Forbidden Curse and the Declaration of War on the Abyss
After collecting the last vengeful spirit in the sealed space, Rosen expanded his World Domain to cover the entire sealed space.
Gavin, who had been waiting at the edge of the space, was pulled into Rosen's divine territory without any ability to resist.
Rosen didn't give Gavin a chance to explain. With a single shot from the Dragon God's Wrath, he pierced through all of Gavin's defenses, and the bullet struck his consciousness sea.
From the very beginning, Gavin hadn't lied, but he had concealed something crucial.
According to Gavin, all he needed was a small piece of the Mother Tree of Life's heartwood to remove the curse on him and even restore his lost lifespan. This statement was true—the heartwood of the Mother Tree of Life could indeed achieve this.
After all, the death curse on Gavin was nowhere near the level of the death curse the Mother Tree of Life endured.
However, Gavin had omitted a critical detail: the heartwood was the protective shell of the Mother Tree of Life, continuously absorbing the death curse from its divine essence. If the heartwood were damaged and the balance disrupted, the Mother Tree of Life would die completely within a short time.
At that point, no one below the level of a true god would survive in the Death Sand Sea.
Gavin was well aware of this, so his true goal was not only to remove the curse but also to accelerate the demise of the Mother Tree of Life.
The one who had bribed Gavin to do this was none other than the true god of the elven race.
The reason was simple: the Mother Tree of Life held dominion over the law of life.
As long as the Mother Tree of Life did not die completely, no deity could master the law of life and become a true god.
The elven race needed a new Mother Tree of Life, so the old one, which was beyond saving, had to die completely. Only then could the new Mother Tree of Life, cultivated from a seed by the elves, ascend to true godhood. This was why they had bribed Gavin, a historian.
Now that the Mother Tree of Life had not died, the elven race's plans seemed destined to fail.
Although the Mother Tree of Life now controlled the old law of life, the newly cultivated Mother Tree of Life within the elven race still could not become a true god. This was because many plants possessed uniqueness, and the Mother Tree of Life was one such mythical plant.
In the past, the Mother Tree of Life cultivated by the elves could grow because the old Mother Tree of Life had lost its physical form and was in a state of half-death.
Now that the old Mother Tree of Life had been reborn, the new one would wither and die in a short time.
This time, the elven race had tried to gain an advantage but ended up losing more. However, Rosen couldn't let this blame fall on him.
Therefore, the bullet Rosen shot into Gavin's consciousness sea contained the skill Mind Domination.
With Gavin's cover and Rosen displaying a Sequence 2 professional sequence, the elven true god would have no reason to suspect him. Even if the elven true god irrationally suspected him based on intuition, it was unlikely they would venture into the human world.
If they did come to the human world, coming in small numbers might not be enough to deal with the Mother Tree of Life.
After all, among the three existing elven true gods, only one was not a high elf born from the Mother Tree of Life. The other two true gods were inherently restrained by the Mother Tree of Life. In a one-on-one battle, a Sequence 0 Mother Tree of Life could easily handle one of its "ungrateful children."
After quietly returning to the Oasis Hotel, Gavin also returned to his divine territory.
Because he was worried about being discovered for leaving the city at night, Gavin's main body, which had ventured into the sealed space, had not brought his divine territory with him.
As a result, no one knew that someone had left the city that night.
Moreover, Gavin had not informed the elven true god in advance. After years of repeated failures, the elven true god had long since lost hope in Gavin. Without ensuring success, Gavin was also afraid that another failure would anger the elven true god.
However, Rosen had underestimated the importance of the Mother Tree of Life. Soon, the dissipation of the Death Black Sandstorm drew the attention of various factions.
Almost on the same day, the human true god descended upon Oasis City.
At this moment, Rosen was extremely grateful that the first thing he did upon returning to the Oasis Hotel was to consume the Flesh Secret Fruit to restore his divine upper limit. With the power of the Flesh Secret Fruit, not only did his divine strength return to its peak, but it also increased by two points, reaching 97.
With such divine strength, it was impossible for him to have entered the sealed space, so under the investigation of the true god, he was not suspected at all.
As the Mother Tree of Life disappeared, the law domain that enveloped the Death Desert gradually dissipated.
Although the death curse still lingered, its intensity gradually decreased.
Most importantly, the spatial restrictions were lifted, allowing free movement within the Death Desert.
Even the speed restrictions were gone—one could move as fast as they wanted.
This directly led to a frenzy of demigods from the Sacred Continent rushing into the Death Desert, each eager to claim a share of the upcoming feast.
In the past, due to the speed restrictions imposed by the law domain in the Death Desert, the areas that could be freely explored were limited to the edges of the desert and the vicinity of Oasis City. The middle region between the core and the edges could only be explored to a limited extent by demigods.
Thus, many areas in the middle region remained unexplored, undoubtedly hiding treasures of astonishing value.
Sure enough, elven ruins were discovered one after another in the middle region.
Rosen also sent out the Golden Mummy to explore the middle region of the Death Desert, while his Bronze Dragon avatar remained in Oasis City, responsible for acquiring treasures related to demon hunters and transcendent materials related to death and curses.
Finally, his main body visited the Mother Tree of Life within the Life World Fruit.
As a true god that had lived for over 100,000 years, the Mother Tree of Life possessed an immeasurable wealth of knowledge and experiences.
Rosen summoned the Eternal History Book and the Arcane Brass Book, handing them over to the Mother Tree of Life to record the knowledge and experiences it held. The non-dangerous content was recorded in the Eternal History Book, while the dangerous content was recorded in the Arcane Brass Book.
Meanwhile, he used Temporal Sketch to quickly browse through the knowledge and experiences of the Mother Tree of Life under time acceleration.
For knowledge that didn't directly benefit him, he only needed a general understanding and could delve deeper if necessary. Only the knowledge that directly aided him did Rosen study in detail.
The first thing Rosen realized was that high-sequence miracle treasures were not necessarily stronger than high-sequence transcendent artifacts.
Creating a Sequence 0 miracle treasure only required killing a deity.
However, creating a Sequence 0 transcendent artifact required not only killing a deity but also preserving its corpse, gathering various Sequence 0 precious transcendent materials, and finding a special deity capable of crafting Sequence 0 transcendent artifacts. Only by meeting all these conditions could a Sequence 0 transcendent artifact be created.
From the difficulty of acquisition alone, it was clear that high-sequence transcendent artifacts were rarer than miracle treasures.
Of course, there were no absolutes. A Sequence 0 miracle treasure could still be stronger than a transcendent artifact.
However, statistically speaking, Sequence 0 transcendent artifacts held the advantage.
Through the Mother Tree of Life, Rosen also learned about the most authentic and ancient history of the elven race.
This history could directly strengthen the power of the Eternal History Book. With this history, Rosen could even use the power of a historian to briefly summon fallen elven deities across time and space.
Finally, what Rosen considered the most valuable gain was the Mother Tree of Life's understanding of curses.
After all, having been entangled with curses for tens of thousands of years, the Mother Tree of Life had not immediately fallen into slumber and lost its ability to resist.
Before falling into slumber, the Mother Tree of Life had studied curses for at least thirty thousand years.
After such a long period of dedicated research, the depth of the Mother Tree of Life's understanding of curses was unimaginable.
A few years later, Rosen left the Life World Fruit and entered the Death World Fruit.
With the aid of triple wisdom叠加 (stacking), he began to create a curse skill for the Painter Sequence.
As expected, this time everything went smoothly. Under the acceleration of Temporal Sketch, it took less than ten years to successfully create a new skill.
[Forbidden Curse: Miracle Skill]
[Miracle Attribute: You can permanently consume divine essence to create spiritual paintings imbued with forbidden curses.]
[Miracle Traits: Cycle of Life and Death, One and Only, Eternal and Indestructible]
The Forbidden Curse had no direct killing power, but it could replicate and duplicate all types of curses.
The miracle trait Cycle of Life and Death granted the Forbidden Curse the ability to infinitely cycle between life and death.
For example, if a deity were struck by a death curse and managed to find a way to remove it, the curse, once "dead," would revive and return, clinging to the deity like a persistent parasite.
Thus, even a true god struck by the Forbidden Curse could only seal it, not remove it.
The only way to lift the Forbidden Curse was to destroy the corresponding spiritual painting created by Rosen using the Forbidden Curse.
The reason the Forbidden Curse was so powerful lay in the forces used to construct it.
This skill simultaneously incorporated the powers of painting laws, death laws, life laws, the authority of fate, and the authority of curses. Finally, it even fused with the Curse of the Apocalypse, giving birth to this terrifying curse-based miracle skill.
Rosen took a root from the World Tree of the Ancient God's True Realm, and soon the root transformed into divine pigment.
He then took a branch from the World Tree. This wasn't a branch from the World Tree of the Ancient God's True Realm but one he had obtained earlier, containing a trace of world laws and originating from the primordial World Tree of the previous Ancient God era.
By now, the essence within the branch had been completely absorbed by his World Tree.
The remaining withered branch was transformed by Rosen into dimensional canvas.
After mounting the dimensional canvas in a frame of fate, he began to carefully paint using the divine pigment. The painting technique he used wasn't the Hand of God but the Forbidden Curse. Soon, the painting depicted a section of the World Tree's trunk with one hundred branches.
The difficulty of this painting wasn't high, but Rosen permanently consumed 105 points of divine essence.
His divine essence had directly dropped to zero.
A normal transcendent being daring to do this would have died instantly, but Rosen still maintained his Sequence 2 divine strength of 91 points.
This was because he activated the active attribute of the Ancient God's Heart. When his Ancient God's Heart beat violently, his life essence and spiritual essence could convert into each other. Thus, he converted almost all of his life essence into divine essence.
This way, even if his divine essence was completely depleted due to the Forbidden Curse, the divine essence converted from his life essence could still maintain the integrity of his transcendent essence.
Rosen took out a Flesh Secret Fruit and consumed it, causing his life essence to surge instantly.
With the power of the Flesh Secret Fruit, he continuously and permanently converted his life essence into divine essence.
By the time the Flesh Secret Fruit was fully digested, his life essence had been fully restored, and his divine essence had recovered to 95 points. The remaining two points could be quickly restored with the help of the Primordial Oil Lamp. This meant that the cost of creating a Forbidden Curse spiritual painting was essentially one Flesh Secret Fruit.
The Forbidden Curse permanently consumed divine essence to create paintings, and the terrifying cost naturally matched the power of the resulting artwork.
If it weren't for the Ancient God's Heart allowing the conversion of essences, and if it weren't for the Flesh Secret Fruit and the Primordial Oil Lamp enabling the rapid recovery of permanently lost divine essence, Rosen wouldn't have dared to use the Forbidden Curse miracle skill, even if he had created it.
Rosen admired the painting before him, transforming the power of the Greed Authority into a Greed Curse through the Forbidden Curse in the painting.
Visible to the naked eye, traces of divine essence from the World Tree, infused with abyssal divine essence, began to appear within the painting.
Through this spiritual painting imbued with the Greed Curse, Rosen could now continuously plunder the divine essence of the World Tree's trunk from the First Abyssal Layer. Moreover, the Cycle of Life and Death trait ensured that the Greed Curse would cling like a persistent parasite.
As long as the First Abyssal Layer couldn't remove the Greed Curse, it would be unable to stop the divine essence of the World Tree from being stolen by the curse.
All the divine essence plundered by the Greed Curse would become nourishment for the growth of the World Tree in the Ancient God's True Realm.
Rosen continued to create a second Forbidden Curse spiritual painting. This time, he directly transformed the Bloody Hell of the Bloody Hell Tree into dimensional canvas. He then converted the roots of the Bloody Hell Tree into divine pigment and used it to paint the Mother of Flesh on the dimensional canvas.
Finally, he infused it with the Greed Authority, generating another Greed Curse.
As long as the Mother of Flesh couldn't remove the curse, she would continuously have her divine essence stolen. All the stolen divine essence would become nourishment for the Bloody Hell Tree to grow Flesh Secret Fruits. Now, the number of Flesh Secret Fruits was equivalent to the number of Forbidden Curse paintings.
If there was any excess flesh divine essence, Rosen could also feed it to the Flesh World Fruit.
His four World Fruits had not yet matured, and the internal law worlds still had significant room for growth.
Now that the curse skill had been created, there was no point in staying in Oasis City any longer.
After leaving the Death Desert, Rosen returned to the Glorious Kingdom to rest for a while.
With the continuous influx of divine essence from the World Tree, the growth of the World Tree would soon cross the 60% threshold. Therefore, he needed to prepare the required Sequence 5 and Sequence 4 miracle treasures in advance to ensure he could keep up with the World Tree's growth.
One day, Rosen was enjoying a hot spring with Alicia in the palace.
Originally, Alicia was just a wood elf, but with the assistance of the Mother Tree of Life, she had transformed into a life elf. These days, Alicia's good mood had kept Rosen thoroughly entertained, making him reluctant to leave the comforts of her company.
After finally finishing their activities, Fara, who had been waiting for a while, handed Rosen a document.
Rosen casually opened it and glanced through it, only to be slightly stunned. The document was actually a conscription order issued by the World Government. All kingdoms and empires under the World Government were required to conscript a portion of their troops and send them to the Abyssal Battlefield.
Just a few days ago, the Abyssal World had suddenly declared full-scale war on the World Government.
Rosen's intuition told him that the Abyssal World's declaration of war was related to the Forbidden Curse.
(End of Chapter)