Chapter 1957 1957. Blood-red
The hurricane rumbled. The storms thundered as they expanded throughout the world and seized as much energy as they could. Divine Demon's copy had given birth to a calamity meant to complete what Heaven and Earth didn't even dream to do. It wanted to restore the existence that they desired desperately.
The procedure's requirements in terms of energy were massive. The issue was with the multiple activities that the copy had to perform at the same time. It had to replicate what Heaven and Earth had partially tried to do before but on a larger scale.
Masses of chaotic laws carrying enough energy to satisfy even the strongest hybrids vanished in mere instants as formations appeared, activated, and generated solutions among the storms. A flow of information that even King Elbas would struggle to absorb in a single training session flowed inside Divine Demon's copy and filled it with answers about its situation.
The old cultivator didn't lie. The process was impossible, but Divine Demon's copy didn't want to approach it through the normal path. It had already decided that he would shatter his world, go back to the eighth rank, and face the breakthrough again.
The energy required to perform all of that was immense, and Divine Demon's copy could understand if everything had been a success only after the process was over. No one in the entire world would ever think about wasting so much power over such a faint hope. Most experts would struggle even to gain access to that quantity of fuel. Yet, Divine Demon's copy was different. The world bent to its will and helped its existence with everything it had.
The hurricane expanded and churned depending on the procedures happening in its insides. Inspecting its center was impossible due to the sheer size and violence of the storms, but anyone could guess that Divine Demon's copy was at its center.
The sky's radiance seemed to intensify from time to time. Those long flashes matched specific procedures that Heaven and Earth wanted to study for different reasons. The rulers were learning from Divine Demon's copy even in their dormant state, which only increased their desire to seize the expert.
The issue was that they had already reached the limits of their fairness, so they couldn't do anything there, at least when it came to hurting Divine Demon's copy. The rulers didn't want to give up on that law, which meant that they had to hope for the replica's success.
The rulers rarely relied on hope when it came to such important matters. They had the power to help Divine Demon's copy there, and it didn't take much before they decided to follow through with that idea.
The storms couldn't expand endlessly. Even Divine Demon's copy couldn't perform that miracle. The hurricane reached a point when it couldn't grow anymore, which inevitably put an end to its relentless absorption of energy.
Yet, chaotic laws came out of the sky after the hurricane starved for a few hours. Heaven and Earth released energy to fill the areas cleared by the calamity and add more power to those lands.
The new chaotic laws ended up inside the hurricane as soon as they reached the general area of the stormy regions. Heaven and Earth were adding power to a technique meant to restore their opponent's energy.
Divine Demon wasn't even a simple enemy. The "Breath" had taken him as its favored son, so the investment could go incredibly bad. Still, they were willing to take risks to have the chance to obtain something so valuable.
The old cultivator found it surprising that his body wasn't falling apart. He was stuck inside the storms, but they didn't appear interested in destroying him. They didn't even care about the energy contained in his centers of power. Yet, they didn't let him leave either, so he remained among that mess with his senses and consciousness obscured.
The expert couldn't sense almost anything, but he couldn't miss the arrival of the energy seeping out directly from the sky. He shared a deep connection with the rulers, so he could understand that Heaven and Earth had decided to help Divine Demon's copy.
The old cultivator couldn't understand the reason behind that action, but he slightly relaxed after learning that Heaven and Earth had joined the fray. The world had taken a stand, so he could enjoy his role as a spectator.
The addition of the new energy made the hurricane denser and eventually allowed it to condense into a rotating chrysalis. The structure spat out the old cultivator and other useless materials accumulated during its expansion to create the perfect cradle for the birth of Divine Demon's true world.
The old cultivator could finally expand his consciousness and study the event, but disbelief soon filled his mind. The rotating chrysalis was massive, immense even. It was so big that it didn't fit his vision from that position.
Standing near the chrysalis also required him to use some weak defensive techniques. The churning gales of chaotic laws weren't trying to affect him, but they still created an intense pulling force in the nearby areas. The old cultivator didn't want to end up in that mess again, so he did his best to protect himself.
The chrysalis never stopped spinning, but it slowly shrunk as the hours passed. A faint dangerous sensation also spread in the area. It was clear that something big was about to appear, but the old cultivator didn't know what to think. A large part of his beliefs had crumbled that day after witnessing a copy seizing control of Heaven and Earth's energy. He had lost the ability to understand what was reasonable.
The chrysalis shrunk until it reached the size of a two-meter-tall sphere. Its edges even caved to give it a shining humanoid shape identical to Divine Demon's copied version.
The process seemed to have failed, but everything changed when the figure opened its eyes. A blinding blood-red radiance came out of those organs and unleashed a type of rank 9 energy that the old cultivator had never sensed in his life.
That aura felt like the heaviest form of energy in the world, but it was also incredibly thin. It could have the texture of the air of some Mortal Lands or the density of the strongest metal in the higher plane. That strangeness in its features made it almost impossible to evaluate. The old cultivator only understood that it was in the gaseous stage of the ninth rank.
"Who are you?" The old cultivator asked as a frown appeared on his face due to his consciousness's struggles to study that aura. "Are you the copy or the real?"
Divine Demon's eyes converged on the cultivator and applied all the pressure that they were capable of. Its power was immense for an existence in the gaseous stage, but its opponent could endure it easily. The issue there was with the nature of that suppression. Its nature hurt to study.
"I didn't know Heaven and Earth held me in such high regards," Divine Demon announced in a cold voice as he stabbed his abdomen with his hand and tore out a glowing white orb. "They even tried to hide this inside me."
Divine Demon closed his hand, and the orb shattered into countless white shards that started to rotate around him. The ground, air, and space broke when he spread his arms and waited for their energy to converge in his palms. That white fuel became blood-red as soon as it entered the range of his eyes.
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Author's notes: I'll move to chaos now. Thank you for your patience.