Original Painting Sealing Technique and the Vanished Cartoonist

Rosen fused a portion of the True Ancient God Realm with his divine domain territory, then performed a second fusion between the divine domain and the Divine Domain of Time and Space.

Once the World Tree successfully descended into the Divine Domain of Time and Space, countless roots began silently infiltrating, gradually taking control of the Laws of Time and Space.

However, it wasn't the right time to make a move—acting now would only bring unnecessary trouble upon himself.

Rosen used data transmission to send away his divine incarnation, then returned the mystic realm key to the True God of Star Coins via a messenger from the Spirit Realm.

After that, he headed to the nearest empire and took a Teleporter back to the Glorious Kingdom.

Now, with a solid alibi, even if someone became suspicious, they wouldn't be able to connect it to him.

A few months later, the roots of the World Tree had spread throughout the entire Divine Domain of Time and Space.

The Gatekeeper, who had been fishing at the bottom of the Tower of Time, slowly stood up and closed the tower.

Then, without a sound, he vanished, leaving behind only some traces of unique spiritual fluctuations at the scene.

These fluctuations belonged to beings of the Spirit Realm, making it obvious that the true mastermind behind the scheme against the Divine Domain of Time and Space had been the Gatekeeper all along.

No matter how much anyone investigated afterward, it would be impossible to find a Gatekeeper who had already perished.

As long as Rosen refrained from openly using Temporal Fishing, he had nothing to worry about—no one would connect him to the Gatekeeper.

Deep within the Divine Domain of Time and Space, the World Tree, in coordination with the Hourglass of Time and Space, unfolded its World Domain and began merging with the Divine Domain of Time and Space. At the same time, Boya's Gate of Time and Space, which had partially embedded itself into the domain, was now also ensnared within the World Domain.

Although Boya's Gate of Time and Space was a True God-level extraordinary artifact, Boya himself was not in the Divine Domain of Time and Space.

Even if he rushed over, it would take him at least a few minutes to arrive.

At this very moment, the World Tree had already joined forces with the Mother Tree of Life, the Imaginary Dragon, Eugene, and Sonia to suppress Boya's Gate of Time and Space.

Meanwhile, inside the Mysterious Study Room, Rosen was using the Window of the World to reinforce the suppression through the Royal Treasury.

With the Miracle Trait: Royal Authority Plunder, it wouldn't take long to erase Boya's divine power infused into the extraordinary artifact.

At that moment, Rosen's Yinglong incarnation, stationed at the Glorious Palace, altered the spatial anchor of the Mysterious Study Room and summoned his true self over.

No matter how much Boya searched upon arrival, at most, he would find only the remnants of the Gatekeeper's traces.

Inside the Mysterious Study Room, Rosen now held five new cards in his hands.

Each card depicted a vividly lifelike deity.

These were real deities that had existed within the Divine Domain of Time and Space, all of whom had been sealed into the cards using his Original Painting Sealing Technique.

[Original Painting Sealing Technique: Law Skill]

[Attribute: Instantly collapses the World Domain, sealing all things into a painting.]

Though not a Miracle Skill, this Law Skill was universally recognized as being no weaker than one.

The core of the Original Painting Sealing Technique lay in the Laws of Painting and the World, and with the support of Dimensional Art and Dimensional Canvas, it could directly seal anything into a painting.

This was undoubtedly the most powerful sealing skill for a Painter, for no other Painter had ever mastered both the Laws of Painting and the Laws of the World.

With all of his Sequence 2 skills perfected, the only thing Rosen lacked now was an upgrade to his extraordinary building.

However, this was no easy task.

A Sequence 3 extraordinary building was already the limit of what could be achieved through human effort, and Sequence 2 artificial extraordinary buildings were so rare that only one might appear every few centuries. Even for a demigod-level architect, the best they could do was rely on quantity rather than quality.

Moreover, even upgrading a Sequence 3 extraordinary building was no simple matter.

Architects capable of enhancing such structures were in high demand, and the waiting list for an upgrade slot stretched beyond measure.

While strengthening the Void Gallery was currently difficult, Rosen had long had a plan for upgrading the Void Sketchbook.

His approach was to replace all the sketchbook's existing pages with Dimensional Canvas and integrate Dimensional Canvas and other supporting skills directly into the Void Sketchbook, triggering a qualitative transformation. If everything went smoothly, this upgrade might even push it straight to Sequence 1.

However, since Rosen wasn't skilled at crafting extraordinary artifacts, it was best to enlist the help of an artistic designer.

Coincidentally, he had already placed a Death Curse on one such designer.

After reaching out through the Spirit Realm's Deep Web in broad daylight, it wasn't long before Joshua Scott arrived in Glorious King City. Following Rosen's specifications, the two worked together to complete the upgrade of the Void Sketchbook.

In the blink of an eye, five years passed.

Joshua finally left, carrying his generous reward.

And Rosen's Void Sketchbook had successfully advanced to Sequence 1.

[Void Sketchbook: Extraordinary Artifact]

[Rank: Sequence 1]

[Attributes: The Void Sketchbook can store all of a Painter's spiritual artworks, allowing them to be used repeatedly.]

[Divine Authority Traits: Dimensional Canvas, Original Painting Seal, Time Script]

The newly enhanced Void Sketchbook now contained three skills from the Painter Sequence.

It enhanced both Dimensional Canvas and Original Painting Seal, though these were not its true core.

Rosen had also fused into it the Sequence 0 Playwright Godhood left behind by the Gatekeeper, along with the Playwright's Miracle Skill: Time Script. By using the Playwright Godhood to wield Time Script and combining it with the Miracle Skill: Fate Frame, he successfully transcended sequences and gained control over the Time Script miracle skill.

[Time Script: Miracle Skill]

[Miracle Attribute: Automatically completes the missing past and future portions of a script.]

[Miracle Traits: Illustrated Script, Sole Existence, Eternal and Indestructible]

A Playwright's scripts were usually composed of text, making their abilities quite similar to those of a Novelist.

However, Time Script was different—it possessed the miraculous trait of freely converting script content between text and images.

Beyond that, Time Script also granted the ability to foresee the past and future.

By recording a person's present experiences within the Time Script, the missing details of their past and future would automatically be filled in. Additionally, with the Illustrated Script trait, textual narratives could be transformed into visual illustrations—an ability just as powerful as Prophetic Paintings.

By merging Time Script and the Playwright Godhood into the Void Sketchbook, Rosen granted his artwork the automatic ability to complete the past and future.

Moreover, he could now transform a single painting into a sequential illustration depicting both its past and future states.

If he were to use the Void Sketchbook to create a Prophetic Painting now, the combination of these two skills would exponentially amplify its predictive capabilities.

Finally, through Time Script, Rosen also gained the ability to bestow reset functions upon his Mystic Realm Paintings.

Painters could create Mystic Realms, but these differed from naturally occurring ones.

Naturally formed Mystic Realms could be easily reset, whereas those painted by Painters could not be reset through conventional means. The only way to do so was to relinquish control and permanently integrate the painting into the Spirit Realm, where the Spirit Realm itself might bestow a reset function.

Alternatively, using the special painting skill Five-Dimensional Painting could also grant Mystic Realm Paintings the ability to reset over time.

However, the more complex the Mystic Realm Painting, the harder it was to integrate Five-Dimensional Painting into it.

But Time Script had now reduced that difficulty to its lowest point.

Finally, Rosen could also modify the Illustrated Script generated by Time Script, allowing him to make certain adjustments to both the past and future. This was essentially stealing the Playwright's core power, and in a way, it was akin to reviving the long-lost Manga Artist Sequence.

There had once been a Manga Artist branch within the Painter Sequence, but it was ultimately eliminated.

The reason was simple—high-level Spiritual Paintings often took centuries to complete.

It was already difficult for a Painter to create a single high-sequence painting, yet Manga Artists required an extensive series of interconnected sequential illustrations.

The more they drew, the less time they had, forcing them to lower their standards.

But lowering quality meant they could achieve neither artistic excellence nor mass appeal, and so the Manga Artist Sequence ultimately stalled at Sequence 4 before being abandoned.

Now, by using Time Script to automatically complete the missing past and future in sequential illustrations, Rosen had effectively borrowed the Playwright's power to compensate for the Manga Artist's greatest weakness. At the same time, he could still leverage the Manga Artist's greatest strength—its terrifying spread and influence.

Traditional Painters pursued realism, but no matter how realistic their work was, it could never surpass that of a Photographer.

If they pursued abstract styles instead, the audience who could appreciate them became vanishingly small.

As a result, achieving fame as an artistic Painter was incredibly difficult. Even when they did gain recognition, it was usually only within elite circles.

Manga Artists, however, were different.

Their technical skills might not be as refined, but by constructing stories through art, they made their work easily accessible to the general public. Ordinary people could enjoy manga without needing any artistic appreciation skills.

This made it far easier for a Manga Artist to achieve widespread fame.

And the value of a painting was closely tied to the Painter's renown.

In the current era, nearly all famous Painters followed a high-end route—none pursued mainstream popularity. Instead, they relied on the endorsement of royalty and nobility. If a nation's king admired a Painter's work and promoted it, then the nobility and commoners would inevitably follow suit.

If an ordinary person failed to appreciate a renowned painting, the assumption was that they simply lacked the taste to understand it.

Thus, mid- and low-tier Painters often held exhibitions to build their reputation, while high-end Painters relied on elite endorsements to gain fame from the top down.

But this approach only worked for a certain segment of society—after all, not everyone was eager to flatter the powerful.

By contrast, Manga Artists could create works that were genuinely recognized and appreciated by everyone.

Yet, because high-sequence manga were nearly impossible to create, the once-promising Manga Artist Sequence had ultimately been abandoned.

Rosen gazed at his newly upgraded Void Sketchbook.

His intuition told him that he had not yet fully unearthed its potential.

So he decided to go out for a walk, explore the city, and sketch a few things along the way.

As he wandered through the capital, he eventually arrived at the Hunter's Guild, where he saw an old hunter with a crippled leg sitting at the entrance.

He detected no injuries related to Rule Authority, meaning that as a Sequence 7 hunter, the man should have had many ways to heal his leg—unless he chose not to.

Judging from the way he carried himself, he had clearly lost the will to live.

There was definitely a story behind him.

Rosen flipped open the Void Sketchbook and quickly sketched the scene and the old hunter.

As Time Script activated, the pages of the Void Sketchbook began filling in additional illustrations on their own.

Some portions of the timeline extended forward, others reached into the past.

The past portion finished first, starting with the old hunter's birth.

The old hunter's parents had been among the first wave of immigrants when the Glorious Kingdom was founded.

At the time, government policies were extremely favorable, so the old hunter smoothly awakened his spirituality with the kingdom's support.

He then advanced into the Hunter profession and effortlessly found a few like-minded companions.

However, during one adventure, he made a fatal mistake that directly led to the deaths of all his companions.

He alone survived, narrowly rescued by a passing group of transcendents. Though his body was saved, his spirit had long since died.

Rosen flipped further through the Time Script—the old hunter only had a few months left to live.

Having completely lost the will to live, even a transcendent's spirituality would eventually wither away. The fact that he had managed to persist for decades was already impressive. He had clung to life only because he still had his companions' families to care for.

"Looks like you're in luck..."

Rosen began editing the Illustrated Script that Time Script had generated.

He removed unnecessary details and reorganized the story into a manga, making the old hunter the protagonist, centering it around thrilling adventures and the deep, genuine friendship between him and his companions.

Once the manga was complete, Rosen extracted it from the Void Sketchbook and sent it to the True Ancient God Realm, where millions of copies were printed in a publishing house.

Ordinary printing presses could not imbue Spiritual Paintings with actual spirituality, meaning the printed copies wouldn't allow a Painter to gain fame in the conventional sense.

But manga was different.

Even without inherent spirituality, sheer quantity could generate qualitative fame, allowing a Painter to amass an enormous reputation.

Rosen walked up to the old hunter and handed him a spatial ring containing millions of copies of the manga.

"If you distribute these to people who enjoy them, your companions might come back to life."

As he spoke, he slightly lifted the concealment on his own presence.

The old hunter, who had been bewildered by the sudden appearance of a spatial ring in his hands, immediately recognized Rosen the moment he stopped hiding.

After all, in the Glorious Kingdom, no one had never seen the king's statue.

Shaken with excitement, the old hunter wanted to express his gratitude, but by the time he looked up, Rosen was already gone.

He pulled out the original copy of the manga and was stunned to find that it was composed entirely of Spiritual Paintings, forming a sequential illustrated story.

The manga depicted his life's most significant experiences.

However, there was one small difference—in the disaster that had taken his companions' lives, not only had he survived, but all of them had as well.

They had simply lost a portion of their memories.

Only at the manga's conclusion, after reuniting with his scattered companions, did they finally recover what had been lost.

The old hunter had some understanding of Painters—he knew they had the power to create Spiritual Paintings that could resurrect ancient beings.

He quickly realized that this manga might very well be the key to bringing his companions back to life.

With newfound purpose, he set out to find people who would appreciate the story.

He soon identified his ideal audience—children.

Traveling across several major cities, he distributed every last printed copy. As he did, the original manga in his hands grew more and more powerful.

Finally, following the events depicted in the manga's ending, the old hunter arrived at a small town far from the Glorious Capital.

He had been to this town before.

He knew his companions had never been here.

Yet this time, as he stepped into the town, he saw them—alive.

Under his guidance, they slowly regained their lost memories.

Though the world had changed, and they could never truly return to the past, as long as they were alive, infinite possibilities remained.

At that moment, Rosen also saw the old hunter's ending through the Void Sketchbook.

What he had given the old hunter wasn't the original manga, but rather high-quality replicas printed using the Universal Printer.

Even so, they were still capable of altering the past and reviving those who had already died.

At the same time, the widespread distribution of the manga brought Rosen a significant amount of fame. Most importantly, the entire process had cost him almost nothing—the return on investment in terms of reputation was practically infinite.

This method was tens of thousands of times more efficient than the fame he had previously gained by gifting high-quality printed paintings from the Universal Printer.

Rosen didn't even need to do anything himself—the Glorious Kingdom had already begun scouring the world for interesting stories.

As long as someone brought back a photograph, all Rosen had to do was paint a single illustration, and an entire manga based on a real-life story would automatically generate itself.

Meanwhile, the printing houses established by the Glorious Kingdom across various nations had begun mass-producing and giving away different kinds of manga at no cost.

Before long, due to the massive increase in his fame, the attributes of Glory Bloodseal began to change.

Originally, Glory Bloodseal could only enhance Portrait Paintings, but now it could strengthen all Spiritual Paintings.

Originally, Glory Authority could amplify enhancement effects by 510% to 961%, but now it had been permanently fixed at 999.99…%.

At first glance, this increase seemed to be less than 40%, but the further Glory Authority advanced, the harder it became to improve.

And 999.99…% meant it was infinitely close to 1000%.

If he could break through this final barrier, Glory Authority would transcend into Glory Law.

At his current level—the absolute limit of a deity—if Rosen leveraged Glory Authority, he would have a very high chance of ascending to True Godhood.

With the Void Sketchbook now fully upgraded, Rosen finally had the time to focus on enhancing the Void Gallery.

He struggled to find an architect capable of handling the project, and he was reluctant to use Soul Gems for the upgrade.

In the end, he decided to fuse his Nen with the Void Gallery.

Though the final product would not be as refined as a traditional Sequence 2 Extraordinary Building, it would still be far superior to the current Void Gallery.

The fusion process went smoothly.

His Nen naturally contained a fundamental fusion rule, allowing it to merge various Laws and Authorities.

Using this ability, Rosen integrated Temporal Authority and Dream Authority into the Void Gallery.

This granted the Void Gallery the power to create Dream Projections within the Dream Realm, as well as the ability to teleport between different Dream Projections and the main body of the Void Gallery.

Not only did this provide an effective cover for data transmission, but it also allowed Dream Projections to invade an enemy's Sea of Consciousness, greatly enhancing its offensive capabilities.

One by one, Rosen maxed out the proficiency of his remaining skills.

At this stage, most of these skills had little remaining value.

All of his abilities needed to be transformed into special skills when he advanced to Sequence 1.

Divine Stroke, Soul Canvas, Glory Bloodseal, Nen, and Nightmare Shackles.

Unknowingly, aside from Acting Skills, these were the only five skill-level Sequence Abilities he had left.

As long as he prepared the necessary enhancement materials for these five skills, he could ascend to Sequence 1 in the most perfect state possible.

Divine Stroke was the easiest to enhance—merging it with a heartwood fragment from the Sequence Tree inside the Painting World Fruit would perfect it.

Soul Canvas also posed no difficulty. Over the years, it had copied countless Spiritual Paintings created by various Painters using their own Soul Canvas, long surpassing the requirements for enhancement. Rosen had simply been suppressing its breakthrough, aiming to build the strongest possible foundation.

Glory Bloodseal was the same—his accumulated fame was the best possible enhancement material.

Nightmare Shackles also wasn't a problem—he planned to use the Imaginary Dragon itself as its enhancement material.

Only Nen remained an issue.

This Nen originated from the extraordinary bloodline of primitive humans, and its strength was directly tied to Life Essence.

After mastering the Law of Life, Rosen's Nen had received a tremendous boost.

The Law of Life was the best possible enhancement material for Nen.

However, the problem was that his Law of Life came from the previous Ancient God Era.

In the current Ancient God Era, the world did not recognize the Law of Life within the Life World Fruit.

Furthermore, once the Mother Tree of Life reclaimed its place in the True God Sequence, the final ownership of the Law of Life would undoubtedly belong to the Mother Tree of Life.

If Rosen forcibly claimed the Law of Life for himself, then the Mother Tree of Life would never be able to recover.

Thus, he had spent years searching for a better alternative to serve as the enhancement material for Nen.

(End of Chapter)