Sky Pillar and the Ancient God’s Chisel
The Suspended Empire was the most unique of all the World Government's vassal empires.
Unlike other nations that were either on land or in the sky, this empire resided within the deep sea, not far from the Old Continent.
There, rooted in the ocean floor, stood an enormous Sky Pillar—a colossal stone column spanning tens of thousands of miles in diameter and towering hundreds of thousands of miles high.
The Suspended Empire was built into the hollowed-out interior of this Sky Pillar, floating within its vast internal space.
By all logic, a pillar of such extreme height should have already reached the Astral Realm, where the gods resided.
According to calculations, the Main World's sea level was only 30,000 miles away from the Astral Realm.
The Main World was a super-flat dimensional plane.
Its crust was no more than several hundred thousand miles thick, and the distance from the sea level to the Astral Realm was merely 30,000 miles.
Even the Astral Realm itself was only several hundred thousand miles thick, making the total thickness of the Main World less than a million miles.
Yet, the diameter of the Main World was estimated to be at least one light-year.
If the Main World truly existed within the legendary cosmos, then it would resemble nothing more than a thin sheet of paper floating in an endless void.
By this reasoning, a Sky Pillar stretching hundreds of thousands of miles high should have long since pierced the World Barrier at the peak of the Astral Realm.
However, in reality, the Sky Pillar never entered the Astral Realm.
Instead, at precisely 30,000 miles above sea level, the Sky Pillar mysteriously vanished from the Main World and reappeared in an endless, pitch-black void.
No one knew what lay within this abyssal darkness.
The World Government had spent immense resources carving out portions of the Sky Pillar, creating vast habitable spaces within its interior.
The Suspended Empire alone consumed one-fifth of the World Government's total treasury.
Because of this, the Suspended Empire was considered the second most important stronghold of the World Government, surpassed only by the Eternal Continent, an artificial megastructure constructed in the Spiritual Realm.
For the World Government to spend such an astronomical sum, the Suspended Empire naturally had unparalleled strategic value.
The outer surface of the Sky Pillar was completely indestructible.
Even a True God unleashing their full power could not leave so much as a scratch on it.
Even if a Great True God attempted to destroy it, the damage they could inflict would still be insignificant.
The only reason the World Government could hollow out sections of the Sky Pillar was due to an unexplained anomaly.
For some unknown reason, the central core of the Sky Pillar, spanning a diameter of roughly a thousand miles, had become extremely fragile.
Even a Sequence 9 miner could easily excavate and break apart the stone within this zone.
As long as the base of the Sky Pillar remained sealed, the interior of the Sky Pillar was absolutely secure.
If the World Government ever faced collapse, the Sky Pillar would serve as the ultimate refuge.
Beyond being a safe haven, the Sky Pillar's interior held immense intrinsic value.
The crushed stone powder extracted from it could be converted into soil with incredibly high nutrient density.
Additionally, various sealed caverns had been uncovered within its depths, suggesting that countless ages ago, some unknown civilization had excavated and inhabited the Sky Pillar's interior.
Many of these caverns contained the remnants of an ancient, lost civilization.
In one such cavern, countless mysterious murals were discovered.
This cavern was later hailed as the origin of the Painter Sequence.
Each mural depicted Spiritual Realms—entire landscapes and domains brought into existence through painting.
And the greatest power of the Painter Sequence was precisely its ability to paint Spiritual Realm Artworks.
Unfortunately, the ancient murals had been too old, and during their initial excavation, most of the Spiritual Realms within them had collapsed.
However, through the Hidden Brass Book, Rosen had uncovered a secret.
Not all of the Spiritual Realms had been destroyed.
One of the mural-based Spiritual Realms still existed.
This hidden realm possessed a mysterious power that allowed it to conceal itself, making it imperceptible to those who did not know where to look.
Rosen hadn't originally planned to come here to advance his Painter Sequence, as the Painting World Fruit already provided the best environment for advancement.
However, the Ancient Tree of Painting Laws, after his Noble Sequence advanced to Sequence 1, suddenly pointed toward the Floating Empire's mysterious cavern, hailed as the origin of the Painter Sequence. The fact that it could actively attract the laws of painting suggested that this place might hold a special opportunity related to the Painter Sequence.
After approaching the Sky-Piercing Pillar, Rosen saw a lighthouse built on its edge.
While it looked like a lighthouse on the surface, it was actually an elevator leading to the base of the Sky-Piercing Pillar.
Only by entering the base of the pillar through this elevator could one access the interior of the pillar, which was buried deep underground. This was also the Floating Empire's only external freight platform, responsible for transporting supplies from the outside world into the empire.
The Floating Empire wasn't unwilling to use teleportation arrays; it was simply that the area within a radius of ten thousand miles around the Sky-Piercing Pillar blocked all teleportation methods.
The vertical elevator, spanning over a hundred thousand miles, took a full three months for a one-way trip.
This elevator itself was rumored to be a True God-level extraordinary artifact.
Over the past twenty thousand years, there had been no shortage of foreign races attempting to destroy the elevator, but without exception, they all failed.
The interior of the elevator had been expanded through spatial manipulation. While it looked small from the outside, inside it was like a small city, capable of accommodating hundreds of thousands of people entering and exiting the Floating Empire at once. After waiting for half a month, Rosen finally caught the elevator on its return trip.
Once aboard, Rosen found a hotel in the elevator city and settled in.
Three months later, the elevator arrived at the base of the Sky-Piercing Pillar.
This location was already deep underground beneath the ocean. After a few days on an underground train, the train began to spiral upward, following the vertical shaft dug into the center of the pillar's base, finally entering the Floating Empire.
At the very center of the Sky-Piercing Pillar, a shaft about a thousand miles in diameter had been hollowed out.
Surrounding this shaft, countless caverns had been dug in a spiral upward pattern, forming cities of various sizes. The higher up the shaft, the more prosperous the cities, as the lower sections had already been mostly excavated.
While teleportation was impossible outside the Sky-Piercing Pillar, it was unaffected inside.
Starting from the base of the pillar, every thousand miles vertically marked a city with a hundred towns, all named using a numbering system.
Rosen quickly arrived at the 63rd Floating City through a portal in the first-level Floating City at the base.
Using the mental canvas to reflect the memories of an elderly passerby, Rosen filtered out a map of the 63rd Floating City.
The cavern containing the murals was located in the deepest part of the 63rd Floating City.
Passing through an exceptionally complex network of stone caverns, Rosen found a cavern that had been abandoned for many years.
A layer of energy barrier sealed the entrance, but it could only block ordinary people; even a Sequence 9 extraordinary being might not be stopped. Judging by its condition, the barrier hadn't been maintained for at least a thousand years, and in another two hundred years, even ordinary people would be able to enter and exit freely.
Rosen passed through the barrier and released a Void Shadow Demon to block the barrier with darkness.
He then summoned an angel and conjured some holy orbs to illuminate the cavern, which had been untouched for at least a millennium.
The cavern, hundreds of meters in diameter and hemispherical in shape, was covered in dense murals. Even though the spirit realms within the murals had collapsed over countless years, the murals themselves hadn't been completely destroyed. One could still vaguely make out what they depicted.
In the most ancient times, before the advent of writing, murals were the means by which intelligent beings recorded events.
This was the most ancient form of painting, completely unrelated to what could be called artistry.
Rosen had already examined copies of these murals before coming here. They recorded a group of humans who once lived on the mainland but, after facing an apocalyptic catastrophe, sought refuge inside a Sky Pillar that had descended from the heavens.
According to historians, these murals dated back to the extinction period of the previous Ancient God Era. This suggested that the people who left these murals behind were likely survivors from that era.
As for what happened afterward—why the cavern was abandoned and where those survivors ultimately went—the murals provided no answers. However, one detail stood out: at the time these murals were made, the Sky Pillar was not as impenetrably hard as it was now.
The survivors had not dug into the Sky Pillar from the bottom, as modern civilization had done, but had carved their way in from the side.
Yet, despite thorough searches, the World Government had never found any such entrance on the pillar's exterior.
According to the murals, the survivors had hollowed out the core of the Sky Pillar, turning it into their refuge. However, when the World Government discovered the Sky Pillar, it was already solid once more—its previously excavated interior mysteriously restored to a solid mass.
The strangest part was that, despite standing here for countless millennia, the Sky Pillar had only been discovered by the World Government a mere twenty thousand years ago.
All the great civilizations that had once ruled the Old Continent had somehow never noticed this massive pillar so close to their territories.
Rosen took out his Secrecy Compass, but it did not detect any hidden spaces.
He also used his Miracle Pouch, but found no trace of treasures.
Only then did he move to the edge of the cavern and locate a carved relief mural that had been directly engraved into the stone. The strange thing was that, despite being right in front of him, even using his Ancient God's True Eye, he couldn't see it at all.
He had no idea how the historian who first discovered this relief mural had even managed to notice it.
Summoning the Secret Brass Book, Rosen flipped it open, and instantly, the previously invisible carving became fully visible.
The relief depicted two figures, barely distinguishable as humanoid, engaged in battle. One wielded a staff, while the other fought barehanded. The barehanded figure extended a finger, pressing it against the end of the staff.
The historian who had first found this mural speculated that the staff might represent the Sky Pillar itself.
Given that the Sky Pillar's exterior was utterly indestructible while its inner core could be easily excavated, one possibility was that the barehanded fighter had shattered the pillar's core with a single touch, causing the force to penetrate the entire Sky Pillar.
If true, this meant that the two combatants depicted in the relief were beings beyond even Greater True Gods.
Rosen extended his divine perception toward the relief mural and immediately sensed a sealed Spiritual Realm within it.
Unlike ordinary murals that depicted collapsed Spiritual Realms, this one was fully intact, but completely sealed off.
Even the historian who had first discovered this place had never entered it.
Rosen attempted to interact with the relief mural using the Painting Law. Since this place had actively drawn the Painting Law to itself, perhaps only someone who controlled it could gain entry.
The moment his Painting Law spread across the relief mural, an overwhelming spatial force erupted, pulling him inside.
...
The Spiritual Realm he found himself in was no larger than ten square miles.
Beyond its boundaries, there was no spatial barrier—only an endless abyss of darkness.
At the center of this dimensional space, a stone-carved tombstone stood alone.
Countless lines of unknown text had been etched into its surface.
Activating his Ancient Scholar's Authority, Rosen deciphered the ancient script, retrieving all its lost history and meaning.
As he translated the text, he quickly learned the identity of the tomb's owner.
The deceased was Shi Yan, the most talented stoneworker of the Rock Tribe.
He had been destined to rise as the leader of his tribe, yet fate took a different turn when he stumbled upon the outer cavern.
Through the murals in the cavern, Shi Yan learned the origins of the Rock Tribe's ancestors.
From that moment on, Shi Yan began to yearn for the world outside the Sky Pillar. He relentlessly dug outward, and with his natural talent for manipulating stone, he eventually managed to break through the Sky Pillar's outer shell and escape.
However, the outside world was not the paradise he had imagined—it was a land of ruin, a dying world filled with remnants of destruction.
One day, as Shi Yan prepared to return home, he witnessed a terrifying scene.
A giant uprooted the Sky Pillar from its deep-sea foundation and wielded it as a weapon in battle against another barehanded giant, unleashing destruction beyond comprehension.
In the end, the defeated giant thrust the Sky Pillar back into its original position and vanished, leaving behind a world on the brink of total annihilation.
Shi Yan, miraculously having survived, retraced his path and returned to the interior of the Sky Pillar.
However, by the time he arrived, the entire Rock Tribe—hundreds of thousands of people—had already perished in the battle between the two giants.
As the sole survivor, Shi Yan lived on in the cavern, consumed by loneliness and despair.
Over time, he made a shocking discovery—the Sky Pillar was healing itself.
The tunnels he had dug to the outside world were gradually sealing shut, and the hollowed-out sections at the pillar's core, which his people had excavated, were slowly being refilled.
It was as if the Sky Pillar were a wounded living entity, gradually mending its injuries.
By then, Shi Yan had lost the will to live. So, he entombed himself within the Relief Mural's world.
...
Through Shi Yan's story, Rosen realized just how unnatural the Rock Tribe truly was.
If the murals depicted real events, and if the Sky Pillar's core had indeed been shattered by a single finger tap from the barehanded giant, then that meant the Rock Tribe had existed for a very long time before that battle.
And yet, they had been able to easily excavate a fully intact Sky Pillar at its peak strength?
Not to mention the fact that Shi Yan had witnessed the battle of the two giants firsthand—yet had somehow survived?
...
Rosen walked behind the tombstone and attempted to dig into Shi Yan's grave.
He quickly unearthed the entire burial site—only to find that it was a seamless stone sphere.
He struck it with full force, but not even a single scratch appeared on its surface.
The composition of this stone sphere was identical to the Sky Pillar's outer layer.
There were only two possibilities: either Shi Yan himself had been an extremely terrifying Extraordinary being, or the Rock Tribe had possessed a unique racial talent specifically attuned to the Sky Pillar—or perhaps both.
Since the stone sphere was a tomb, it was likely hollow on the inside.
Though Rosen couldn't break the stone sphere, he could open a door to the Mysterious Study Room on its surface.
Stepping inside, he approached the World Window—and sure enough, through the window, he saw a figure sitting with knees hugged to its chest.
He sent a Shadow Demon into the tomb to verify whether Shi Yan was truly dead.
If Shi Yan had really been as powerful as the tombstone inscriptions claimed, then there was a chance that, despite the passage of endless years, he might not have completely perished.
Only after confirming that Shi Yan was indeed long dead did Rosen begin a closer examination of the corpse.
It wasn't as terrifying as he had expected. Even in life, Shi Yan had at best been a Half-God.
His body itself held no exceptional value—it had merely turned to stone over time.
However, Shi Yan's eyes were somewhat special, possessing an innate talent for manipulating rock and petrifying the body.
The shape of his pupils bore an uncanny resemblance to the Petrifying Eyes, a Miracle Artifact Rosen had obtained on Mount Pantheon.
In fact, he even suspected that the Petrifying Eyes were formed from the eyes of another Rock Tribe member after death.
A mere pair of eyes was clearly not enough to drill through the Sky Pillar.
Rosen continued searching the corpse and soon discovered the cause of Shi Yan's death.
His heart had been pierced by a chisel.
At first glance, the chisel appeared to be an ordinary stone tool, but when Rosen pulled it from Shi Yan's heart, it slid out effortlessly, leaving no resistance behind. What was even more remarkable was that the surface of the chisel bore no scratches whatsoever.
A stonecutter's chisel, used for carving rock, shouldn't be completely unmarked.
Either it had never been used, or it was simply far too durable.
After confirming that there was no immediate danger, Rosen opened the World Window and retrieved the chisel into the Mysterious Study Room.
As his divine sense seeped into the chisel, he quickly discerned its properties.
[Ancient God's Chisel: Miracle Artifact]
[Level: Unknown]
[Miracle Property: Can destroy anything created by an Ancient God]
[Miracle Trait: Stonecutter of Creation]
Rosen took the Ancient God's Chisel and exited the Mysterious Study Room. He then gave a gentle tap against the hollow stone sphere that served as Shi Yan's tomb.
A moment ago, the stone had been utterly indestructible. But now, it broke apart like tofu, a small chunk effortlessly shaved off.
Judging by its name, this artifact likely belonged to an Ancient God, imbued with fundamental, transcendent rules beyond conventional laws. It appeared unremarkable, but as its Miracle Property suggested, it could freely destroy anything created by an Ancient God.
Rosen then examined the Miracle Trait—and found that Stonecutter of Creation was truly extraordinary.
If the Miracle Property represented destruction, then Stonecutter of Creation was its opposite—creation.
On a whim, Rosen used the chisel to carve a rabbit out of stone.
To his astonishment, the rabbit came to life.
Not only was it born as an Extraordinary creature with the ability to manipulate rock, but the type of rock it controlled was none other than the special stone that made up the hollow sphere.
...
The Sky Pillar's interior contained many civilization ruins, with the mural cavern being the oldest.
The other ruins had collapsed much later in history.
If the inscriptions on Shi Yan's tombstone were true, then after the Rock Tribe's destruction, Shi Yan had been the only living person left inside the Sky Pillar.
This raised a new question—where did those later ruins come from?
Rosen considered a possibility: the ruins weren't left behind by another civilization.
Instead, they might have been created by the lifeforms that Shi Yan had sculpted using the Ancient God's Chisel.
Shi Yan had at best been a Half-God—far from powerful enough to conceal the Relief Mural's world from history.
If the Relief Mural had truly been hidden all this time, the only explanation was that Shi Yan had used the Ancient God's Chisel, relying on its Miracle Trait, to sculpt beings who had later sealed his grave away.
Those sculpted lifeforms might have continued thriving within the Sky Pillar, gradually leaving behind the ruins that had been discovered in later ages.
...
Rosen soon realized that any lifeform he carved with the chisel could be completely controlled by him.
Yet, strangely enough, he found no connection between the Ancient God's Chisel and the Law of Painting.
If there was no connection, then why had the Relief Mural actively drawn in the Law of Painting, leading him to this place?
Rosen did not believe in coincidences. His first instinct was skepticism.
Was someone manipulating his fate?
Professions like Director and Novelist had abilities capable of orchestrating events in a similar manner.
However, after deploying various investigative methods, he found no trace of external interference.
...
After pondering for a moment, Rosen decided to leave the Sky Pillar with the Ancient God's Chisel.
But just as he was about to depart, he suddenly recalled something from Shi Yan's tombstone inscription.
Shi Yan had also left the Sky Pillar carrying the Ancient God's Chisel—and only after that did everything unfold.
So, was it possible that someone—or something—was deliberately using him to take the chisel out once more?
(End of Chapter)