Published at 11th of February 2026 8:22 am

Chapter 3849: Tolling Darkness

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Yet, the more time he spent in the darkness, the more morsels of information he began perceiving.

Information he recognized.

Information defining his body.

Sometimes it was a sound.

Sometimes it was a vision.

A sense of touch.

Sometimes it was a kind of sense that didn’t quite fit in any of category. He could describe it as the sense of information itself, something that his consciousness had a hard time interpreting into one of his conventional senses.

And yet, he recognized it as a part of his existence.

He knew his body inside-out and backwards-front. He had spent sixteen years studying it close up while integrating Anthean biology into his body. He could reconstruct his body right down to the last cell in his mind.

That was why he recognized information describing his body.

"I’m in the right place, and my suspicions were right."

He could access the information describing his body, but only tiny morsels. But as time passed, his familiarity with the darkness continued to grow, and he began sensing more within its depths.

He could only speculate that this information was always there, but he was blind to it. He suspected the more time he spent, the more he would be able to see. Perhaps the darkness was his consciousness’s interpretation of his own limitations.

It was like how one’s eyes eventually adjusted to the darkness if the lights were switched off in an isolated room. At first, one would not be able to see anything, but then the eyes would adjust, and one could begin to see better in the darkness.

Then there were those who spent a lifetime in the darkness, and to them it was no different from day.

"Will I need to spend a lifetime in this place?" A hint of weariness entered his voice. "I already feel like I’ve spent eons here."

It took a toll on him psychologically.

Even as he withdrew from the darkness and returned to his Martial Path, he felt like years, decades, and centuries had passed.

By the time he returned to his path, he was exhausted.

When he opened his eyes in the real world in the training chamber he was secluded in, his body was drenched in sweat while his breathing was labored. He gazed at his hands with a serious expression. "How much time will this take?"

He couldn’t even begin to estimate that, but he knew that he had barely taken a step, less than a step, in the direction of Project Autocorpus. This time, more than real-world time, he suspected that this project would be extremely taxing psychologically.

Drowning his consciousness in a metaphysical darkness to grow accustomed to it, the way that the eyes and brain grew accustomed to real darkness in the real world, was a highly painful process.

Even if Martial Sages had a sort of super-sanity thanks to their enlightenment of self, it was not easy.

"Real power is never easy to come by, especially at my stage."

He was starting to finally approach bottlenecks in terms of path forwards for progress. Chaos, mirror neurons, and esoteric samples were a given and were just a matter of time, but beyond that, it was very difficult for him to conceive of brand-new avenues of growth.

He gazed at the time as his eyes widened with shock.

A whole day had passed in the blink of an eye.

Thankfully he was in the manifold, so less than two hours had passed in the real world, he quickly took a shower to freshen himself while resetting his brain to get rid of the need for sleep, before returning back to the royal palace quickly.

It was an inconvenience to the manifold management division to open the manifold so many times in such a short interval, but he was the Emperor and part-owner of the manifold, so he could do as he pleased.

By the time he exited the manifold, dusk had arrived in the outside world. The dark skies blackened once the sun dipped underneath the horizon as he inhaled a breeze of fresh air, after exiting the stuffy manifold.

WHOOSH

He teleported back to the royal palace, finding Amare reading a book on the royal bed with a bored expression. Bodhisattva Maitreyi simply sat on a chair beside the bed, knitting something intricate from special leaves. She had resolved to be with Amare at all times when Rui wasn’t there, unwilling to compromise on the safety of her granddaughter when she was incapacitated with pregnancy.

It was a remarkably normal familial sight considering that everybody in the room was a Transcendent Candidate.

"Rui..." Her tone was one of relief as she turned around to him with an exhausted expression. "I’m glad you’re back."

The luster in her amber eyes was missing, while her bronze skin looked unusually pale.

Rui frowned, sensing a hint of frustration in her mind. "What’s the matter?"

He scooted over to the bed beside her as she immediately hugged him, burying her face in his clothes with an expression of relief. Bodhisattva Maitreyi quietly excused herself, giving the couple some private time.

"This..." she muttered with a tired voice. "This is going to be harder than I expected. I haven’t activated my Martial Heart in a day, and I already feel extremely frustrated."

His expression grew a little grim. Unfortunately, this was a problem that even he couldn’t do anything about. The Martial Heart could not be activated while she was pregnant, or it would kill their unborn child. For someone who trained in Martial Art to her very limit, this was deeply tormenting.

He simply hugged her, pulling her into his arms before kissing her softly and gently on the head. "Once our child is born, you should spend an entire day on Martial Art and get it out of your system."

She smiled bittersweetly, snuggling in his arms. "That does sound nice. Now put me to sleep. I can’t sleep without the exhaustion of training all my Realms of power, and I have so much energy that I don’t want to do with it."

"You can train your Martial Body, for now," Rui remarked.

"I did, but it only makes my inability to activate the Martial Heart even more frustrating." She huffed. "The only thing that improves my mood is..."

Her expression softened as a sincere smile emerged on her face. "...thinking about our baby. I’ve been thinking about names, and I wonder if you want to go with a Gen name or a Kandrian name. We have some really nice names in the Gen Temple."

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