Quinn Shepherd had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. When he finally came to, he felt utterly exhausted, his blood and yuanqi both dangerously depleted—neither had recovered much at all.
His hand trembled as he reached up to touch his brow. The Creation God-Stone was gone, and so was the Jade Pendant.
"What happened while I was out cold?"
With great effort, he managed to sit up and glanced into the mirror across from him. The reflection showed a gaunt, almost skeletal face—pale, devoid of any trace of color.
The wound at his brow looked like a closed eyelid, leaving behind a thin streak of blood.
Quinn’s mind was a mess; even his god-sense was hard to marshal. His yuanqi was drained, his heart beat weakly, and there was barely enough blood to keep his body functioning.
His limbs were ice-cold. Struggling, he rummaged through his Glutton Dragon Pouch looking for spirit herbs. It took ages to gather everything he needed, and with the last of his yuanqi, he barely managed to refine a batch of pills.
His control over yuanqi wasn’t what it used to be. During alchemy, he actually blew up the furnace, ruining a batch of pills.
That hadn’t happened once since his medical skills had fully matured!
He’d learned medicine from Apothecary, and only ever blew up a furnace back in Oldridge Village. With his current cultivation, every batch should succeed—exploding a furnace simply wasn’t supposed to happen anymore.
His reserves were so low that his control over his body, yuanqi, god-sense, and blood-qi was worse than ever—he was weaker than he’d been as a teenager!
With his current medical skills and creation arts, as long as he wasn’t dead, he could heal any injury. But now he was so depleted that even his creation arts wouldn’t work—just refining pills to heal himself was a struggle.
“Senior Brother Wayne, that God-Stone you left me has done me in..."
Wayne Gale left the Creation God-Stone for his benefit, but Wayne’s plan couldn’t keep up with reality—he hadn’t expected Quinn’s situation to be so complicated.
Quinn’s brow now held a third eye, whose mysteries he had yet to unravel. The Creation God-Stone tried to replace his eye, but ended up tormenting him nearly to death.
Steadying himself, Quinn refined another batch of pills, working even more carefully this time, and finally succeeded.
He grabbed the pills and swallowed them in big gulps, channeling the last of his yuanqi to catalyze their effects. After a while, his bone marrow began producing blood again, and his heart filled with new vitality.
With a bit of color returning to his face and his yuanqi slowly recovering, Quinn refined several more batches of pills, restoring his depleted blood to about half its former level, then made pills to replenish his yuanqi.
Though he could finally stand, his body was still shaky and weak. At least his face had some color now, though he remained gaunt.
Where did that Creation God-Stone and my Jade Pendant go? Don’t tell me... they pushed out my third eye?
In the sky above, the constellations stretched out, and beneath his feet, the Netherworld grew even deeper, while the taiji-patterned spirit platform steadily expanded.
He had no idea how much time had passed. His yuanqi and god-sense had already returned to their peak, and were still rising—yet his blood-qi was still depleted.
His Spirit Embryo Treasury kept expanding; more and more stars appeared in its sky, and the Netherworld beneath grew ever broader.
He had once thought his Spirit Embryo Treasury had reached its limits, but now, as it grew, he realized he had barely tapped its full potential.
The lake of Hongmeng Origin-Root Primordial Essence was slowly shrinking. At this rate, what he’d expected to take a decade to refine might be absorbed in just a few months!
But now that his eye had fully grown, why did it still keep devouring his blood-qi?
Quinn summoned his god-sense, sending it into his brow, where it transformed into a tiny figure flying through the third eye.
The inner space of this eye was vast and dizzying—a sprawling Keane-Sigil Continent, with mountain ranges folding over one another, shaping a giant 'Keane' character.
This was a fragment of Tu Bo’s horn; from afar, it looked like a circular continent, and the mountain chains formed the iris’s patterns.
And right at the center of the Keane-Sigil Continent, the Creation God-Stone was embedded.
The God-Stone had grown enormous, pushing out a huge section of the continent and sinking into a deep abyss. Chains of god-sense linked the stone to the land, blazing like molten shackles.
Tu Bo’s horn fragment formed the iris of his third eye, while the Creation God-Stone was now the crystal pupil.
His yuanqi and god-sense flowed here like clouds over the Keane-Sigil Continent, shifting the weather in its sky.
This transformation had caught Quinn completely off guard—and Wayne Gale, who’d gifted him the Creation God-Stone, would never have imagined it either.
Was this change a blessing or a curse?
A shadow of worry crept into his heart. He searched with his god-sense and saw his blood-qi streaming in, only to be devoured by the Creation God-Stone.
So it was the stone that was stealing his blood-qi?
Quinn directed his god-sense, diving into the crystal itself.
Inside the crystal, crimson light flooded every direction—there was no sense of up, down, north, or south. Quinn’s god-sense flew through the red glow for ages and still found no end.
He stopped abruptly, quietly sensing the flow of his blood-qi, then followed its current onward. After an indeterminate time, Quinn’s god-sense halted—there, in the red void, stood a colossal altar, and on it, a mass of twitching flesh writhed like a monstrous beast.
So it wasn’t the third eye or the God-Stone itself stealing his blood-qi—it was something hiding inside the stone, using his blood to resurrect!
Quinn’s heart skipped a beat. He crept closer and saw the mass of flesh on the altar pause, as if it sensed his approach.
Quinn narrowed his eyes. Suddenly, the flesh split open, revealing a single scarlet eye that swept the void.
Quinn instantly dispersed his god-sense, dodging the monster’s gaze. The flesh closed back up, hiding the crimson eye, and resumed devouring his blood-qi.
Standing before the cabin mirror, Quinn’s expression grew grave.
Wayne Gale’s so-called ‘gift’ hid some kind of demon, lurking inside the Creation God-Stone to secretly siphon his blood-qi.
There was even an altar inside—one that looked just like those pre-historic sacrificial altars in the Blood-Rust Belt. Its goal was to drain his blood-qi and use his god-sense to rebuild its body! That meant the thing inside the God-Stone had to be a Pre-Historic Creator!
Quinn steadied his blood-qi, careful not to alarm whatever was hidden in the God-Stone. He thought, 'The Blood-Rust Belt was the ancient gods’ battlefield where they wiped out the Pre-Historic Creators. This one must have been slain there, but didn’t die completely—he must’ve hidden in a shattered God-Stone fragment with his last strength.'
He paced, deep in thought: 'Wayne found this crystal, but because he was too strong, the thing inside didn’t dare act up and let Wayne believe the stone was harmless, so he passed it to me. Since my cultivation is weaker, when I experimented with the God-Stone, it tried to seize my blood-qi and resurrect, but my third eye blocked it.'
Gradually, he pieced together the truth: 'When I wedged the Jade Pendant between the God-Stone and my third eye, the stone took advantage of my distraction to smash into the pendant and knock me out. That must’ve been the Pre-Historic Creator making its move!'
'It could have taken over my third eye and drained me dry, but it underestimated the Jade Pendant—Tu Bo himself forged it as a Netherworld seal, meant to suppress my brother Fenix, the Netherworld Divine Son.'
Quinn’s eyes flashed. 'It crashed headlong into Tu Bo’s seal and couldn’t escape, so it settled in and started secretly stealing my blood-qi. Every time I run the Overlord Three-Core Art and my god-sense passes through the third eye, it flows through the God-Stone and gets intercepted—some of it ends up left on the altar.'
'It’s brewing power, waiting to revive! It must be a major Pre-Historic Creator—if it’s survived this long, it’s no ordinary remnant. If it steals enough blood-qi and uses the God-Stone’s powers, it could really resurrect inside my eye. So…'
Quinn’s three eyes gleamed brighter and brighter. 'How do I kill it for good?'
He paused. Judging by how it had seized his blood-qi, even without a physical body, this being was far beyond anything he could handle.
Back then, Quinn had lost all control over his blood-qi and yuanqi—if his third eye hadn’t awakened, he’d be dead already!
Now, with the God-Stone fused into his eye and Tu Bo’s seal in place, the remnant couldn’t act up for the moment; it could only steal his blood-qi slowly.
That gave Quinn a window of opportunity to fight back.
But dealing with a Pre-Historic Creator hiding in the stone was no easy task—now that the crystal was part of his eye, one wrong move could ruin his vision forever.
First, he needed to control his blood-qi flow and reduce the amount of god-sense passing into the third eye, slowing the remnant’s recovery.
Quinn pondered carefully: 'I’ll have to lay formations inside the third eye. Grandpa Blind’s Ninefold Heaven Eye Art isn’t enough to wipe out such a monster—I’ll need a new set of arrays… Since this Pre-Historic Creator died in the Blood-Rust Belt at the hands of the ancient gods, their Daos should work best against him. First, I’ll engrave the Great Zhou Heavenly Stars’ 360 righteous gods’ Dao-runes!'
No sooner thought than done—he sealed off his blood-qi, summoned his yuanqi, and began imprinting the Dao-runes of all 360 Star Gods into the pupil of his third eye.
This wouldn’t just suppress the Pre-Historic Creator—it would also empower the third eye, turning it into his true Third Divine Eye!
Once the formation was activated, the Third Divine Eye could unleash the full Star-God Array—slaying mighty foes would be child’s play!
Inside the Spirit Embryo Treasury, Quinn’s yuanqi surged like a rainbow. Guided by the spirit embryo, it swept into the Keane-Sigil Continent, imprinting star-god runes across the sky.
As countless runes appeared in the sky, they gradually coalesced into the first Star God.
Just then, an ancient, obscure wave of god-sense echoed in his mind: "Wait."