"Golden Core… I have finally succeeded."

Wang Chen muttered the words under his breath, his eyes shining with uncontrollable exhilaration. For a brief moment, he simply stood there, letting the reality sink in.

Just a year ago, this realm had been nothing more than a distant dream. Back then, reaching the Golden Core stage was an absurd fantasy—something reserved for legends and monsters of talent. And yet now, he had crossed it in a single year.

A speed that defied common sense.

A pace that spat in the face of heaven itself.

His gaze instinctively swept across the Garden of Eternity, drawn to the changes unfolding everywhere. The newborn sun of True Fire hung high above, radiating golden brilliance, while the realm itself seemed to breathe—alive, expanding, evolving.

He wanted to linger.

To admire the miracle he had created.

But this was not the time.

A fleeting window had opened, and if he missed it, the price would be immeasurable.

The reincarnation cycle had to be established now.

As Wang Chen focused his thoughts, the mana drawn from the Azure Dragon Continent continued to pour into the Garden of Eternity like a celestial flood. Every passing minute brought drastic change. Mountains stretched outward, skies rose higher, and land unfolded as if space itself were being rewritten.

In the span of a single breath, the size of the Garden more than doubled.

Now that the realm possessed a True Fire Core, Wang Chen no longer needed to actively stabilize it. Beneath the warm, golden radiance of the newborn sun, the space walls began repairing themselves instinctively. Microscopic tears vanished one after another, the fabric of the realm thickening and hardening as if reinforced by invisible hands.

This was not maintenance.

It was self-evolution.

The Garden continued to expand unhindered, only slowing when its vertical span surpassed a full hundred kilometers. At that moment, a subtle transformation occurred.

Residual qi, no longer needed to fuel expansion, began to condense.

Droplets of liquid qi shimmered into existence, pooling and flowing until a new Qi Sea formed—vast, deep, and terrifying in scale. Where the old Qi Sea had once measured a mere kilometer, this new one stretched for ten full kilometers, dense enough to distort light itself.

Only then did the Garden finally stabilize.

Yet even after space stopped growing, qi from the outside world continued to descend. With nowhere left to go, the excess energy obeyed deeper, unseen laws. It twisted, refined itself, and scattered across the land, transforming into countless exotic spiritual ingredients—rare herbs, crystalline minerals, and embryonic treasures that rooted themselves into the soil as if they had always belonged there.

The Garden of Eternity was no longer just a spiritual space.

It had become a world.

And Wang Chen stood at its center, keenly aware that what came next would decide whether this newborn realm would merely exist…or truly govern life and death.

Although Wang Chen wasn't consciously paying attention, none of these changes escaped his perception.

He might not have been a true connoisseur of heavenly treasures, but after inheriting multiple great legacies, his judgment was no longer shallow. The moment his spiritual sense brushed past several newly formed objects, his breath hitched ever so slightly.

Nine-Turned Divine Lotus.

Five-Star Dew.

Frost Radiant Iron.

Each name alone was enough to drive cultivators into madness. Any one of them appearing in the outside world would spark bloody wars that spanned continents, with countless sects tearing each other apart just for a chance to claim them.

Even Wang Chen felt a fleeting pulse of temptation.

But only fleeting.

He deliberately withdrew his gaze, suppressing the urge to claim them for himself. These treasures were born from the evolution of the Garden of Eternity—they belonged to the world, not to him alone. He wanted to see how the cultivators within would grow, how civilization would shift when such fortune was placed directly into their hands.

Only by observing that process could he truly understand what kind of realm he was creating.

…

"So this is the Shadow Realm…"

Wang Chen's voice echoed faintly as his gaze swept across the newly formed Nether Realm. Unlike the radiant Garden above, no trace of the Golden Core's True Fire illuminated this place. Darkness pressed in from all sides, heavy and suffocating, while an unnatural cold seeped into existence itself.

It was silent.

Still.

And eerily comfortable.

This was a world where souls could linger without decay—a place where spiritual entities would not be burned away by life's excess vitality. In other words, it was perfect.

The first step was clear.

He needed to cast a grand formation—one capable of drawing wandering souls from the living realm into the Nether Realm, guiding them naturally rather than forcibly.

The reincarnation knowledge he had received from Mo Huyan did not provide a rigid blueprint. There were no step-by-step instructions, no ready-made arrays waiting to be copied. Instead, it offered concepts, principles, and fragments of forgotten truth.

And that was exactly how Wang Chen preferred it.

He had no intention of replicating another's system wholesale. Anything pre-built could hide unseen flaws—ancient traps, dormant marks, or hidden backdoors left behind by beings far older and more dangerous than himself. If something was going to govern life and death within his Garden of Eternity, it would be his creation, shaped by his will alone.

His attainments may not yet rival those of true ancient architects, but they were sufficient.

Enough to carve something custom-made.

"Nether Monarch Soul-Gathering Array…"

The name formed naturally in his mind as his eyes flickered with resolve.

However, as soon as he began outlining the formation's structure, a familiar problem surfaced.

Formations meant to summon and guide souls traditionally required dragon blood—pure, ancient, and resonant with heaven and earth alike. But true dragons had vanished billions of years ago. Even creatures carrying a faint trace of that bloodline had been hunted to extinction by greedy cultivators long before Wang Chen's time.

Finding such materials would be difficult to the point of absurdity.

Yet even if he could find them, Wang Chen had no intention of using dragon blood at all.

He had seen enough schemes, inheritances, and hidden plots to know better.

Dragon blood was never just dragon blood.

Using it carelessly could entangle him in some ancient revival plan, awaken dormant wills, or attract the attention of old monsters lying in wait for the dragon race's return.

No.

That was a risk he refused to take.

If the Nether Realm was to be born, it would not rely on the remnants of extinct races or the ambitions of forgotten ancients—but on a foundation that answered to him alone.

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