Floating amidst the intergalactic void, Adrian didn't immediately start to move.
Escaping the immediate borders of the Andromeda Galaxy was only the first step. He still had yet to figure out exactly where to go, and there was another, far more pressing matter to deal with first. If he intended to travel through regions governed by Major Sects or explore unknown territories, walking around with his true face was an invitation for an intergalactic manhunt. He needed to disappear entirely, not just in presence, but in identity.
He expanded his Source domain once again, letting the white-grey essence ripple out to encompass the immediate vacuum of space, and issued a direct command to reality, "Change my face structure; it should not resemble my own face".
Reality obeyed in a fraction of a second. Immediately, Adrian felt an immense, blinding pain bloom across his face as his underlying bone structure violently shifted and broke beneath his skin to accommodate the command.
Cartilage snapped and reformed, the jawline broadened, the cheekbones angled themselves differently, and the entire muscular structure of his face rewired itself in a gruesome symphony of biological manipulation dictated by absolute authority. Within seconds, the excruciating transformation ceased, and Adrian's face looked completely like a different person. His previously sharp and distinct features had melted away into an appearance that was entirely unremarkable, the kind of face that one could pass in a crowded UNI-Hub plaza a thousand times without ever remembering it.
He ran a hand over his newly constructed jawline, testing the unfamiliar contours of his own skin. He accessed his internal mana reserves to check the toll of the action. The cost for this direct command was something very low that Adrian didn't even need to care much about. Altering mere flesh and bone, even permanently, was an incredibly simple task for reality compared to masking a spatial trajectory against the observation arrays of a Major Sect.
"One problem is solved. Now I need to decide where I need to go," Adrian thought, his eyes narrowing as he gazed out into the abyss.
The universe is truly vast, and just floating here, Adrian could see countless galaxies suspended in the dark like islands of glittering jewels. The sheer magnitude of existence lay bare before him.
Most of these swirling masses of stars were either entirely empty ones, devoid of any meaningful cultivation civilization, or ones like the Andromeda Galaxy, ruled by minor sects struggling in their own isolated ponds. And then there were the nearest ones that were owned by the major sects, places like the Kyros, Vanguard, and Oryx galaxies.
The brilliant, domineering lights of those specific galaxies seemed to pulse with a different kind of intensity, representing the immense power, resources, and ancient bloodlines of the Starlight Sanctum, the Cerulean Spear Sect, and the Veiled Horizon Sect.
But it was not the end; after that, stretching far beyond the limits of ordinary perception, there were many more galaxies, hidden structures, and cosmic anomalies waiting to be discovered. The universe did not simply stop at the borders of the factions he already knew.
Right now, the overarching purpose of this solitary journey was to comprehend more arcane concepts and gain the inspiration required to create a unique divine concept for the Origin Sect. A sect could only truly stake its claim in the universe and forge an undeniable identity if its foundation was built upon a divine concept that belonged to no one else, a signature of essence that proved its legitimacy.
Adrian already knew the specific arcane concepts that the formidable Void Sect used for its signature divine concepts. Their first divine concept was meticulously made from Fire, Ice, Space, Shadow, and Gravity. And their second divine concept, the one that elevated them further into the realms of the Astral Stage, was made of Void, Entropy, Silence, Erosion, and Boundary.
Even Adrian had experimented with building divine concepts during his countless cultivation sessions inside the time formation, and he had successfully built so many ultimate-tier divine concepts up until now.
While they were not fully mastered to the level of producing ultimate-level divine spells, he had at least assembled those conceptual structures within the boundless chambers of his Source Seed. He had merged, shattered, and rebuilt the rules of reality time and time again, learning how concepts naturally harmonized and how they violently rejected one another.
And now, all of this accumulated knowledge acted like a grand, cosmic blueprint, sparking a profound idea within his mind. Adrian wanted to make the Origin Sect's divine concept something utterly unprecedented.
He did not just want a concept that excelled in one specific domain of combat or utility; he wanted a foundation that defied the restrictive, compartmentalized laws of traditional cultivation. Using this new, unified concept, his people should be able to teleport across the void, heal lethal wounds instantly, move faster than the eye could track, predict enemy attacks before they happened, unleash apocalyptic destructive force, and accomplish many more things simultaneously.
If someone else, even an ancient elder from a Great Sect, heard of his internal thoughts right now, they would simply regard Adrian as a mindless, crazy idiot.
The fundamental laws of the universe dictated that there cannot be a divine concept that does too many things at one time. Arcane concepts carry their own distinct wills, their own rigid definitions of reality. Forcing too many contradicting rules, like the restorative nature of healing and the annihilation of destructive force, into a single, stabilized Rule Core was a recipe for instantaneous self-destruction. The conflicting frequencies of such a core would tear a cultivator's body apart.
But Adrian exactly wanted to defy that. If he could find the right overarching framework, the perfect conceptual anchor, he could weave all of these impossible abilities together.
However, doing such a monumental thing would require an extreme level of knowledge. It was not merely a matter of throwing concepts together and hoping they stuck.
And Adrian himself lacked knowledge of multiple domains. If he wanted to use the Time concept to grant his people the ability to manipulate temporal speed and evade attacks effortlessly, he himself didn't even have the full comprehension of it yet. His comprehension of Time, up until now, was only at the basic galactic level. He could cast a Temporal Veil to accelerate his own perception, but he lacked the advanced understanding required to seamlessly fuse Time into a multi-layered, ultimate-tier divine concept.
And there were countless other highly complex concepts he needed to master, and then he had to figure out the whole underlying structure of forming two massively complicated divine concepts that could eventually merge for the Astral Stage. This was a terrifyingly large process. Roaming randomly across this vast, infinite universe, hopping from one star system to another in the blind hope of stumbling upon ancient relics or rare concept crystals, would only make things delay.
He merely had a one-year time limit to do this before he had to return and fulfill his diplomatic obligations and public schedule. He could not afford to waste a single day wandering through empty space or getting bogged down in the petty politics of minor galaxies.
He needed a way to decide his path, a method of navigation which would naturally give him more advantage and lead him directly to the knowledge he sought.
Adrian closed his eyes, shutting out the breathtaking view of the spiraling galaxies before him. He reached deep into himself, sinking his awareness into the infinite, white-grey expanse of his Source Seed.
Within that vast internal world, hundreds of chambers glowed with the radiant light. His consciousness bypassed many concepts, moving directly into the chambers where Fate and Causality rested.
The chamber of Fate pulsed with a mysterious, golden-white light. Next to it, the newly formed chamber of Causality, the Prime Arcane Concept he had wrested from the very fabric of the Virelith Galaxy, shimmered with an intricate, deep golden radiance.
Adrian anchored his willforce to both chambers simultaneously. He commanded them, "Guide me!"
Immediately, in the physical universe outside, a breathtaking golden wave of energy rippled out from his body. The pulse of light swept through the dark vacuum of space, illuminating the stray cosmic dust and bending the ambient starlight. The will of both Fate and Causality awakened simultaneously, resonating with his command and working perfectly on behalf of Adrian to help him navigate the cosmos.
Adrian's vision was fundamentally altered. The physical universe of stars and black emptiness faded away, replaced by an overlaid tapestry of incomprehensible complexity. Adrian could perceive the actual, physical causality chains connecting events across the cosmos, and he could observe the delicate, shimmering probability threads branching out into infinite, uncountable futures.
As Fate and Causality worked together, the threads began to shift and weave. He saw paths that led to dead, barren galaxies where he would waste centuries finding nothing. He saw threads that plunged him directly into the heart of a Major Sect's ambush, ending in a catastrophic war he was not yet fully prepared to fight. He saw vectors that offered mediocre knowledge, giving him only standard concepts like Ash or Friction that would not serve his ultimate ambition.
But amidst the chaotic tangle of infinite possibilities, the Prime Arcane Concept of Causality began to isolate the exact cause-and-effect relationships required to reach his goal. Fate illuminated the resonance of his desires. The sprawling web of futures violently collapsed, the dead ends crumbling into ash, until only a few radiant threads remained.
And soon, the golden energy rippling around him in the void slowly faded, and a sense of certainty settled within his mind. Adrian felt a distinct, magnetic pull from a particular direction as he floated in the intergalactic void. It was not a physical force dragging his body, but a conceptual tether anchoring his consciousness to a specific sector of the universe hidden far beyond the immediate clusters of the Vanguard or Kyros galaxies.
He immediately knew that this specific path possessed the highest probability of success for his planned journey. Whatever lay at the end of that conceptual thread, be it an ancient ruin harboring the complete truths of the Time concept, a hidden faction hoarding forgotten Prime Arcane concepts, or a cosmic phenomenon capable of granting the exact epiphany he required, it was exactly what the Origin Sect needed to cement its identity.
With a fierce, unrestrained smile spreading across his newly altered face, Adrian kicked the invisible floor of the void, treating the vacuum of space like solid ground, and dashed towards that direction! His body blurred into a streak of white-grey light, tearing through the expanse as he set forth to conquer the deeper mysteries of the universe.