The Hell Soul Reaper Diagram and the Spacetime Divine Domain

With only three days left before the opening of the Despair Abyss Spirit Realm, more and more demi-gods and deities were gathering at the Time Tower.

The Transcendent Artifact—Boyar's Space-Time Gate, which sealed off the Despair Abyss Spirit Realm, would extract time energy from within the realm during its activation and channel it into the Time Tower, drastically increasing its time acceleration multiplier. This period attracted many to the Time Tower for cultivation.

Only Sequence 0 deities were truly qualified to enter the Despair Abyss Spirit Realm.

Technically, Rosen wasn't even eligible to enter, which was why he had obtained special permission from Star Coin True God.

Star Coin True God wasn't worried about him dying inside, as the key to Boyar's Space-Time Gate not only allowed entry but also enabled emergency teleportation out of the realm. As long as he wasn't deliberately seeking death by choosing to stay, the chances of perishing in the Despair Abyss were extremely low.

As the realm's activation time approached, Boyar's Space-Time Gate automatically opened.

The Time Tower began absorbing temporal spirituality flowing from the gate, while all keyholders swiftly departed the tower.

From start to finish, the Gatekeeper continued fishing, completely ignored by everyone.

Unless something went wrong with Boyar's Space-Time Gate, nothing fell under his jurisdiction.

Rosen stepped onto the cloud-like pathway leading into Boyar's Space-Time Gate and was immediately randomly teleported into a gravity-free void, where all direction was meaningless.

A dense fog obscured his vision, and his entire body was instantly frozen in mid-air, as if trapped in suspended time, unable to move an inch.

At the same time, his mind and consciousness were subjected to an automatic thousandfold time acceleration.

Rosen didn't even need to activate Time Sketching—this built-in acceleration already allowed him to theoretically complete the creation of an original skill within a year.

In the blink of an eye, less than a month passed, and Rosen had already fully developed his final Sequence 2 skill in the Painter Sequence.

There were still eleven months until the Spirit Realm's next opening, which meant that for the next nine hundred years, his accelerated mind would have to endure an eternity of stillness.

Doing nothing for such an absurdly long period would drive anyone insane.

So, he decided to spend the time painting on his Mental Canvas.

Other deities who entered would never dare to recklessly engage in such energy-consuming activities.

Simply accelerating thoughts for learning or theoretical analysis wasn't an issue.

However, attempting something like painting on the Mental Canvas, which actively consumed divine power, would cause divine energy to drain irreversibly in the Despair Abyss, where energy output vastly exceeded input.

Sooner or later, their life essence would be forcibly extracted to compensate for divine depletion, reducing them to lifeless husks.

But for Rosen, he had ways to forcibly replenish his divine energy.

First, he had the Primordial Oil Lamp, which contained an ocean of fuel.

After slaughtering almost all the demons of Abyssal Layer 21, the souls and divine essence of hundreds of thousands of demi-god demons had been sealed within the Primordial Oil Lamp.

Forget a thousand years of accelerated thinking—even if he spent ten thousand years, or even a hundred thousand years, it wouldn't exhaust the lamp's fuel reserves.

Additionally, his Ancient God Heart Aperture contained vast reserves of life essence.

No matter how recklessly he pushed himself, he wouldn't collapse even after a full year.

Thus, Rosen decided to dedicate the next nine hundred years to painting a special piece on his Mental Canvas.

His Painter Sequence skill, Death Verdict, was losing effectiveness as he advanced to higher ranks.

At higher sequences, a deity's sea of consciousness naturally reinforced the defenses surrounding their divine essence, leaving no exploitable weak points.

Without a way to directly attack divine essence, Death Verdict would inevitably lose its power.

However, outright discarding it felt like a waste, so Rosen decided to paint a spiritual artwork specifically designed to enhance Death Verdict.

He planned to incorporate the Death Law of the previous Ancient God Era, fuse it with the Death Authority of the current era, and ultimately create a Hell Reaper Painting. This way, even if high-sequence consciousness seas were layered with countless defenses, Death Verdict would still remain just as deadly.

Nine hundred years of accelerated consciousness quickly passed, and Rosen was finally nearing completion of the Hell Reaper Painting.

The painting depicted a Hellish World, with a grand divine temple at its center.

Within the magnificent temple, a Death God, bearing Rosen's likeness, sat upon the Throne of Death, gripping a Scythe of Reaping in his hands.

At his feet, one thousand Death Hunters, each wielding a Scythe of Death, knelt in devout worship, offering their unwavering faith to their great and almighty Death God.

As Rosen placed the final stroke, the Death God and the Death Hunters within the painting came to life.

To create the Death God, Rosen had used his divine essence, transforming it into Divine Paint.

Thus, the painted Death God naturally became his Divine Incarnation.

The Death God was Sequence 3, while the one thousand Death Hunters were all Sequence 1.

The reason why the Death Hunters were so powerful was that their Transcendent Sequence was a mutated version of the Hunter Sequence—a newly developed unique Hunter path that Rosen had devised over the past nine hundred years.

Unlike ordinary hunters, the Death Hunters had no physical bodies—they existed purely as spiritual entities formed from manifested souls.

These Death Hunters could, using the power of Death Verdict within the spiritual painting, infiltrate an enemy's consciousness in swarms, dragging their soul and divine essence into the Hell Reaper Painting, where they would ultimately become part of the Hellish World.

The more souls the Death Hunters reaped, the stronger and more refined the Hell Reaper Painting would become.

As for why the Death Hunters were Sequence 1, while the Death God was only Sequence 3, it was because the Death God followed the Reaper Sequence, which Rosen had only developed up to Sequence 3 so far.

The Reaper Sequence was a new Transcendent Path created by Rosen himself.

It originated from Abyssal Lords and Infernal Overlords, while also incorporating aspects of the Noble Sequence, Hunter Sequence, and Assassin Sequence.

This wasn't merely a patchwork of various abilities—he had genuinely developed a new Golden Sequence.

By mastering the Reaper Sequence, Rosen gained absolute control over all Death Hunters.

He also gained complete dominion over the Hell within the Hell Reaper Painting, effectively turning it into his personal domain.

Despite the Death God Incarnation being only Sequence 3, any deity foolish enough to step into the Death Hell would be easily suppressed by him.

Moreover, the moment the Hell Reaper Painting was completed, it instantly became a Miracle Artwork.

[Hell Reaper Painting: Miracle Artwork]

[Rank: Sequence 0]

[Miracle Attribute: The Death God, ruler of the Hell of Reapers, commands Death Hunters to harvest the souls of all living beings.]

[Miracle Traits: Death Verdict, Soul Reaping, Death Hell, Heaven's Sole Authority, Eternal Immortality.]

Due to the Miracle Traits, every Death Hunter could now use Death Verdict and Soul Reaping.

The final unique Miracle Trait, Death Hell, granted the Hell Reaper Painting the potential to continuously evolve and grow stronger.

Rosen immediately installed new subordinate god statues in every divine temple within Ancient God True Realm, adding three new Subordinate Deities—the God of History, the God of Death, and the Dragon God.

From now on, the souls and spiritual essence of evildoers within the Ancient God True Realm would, upon death, be dragged into the Death Hell by the Death Hunters.

As for the souls of the virtuous and those with unwavering faith, they would have many choices after death.

They could reincarnate as Transcendent soldiers, reincarnate as ordinary citizens, or live a second lifetime.

For devout believers, the first reincarnation required no cost.

However, for subsequent reincarnations, the requirements would gradually increase.

The more times one reincarnated, the harsher the conditions would become.

Since each reincarnation significantly weakened the soul's spiritual essence, ordinary people could reincarnate at most once—never a second time.

Without sufficiently devout faith, Rosen had no reason to offer charity by helping ordinary believers strengthen their spiritual essence.

Time quickly passed, and the millennial cycle was nearing its end.

Rosen was ready at any moment to activate the key and be pulled out of Despair Abyss by Boya's Time Gate.

On this day, the Time Gate opened once again.

A new group of deities entered Despair Abyss, while those who had arrived a year ago began preparing to leave.

However, when Rosen activated his key, he discovered—to his shock—that he wasn't leaving.

Had data transmission not still been functional, he might have already called for help from Star Coin True God.

After all, if there was one person in the world who most wanted him to stay alive, it was undoubtedly Star Coin True God.

Soon, the Time Gate closed, and no one knew that Rosen was still trapped within Despair Abyss.

The Gatekeeper, who was supposed to verify the headcount, was nothing more than a counterfeit in disguise.

Rosen himself had no idea what had happened—until a mysterious hourglass suddenly appeared before him.

It was palm-sized, entirely silver-white, with a serpent biting its own tail coiled around it.

Inside the hourglass, hundreds of grains of sand shone like miniature divine cores.

The moment it approached Rosen, the hourglass began madly siphoning his time energy.

Visibly, the stored time power within his Time Dragon Crystal was being completely drained.

Then, the hourglass moved on to absorb his lifespan.

Within the mental canvas where Rosen had painted the Hell Reaper Painting, countless Abyssal Demon Souls suddenly manifested out of nowhere.

These were semi-divine demons that had been sealed within the Primeval Oil Lamp.

As long as the divine essence within their souls hadn't been completely erased, these Abyssal Demons weren't technically dead.

By slaughtering these souls and their divine essence, Rosen's Innate Ability—Time Hunter could still extract their time.

The Time Dragon Crystal continuously replenished the time energy that was being drained.

Finally, when only tens of thousands of the original hundreds of thousands of Abyssal Demon Souls remained, the mysterious hourglass ceased its extraction.

Then, it merged directly into Rosen's consciousness sea, completing a specialized bonding ritual.

[Time-Space Hourglass: Transcendent Artifact]

[Rank: True God]

[Attributes: The Time-Space Hourglass grants access to the Time-Space Divine Realm, where one can wield the power of both Time and Space Laws.]

[Law Abilities: Time-Space Mastery, Time-Space Banishment, Time-Space Traversal.]

Through the Time-Space Hourglass, Rosen instantly seized control of Despair Abyss.

More precisely, Despair Abyss wasn't even its real name—it was actually called Time-Space Divine Realm.

By linking with the Time-Space Hourglass, Rosen finally learned the true fate of the ancient deities from so long ago.

A hundred deities, all masters of Time Authority, had once joined forces to forge the Time-Space Hourglass.

Not only that, but they had also merged their divine domains into a single entity, creating what became the Time-Space Divine Realm.

Though they failed to birth a true Time God, they had successfully achieved complete mastery over Time Laws within their own Divine Realm.

As long as they remained within the Time-Space Divine Realm, these Time Deities could unleash power equivalent to that of a True God of Time.

The Laws of Time were far stronger than ordinary Laws, and any True God whose laws were not powerful enough would only meet certain death upon entering the Time-Space Divine Realm.

With the divine realm's power at their disposal, the hundreds of Time Deities soon began an all-out war—both openly and in secret—to claim sole ownership over it.

If any one of them succeeded in monopolizing the Time-Space Divine Realm, they might truly ascend as the Time True God.

However, not a single one of them could achieve an absolute victory over the rest.

Each Time Deity held a portion of the Time-Space Divine Realm's fundamental authority.

As the battle raged on, Time Deities continued to fall—only to be resurrected through time reversal, using the power of the divine realm itself.

But resurrection was not without cost—reviving within the Time-Space Divine Realm still required consuming divine essence.

At that time, the spiritual system had not yet fully developed, and the Time Deities' divine essence strength was roughly equivalent to that of a Sequence 1 being.

At most, they could revive a dozen or so times, but with each resurrection, they grew weaker and weaker.

Some deities who had revived too many times eventually realized that if they continued down this path, they would inevitably face permanent death.

Moreover, after so many resurrections, they had long lost the possibility of becoming the final victor.

And if they were doomed to die regardless, who would willingly let their killer win and ascend as the True God of Time?

Thus, each Time Deity, before their final death, used their control authority over the Time-Space Divine Realm to tamper with its Time Laws.

Over time, this interference accumulated, eventually creating two devastating effects:

Time Stasis on the Body—making it impossible to move.

Time Acceleration on the Divine Mind—forcing an uncontrollable, endless state of hyper-thought.

These effects grew stronger and stronger, until even the last remaining Time Deities could no longer continue fighting.

Their bodies became frozen in time, while their divine minds were trapped in an unrelenting, maddening acceleration.

Although their authority over time still allowed them to move with extreme difficulty, undoing the chaos within the divine realm had only one possible solution—for the last surviving Time Deity to fully master the Laws of Time.

However, there was one problem—those who remained could barely move anymore, let alone defeat the others.

Even more terrifying was the runaway acceleration of their divine consciousness.

Ten years outside became ten thousand years inside—a century outside became a million years inside.

A million years outside? That was a hundred million years of solitary confinement in this endless prison of time.

Imagine being trapped for such an incomprehensible eternity, with nothing to do but think, while your body lay frozen in place, unable to act.

At this point, the Time-Space Divine Realm had become nothing more than a hopeless time prison.

Under the relentless torment of hyper-accelerated time, even the last few remaining Time Deities succumbed—one after another, their minds crumbled.

One by one, they committed suicide.

The last survivor, the final Time Deity, claimed full control over the Time-Space Divine Realm.

By then, this deity had a legitimate chance at becoming a True God of Time.

Yet in the end, even this final victor chose suicide.

Because by that point, their divine mind had endured over a hundred million years of absolute solitude.

Their body was practically crippled, and only their mind remained functional—an agonizing existence of endless thought without action.

They had held on until the very end only because of their unwavering obsession with mastering the Laws of Time.

But once that goal was achieved, this final Time Deity simply chose self-destruction.

However, their death was not meaningless.

Before perishing, they gathered the corpses of all the fallen Time Deities.

Then, using his own life, he forged the Time-Space Hourglass, a True God-level Transcendent Artifact that could control the Time-Space Divine Realm.

The mere thought of being trapped in a mental black hole for over a hundred million years sent chills down Rosen's spine.

He could entirely understand why that nameless Time Deity ultimately chose suicide.

The first deity to discover the Time-Space Divine Realm had been trapped for several hundred years before other deities finally found the divine realm.

By the time that trapped deity managed to leave, their divine consciousness had already suffered hundreds of thousands of years of isolation.

And their physical body had been completely destroyed, leaving behind nothing but a divine consciousness drained of divine essence.

Though they hadn't chosen suicide, they had fallen back to Sequence 1 and suffered severe mental damage.

This was why the Time-Space Divine Realm was feared as the Abyss of Despair—why it had to be sealed by the Time-Space Gate of Boya, and why entry required a key, with a strict one-year time limit for all entrants.

All these measures were put in place to protect the deities who ventured inside.

Over the countless years, who knows how many deities had entered the Time-Space Divine Realm.

Many of them had even mastered the Authority of Time, yet not one had ever attracted the Time-Space Hourglass to acknowledge them as its master.

The reason?

The Time Deity who had crafted the Time-Space Hourglass had left behind a death trap.

First, a potential wielder's divine essence had to be exceptionally strong.

Second, they had to wield the Divine Authority of Time.

If they also possessed the Divine Authority of Space, they would receive a slight advantage.

Once these conditions were met, the Time-Space Hourglass would appear—but only to violently extract all the time energy from the deity's body.

Without exception, every deity throughout history who had satisfied these conditions had been drained dry and died within the divine realm.

Rosen had barely survived, only because he had forcibly fed the hourglass with the lifespans of hundreds of thousands of Abyssal Demi-Gods.

Moreover, thanks to the tiny sliver of World Laws he controlled, he had forcefully satiated the Time-Space Hourglass and completed the recognition process.

Through the hourglass, Rosen sensed the state of the Time-Space Divine Realm, and his first reaction was pure heartache.

The divine realm's essence had been drained at an alarming rate, continuously plundered by the Time-Space Gate of Boya.

Now, the Laws of Time and Space within the divine realm had become incredibly weak.

Forget suppressing True Gods—even suppressing ordinary deities had become increasingly difficult.

No wonder the keys to enter this place had become rarer and rarer over time.

The World Government must have long realized the existence of the Time-Space Hourglass, thanks to the countless Time Deities who had perished here.

Yet, because they could not forcibly claim the artifact, they had instead forged the Time-Space Gate of Boya to continuously leech away the divine realm's essence.

At this rate, within a few more centuries, the Time-Space Divine Realm would completely collapse.

And when that happened, the Time-Space Hourglass would simply become fuel for the Time-Space Gate of Boya to grow even stronger.

Rosen now had two options.

The first was to let the divine realm collapse, allowing it to be fully absorbed by the World Government.

The second was to sever the connection between the divine realm and the Time-Space Gate of Boya, then use the Time-Space Hourglass to extract and take away what remained.

But that would still be too much of a bargain for Boya.

Boya was one of the True Gods of the World Government, wielding the Virtual Time-Space Law—a weaker derivative of true Time-Space Laws.

He was also one of the seventeen True Gods Rosen would inevitably eliminate.

So, instead of choosing between the two existing options, Rosen decided to create a third one.

He wanted to see if he could harness the power of the World Tree, forcefully assimilate the Time-Space Divine Realm, and turn the Time-Space Gate of Boya against itself—sealing it instead.

If successful, all of Boya's efforts would be for nothing.

And perhaps, in the process, he could even nurture a Time-Space World Fruit on the World Tree.