Deep within the shadowed alcoves of the central golden spire.
"No, no, no, Impossible!" Androxus stammered. He stared through the viewports at the empty expanse of the central plaza below, unable to comprehend what he had just witnessed.
"How? How did he command the Prime Arcane Concept of Null? Even Master can't do this!" Androxus whispered to the empty room.
As an Anchor-stage disciple of a Great Sect, Androxus had been granted access to the deepest archives of universal truths. He knew of the foundational pillars of reality, and the Prime Arcane Concept of Null was a myth, a power that even Divine Stage sovereigns could not effortlessly wield. Yet, he had just watched a supposed junior invoke it.
"And what was that authority technique? How could he plunder others' authority?" Androxus thought. Ultimately, he was within the hub and had been residing within the overlapping boundaries of both Navira and Adrian's domains, allowing him to clearly feel their authority and techniques. The moment Adrian acted, Androxus had witnessed everything. He had felt the forty-five percent authority forcefully ripped from Navira's grasp, leaving her an impotent mortal before the laws of reality.
Even if Androxus forced himself to accept that Adrian had somehow wielded the Prime Arcane Concept of Null, the authority-plundering technique remained beyond comprehension. Across all the accumulated knowledge preserved by his Great Sect, no such method had ever been recorded. Authority was the recognition granted by reality to a cultivator and their divine concept. It could be contested, suppressed, or diminished by another domain, but it could not simply be seized and transferred in this way.
At least, that was what the universe had always believed.
"Is he truly from the Heaven-Weaving Pavilion?" Androxus muttered as he paced through the shadows, his translucent feet phasing partially into the floor with every step. "They possess arts capable of obscuring Fate, but they have never demonstrated an ability to steal authority. Unless they developed such a technique and successfully hid it from every other Great Sect, but why would they entrust a secret of this magnitude to a mere junior?"
His pacing stopped abruptly as another possibility entered his mind.
"Wait. Is that person even a junior disciple?" Androxus whispered, his silver eyes narrowing. "Master called him a junior, but even Master possessed very little information when he reached that conclusion."
Damian's deduction had been built upon fragments of Fate, reports from Navira, and the assumption that the divination backlash resembled the protective methods of the Heaven-Weaving Pavilion. There had been no verified identity or confirmed connection to Elder Milan. They had constructed an entire explanation because it fit the political rivalries they already understood.
Androxus forced his mind to calm, arranging the available possibilities. "Either this person truly belongs to the Heaven-Weaving Pavilion, in which case they are concealing a technique capable of overturning the universal understanding of authority and planning something far greater than a minor proxy conflict, or he has no connection to the Pavilion at all and originates from a hidden faction we have never encountered."
Curiosity began to rise within him, followed by the thrill of encountering something capable of defying the stagnant knowledge he had accumulated within his Sect.
"Interesting," Androxus murmured, his lips gradually spreading into a grin. A sudden laugh escaped him as he looked down at the devastation below. "It has been far too long since I travelled beyond the sect. I never expected this assignment to become so entertaining."
…
Back within the plaza, Adrian floated motionless in the air, his white-grey robes undisturbed. However, beneath his calm exterior, Adrian felt the severe price for his actions.
Nearly twenty percent of his total mana and a significant portion of his willforce had been depleted from him in that single instant. With his Mana Sea recently expanded to one billion mana units, twenty percent equated to a massive two hundred million mana units drained from his body. It was a suffocating toll, leaving a dull, throbbing ache at the edges of his Anchor-stage mind.
From the moment Adrian had entered the universe, he had rarely used his Absolute Source Order. He hadn't tried to erase anyone on this scale, not even in the Andromeda supremacy war, or when he previously fought against Navira in their first clash. At the end of the day, the Absolute Source Order was just a technique that let him use a direct command while simultaneously plundering the enemy's authority. But apart from that advantage, he still had to pay the universal price for whatever command he gave.
And for the 'Erase' command, Adrian truly had no idea what the exact cost would be, as he didn't get a proper, safe situation for him to test it before. Now, with his recently exponentially increased mana and willforce reserves, he finally had this chance to test it. He did it cautiously, deliberately not touching any Astral Stage beings with the command, choosing instead to restrict the erasure exclusively to the hundreds of thousands of Rule Stage disciples filling the inner continent.
This first grand-scale test gave him a clear idea of his boundaries: he could erase a few hundred thousand Rule Stage cultivators at the cost of around twenty percent of his massive reserves. It was an unparalleled method of crowd control, but one that he could not spam endlessly against true cosmic armies without risking total depletion.
Adrian slowly exhaled, steadying his breathing, and looked at the floating Navira in front of him.
The Sect Leader of the Ethereal Providence Sect was staring down at the empty Inner Continent, her golden sword trembling in her grip, and even her magnificent golden divine domain had already disappeared. The hundreds of thousands of elite disciples she had summoned, the very foundation of her Lesser Major Sect's military might, had been turned to dust without a single scream.
"Huh, never expected I could break her mind this easily..." Adrian thought, his eyes observing the total collapse of her posture.
The best way one could win a fight in the higher realms was by psychologically breaking someone. Even if a cultivator resided in the Anchor stage of consciousness mastery, if their mind was broken by overwhelming trauma or despair, they couldn't wield their mana and even their willforce properly. Navira's unshakable will as a sovereign had been inextricably tied to her sect and her absolute control. By deleting her army in a microsecond, Adrian had shattered that anchor, rendering her mental defenses fragile and full of gaping holes.
Adrian didn't waste a single moment. He knew better than to give a cornered Astral Stage sovereign time to recover her wits or attempt a suicidal retaliation. His white-grey Source sword materialized in his grip, and Adrian thrust it forward with blinding speed.
"AHHHHHHHHH!" Navira screamed in agonizing pain as Adrian's sword thrust into her stomach.
Adrian pulled out his blade and struck her chest with his hands, grabbing her Astral Core as he muttered, "Devour!"
Dark tendrils appeared from Adrian's hand and devoured her Astral Core. The golden light within Navira's eyes flared wildly for a fraction of a second before dying out forever. The vast accumulation of her millions of years of cultivation, her mastery over her divine concept, all of it went to Adrian.
"I prepared so much for you. Never thought you would die this easily," Adrian muttered coldly, leaning in slightly as he pulled his hand out of Navira's chest. Her lifeless body immediately lost its buoyancy, collapsing down through the air and crashing onto the cold stone of the plaza ground.
From the edges of the execution platform, a broken wail tore through the silence.
"Mother! Mother!" Tenyz screamed, running frantically towards Navira's fallen body, his mind still not in a proper state. He collapsed to his knees beside her, his hands hovering over the gaping wound in her chest, unable to comprehend that his mother had been slaughtered like a common cultivator.
The entire Providence Hub stared in shock. No one among the millions of spectators watching from the Outer Continents or viewing the live broadcasts expected a Lesser Major Sect Leader to die just like that.
High above the artificial sky, the starships that were constantly arriving at the hub carrying merchants, delegates, and returning Ethereal Providence Sect disciples suddenly halted. Several starships belonging to the sect's own disciples had just breached the atmospheric barriers. The moment they witnessed the scene of everything happening, their invincible army erased into nothingness, and even their supreme leader being killed just like that, they stopped their starships and immediately began reversing their thrusters, desperately retreating.
Panic spread through the Providence Hub like a plague. The surviving disciples understood that their sect could no longer exist as it had before. Without Navira, the remaining Astral Stage elders possessed neither the power nor the authority to defend the Hub from the unknown monster who had erased their armies. Remaining within the territory of a fallen sovereign was no longer loyalty. It was suicide.
Some starships fled because their crews intended to warn the scattered strongholds of the Yiphraen race. Others retreated simply to preserve their own lives, abandoning wealth, assignments, and generations of sect pride in their desperation to escape the slaughter. The ordered traffic lanes above the Hub disintegrated into chaos as vessels collided, folded space recklessly, and tore into the intergalactic void as quickly as their engines and formations could carry them.
Adrian didn't even glance toward the fleeing ships. Rather, his entire attention was fixed upon the central golden spire as he sensed a hidden presence there.
He turned towards the floating King Elyras, Princess Mariska, and the other elite Elyrians who were hovering in the air, still paralyzed by the impossible scale of violence they had just witnessed.
"Deal with the remaining enemies and release the Crown Prince," Adrian instructed, his tone as casual as if he were asking them to sweep dust from a floor. "I have another important matter to handle."
Before any of them could respond, Adrian's figure disappeared through a subtle fold of spatial rules, leaving the stunned Elyrians suspended above the bloodstained execution ground.
The first one who recovered from this display of power was Mariska. She blinked, her wings fluttering as her mind snapped back to the immediate reality. She looked down at the weeping Tenyz, then at the other Astral Stage elders who stood frozen in shock, and finally, her gaze locked onto her brother, chained to the execution crucible.
She flew down like a falling star, her divine concept flaring around her hands as she slashed the suppression chains. The heavy, light-absorbing metal shattered under her assault. The Prince's battered body slumped forward as he was freed from the chains.
Mariska caught him before he hit the ground, her arms wrapping around his scarred shoulders. She made him seated upon the floor, her eyes burning with unshed tears and newly ignited wrath.
"Rest now, Brother," Mariska whispered, her voice trembling with a mix of sorrow and wrath as she gently lowered him to the stone. "Your chains are broken. Give me a few moments. I will finish the remaining Yiphraen filth before we leave this place."
The Elyrian Prince coughed, a weak but proud smile breaking through the blood and scars on his face. He reached up with a trembling hand, brushing his fingers against her luminescent wings.
"You have grown, Mariska," the prince rasped, his voice filled with pride despite his ruined condition. "Go and make those bastards pay for everything they have done to our people."
With that, Mariska moved. Her grief transmuted into a lethal killing intent. She turned slowly, her gaze locking onto Tenyz, who was still weeping over his mother's corpse. The remaining Elyrian elites descended from the sky, landing in the perimeter around the surviving, defenseless Yiphraen elders. The era of their subjugation was over, and the time for a bloody reckoning had arrived.
…
Deep within the central golden spire, Androxus watched the events unfolding below. His mission was to save his master's race, but the situation had moved far beyond anything they had imagined. More importantly, Androxus was still not sure if this person was from the Heaven-weaving pavilion or from a hidden faction.
"I need to find more information about him before doing anything," Androxus thought.
Suddenly, a calm, indifferent voice bloomed in the very center of the chamber he was hiding in.
"Who are you?"
Androxus spun around with such speed that the surrounding shadows distorted.
Standing within the deepest darkness of the chamber, looking at him with an expression of mild curiosity, was the white-grey-robed figure who had just erased an army and killed Navira.
Adrian had found him.