Will of the Eternal Domain had detected his excessive movement. He had hunted too much, too fast.

A notification flickered in his vision.

[Travel restricted. Cooldown period: 10 days.]

"So, you’ve noticed me," he whispered.

But it was too late for them to stop the momentum. Inside his body, his Omni-Bloodline was screaming. It had evolved past its previous limitations, becoming a swirling ocean of potential.

He had gathered over two hundred unique, high tier bloodlines in this month alone. He could feel his very cells rearranging, becoming something that was not quite "life" anymore, but something closer to a fundamental force.

Beside him, floating in the void, was the Space Cube. The artifact was encased in a thick, pulsating cocoon of black and gold energy.

Cracks were beginning to spider web across the surface, leaking a scent that smelled like the birth of a world. It was evolving into a Chaos Rank Artifact.

Ethan sat cross legged, watching the cocoon. He had time. And for the first time in his life, he was not going to use that time to "level up" in the way they expected.

"If I keep cultivating their way," Ethan thought, "I will only become the biggest decimal between 1 and 2. I will be 1.9999999... forever. I need to reach 2. I need to become an integer."

He closed his eyes and began to draft the blueprint for his own destruction, and his rebirth.

He looked at the laws he had mastered. The Law of Fate. The Law of Karma. The Law of Space. To every other being, these were the ultimate powers. To Ethan, they were now shackles.

The laws were the rules of the house. If you mastered the Law of Fate, you were still just a master within the house. The person who built the house did not need the Law of Fate. They were the ones who wrote the law in the first place.

"I will not be a master of the law," Ethan decided. "I will be the void where the law does not apply."

His plan was a masterstroke of cosmic contradiction. He would create a cultivation system based on his Infinite Origin Essence, but it would not give him "strength" in the traditional sense. In the current system, strength was a number, a measurement of how much energy you could exert within the reality.

Ethan’s new system would have 3,000 layers.

In every world, in every reality he had visited, there were 3,000 fundamental laws that held existence together. These were the threads of the cage.

"Every day," Ethan whispered, his eyes glowing with a terrifying light, "my system will cancel 0.1% of one law. It will erase that law’s influence over my existence."

It was a slow, agonizing process of deletion. He was not building a palace. He was digging a hole out from under the walls.

The logic was perfect. If the "Superior Beings" at point 2 used the Law of Fate to track him, but Ethan had cancelled the Law of Fate within his own body, he would be invisible. He would not be "hiding" from fate. He simply would not have a fate to be tracked.

According to his math, it would take 3 million days, roughly 8,200 years, to fully cancel all 3,000 laws. To a mortal, that was an eternity. To a being like Ethan, it was a blink of an eye.

But there was a catch. A beautiful, hidden trap for his observers.

As he cancelled 0.1% of a law every day, the "friction" caused by his existence resisting the universe would generate a secondary effect. To compensate for the loss of a cosmic anchor, his system would grant him a surge of power equal to a level from where he would start his new cultivation.

This was the distraction.

To the watchers, it would look like he was still gaining power, still playing the game, still becoming a "bigger decimal." They would see his strength rising and think he was just another ambitious ant. They would not notice that the nature of his power was changing. He was not gaining strength. He was gaining Independence.

"And then," Ethan’s smile grew cold, "there is the final piece. The Law that does not exist."

He knew he could not just be "nothing." To survive outside the loop, he needed a core. He needed a law that the creators of this reality had never thought of, or perhaps were afraid to create.

"The Law of Infinity," he declared.

The current infinity he lived in was a "bounded infinity," the infinite numbers between 1 and 2. His Law of Infinity would be an Unbounded Infinity. It would be a law that stated: There is no limit, and there is no ceiling.

He would integrate this Law of Infinity into his very marrow. It would be the new foundation of his 3,000 layer system.

Suddenly, a loud CRACK echoed through the void.

Ethan turned his head. The cocoon around the Space Cube had shattered.

Instead of the golden light of the system, a deep, swirling purple black mist poured out. It did not illuminate the void. It swallowed the light that was already there. The cube was gone. In its place floated a small, jagged fragment of what looked like solidified darkness.

[Warning: Chaos Rank Artifact ’Void Heart of the Beginning’ has been birthed.]

[Detection: This artifact exists outside the recorded history of the Eternal Domain.]

[WORLD ANNOUNCEMENT]

[A Nexus Event has been triggered.]

[Aspirant: Ethan Hunt has obtained a chaos rank artifact.]

[Authority Granted: 10 percent of the Throne of Destiny.]

Instantly the thorne behind his back became even larger and more vivid.

Ethan reached out and grabbed the fragment. It did not feel cold or hot.

"Perfect," Ethan said. "A tool that does not belong here, for a man who is leaving."

"You think the Throne is the prize," Ethan thought, standing up and letting the Chaos Artifact sink into his chest. "But to me, the Throne is just the exit sign."