The void shook violently.

The afterimage Leon had left behind seemed to have completely disappeared, but the extremely faint "primordial trace" still lingering in the air could not escape Aiden’s double-pupiled eyes.

"You put on your mysterious act, say what you want, and now you think you can just leave?"

A cold smile appeared on Aiden’s lips.

Boom!

The divine power inside him erupted like ten thousand volcanoes at once.

The Law of Space, the Law of Thunder, The Law of Light, and the law of the primordial trace merged perfectly in that instant. They turned into a huge dark-golden divine hand that covered the sky and reached fiercely into the depths of nothingness.

Crack!

The space inside the study shattered like a mirror, revealing a deep, black stream of chaotic void.

And deep within that chaos, a gray figure suddenly paused.

Aiden’s strike had actually forced Leon to stop retreating.

"As expected of a monster who breaks all common sense. You can even catch a primordial trace."

A soft sigh came from the void.

Gray light flashed.

Leon stepped out once more and stood at the edge of the broken space. His face was still calm, but there was now a hint of approval in his eyes.

Aiden withdrew his hand.

His divine power surged, instantly smoothing out the shattered space.

"Explain everything clearly. Otherwise, today, you won’t take even a single speck of dust from Celestial Imperial City."

Aiden stood with his hands behind his back.

The pressure of an Intermediate God poured out from him without any restraint, making him look like a young heavenly emperor who ruled over heaven and earth.

Leon looked at Aiden, patted the nonexistent dust from his robe, and slowly said,

"You became a god at level 100. You do have the right to know this secret."

"After all, I have kept this secret for five hundred and twenty-one years."

Leon’s gaze moved past Aiden, as if it had passed through the fog of time and reached the distant past.

"Five hundred and twenty-one years ago, Earth had not yet entered the age where everyone was turned into data. Back then, there were still cultivators here."

"And I was a warlock from a mid-level cultivation kingdom."

Aiden did not interrupt him. He only listened in silence.

"In my life, I never sought immortality or power. I only wanted to understand the true nature of the laws, and to find the source of the Great Destruction spoken of in legends."

"Heaven rewards those who never give up. In the end, I found a passage."

"A completely stable passage leading to the very core of Earth."

At this point, a strange hint of passion flashed in Leon’s eyes.

"The core of Earth today is sealed tightly by a golden gate, isn’t it?"

Aiden raised his eyebrows slightly, but did not deny it.

"But more than five hundred years ago, there was nothing there."

Leon took a deep breath. His voice became a little hoarse.

"No golden gate. No law chains. Only the most primitive entrance of consciousness."

"There were no barriers at all. Anyone who found it could simply walk in."

"And that was exactly what I did."

The temperature in the study seemed to drop sharply at that moment.

Aiden could feel that what Leon was about to say next would completely overturn the history of Earth.

"Inside the core was an endless sea of stars."

"At the center of that starry sea lay a being so huge that no words could truly describe it."

"That being was the Lord of the Primordial."

Leon looked at Aiden and spoke each word clearly.

"He was not some strange creature from a higher dimension that humans could never understand."

"He was simply a life-form that had taken a different path of evolution, one that was countless years ahead of humanity."

"But he had always been asleep."

Aiden’s eyes moved slightly.

"Why was he asleep?"

"Because of the cold."

Leon gave an answer that no one would have expected.

"From the day Earth was born, it was a cold and silent planet."

"The primordial power was powerful, but without any outside force, it would always remain in a state of absolute cold and silence."

"The Lord of the Primordial needed ’heat’ to wake up."

"But that heat was not fire. It was not temperature."

"It was the heat of civilization."

Leon’s breathing became faster, and the calm on his face finally broke.

"It was human joy, anger, sorrow, and love. It was the understanding of laws gained by cultivators. It was the sparks of wisdom created by the clash of countless ages of civilization."

"I looked at that sleeping giant, and I knew that if he did not wake up, Earth would sooner or later be devoured by other predators hidden deep in the universe."

"So I made a decision."

Aiden narrowed his eyes slightly, as if he had already guessed something.

"I gave him everything I had learned in my life, all my understanding of the laws, and even all the knowledge of human civilization that I knew..."

"All of it turned into Spirit marks and slammed deep into Earth’s core!"

"I used the heat of one person’s civilization to light the fire that had been cold and silent for hundreds of millions of years!"

Leon closed his eyes, and his body actually began to tremble slightly.

"I succeeded."

"The Lord of the Primordial was awakened by me."

"But the price was devastating."

Leon suddenly opened his eyes and pulled open his gray robe.

Aiden’s pupils contracted sharply.

There was no flesh or bone in Leon’s chest.

There was only a slowly spinning, dark-gray vortex of chaos.

The aura coming from that vortex was exactly the same as the primordial Strength Aiden had felt inside the Seven Divine Pillars.

"The backlash from the primordial Strength tore my mortal body apart in an instant."

"His Strength rebuilt my body and turned me into a monster that does not age, does not die, and cannot be harmed or destroyed."

"A... half-primordial being."

Leon gave a self-mocking smile and pulled his gray robe closed again.

"From that day on, Earth changed."

"The age of data arrived. The Abyss opened. The Golden Great Wall rose from the ground."

"All of it happened because my ’mark’ activated the self-defense system of Earth’s core."

The study fell into a dead silence.

Aiden took a deep breath and forced down the shock in his heart.

He looked at Leon, cold light flashing in his double-pupiled eyes.

"So, you founded the Dawn Society and caused all of this because you want everyone on Earth to go through the same pain you once suffered?"

Hearing Aiden’s question, Leon slowly shook his head.

"No."

"The pain of being reshaped against my will is mine to bear alone. That is not evolution. That is slavery."

Leon looked straight into Aiden’s eyes. His voice carried a firmness and passion Aiden had never heard from him before.

"What I want is active evolution!"

"I want every person on Earth to be able to cross that golden gate by their own choice."

"With their own will, they should decide whether to merge with the primordial power or not. They should decide whether to become new gods or not."

"Not like now, where they are kept like livestock by the system of data, barely surviving under the lightning tribulations!"

Leon took a step forward and reached out his right hand toward Aiden.

"Aiden, you cleared the Seven Divine Pillars. In the past five hundred years, you are the only one who has made the primordial laws resonate."

"You are the only key to opening that new age."

"That is why I came to find you."

Inside the study, the shattered space had already grown calm under the touch of divine power, but the remaining pressure of the laws still cut through the air like icy blades.

Aiden stood tall. His double-pupiled eyes reflected Leon’s slightly fanatical face, while his own expression was as cold as ice.

"Yves."

Aiden slowly said the name. His voice was not loud, but it carried a weight like a mountain.

The four great laws inside his body began to resonate slightly. In particular, the fragment deep within his system, the one engraved with the words "He was not wrong either," was giving off a warm pulse.

"Heh. So you really do know him."

Leon gave a self-mocking smile. A trace of sincere respect flashed in his eyes, along with a loneliness that outsiders could not understand.

"Fifty years after I walked out of Earth’s core, I met him."

"At that time, Yves had not yet reforged the Golden Great Wall, nor had he sealed the Seven Divine Pillars. He was only a traveler, searching bitterly between heaven and earth for the true nature of the laws."

"We sat on top of a nameless barren mountain and talked for three days and three nights."

Leon’s gaze seemed to pass through five hundred years, returning to that stormy night.

"I told him I had seen the Lord of the Primordial."

"I told him that humans could merge with the primordial Strength and complete the final leap in the level of life. We could break free from the limits of mortal bodies and escape the threat of the Abyss forever."

"I thought he would be like those ignorant mortals, seeing me as a monster and seeing the primordial as evil."

"But he did not."

Leon took a deep breath. His voice became a little hoarse.

"After Yves heard everything I said, he did not object, and he was not angry. He only looked at me quietly and asked me a question that I still cannot answer even now."

Aiden raised his eyebrows slightly.

"What question?"

"’If we complete that leap of evolution, remove the impurities from the human body and soul, and exist together with the primordial...’"

"’Would we still be human?’"

Leon’s eyes looked empty, as if that question was still torturing his soul to this day.

Aiden fell silent.

It was a question that struck straight at the soul.

"At the time, I answered him, ’At least we would survive. In this cruel universe, under the watchful eyes of the Abyss myriad races rank, survival is the only truth!’"

"But Yves asked me again, ’But what is a human?’"

"’If the price of survival is losing our human identity and becoming a "divine monster" with no emotions, only reason and laws, then what meaning does that survival have?’"

Leon gave a bitter smile.

"I could not answer him."

"That is the deepest difference between him and me."

The divine power around Aiden moved slightly. The Law of Space danced at his fingertips like a spirit, cutting tiny black marks into the void.

He finally understood everything.

"In Yves’s eyes, survival was important, yes. But evolution was only a means. The right to choose was the one principle humanity must never allow anyone to trample on."

Aiden spoke coldly, cutting straight to the heart of the matter.