Another year has passed,

The Tier 8 spatial material had finally been exhausted.

After nearly three years of ceaseless refinement, the crystallized core recovered from Parasite X had at last been reduced to nothing. Its silver-gray essence had been unraveled thread by thread, every fragment of comprehension extracted and assimilated. Yet even after the material itself had vanished, the dark avatar had not stirred. It remained seated upon Star Beast Island, locked in the deepest meditative trance Emery had ever witnessed, silently digesting the immense accumulation of insight gathered over those long years.

Emery had left it undisturbed.

Then,several weeks later, something changed.

Seated in meditation beneath Neo Terra Palace, Emery suddenly felt it.

His inner domain trembled.

The dark avatar had finally reached its breakthrough.

The split soul erupted with overwhelming clarity, its aura surging upward in a single, violent leap. Emery immediately extended his perception toward it, and what he sensed caused him to pause.

Second Cosmos.

The dark avatar’s soul had crossed into the Second Cosmos realm.

Emery could not help but shake his head, caught somewhere between disbelief and reluctant admiration. He had expected the avatar’s comprehension of Spatial Law to deepen dramatically after consuming such an extraordinary treasure.

He had never imagined it would advance an entire realm.

But there was no time to marvel.

The instant the breakthrough was complete, Emery felt the consequences travel back through the bond connecting their souls. A split consciousness advancing beyond the harmony of the original created a dangerous imbalance—the fragment was beginning to outgrow the whole. Left unchecked, it would gradually strain the very foundation that bound them together.

Without hesitation, Emery focused his mind and reached inward, calling the dark avatar back.

The process was anything but gentle.

Across the inner domain, the seated avatar dissolved into a torrent of dark energy that surged across the sky, drawn toward Emery like a river flowing in reverse. He aligned his own soul with the incoming stream and allowed the two to overlap completely.

The moment they merged, three years of accumulated understanding flooded into his consciousness.

Every hour the avatar had spent cultivating... every layer of Spatial Law it had painstakingly unraveled... every incomplete realization, every subtle connection, every fragile thread of insight it had assembled over those silent years...

All of it arrived at once.

Knowledge that had been separated now returned to its source, fitting seamlessly into Emery’s own comprehension.

The dark avatar had not merely studied the parasite’s spatial essence. It had refined that essence through Khaos itself, the Lord of Shadow and Space stripping away every flaw and revealing the deepest principles hidden beneath. Emery’s understanding of Spatial Law had not simply increased.

It had evolved.

A familiar notification surfaced amid the overwhelming torrent.

[Your soul power has increased.]

[Your comprehension of Spatial Law has increased.]

It did not appear only once.

[Your soul power has increased.]

[Your comprehension of Spatial Law has increased.]

Again.

And again.

The notifications continued to rise one after another as the final pieces of understanding settled into place.

Emery remained perfectly still, holding onto the sensation and allowing the transformation to complete itself.

During that same year, Emery’s true soul had also successfully mastered the fourth stage of the Twelve Spirit Beast Arts, granting him the ability to establish a stable bond with a single spirit beast. His chosen companion was the Silver Veil Ape, and through that bond, his understanding of the Law of Shadow had deepened considerably.

Now, with three years of accumulated comprehension added to those insights, the combined knowledge seemed ready to overflow once more.

But the merge had done more than deliver insight.

It had shattered the balance.

The dark avatar’s breakthrough, now folded back into Emery’s true foundation, sent a violent shockwave through his cultivation. His inner domain trembled as spirit energy surged uncontrollably in every direction, the sudden influx of upgraded comprehension threatening to overwhelm the limits of his foundation. The delicate equilibrium he had cultivated over the years lurched toward collapse.

Emery reacted immediately.

Without hesitation, he recalled the light avatar as well.

The second split soul dissolved into a stream of radiant energy and rushed back into his body. With both avatars reunited, his fractured consciousness became whole once again, and Emery immediately activated his core cultivation path.

The Dao of Heaven and Earth descended.

Curtains of light and shadow revolved around him like opposing tides, rising and falling in perfect rhythm. Rather than clashing, the two primordial forces complemented one another. Darkness tempered radiance, while radiance restrained darkness, each circulation smoothing the violent turbulence within his foundation. Little by little, the overflowing spirit energy began to settle into an ordered cycle.

Yet even that proved insufficient.

The influx of comprehension was simply too immense. The imbalance ran too deep for the Dao alone to suppress.

Emery reached further.

"Twik."

His will echoed across the inner domain, and the plant spirit answered immediately. Its countless roots burrowed deep beneath the Elysian Forest, connecting directly to the heart of the ancient Elysian Tree.

At Emery’s command, the colossal tree responded.

A vast current of emerald life force surged upward through the land, flowing into his cultivation like an endless river. It wrapped itself around the raging storm of spirit energy, grounding the unstable currents while nourishing every corner of his foundation. The overflowing power, which moments earlier had threatened to tear his cultivation apart, finally found a path through which it could circulate naturally instead of erupting uncontrollably.

The three forces intertwined.

Only then did the imbalance begin to yield.

Days passed.

Emery remained sealed within uninterrupted meditation, patiently guiding every fragment of merged comprehension into place. Rather than forcing the breakthrough, he allowed his foundation to grow naturally into its new height, refining each cycle until the once-violent storm gradually became as calm as a still lake.

His inner domain steadied.

The overwhelming flood of understanding slowly consolidated into something far greater than before.

Then Emery sensed it.

A familiar power.

A faint glimpse of Origin.

Another thread of that pure, undivided principle slowly emerged from within the countless streams of comprehension, clearer than ever before.

Emery immediately understood the significance of the opportunity before him.

With both avatars reunited and every fragment of his consciousness focused upon a single purpose, he immersed himself completely in comprehension.

Weeks slipped quietly by.

With every new realization, his Cosmos power continued to refine itself. The three layers of his Second Cosmos realm, became even more condensed and stable, their foundations polished to a level few cultivators could ever hope to achieve.

Then the long-awaited notification finally appeared.

[You have comprehended the Law of Origin.]

[Law of Origin: 2%]

[Soul power has increased exponentially.]

When Emery finally opened his eyes, the world itself felt different.

He could immediately sense the change.

His entire cultivation had improved tremendously. His physique had grown stronger, his soul power had become far more refined, and his cosmic reserves had increased by more than a third.

Yet, among all those improvements, one stood above the rest.

His connection to Khaos had deepened.

Some invisible barrier between them had grown thinner, weakened by Emery’s growing mastery over the very domains Khaos governed—Shadow and Space.

And deep within the Khaos Hub...

Something changed.