Months earlier, when Demon Merin first formed his Dao, something stirred deep within the sealed dream space.
Merin, seated in quiet meditation while comprehending the Law of Soul, suddenly felt a vibration—subtle at first, then increasingly sharp—echoing through the boundary of the Dream Mirror seal.
His focus broke.
Eyes snapping open, he frowned.
The tremor wasn't random.
It wasn't external.
It came from inside his own spirit space.
He withdrew his awareness from the Law of Soul and extended his senses outward, following the disturbance. The seal pulsed again—soft ripples spreading through the dream world like waves across a still lake.
Merin's brow tightened.
"The Dream Mirror seal is reacting… but why?"
He pushed his perception beyond the dream world's sky, piercing the spiritual fog that separated his consciousness from the outer layer of his soul.
Then he saw it.
Demon Merin—his other self—was forming a Dao.
A new Dao.
A true Dao.
And the seal trembled again.
In that moment, understanding dawned.
The Dream Mirror was not merely a tool—it was a Dao artefact, its essence tied directly to the Dao it represented.
The seal on the dream world was a projection—an extension—of the Dream Mirror's Dao.
Since Demon Merin crafted his Dao inside the same soul space, the two concepts were close enough to resonate. The Dream Mirror reacted instinctively to the birth of another Dao so near its core.
Two Dao paths, born in the same vessel, were affecting one another.
Merin sat quietly for a long time as realisation settled.
Demon Merin had forged a nascent Dao—far earlier than expected.
A twisted, devouring, emotional path.
Dark but complete in structure.
Merin exhaled softly.
And then a decision was formed.
If Demon Merin—a fragmented consciousness—could shape a Dao from instinct, hunger, and inherited understanding…
Then his own Dao—built on reason, experience, and insight—should not remain half-formed.
His Dao was still in the nascent stage only because he never organised it with full intention. His cultivation path had always been a layering of Laws, growing deeper but never woven into a unified truth.
Now was the time.
Not later.
Not after hunting devils, or escaping death, or building worlds.
Now.
He closed his eyes again.
Inside the dream space, the laws he had comprehended—Five Elements, Space, Illusion, Soul, and more—slowly emerged like constellations.
He would not copy Demon Merin's Dao.
He would refine his own.
A Dao not built on devouring or domination.
But a Dao built on illusion and reality, soul and form, creation and transformation.
A Dao that could create a true world—not one fed by death, but one sustained by existence.
A Dao worthy of a realm.
A Dao that could stand beside—or one day suppress—the demon's path.
Merin steadied his breath.
Eyes calm.
Mind still.
And inside the dream world, the Laws continued to shift—slowly aligning toward something greater.
But alignment did not mean harmony.
The moment Merin tried weaving them together, the Laws collided—crashing, clashing, rejecting one another. Fire scorched Space. Illusion swallowed Five Elements. Soul law disrupted Devouring. Every attempt to unify them resulted in fragmentation and collapse.
No matter how carefully he arranged them, conflict returned again and again.
Yet Merin refused to give up—not even on a single fragment.
Every Law he possessed was earned with hardship, insight, sacrifice, and near-death experience. To discard even one felt like cutting off a limb—like betraying the very path he had walked.
Before entering this world, his dream space carried these Laws inside the illusion world. He held them, yes—but holding was not mastery. His current application has barely reached half of its potential.
If he ever reached full application—if he could wield every Law perfectly—then he would stand among those terrifying heavenly geniuses, the ones who crushed realms above their level as if stepping over stones.
And he needed that strength.
Desperately.
The more he learned about this world, the clearer the danger became.
The portal he sought to complete was not an escape—it was a summons.
Opening it would draw attention from forces beyond his current understanding.
If he were weak when that moment arrived, he would vanish—devoured by the very world he tried to reach.
So his combat strength had to rise.
Not slowly.
Not gradually.
As high as reality and comprehension allowed.
Days passed inside the dream world as Merin contemplated, dismantled, rebuilt, and failed.
Until finally, his thoughts circled back to something fundamental:
Runes.
The language of Laws.
Not concepts.
Not force.
Not interpretation.
But structure.
So Merin changed his method.
Instead of forcing Laws to merge directly, he began breaking each one into its smallest foundational symbol—its rune-form, the pure syntax of its existence.
Fire became dozens of runes.
Space became hundreds.
Illusion, soul, elements, devouring—each fragmented into countless glyphs.
When he finally finished, he found himself staring at nearly ten thousand runes—each one unique, each one the distilled essence of a Law fragment.
And now the true question began:
How should these runes form a Dao?
His Dao needed a foundation—not just strength, but identity.
Two things defined him.
His ability to turn dream into reality, and his pursuit of immortality.
Immortality would come naturally with higher cultivation.
But turning dream into reality—that was his Dao.
He created the illusion of space. He tried to turn imagination into a living existence. Even the demon's awakening happened because his illusion world touched reality without stability.
Turning illusion into truth was not a mistake.
It was his direction.
His path.
After long contemplation, a possibility formed—not a fusion, but a program.
A structure that used runes as code.
A Dao that operated the way formations did—logical, stable, evolving.
He began.
He selected four elemental runes—Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth—to serve as the first pillars, the base foundation of a greater framework.
From these runes, he started constructing the architecture of a system:
Stable.
Upgradeable.
Self-evolving.
Reality-binding.
Not a beast like Demon Merin's Dao.
But a world-engine.
A Dao meant not to devour existence—
—but to build it.
As the first runic framework locks into place, the dream world trembles.
Merin does not hesitate.
With a single thought, he destroys the illusion world that once filled his inner space. Mountains, oceans, artificial souls, sky, structures—everything collapses into pure energy.
Countless soul fragments and memories spiral downward, sucked toward the newborn world engine.
It consumes everything—purposefully, not hungrily—and reorders it as fuel.
Merin chooses to start over.
No impurities.
No flawed foundation.
No borrowed emotion or broken logic.
Only truth, structure, and intent.
The runic framework stabilises.
The four primary energies ignite—Fire, Wind, Water, and Earth—rotating slowly like four celestial spheres.
The longer they rotate, the more their natures grind and clash, until sparks of potential spill from every collision.
At the perfect moment, Merin adds the illusion rune—followed by the dream rune.
Immediately, the four energies blur, distort, and shift.
Form becomes reflection.
Reality becomes potential.
A phantom cycle begins:
Four Elements → Illusion → Concept.
From that illusion, new principles emerge—Five Elements, born from refinement:
Metal, Wood, Earth, Water, Fire.
He guides them gently, adding their runes one by one.
With their addition, the illusion begins to stabilise—forming not an image, but a structure capable of becoming real.
Next, he introduces the Space rune.
The illusion compresses, stretches, folds, and stabilises—because now it has location and distance, not just appearance.
Then come the final layers—Soul, Emotion, Devouring, and all the remaining runes he derived.
The runes settle into a coherent weave.
A silent engine.
A complete framework.
A Dao—not borrowed, not random, not instinctual—designed.
Merin exhales slowly.
His voice is calm, steady, certain:
"I won't open a world here. There is no point."
A world born now would support him, yes—but that would trap him in dependence, slowing growth and binding his potential. Once his Dao matures, he can replicate everything the illusion world could do—and far more.
"No. The world must support itself. Only then can it support me."
He will open it later.
Outside this world.
In the chaotic energy beyond realms, where true worlds are birthed.
There, a world would serve as his coordinate—his return point, a beacon across dimensions.
He remembers rumours circulating across this realm—rumours of the Immortal Realm, proof that this world is merely a sector of a far vaster existence.
He does not intend to remain here forever.
But he must leave a path back.
So he works.
Silently.
Focused so deeply, he does not notice what happens outside.
He does not see Demon Merin's breakthrough.
He does not feel the awakening of a Saint body.
He does not sense the sky tearing open as the Saint Tribulation forms.
Nor does he hear the countless cultivators rushing across the desert—sect forces, vengeful survivors, opportunists, assassins—drawn by rage and greed.
When they see the Saint Tribulation forming in the sky above the ridge, realisation spreads like wildfire:
Someone is breaking through.
And they accelerate.
Fast.
Hungry.
Bloodthirsty.
The hunt has changed—
And now the hunters race toward the storm.