In the Destiny Study Room, Rosen casually flipped through the Book of Fate and Creation.
Having converted his Origin Source Seed into a Destiny Source Seed, he effortlessly took control of the Destiny Study Room.
What he could do, the Old Gods who controlled the Cosmic Source Seed could naturally do as well.
However, none of them had ever taken control of the Destiny Study Room. The reason, perhaps, was that there existed only one such room—no matter who claimed it, the other two would object. Thus, the Destiny Study Room had remained unclaimed until now.
But that didn't mean they had done nothing. The Destiny Source Seeds within the Book of Fate and Creation were already incomplete.
Of the ten Destiny Source Seeds, only nine remained. The one that had vanished was the core of them all.
Without that core seed, the power of the Destiny Study Room had dropped a full tier.
That missing Destiny Source Seed had likely been divided up by the Old Gods.
The portion the Old Gods held had been largely absorbed into the Destiny Tablet, and later a part of it was integrated into the Heart of the Universe. This was the key that allowed the Heart of the Universe to grant Rosen the Cosmic Source Seed. In a way, without the Old Gods' Destiny Tablet, there would be no Rosen as he was today.
Rosen approached the Destiny Bookshelf, cautiously examining it.
He had once believed the Old Gods were incapable of controlling the Destiny Study Room—thus, the schemes that Apocalypse had set in motion using the room had succeeded.
But if the Old Gods could control the Destiny Study Room, why had they allowed Apocalypse's plan to unfold? Why had they permitted his birth, allowed him to seize the Time Source Seed? Either his entire life had been under the Old Gods' control from the start… or the Destiny Bookshelf was even more powerful than the Destiny Study Room.
Sure enough, when Rosen attempted to take control of the Destiny Bookshelf, even with a complete Destiny Source Seed transformed from the Origin Seed, he failed.
He could control the Study Room, but not the Bookshelf—and it seemed the same applied to the Old Gods.
Every being who read the Book of Fate and Creation would have a fate replica generated on the Destiny Bookshelf. Clearly, the Destiny Bookshelf might be an existence far more terrifying than the Study Room itself. Perhaps this was also one of the reasons why the Old Gods had never seized control of it.
Rosen's Eternal Will transformed into countless Origin Broodmothers, wrapping layer upon layer around the Destiny Bookshelf.
Analysis failed. Infiltration failed. Destruction failed. He tried every method using the Origin Broodmothers, but all efforts ended in failure.
Rosen was absolutely certain—this was no Primordial-level object.
It was likely something that had transcended the Primordial level, even transcended the universe itself. Just as Eternal beings had their strengths and weaknesses, so too did the Primordial Lifeforms. The most powerful among them had truly transcended the universe. Could it be that such a being had left behind the Destiny Study Room and this Bookshelf just to store some fate replicas?
Just as Rosen was racking his brains to no avail, he sensed something and put down the Book of Fate and Creation, leaving the Study Room.
He didn't want to get trapped inside—what if the next one to enter was one of the Old Gods?
Besides, there was plenty of time to study the Destiny Bookshelf. Rushing wouldn't yield any breakthroughs.
After returning to the Sacred Temple, Rosen once again had a sudden premonition.
Due to the prolonged transformation of the Origin Seed into ten Destiny Source Seeds, anytime someone used the power of destiny to investigate him, he could instantly sense it. Combined with the fact that someone had entered the Destiny Study Room after him, it wasn't hard to guess that this person was using the Book of Fate and Creation to probe him.
Rosen felt a strong impulse—he wanted to return to the Destiny Study Room and see who was flipping through the book.
As long as he didn't send his true body, sacrificing an Eternal clone wouldn't be a real loss.
Especially now that he had mastered the Holy Art of Myriad Forms, he could perfectly frame anyone he wished.
Rosen released an Eternal clone with the strength of an Undying God-Demon. Instantly creating such a clone was still a significant burden for him.
The Eternal clone activated the Holy Art of Myriad Forms and in the blink of an eye had turned into Immortal Particle.
He hadn't killed Immortal Particle, nor had he taken the three Causality Source Seeds in his possession. That was because Causality Source Seeds could block the probing of the Book of Fate and Creation, making Immortal Particle a perfect scapegoat for critical moments.
Rosen injected Immortal Particle's memories into the Eternal clone, and then completely wiped its own.
In this way, this clone, now transformed into Immortal Particle, didn't even know it was a clone. It had no idea it was created by Rosen. From the level of memory itself, it believed it was Immortal Particle. This was a peak-level impersonation, nearly impossible to expose.
Rosen opened a spacetime interdimensional gate and sent Immortal Particle to a location anchored to the entrance of a Destiny Study Room.
As soon as Immortal Particle regained consciousness, it activated the entrance condition at the anchor point and stepped into the Mysterious Study Room.
A few hours later, Rosen's Eye of the Creator detected that Immortal Particle had exited the Mysterious Study Room.
He had thought the clone would be killed—but surprisingly, it returned completely unharmed?
Rosen recalled the Eternal clone and examined the memory of its time inside the Mysterious Study Room, only to be shocked to discover that it had encountered no one inside. It was as if whoever had been there had left just before the clone entered.
However, his Destiny Source Seed clearly sensed that the fate-probing directed at him was still ongoing.
Could it be that the one who cast this destiny-tracing spell wasn't using the Book of Fate and Creation?
Or perhaps, just like him, the person who entered the Destiny Study Room had a sudden instinct to avoid confrontation and left early?
Rosen didn't think either was the case. He was absolutely certain that the probing was from the Book of Fate and Creation.
Even if they both used the power of destiny, different techniques left different traces.
The All-Knowing Bookworm had studied the Book of Fate and Creation for so many years—there was no way Rosen could have sensed it incorrectly.
If that was the case, Rosen did not hesitate to send out a second eternal clone. Two eternal clones simultaneously entered the Mysterious Study Room from different routes, and after a moment, both left the room at the same time.
After checking their memories, Rosen discovered that both clones had entered the Fate Study Room and browsed the Book of Fate and Fortune. Both had seen the Fate Bookshelf, but neither saw the other. This meant there might be more than one Fate Study Room, and everyone entering was actually in different Fate Study Rooms.
Since different beings existed in different Fate Study Rooms, why was he able to sense someone entering several times? Was his perception wrong, or was the Fate Study Room he entered somehow different from the ones the eternal clones entered?
Rosen conducted more tests and confirmed that there truly was more than one Fate Study Room.
Because the thousand eternal clones he sent out, without exception, all entered different Fate Study Rooms.
Worried that the Fate Study Rooms might detect the changes caused by his Myriad Transformations Divine Method, he even sent several True Gods of the Ancient God's True Realm into the Fate Study Room, but none of them entered the same Fate Study Room — again, each entered different ones.
So it was certain that two people could never meet in the Fate Study Room.
Yet, he did have two occasions where he sensed someone entering suddenly.
"Could the problem lie here?" Rosen considered a possibility.
Both times he sensed it, it was his own true self; in contrast, the All-Knowing Bookworm, who had spent years in the Fate Study Room, never had this feeling.
So the problem lay with him. Was his sense false, or was there something unique about him?
Rosen pondered for a long time and then made the last attempt he could at the moment.
He split off a thousand eternal clones at True God level, then used the Myriad Transformations Divine Method to merge all these eternal clones into one person.
Then, before his eyes, there appeared a full thousand True Gods of the Star Coin faction — and without exception, all were his true selves.
A thousand true Star Coin True Gods entered a thousand Fate Study Rooms through the spatial boundary gate.
They each opened the Book of Fate and Fortune, leaving their own fate copies on the Fate Bookshelf.
Could someone already dead still generate a fate copy?
The answer was yes. According to the Book of Fate and Fortune, the Star Coin True Gods had been resurrected. Who exactly resurrected them was unknowable, but their subsequent fate was clear: they would completely lose their fighting spirit and then retire into seclusion in the universe.
Eventually, one day, they would silently vanish together with the galaxy they hid in.
All the Star Coin True Gods' futures, without exception, ended in this way.
After all thousand Star Coin True Gods left the Fate Study Room, Rosen immediately lifted the Myriad Transformations Divine Method and reverted back to the True God of the Treasure Sword.
This time, the memories he implanted in all the eternal clones of the True God of the Treasure Sword were different.
Life choices depended on memory. If the memory held hatred, there would be a desire for revenge. If the memory was a happy life, one would settle for the status quo. If the memory was unbearable suffering, one would avoid and escape. Different memories led to completely different life decisions.
As expected, the thousand fate copies of the True God of the Treasure Sword could no longer be unified because of the different memories.
For each True God of the Treasure Sword, the Book of Fate and Fortune gave different fate copies.
Then, the thousand True Gods of the Treasure Sword left the Fate Study Rooms, and Rosen scrambled all their memories, having them enter the Fate Study Room a second time to open the Book of Fate and Fortune and check their fate copies.
Sure enough, the fate copies, like their memories, were all scrambled.
He left one True God of the Treasure Sword in the Fate Study Room, while the other 999 came out and subsequently died one after another.
Some were murdered; some were shredded by spatial storms in the void; some were eaten by primordial beasts. None of the 999 True Gods of the Treasure Sword died the same way, but without exception, none of these deaths matched the death methods given by the Book of Fate and Fortune.
This was equivalent to Rosen overturning the fate predicted by the Book of Fate and Fortune. He wanted to see if the book would change.
Then Rosen witnessed a terrifying scene: the 999 dead True Gods of the Treasure Sword all resurrected.
As if they had never died, they each continued their lives according to the fate copies recorded.
Rosen then tried many methods. Except for the Myriad Transformations Divine Method, which could make the True Gods disappear, no other means could stop these True Gods of the Treasure Sword from continuing their lives. Even if sealed, they could escape silently without a trace.
This was simply not a power the Book of Fate and Fortune could wield. Perhaps this was the real power of the Fate Bookshelf.
The Fate Bookshelf could not only store fate copies to prevent people from casually viewing them, but also ensure everything recorded in the fate copies must come true and could not be changed. Of course, nothing in the world is absolute; his Myriad Transformations Divine Method could deceive and disrupt the Fate Bookshelf's fixed fate.
Rosen opened the spatial boundary gate to the Fate Study Room to see if there were any unexpected changes.
What he saw shocked him — the Book of Fate and Fortune, which should have been on the desk, was shattered into pieces scattered across the entire room. The Fate Bookshelf, normally unaffected, was now covered with countless blood-red handprints on its surface.
Countless fate copies once stored in the Fate Bookshelf were now burning fiercely in raging flames.
Rosen wanted to extinguish the flames but found that this fire was far more terrifying than the Heavenly Burning Flame.
It could not be extinguished at all, not even by time-space reincarnation.
He could only watch helplessly as all the fate copies were burned away, and then the mysterious flames continued to consume the Fate Bookshelf itself. In the end, even the Fate Study Room was not spared. Fortunately, burning took time, giving Rosen a chance to salvage the fragments of the Book of Fate and Fortune.
After the entire Fate Study Room was completely destroyed, Rosen suddenly felt that the whole universe had changed.
This was not an illusion, for the biggest change was the Universe's Heart.
If the original Universe's Heart was a dead object, the current Universe's Heart suddenly came to life.
Through his eternal will merged with the Universe's Heart and the connection between the Root Origin Seed and the Universe's Heart, Rosen quickly understood what had just changed in the Universe's Heart — a change that brought him both good news and bad news.
All source seeds and laws originate from the Universe's Heart.
Fate was no exception. In the beginning, fate was chaotic; the will of the universe did not predetermine the destinies of all living beings.If the will of the universe had truly fixed the fates of all beings, then perhaps the original lifeforms would never have killed the universal will in the first place.
Everything in the universe is subject to the butterfly effect, and the thoughts of intelligent beings can change at any moment.
A single fleeting thought might alter a small event, but through the butterfly effect, it could bring about endless, far-reaching changes across the universe.
If even a single intelligent being could create an infinitely expanding butterfly effect, then with countless such beings, the potential for change was immeasurable.
Thus, fate in the beginning was never fixed. If someone tried to discern a person's fate back then, they wouldn't see the near-immutable outcomes like those recorded in the Book of Fated Creation, but rather countless possibilities. Fate could be changed—misfortune avoided, good fortune pursued.
The will of the universe created the Law of Fate to help its children avoid danger and draw near to fortune.
However, after the original lifeforms killed the will of the universe, they stripped away fate's power and forged the Mysterious Study Room and the Fate Bookshelf.
Through these two constructs, they imposed determinism on what was originally undetermined.
If the Book of Fated Creation showed a being was doomed to die, and a fate replica of that being was stored on the Fate Bookshelf, then that death became inevitable—unless one wielded power surpassing that of the Fate Bookshelf to rewrite that now-fixed fate.
Using the Fate Bookshelf, the original lifeforms set a destined fate for the universe: its inevitable destruction.
The Heart of the Universe was far too powerful. In order to lock in such a fate, the Fate Bookshelf had already been pushed to the limits of its own capabilities.
By transforming into the Sword Emperor with his Ten Thousand Forms Sacred Law, Rosen continuously shattered the predetermined fates held by the Fate Bookshelf. This forced the bookshelf to constantly reestablish fixed destinies to revive the Sword Emperor, until eventually Rosen overturned the entire table, collapsing the fates it had sealed.
So much of the Fate Bookshelf's power had been diverted in this struggle that it could no longer suppress the Heart of the Universe.
Moreover, the Heart of the Universe had previously retrieved fragments of the Origin Seed of Fate. All of this combined gave it the chance to destroy the Fate Bookshelf. The mysterious flames that incinerated the entire Fate Study Room were, in truth, the fury left behind by the universal will at the moment of its death.
Now that the destined destruction of the universe was no more, the Heart of the Universe—previously doomed with no hope of survival—saw a flicker of new life.
That was why Rosen had felt as though the Heart of the Universe had suddenly come alive.
This change brought both benefits and drawbacks.
The bad news: since the universe was no longer guaranteed to perish, the Heart of the Universe might no longer be willing to sacrifice itself to nourish the budding seed of a new Heart of the Universe. If it chose to preserve itself, Rosen might find himself at odds with it.
But the good news: with fate no longer fixed and determinism broken, the influence of the original lifeforms over the universe had weakened.
Rosen could clearly sense that the bottlenecks across all transcendental systems had eased.
Where once it was ten times harder for an immortal god-demon to ascend to eternal life, now that difficulty had been halved at most. If the universe's fixed fate had been broken earlier, at least twice as many eternal beings would have emerged from the world of the ancient gods.
Rosen carefully examined the Origin Fruit and indeed found a disruption in the connection between the Heart of the Universe and the budding Heart.
Though not completely severed, the growth of the budding Heart of the Universe had halted.
Just as Rosen intended to further investigate this change, he suddenly sensed a summoning through the Heart of the Universe—someone was calling upon a cosmic Origin Seed.
Following this summons, he once again arrived at the space between universes, in the unknown region tied to the Heart of the Universe.
The dim room was now considerably brighter.
The Chaos Holy God, the Dimensional Holy God, and the Ancient God had all arrived before him.
"The Fate Bookshelf was shattered by the Heart of the Universe. Was it any of you?" asked the Chaos Holy God as soon as everyone had arrived.
"Not me..." Rosen, the Ancient God, and the Dimensional Holy God all answered simultaneously.
"Forget it. Even if one of us did it, no one would admit to it," the Chaos Holy God snorted. "The universe's predetermined destruction has been broken. The Heart of the Universe has awakened a survival instinct. All our hopes of transcending eternity through it are now gone. No matter what you plan to do, I'm definitely lifting the seal on the Nightfall Society."
"Agreed!" said the Ancient God and Dimensional Holy God in unison.
"I don't understand what you're talking about. What seal on the Nightfall Society?" Rosen asked in confusion.
"Ancient God, you explain it to him," said the Chaos Holy God, before vanishing.
The Dimensional Holy God disappeared as well, leaving only the Ancient God behind. He took out an Eternal Origin Stone containing memories and tossed it to Rosen.
Rosen inspected the memories inside. They contained the origins of the Twilight Society.
In the universe, there exist several mysterious spaces, all of which—without exception—are fragments of the original universe. That original universe was the very first, where heaven was round and earth was square, the cradle of the original lifeforms. Even those lifeforms found it difficult to destroy the heaven and earth of the original universe.
After the original universe was destroyed, most of it was reshaped by the original lifeforms into the current starry cosmos.
A few fragments, however, fell into the hands of certain original lifeforms, who used them to create unique spaces.
The Mysterious Study Room, the space between universes, the Nightfall Society—these were not just simple fragments of the original world, but parts of the original universe itself. Among them, the Twilight Society was the largest fragment, burying within it all the sins and disasters of that original cosmos.
(End of Chapter)