In the stillness of the Void Sea, Lex sat cross-legged in his floating dojo, suspended above his universe.
His steady breathing and deep comprehension of the runes of the Dao king technique were suddenly interrupted by unexpected wailing, curses, and desperate cries.
Lex's eyes snapped open and without hesitation, he reached out with his will and reconnected with Luna's Cosmic Door.
An instant later, a clone of him formed in front of the door, manifesting like a ripple in still water.
"What... is going on here?" he muttered as he scanned the space beyond the Zone of the Cosmic Door.
There they were: trillions upon trillions of twisted, howling souls drifting through space like ash in a burning wind.
Each one was brimming with sorrow, overwhelming hatred, and unrelenting resentment. Wherever he looked, he saw an aura of death.
"Did my creation cause this?" he murmured.
For the first time in a long while, the human side of his soul stirred, shaken by the sheer volume of suffering he caused.
However, it was immediately suppressed by his logical side.
A moment later, Luna appeared beside his clone, her small form floating above his shoulder. She had been drawn by the same anomaly.
Her usually joyful expression was now filled with unease. She stared into the sea of damned souls.
"I've heard of an Extinction Event," she said quietly, "but this is the first time I've seen one."
"Extinction Event?" Lex inquired, turning to face her.
"Yes," Luna said, her voice softer than usual and tinged with something strange, almost like hesitation.
"It's a term Dao Seekers often use when speaking of harvesting the grief, fear, and rage left behind by dying universes. They call it Cataclysmic Energy.
"Is it more powerful than chaotic energies?"Lex asked intrigued by what makes it so special.
"No, it isn't powerful but it is rare. It is especially useful for those who practice destruction Dao. Others also use it to add destructive properties to their attacks. Or even make weapons with destruction Dao weapons; the most lethal Dao weapons."
She paused and watched the endless sea of disembodied souls drifting like ash in an eternal wind.
"This is still the early stage," she added.
"What?" Lex asked.
"The extinction event."
"There's no crimson hue in the stars. No distortion in the void. No weeping light. The true red hue of extinction hasn't touched everything yet."
Her voice faltered slightly. A faint sorrow crept in her young mind that experienced a little, but it was quickly buried, but not completely hidden.
Lex tilted his head and turned toward the Origin Ocean. Now, it could hardly be called an ocean; it was just a pool of origin energy.
The pool shimmered with a soft, unnatural red light.
"So that's why the origin energy turned red," he murmured as he reached out and caught a lone soul—a man hollowed out by pain.
Gently, he drew the man's final memories from him and watched them unfold in silence. Then, without a word, he passed the soul to Luna.
"Here. See for yourself."
She took it, her fingers brushing against the echo of a life once lived.
When the visions ended, she remained silent. But her face creased. Her eyes glistened faintly.
He noticed a new expression on her face—one he never knew she could make. Since her roots were from the Voidsea, he had assumed she wouldn't be burdened by emotions like this.
Moreover, the fact that she carried the memories of her ancestor should have made her more resilient.
"What did you see?" he asked.
"Nothing," she said at first, then, after several seconds, and due to Lex questioning guess she continued: "Only that sometimes the truth is heavy, even when it's correct."
Lex stayed quiet for a moment, surprised by her response.
His expression didn't change, but inside, he was reconsidering Luna's personality.
He had seen a glimpse of emotion, a trace of sorrow that shouldn't have been there, in her, although just for a second.
"I thought that, since she carries the memories of her ancestors, things like this wouldn't affect her," he thought, observing her closely.
His logical side remained steady and unchanged to this, but the human part of him noticed that moment clearly.
And quietly, he appreciated it, not because it made her weaker, but because it made her real.
"I only thought," Luna added, not in protest, but in observation.
"That it is senseless that so many lives would end merely to devour a universe."
Lex looked at her deeply.
His voice still and absolute echoed, "Senseless?" "You carry the ancestral memory of entire cosmic-blooded lineages. You know better than most that countless universes collapse every moment. Trillions die in silence. That is the way of things."
He turned his gaze to the void beyond, his expression one of absolute resolve.
"To seek the Dao is to abandon such attachments. It is to see through the illusion of suffering. There is no good or evil, Luna. Only ascent. And you should know it."
After a long pause, she asked in a calm voice with a hint of sharpness and childlike cuttingness.
"If ascent demands indifference to suffering, then what exactly are we ascending into?"
Lex, as if stating a fact that he would never questioned, said without hesitation, "We ascend into the eternal."
Luna looked down at the soul in her hands. Then, with a small breath, she released it and it rejoined the countless souls drifting in the void.
"Then perhaps," she said quietly, "the eternal is emptier than we ever dared admit."
Lex glanced at her. "Maybe," he said after a beat. "But even emptiness, is better than death."
Luna didn't argue. There was nothing to correct. Only truths, drifting between them, weightless, and infinite.
Lex noticed her silence, as well as the way her gaze lingered on the despairing souls drifting around them.
He also noticed how her breath had stilled, even though she didn't need to breathe.
He then spoke, not with defensiveness, but with quiet reassurance.
"Don't be dejected," he said gently. "Your thoughts matter to me, Luna. They always have."
He looked back out into the drifting tide of death, the crimson-tinged cosmic energy slowly thickening around them.
"It's not that I want to slaughter the innocent senselessly. I gain nothing from cruelty."
"But if I don't reduce their number, it becomes almost impossible to weaken the Universal Will enough to devour it safely."
His voice remained steady, but there was no mistaking the calculation behind it.
"The more beings that exist in a universe, the stronger the cosmic will becomes. Their collective consciousness—their thoughts, hopes, and fears—empowers it. That is the foundation behind the existence of a cosmic will," he said.
"Let me tell you a secret. The Universal Will isn't a normal entity, Luna. It's the collective mind power of everything that exists, especially living beings; they make up seventy percent."
Luna blinked slowly, absorbing his words. In her limited memory of her ancestors, there is nothing that talks about the nature of cosmic wills.
After a long silence, she spoke. "What if, instead of killing them, you steal them from the Universal Will?" she began, her voice light but serious.
"Explain," Lex said, intrigued.
"Take their souls. Isolate their minds from the Will. Sever their connection to it. Control their perceptions. If you do that, they might no longer contribute to the Will's strength. They might stop feeding it."
"You could suppress its power without extinction," she finished.
"Reclaim their sentience, but let their lives continue. Use them as neutralized fragments?" Lex considered this.
She nodded. "Exactly. Remove them from the equation, not the world."
Lex was silent for several moments, calculating. His expression didn't change, but the air around him shifted.
"Interesting," he said at last. "A quiet war. Bloodless, but precise."
Lex gave a slow nod. "Very well. We'll test this."
He then fell silent, folding his arms as he began deducing.
After several minutes, something clicked. His mind had run through countless possibilities, discarding one after another.
"Faith," he arrived at a conclusion.
Luna, who had been observing the dead souls, turned to him and asked, "Faith?"
Lex nodded once, his eyes focused.
"Yes, faith, the creatures of this universe don't know the Universal Will exists. But they still generate mind power just by living, thinking, and feeling."
"I don't need to make them aware of it; I just need to redirect that energy before it reaches the Will." he said.
"If I present myself as a god and save, shelter, and protect them, their faith will naturally attach to me. That faith will act as a conduit, and the mind power they generate will come to me instead."
Luna nodded slowly, understanding his reasoning said, "So you're not trying to enslave them. You're trying to gather them. Not to harvest them, but to make them yours."
"Exactly," Lex said. "If they believe in me and take me in willingly, then I can feed off the mind power they produce. I weaken the Will, not by killing life, but by recycling it into faith power then into mind power suitable for me."
Luna looked out into the void thoughtfully.
"It's clean, precise, and subtle. They'll never even realize it's happening," she said.
Lex smiled faintly. "They won't have to. All they'll know is that I saved them."
He stepped forward into the endless darkness, his presence spreading wide.
"Through that salvation, they will give me everything