A few moments earlier, before Adrian and the Elyrians learned of the decree, Navira stood at the center of the grand plaza within the Inner Continent, her golden robes shifting gently beneath the artificial breeze.
The public square had been transformed into a fortified execution ground, its surface covered by overlapping runic formations while projections hovered throughout the sky, preparing to transmit the coming spectacle across the Providence Hub and the surrounding galaxies.
"Are the broadcasts live across the premium networks?" She asked.
"Yes, Mother," Tenyz replied, his eyes gleaming as he stared up at the projections floating above the plaza. "Every major channel, every public forum, and every premium network across the surrounding galaxies is broadcasting this live. No matter where in the universe that bastard is hiding, he will see it. He will know what is about to happen."
Navira nodded slowly. She tilted her head upward, gazing into the Hub's artificial sky. The atmospheric barriers that usually restricted incoming traffic had been lowered completely. The gates to the Providence Hub were thrown wide open, acting as an unmistakable invitation.
From her vantage point, she could see thousands of starships pouring into the Hub's airspace like a swarm of glittering insects. She had deliberately removed the security checkpoints for the Outer Commercial Continents, making it easy for the Elyrians and the mysterious stranger to simply walk in.
Simultaneously, the vast military of the Ethereal Providence Sect had been fully mobilized. Sect disciples who had been deployed across neighboring galaxies for missions, resource extraction, and mercenary contracts had all been urgently recalled. The Inner Continent was already packed to the brim with more disciples kept returning. A sea of purple and gold robes stretched out across the sprawling plazas and floating platforms, hundreds of thousands of elite Rule Stage disciples, all standing in disciplined formation.
"When that bastard finally appears, he will face the entire might of my sect," Navira thought.
Despite this overwhelming display of military power, the true lethal edge of this trap was completely invisible.
Apart from the roaring crowds and the mobilized armies, hiding in the deep, shadowed alcoves of the central golden spire, almost entirely phased out of physical reality, was Androxus.
The silver-skinned disciple of a Great Sect stayed still, suppressing himself. He did not emit a single trace of killing intent. He simply waited, his half-transparent eyes tracking the plaza below with the cold, dispassionate gaze of a predator observing a chessboard. He was waiting for his chance to strike from the blind spot, fully prepared to inject a lethal thread of his highly refined willforce to paralyze the anomaly the moment he was distracted.
As the minutes ticked by, the Providence Hub swelled to maximum capacity.
More and more starships flooded the docks. While the Inner Continent was fortified by the sect's disciples, the Outer Commercial Continents were literally overflowing with millions of wandering cultivators, independent merchants, and delegates from rival factions.
To the vast majority of them, this was mere entertainment. The Grand Refinement of an Elyrian Crown Prince, broadcasted live, was a spectacle of cruelty and power that drew the worst kinds of curiosity from the cosmic masses.
It was within this suffocating atmosphere of anticipation that several Elyrian scouts hidden among the crowds discovered the decree and rushed back toward the concealed sanctuary to deliver the warning.
…
Within a few moments, the space folded open, and Adrian materialized. Beside him emerged King Elyras, Mariska, Xeolze, Levi, and a handful of elite Elyrian guards.
King Elyras immediately looked down, his eyes locking onto the inner continent, towards the center of the plaza where his son was bound in suppression chains, covered in scars from endless blood extraction. The King's breath hitched, a mixture of relief that his son was still alive and agony at the sight of his torture.
"Follow me," Adrian commanded as he glided forward.
Together, they flew downward, descending directly toward the heavily fortified central plaza.
As they flew, something suddenly shifted. The Concepts of Fate and Causality, which had been anchoring his destination for days, vibrated with a strange resonance.
Adrian narrowed his eyes. The magnetic pull he had been feeling from the concepts had altered its trajectory. It was no longer coming from the golden spire as it had during his first visit.
As he moved closer to the plaza, the pull grew stronger, sharpening until Adrian could see precisely where it originated. The conceptual threads of Fate and Causality were anchored directly to the chained, bloodied figure in the center of the plaza. They were leading him straight to the Crown Prince of the Elyrians.
"What? This doesn't make any sense," Adrian thought, his mind racing to process the anomaly.
He had assumed the hub contained some ancient relic, an unread archive, or a forgotten legacy hidden by the Ethereal Providence Sect with their golden spire that would help his Origin Sect's divine concept somehow. But why were Fate and Causality tethered to a living prisoner? Were the concepts leading him here to save the prince?
That explanation felt insufficient. Adrian had already decided to protect the Elyrians before learning the prince even existed, and when he had originally asked Fate and Causality to guide him, he had specifically sought a path that would help him construct the future divine concept of the Origin Sect. There should have been no need for those concepts to pull him across such a vast distance simply to reinforce a decision he had already made.
"Is there something else hidden within the prince?" Adrian pondered, his gaze locking onto the chained figure. "A legacy? A sealed truth?"
"I never thought you would be this stupid." The booming, imperious voice of Navira cut through the sky, disrupting Adrian's internal thoughts.
Instantly, the hundreds of thousands of disciples stationed in the Inner Continent raised their heads. The millions of spectators in the Outer Continents surged toward the viewing barriers, and countless recording artifacts immediately pivoted, locking their lenses onto the small group floating high above the central plaza.
Navira hovered in the air, her divine concept already beginning to simmer beneath her skin. She looked past Adrian, her eyes scanning the empty void behind the floating Elyrians, as if searching for a tear in space that would reveal a hidden armada or an army of ancient monsters.
But there was nothing.
The sky behind them was completely empty.
Navira stared for a second, almost unable to believe her own eyes. She had assumed that since this stranger knew her power and knew about her sect, he would undoubtedly bring backup with him.
"You actually came alone," Navira mocked, a cruel laugh echoing across the plaza. "I prepared my entire sect for an invasion, and you bring me nothing but a handful of winged livestock."
Without another word, Navira expanded her domain.
A blinding sea of golden light erupted from her body, instantly swallowing the Inner Continent. The oppressive weight of her divine concept pressed down upon reality, wielding a devastating ninety percent authority.
Adrian's expression remained indifferent as his Source Domain erupted in tandem. A tranquil, indifferent wave of white-grey essence washed over the sky, colliding head-on with the golden tide.
BOOOOM!
The artificial sky of the Providence Hub groaned under the impact. The two domains literally covered the entire expanse of the Hub, grinding against one another. Because both of them had ninety percent authority, the very fabric of reality within the Hub was split. Their authority divided equally: forty-five percent under Navira's golden domain, and forty-five percent under Adrian's white-grey domain.
"You have made a huge mistake coming here alone, outsider," Navira taunted, her voice amplified by her domain, ringing like the bell of execution across the Hub. She raised her golden sword, pointing it directly at Adrian's chest. "Look beneath you! You are not just facing me. You are facing my entire sect! The arrays of this plaza, the formations of this Hub, and hundreds of thousands of my elites are locked onto your position."
Her golden eyes burned with certainty. "This is where you die today."
Adrian floated silently in the air. He kept his hands resting loosely behind his back, his posture relaxed. He slowly lowered his gaze, sweeping over the sea of purple and gold robes filling the plaza below.
"I don't see an entire sect here," Adrian replied, his voice calm, yet it sliced through the roaring of the domains with eerie clarity. He tilted his head slightly. "I barely see a few Astral Stage beings."
The sheer arrogance of the statement sent a ripple of outrage through the elite disciples below.
Navira sneered at Adrian as though staring at a dead man who had not yet realized his fate. "Has the sight of such an army destroyed what little judgment you possessed, or are you foolish enough to believe that you can simply crush all of their minds with your willforce?"
Navira had already prepared for such an attempt. Her consciousness remained spread throughout the plaza, connected to the defensive formations protecting her army. If Adrian unleashed his Anchor-stage pressure, she would intercept it and prevent even a single disciple or elder from being affected.
Adrian did not respond to her taunt. He simply looked down at the sprawling army of the Ethereal Providence Sect, an army that had subjugated galaxies and harvested sentient life for millions of years.
But the number gathered below did not even approach the force he had faced during the Andromeda War. Back then, a single command to stop had broken the minds of nearly a million cultivators. Compared to that battlefield, the army standing in the plaza was insignificant.
However, Adrian knew the same method would not be so simple here. Navira's willforce and prepared defenses could shield the lesser cultivators from an ordinary mental assault. If he attempted to crush them through raw consciousness alone, she would interfere.
A slight smile formed upon Adrian's face. He looked down upon the gathered army and spoke a single quiet command.
"Erase."
The word fell from his lips like a whisper, yet it carried the unchallengeable authority of the Source.
Because his Source domain was already active and enveloping the Hub, the Absolute Source Order triggered instantaneously.
In a fraction of a microsecond, Adrian's command forcefully stripped the forty-five percent authority that Navira had been holding. The golden light of her domain flickered and died, completely devoured by the white-grey essence as Adrian seized dominance over the space.
Navira gasped, her eyes widening in horror as she felt her connection to the reality's authority severed. She instinctually understood that a direct command had been issued.
"Negate!" Navira screamed, desperately attempting to channel her authority to block whatever was coming. But nothing happened. She had zero authority left to enforce her will. The universe simply ignored her.
And then, the command took effect.
There was no explosion or grand, blinding flash of destructive energy. In a single, breathtaking instant, every single Rule Stage disciple of the Ethereal Providence Sect standing within the Inner Continents simply ceased to exist.
Flesh, bone, blood, armor, and weapons dissolved into ash and vanished into the void before a single one of them could even register that they were dying. They had no authority to resist. They couldn't even raise a defensive barrier.
One moment, the plaza was filled with an ocean of roaring, bloodthirsty soldiers. The next moment, it was an empty wasteland.
The silence that crashed down upon the Providence Hub was so absolute that it felt as though the heartbeat of the universe itself had stopped.
Outside the Inner Continent, the millions of wandering cultivators and spectators who had been watching the broadcast stared at the sky in awe. Cups dropped from trembling hands. Conversations died in throats. No one could breathe.
In the central plaza, only a few figures remained standing.
The handful of Astral Stage elders, whose higher cultivation had spared them from the immediate purge, stood frozen like statues.
Tenyz collapsed to his knees, his jaw hanging slack, his mind completely shattering. He couldn't comprehend what had just happened. He had no knowledge of Absolute Source Order or authority plundering. To his mind, this instant erasure felt exactly like the distorted horror they had felt during the divination backlash.
It was the shadow of true eradication.
Navira floated in the air, her golden sword trembling in her grip. Her Anchor-stage mind completely stalled. She stared down at the empty, silent plaza where her entire sect's foundation had stood just a second ago.
Adrian calmly floated, his hands still resting casually behind his back. He stopped a few meters away from the trembling Sect Leader, his indifferent eyes locking onto hers.
"Now," Adrian asked softly, "does the count look right to you?"