Lord: Sequence Master

Rosen searched the Doomsday Ark from bow to stern but found nothing of real value.

A Great True God-level Miracle Artifact had already been damaged beyond recognition, so it was even less likely that anything else survived. Still, considering the unusual circumstances, he decided to take out the Sequence 3 Miracle Artifact: Secret Compass.

[Secret Compass: Miracle Artifact]

[Level: Sequence 3]

[Miracle Attribute: The Secret Compass can detect hidden secret spaces nearby.]

[Miracle Traits: Spatial Orbit, Unique in Heaven and Earth, Eternal and Indestructible]

This was another relic from Suade.

The Spatial Orbit trait allowed it to directly open a passageway to a discovered secret space.

This was one of Suade's main tools for entering the Mysterious Wooden Cabin, though unfortunately, even the Secret Compass couldn't escape the World Recycling Station.

Whether the Doomsday Ark had a hidden space or simply had none at all remained to be seen.

As soon as Rosen stepped into the captain's quarters, the compass needle began trembling violently.

He immediately activated Spatial Orbit, and the compass locked onto a corner of the captain's quarters, creating a direct passageway to the secret space.

The moment the spatial tunnel formed, a rotting humanoid creature lunged out from within.

Rosen's World Domain expanded instantly, dragging the creature into his Divine Territory.

The creature had no spirituality, meaning it was a corpse.

Despite its body being entirely rotten, it was still capable of movement.

For now, Rosen imprisoned the creature in his Divine Territory and focused on the secret space beyond the tunnel.

The space was small, roughly the same size as the Doomsday Ark Ticket's cubic space.

In fact, it was highly possible that this was the exact same kind of space.

In one dimly lit corner, Rosen spotted a notebook that showed no signs of decay.

A manifested psychic hand reached into the secret space, retrieved the notebook, and, after confirming no traps were present, he carefully flipped it open.

After reading a few pages, Rosen understood what had happened.

This was a private diary-style nautical log, and the rotting humanoid creature had once been its owner.

This person was a Sequence 0 deity—the captain of the Doomsday Ark.

The Ark had stronger beings aboard, but this Sequence 0 deity was chosen as captain due to his unparalleled skill in piloting Extraordinary vessels.

The Doomsday Ark, as previously suspected, was a relic from the last Ancient God Era.

According to speculations, it was highly likely that the complete destruction and reset of the previous era had triggered the creation of the Doomsday Ark.

Ever since its discovery by the gods, it had become their last hope of escaping the Main World.

Approximately 150,000 years ago, when all preparations were complete, the Doomsday Ark embarked on its maiden voyage to escape the Main World.

At the time, everyone was confident—the Ark had three Great True Gods onboard, over a hundred True Gods, and the nautical log's owner was only allowed on board because of his unparalleled expertise in navigating Extraordinary vessels.

Rosen flipped further through the nautical log, only to find that the remaining pages were heavily damaged and incomplete.

It wasn't that the logbook itself was damaged—rather, a significant portion of the recorded text had mysteriously vanished, leaving only blank spaces behind. This indicated that what had been written was something the world itself could not tolerate, causing those sections to be erased at the source.

Due to the fragmentary nature of the content, there wasn't much valuable information to extract.

What he could discern was that the early stages of the Doomsday Ark's voyage had gone smoothly, with the entries filled with joy and optimism.

However, something happened midway—the details of which had been completely wiped clean.

From then on, things grew increasingly dangerous, and the Ark eventually encountered a terrifying threat that even Great True Gods could not resolve.

The Sequence 0 captain, despite being gravely wounded, never even saw what attacked them.

By the time a Great True God arrived at the captain's quarters, there was no time to heal him—all they could do was place him inside the emergency shelter hidden within the captain's quarters.

Rosen put away the nautical log—even if its latter half was incomplete, its first half was still valuable.

The departure point of the Doomsday Ark, along with its intended trajectory, pointed toward a path out of the Main World.

After conducting one final search of the Ark, Rosen reluctantly returned to the ship's cabin.

He had already attempted to interact with the other two tickets, but their core material was so durable that even True Gods would struggle to destroy them.

Using the Secret Compass was also useless, as the ticket's internal space did not meet the conditions for a hidden space.

A hidden space was one that either had no known existence or was questionably uncertain, requiring the Compass's ability to locate and verify.

Since Rosen was already fully aware that the tickets contained internal spaces, the Secret Compass naturally had no effect.

That left only one option—using the Mysterious Study Room to enter the ticket's interior.

Placing his hand on the surface of the square-shaped unknown material, a doorway opened.

Rosen stepped into the Mysterious Study Room and walked up to the window, gazing through the glass into the ticket's interior space.

His pupils instantly contracted.

Inside the ten-meter-wide cubic space, there was a mountainous pile of objects.

After carefully identifying them, Rosen realized that within this tiny space lay an entire True God's Divine Kingdom, a True God's corpse, and countless dead believers, all compressed into an impossibly minuscule volume.

It was like trying to fit a living person into a ping-pong ball, which could be accomplished in two ways.

The first method was to expand the space within the ping-pong ball, infinitely stretching its interior until it could fit a person.

The second method was to forcefully compress a person down to a size even smaller than the space inside the ball.

This was clearly an example of the second method.

But while compressing an ordinary person was one thing, compressing a True God, an entire Divine Kingdom, and all its believers to such an extent—what kind of inconceivable power could accomplish such a feat?

Even a Great True God might struggle to achieve this.

Rosen backed out of the Mysterious Study Room, deciding to check the other ticket's internal space instead.

The first one was too dangerous to meddle with—if he accidentally opened the window, he feared the compressed Divine Kingdom might burst out like an overinflated balloon, violently ejecting its contents into the Mysterious Study Room.

Even if the room itself remained undamaged, he himself might not survive the aftermath.

Re-entering the Mysterious Study Room, Rosen, feeling both tense and expectant, approached the window.

The ticket's interior space was completely empty.

Instinctively, he reached out to push open the window, intending to refine the ticket's interior from within.

However, at that exact moment, a fine network of cracks suddenly appeared on the windowpane.

The main body of Rosen, who had been painting in another part of the study, immediately exited through the main door.

In the same instant, he forcefully severed the spatial anchoring between the Mysterious Study Room and the ticket's space.

When he reopened the Mysterious Study Room, the scene outside the window had already returned to normal—it was no longer showing the ticket's internal space.

Only then did the Yinglong avatar, who had nearly pushed open the window, come back to his senses.

Had the main body not reacted in time, things could have ended disastrously.

Rosen stepped forward, running his fingers over the glass surface of the window. The origin of the cracks looked just like a handprint.

That ticket space hadn't been empty—there was at least one unseen entity inside. That entity had noticed the Mysterious Study Room in return and slammed a palm against the window. If not for the cracks appearing, Rosen wouldn't have even realized that his Yinglong avatar had been ensnared.

The being inside the ticket space was undoubtedly the most terrifying existence Rosen had ever come into close contact with.

Rosen's divine essence seeped into the window, which immediately began absorbing his divinity to repair itself.

In just a few seconds, his 93-point divine essence was completely drained.

Yet, the dense web of cracks on the window barely faded, leaving only an imperceptible improvement.

Rosen took out Divine Essence Crystals, and as expected, the window could absorb them to repair itself.

However, at that moment, the Main God Computer extended a data cable, blocking Rosen's action.

After some thought, Rosen stopped using Divine Essence Crystals to repair the window.

Instead, he painstakingly refined the crystals, using only his naturally restored divinity to mend the cracks.

The repair process lasted several years, during which Rosen gave it his all.

When his main body's divine essence ran dry, he drained it from his two avatars.

When even his avatars were depleted, he summoned several pets, siphoning their divinity into the window.

When all available divine sources were exhausted, he resorted to every method possible to restore his divine essence.

Gluttony alone wasn't enough—fortunately, he could consume spiritual foods, set up magic arrays to accelerate divine recovery, and ingest alchemical potions that replenished divinity.

After years of this, Li Shiqing was so overworked she nearly advanced to Sequence 4 peak-tier as a Gourmet.

Rosen watched as the last remaining crack on the window disappeared. Gritting his teeth, he once again approached the ticket space where the unknown terror was sealed.

Just like before, the entity within the ticket space struck the window.

And this time, the damage was even worse than before.

Rosen immediately resumed injecting divine essence to repair the window. After years of this process, he finally understood why the Main God Computer had prevented him from using Divine Essence Crystals for the repairs.

Because as he restored the window, his control over the Mysterious Study Room was gradually increasing.

Until now, he had only been able to passively use the study room.

His relationship with it was akin to a tenant with a key but no deed to the house—he could enter and exit, but the room was not truly his.

This was because he was too weak to fully control the Mysterious Study Room.

But by repairing the window, he found that while he still couldn't claim full ownership, he was gradually gaining control over it—starting with the window.

If he continued repairing it, he would eventually master this window entirely.

Another twenty years passed, and Rosen finally refined the window of the Mysterious Study Room.

With a mere thought, he opened the window—and with another, he closed it again.

World's Window—this was the true name of the Mysterious Study Room's window.

With full mastery over the World's Window, he could infuse it with different rules and laws, granting it various effects.

When he merged the Authority of Faith, the transparent window transformed into a luminous screen.

Now, through the screen of the World's Window, Rosen could watch over all his believers from an omniscient, god-like perspective.

When he infused the Authority of Fate, he found that he could see the past, present, and fleeting glimpses of the future for each of his believers.

When Rosen attempted to merge the Authority of Blood, the integration failed.

Clearly, the World's Window could fuse with rules and laws, but there were compatibility limits.

He began testing various authorities and soon discovered that, among the rules he currently possessed, only Faith, Fate, Time, Devour, Seal, Protection, Mind, Reality, Nightmare, Light & Shadow, History, and Painting could be successfully integrated.

Even so, the power of the World's Window had already become incredibly terrifying.

Fate, History, and Time allowed him to see past and future events, greatly enhancing divination abilities. Devour and Protection strengthened the defensive properties of the window. Mind and Nightmare granted him the ability to peer into the hearts and dreams of those outside. The last few—Seal, Reality, and Painting—allowed him to transform the World's Window into a painting.

Rosen could clearly sense that the first set of abilities were the window's original functions.

The ability to turn into a painting, however, was not an innate property of the World's Window. Instead, it was a result of him fully mastering the artifact, allowing him to integrate his own supernatural powers into it and use it as an extension of his abilities.

Rosen once again attempted to peer into the mysterious entity.

This time, the World's Window was still attacked from the outside—but unlike before, the attack wasn't instantaneous. He was able to observe the entity for several seconds before it noticed him.

And when it finally attacked, the damage to the window was significantly reduced. The overall durability of the World's Window had improved drastically.

Rosen no longer needed to personally inject divine essence to repair it. He simply took out Divine Essence Crystals and let the World's Window absorb them at will.

After confirming that there was nothing else of value left on the Doomsday Ark, he used Data Transmission to return to Radiant King City.

For a while, Rosen focused entirely on researching the World's Window.

Since parts of the Painter Sequence could merge with the window, there was no reason other sequences couldn't do the same.

As expected, through further experimentation, he discovered a new function—the World's Window could synchronize with the God-Hunting Eye, displaying everything the eye saw directly through the window's surface.

More importantly, beings spied upon by the God-Hunting Eye would find it even harder to detect its presence.

Once he could no longer extract any more new abilities from the World's Window, Rosen temporarily halted his research.

Decades had passed, and the divine essence increase he had gained from advancing to Sequence 2 of the Noble Path had now been fully assimilated.

Now, at last, it was time for him to advance his Painter Sequence to Sequence 2.

Inside the Painting World, within the inner layers of the World Fruit, Rosen teleported beneath the Painter Sequence Ancient Tree.

The Painter Sequence had long since separated from the Artist Sequence. Now, all painters in the Main World, whether advancing or changing classes, no longer connected to the Artist Sequence Ancient Tree. Instead, they communicated with the Painter Sequence Ancient Tree—the one standing before him.

Over the years, many True Gods had attempted to trace its origins.

But the Mysterious Study Room, combined with the World Tree, had completely concealed it. No one could find the Ancient Tree hidden deep inside the World Fruit.

Rosen used his divine essence to command the Ancient Tree, causing two golden leaves to descend.

As they merged into his transcendent essence, there was no whispering curse.

Because in the past few years, all the True Gods who had cursed the Painter Sequence had, one by one, lifted their curses.

The reason was simple—all intelligent races could now switch to the Painter Sequence.

And since Painters were the best sequence for creating artificial Spirit Realms, various races had started mass-producing Painters.

With things as they were, any True God who dared to curse the Painter Sequence would face resistance from the entire pantheon.

As the Painter Sequence spread far and wide, various non-human races profited immensely, while the World Government suffered catastrophic losses.

The unluckiest of all was the Painters' Guild, which had now become an empty shell of its former self.

The transformation of his transcendent essence quickly came to an end, and Rosen's divine strength increased by two points, reaching 95.

One point was the expected increase from advancing sequences, while the other—mostly due to his constant cycle of depleting and restoring divine strength over the past two decades—was unexpectedly boosted with the aid of the Primordial Oil Lamp.

But Rosen didn't care about that.

What he truly cared about was—what innate skill had awakened?

[Painting Domain]—Unleash the Painting Domain, greatly enhancing the power of the Painting Authority. Within the domain's range, all paintings personally created can be seamlessly integrated into the Painting Domain.

"A specialized domain skill..."

Rosen's eyes lit up, and he immediately activated the Painting Domain.

Opening his Void Sketchbook, he began painting, and as expected, the difficulty of creation dropped significantly, while the quality of his spiritual paintings increased dramatically.

Even though he possessed the Law of Painting, that didn't mean he could fully wield its power.

In truth, even True Gods struggled to exert the full potential of their laws.

The reason was simple—a True God who wielded the Law of Light could not erase all light from the Main World, plunging it into eternal darkness. The best they could do was shroud the Holy Continent in shadow.

Even a Great True God of Light might not be able to extinguish the Main World's radiance entirely.

Perhaps the only being truly capable of fully unleashing the power of a law was a fully awakened Primordial God.

From Demi-Gods to True Gods, the essence of their pursuit of power was continuously expanding their ability to wield rules and laws at greater levels.

Now, the Painting Domain significantly raised the upper limit of how much power Rosen could extract from the Painting Authority.

A conservative estimate suggested his power had doubled—already the upper limit of what a domain skill could provide.

Rosen then tested the second ability of the Painting Domain by pulling out a Sandstorm of Calamity painting.

This was a Sequence 3 spiritual painting he had casually drawn over the years after observing the desert in the Old Continent.

The moment the painting merged into the Painting Domain, the domain's space expanded significantly, and within it, a massive black sandstorm raged to life.

But if that was all, it wasn't anything special—even without the Painting Domain, Rosen could manifest the sandstorm into reality.

So next, he took out a second painting—Storm of Thunderclouds.

This painting depicted the largest storm and thunderclouds he had ever seen in Storm Canyon.

As soon as Storm of Thunderclouds merged into the Painting Domain, the domain not only had the black sandstorm, but also an endless expanse of thunderclouds overhead.

Then, powerful gales fused with the sandstorm, increasing its wind speed several times over.

Through the Painting Domain, Rosen could now perfectly merge the power of different paintings into one unified phenomenon.

The maximum number of paintings he could integrate depended on his divine strength.

If he merged two paintings, the divine energy consumption of maintaining the Painting Domain doubled.

If he merged three paintings, the cost quadrupled.

If he merged four paintings, the cost increased eightfold.

The more he merged, the higher the divine energy consumption.

So there was no way to merge an infinite number of paintings—beyond three to five, the domain would have to be used for a swift, decisive battle.

Rosen then conducted various experiments, and the most intriguing fusion was when he merged a painting of an Angel and a painting of a Demon into the Painting Domain.

The result?

A never-before-seen fusion—a Demonic Angel.

Despite only being Sequence 3, the Demonic Angel was able to fight Sequence 2 Angels and Demons one-on-one.