Lord: Sequence Master

"Finally, it's all done..."

Rosen collapsed into Li Shiqing's arms, not wanting to move an inch.

These past months had been exhausting, but the good news had certainly been abundant.

First, the Gate of Heaven had actually come into existence. Secondly, the Angel Beast, after absorbing the sincere gratitude of countless patients, had caused the Angel's Blessing, a transcendent artifact, to evolve slightly. Although it hadn't advanced from Sequence 4 to Sequence 3 yet, it was only a matter of time.

Finally, Li Shiqing had finally completed her studies and returned, now the number one divine chef in the virtual spiritual world of Golden Prosperity Movie . She had memorized all the recipes from that world with the help of a transcendent memory-assisting artifact.

Now, they only needed to wait for him to finish his current tasks, and they could try to fulfill the special talent clause of the World Government.

Li Shiqing looked at Rosen, who was so tired that he was about to doze off, and was just about to suggest he get some rest when he suddenly pounced on her.

Under the influence of his Divine Power of Enchantment, Rosen's energy was instantly and infinitely restored.

However, once some things started, they couldn't stop. By the time they did, Li Shiqing had already passed out from exhaustion.

Only then did Rosen realize that the Divine Power of Enchantment's ability to grant unlimited stamina seemed to have an unintended side effect.

His body could maintain endless physical energy in a certain "riding" state, but his spiritual awareness still succumbed to fatigue.

Rosen gently placed Li Shiqing in the master bedroom of Ashen Castle and then walked to the castle's terrace, pulling out the Gate of Heaven painting.

Tearing apart the painting, a palm-sized doorframe appeared in his hand.

[Gate of Heaven: Transcendent Building]

[Level: Sequence 6]

[Ability: The souls of pious followers can be reborn in the Divine Domain through the Gate of Heaven after death]

[Divine Attribute: Life Conversion – Reborn pious followers can be transformed into Divine Domain residents]

Though the Gate of Heaven wasn't of a high level and its ability was simple, it gave pious believers the chance to live a second life.

This meant he could gain more followers and more residents for his domain.

The more residents there were, the stronger his authority as a Sovereign Lord would become.

Rosen placed the Gate of Heaven in a corner of his domain. In the short term, there probably wouldn't be any deaths among his followers.

This building's value would only increase over time, as its true worth unfolded across longer time spans.

When Li Shiqing woke up, she looked out the window to see that it was already afternoon.

In the castle's main hall, Rosen was busy studying new spiritual runs.

Upon seeing Li Shiqing come downstairs, Rosen activated a folding and twisting of space around them.

Although it was still the castle's main hall, it was no longer the surface-level hall but one deeply hidden and protected within layered spatial barriers. This hall was sparsely furnished because it housed Rosen's Sequence Tree.

The Sequence Tree was composed of the essence of spirituality. If it were damaged, it would cause profound harm to one's spiritual foundation.

For most transcendents, their Sequence Tree resides within their spiritual sea, meaning that an attack on the spirit could also destroy their Sequence Tree .

However, a Sovereign Lord's Sequence Tree was synchronized with their divine domain, making it far more difficult to kill them in normal circumstances.

Rosen took out various materials and quickly arranged a spiritual awakening ritual for Li Shiqing.

With eager anticipation, Li Shiqing stepped into the ritual circle. As the awakening ritual activated, she began absorbing the power of the spiritual crystals, which gradually gave birth to spirituality within her soul—a force even more fundamental to life than the soul itself.

Rosen approached Li Shiqing and summoned the Divine Brush, gently touching it to her forehead.

A small amount of the Divine Power of Creation that he had gained from his spiritual paintings was transferred into Li Shiqing's spiritual sea.

Without this divine power, people emerging from the spiritual world could only transfer to normal sequences, without receiving full recognition from the World Government as nobility.

Only the Divine Power of Creation could bestow spiritual life with a fully acknowledged human identity from the World Government.

When the spiritual awakening was complete, Li Shiqing seamlessly connected her spirituality to the spirit realm.

In just a few seconds, Rosen could already sense that her spirituality had suddenly increased, signifying that the recipes she submitted to the Gourmet Sequence Tree had been accepted by the Golden Tree .

This earned her the noble Sequence 9 Gourmet class, along with the honor of a noble's bloodline power, which increased her spiritual growth limit.

Rosen breathed a sigh of relief—there would be no obstacles to her becoming a gourmet now.

Time passed day by day, and Rosen found himself enjoying life more and more.

Each day, he savored the spiritual delicacies prepared by Li Shiqing, while also mastering new spiritual runes.

Until one day, his peaceful life was abruptly interrupted.

Though Rosen's main body was focused on studying runes, his self-portrait clone wasn't idle.

The clone continued hunting ash beings in the Blazing Shadow Duchy. Finally, after a year of relentless hunting, he had accumulated enough military merit to avoid being sent to the front lines.

Normally, a Sequence 6 noble wouldn't need to go to such lengths to avoid the front lines.

But being a hereditary duke came with greater power, and thus, greater responsibilities.

At long last, after over a year of nonstop hunting, he was free from this burden.

But Rosen barely had time to celebrate before a new mission from the World Government arrived through his Stellar Emblem.

In the Underground Kingdom, he had killed Count Fritz. In the Thunder Empire, he had killed Marquis Ford.

Ford's death hadn't caused much trouble, since he had effectively killed himself with his Stage of Fate.

Additionally, Ford wasn't a hereditary noble, so the World Government's protection over him was minimal.

But Count Fritz was different.

Because of this, Rosen was burdened with a disciplinary task at Sequence 6.

Since he had chosen to offset front-line duties by hunting ash beings, the disciplinary task was also located in the Blazing Shadow Duchy.

After reviewing the mission details, Rosen found himself in a bit of a bind.

A World Government employee had recently stolen an important document, and Rosen had to locate the thief and retrieve it. If he failed, he would have no choice but to go to the front lines.

This mission was odd—normally, it wouldn't have landed on his desk.

Unless someone was intentionally trying to cause trouble for him.

Aside from a photograph, there were no valuable clues.

If it weren't for the Death Sentence ability he possessed, finding this traitor would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Rosen opened his Void Gallery and quickly sketched a portrait of the traitor, Gila Hinton.

His self-portrait clone donned the Reaper's Cloak and entered the painting, accessing Gila's spiritual sea through the portrait.

However, the moment the clone entered Gila's spiritual sea, it was instantly shattered, along with the Reaper's Cloak and the Reaper's Scythe . It had been destroyed by the power of a demigod.

Gila wasn't a demigod, but his spiritual sea housed a demigod-level countermeasure.

Though the clone was almost immediately destroyed, Rosen was still able to roughly determine Gila's location and distance.

Gila was in the Blazing Shadow Duchy, seemingly inside a spiritual realm.

The protection of this realm was likely what had helped him evade detection for so long.

A nameless, destroyed fishing village along the Blazing Shadow Duchy's coast.

Rosen vaguely remembered this place—it had been one of the villages destroyed by the Black Shark Pirate Crew.

Everyone had died, leaving the village shrouded in ash.

Moreover, the ash seemed to have caused some abnormalities. The scarecrows scattered throughout the village appeared to be coming to life.

As Rosen examined the scarecrows, he realized that in a few days, they would fully transform into ash beings.

These scarecrows had originally been used to ward off seagulls or thrown into the sea as substitutes during storms—a superstitious custom. How could such a place hide a spiritual realm of at least Sequence 6?

Rosen activated the power of the Lazy Foot, which allowed him to sense hidden spiritual realms.

Sure enough, there was a concealed realm within the abandoned village, linked to the only stone-carved scarecrow.

Rosen approached the stone scarecrow and noticed that offerings had been placed in front of it.

Slowly, he walked toward the stone scarecrow, the power of the Lazy Foot enveloping him, allowing him to pass through the spatial barrier. He forced his way from the physical world into the spiritual realm bound to the stone scarecrow.

The moment he crossed the barrier, he found himself in a bustling, vibrant fishing village.

Groups of women sat by the roadside, some weaving nets, others crafting scarecrows.

In the distance, by the village's pier, a fishing boat was unloading its catch.

It was a transcendent ship, of Sequence 8 quality.

It must have been the village's most valuable possession, for only transcendent ships could venture into the sea to catch fish.

After all, the shallow seas were tainted by ash, leaving no fish to catch.

To fish, one had to venture into the deep sea.

Additionally, the waters near the village were kept clear of ash by the villagers, creating a relatively safe area for coastal aquaculture.

Why was this place still a village and not a town? It was because the coastline suitable for aquaculture was limited.

A town couldn't support itself in such an area, but a village could.

While the village wasn't as safe as a city, its income was quite substantial.

Given the difficulty of catching fish in the ash-tainted seas, even the Blazing Shadow Duchy, surrounded by water, found it hard to enjoy seafood.

Through spiritual perception, Rosen quickly assessed the spiritual energy levels of his surroundings.

The higher the spiritual realm's level, the stronger the spiritual intensity of its environment.

Unless, of course, it was a place like the Time Dragon's Nest, where the spiritual energy had been drained by a Bronze Dragon.

"Sequence 4..."

Rosen's pupils were constricted.

How could such a small fishing village, destroyed two or three years ago, form a Sequence 4 spiritual realm?

Rosen calmed himself and soon noticed more peculiarities.

Despite being surrounded by villagers, no one seemed to notice him.

Moreover, he couldn't move his body.

Looking into a nearby puddle, Rosen saw not his own reflection, but that of a scarecrow.

Upon entering the spiritual realm, he had been transformed into a scarecrow. No wonder the villagers paid him no attention.

Rosen began channeling his spirituality into golden divinity, causing the Ancient God Relic within his heart to stir.

In an instant, his spiritual strength surged to 50 points, reaching Sequence 5, and he finally regained control over his body.

As he moved slightly, the surrounding villagers looked at him with fear.

A scarecrow had come to life, which was clearly beyond normal reason, signaling danger.

The villagers scattered in terror, and two Sequence 9 guards soon arrived.

One was a knight, the other a doctor.

The doctor levitated surgical scalpels, sending them flying at Rosen, while the knight threw spears that pierced his heart and head.

Rosen could feel life slipping away from him.

Interesting, he thought.

With 50 points of golden divinity and the Blessing of the Dragon King, he could barely control his body.

Rosen activated the Stellar Emblem, boosting his golden divinity to Sequence 4.

Finally, he broke free from the restrictions, his terrifying spiritual energy erupting like a volcano.

He glanced at the sky, and the Ashen Veil projected the image of a meteor shower. With a single thought, he could summon the meteors to rain down on the village.

The knight and doctor were paralyzed with fear, unable to even breathe under the pressure of his spiritual energy.

"Stop!"

A dark-skinned young man, clutching his chest, emerged from a nearby two-story building.

"Gila!"

Rosen scrutinized the youth.

"I didn't expect the capture of one rogue would warrant the intervention of a hereditary duke," Gila said with a wry smile.

"I'm not interested in wasting time," Rosen said, attacking without hesitation.

The Chains of Nightmare lashed out, binding Gila, while Rosen canceled his plan to fire the Wrath of the Dragon King.

Gila made no attempt to resist, and it seemed his injuries were indeed severe.

Under normal circumstances, the power granted by the Stellar Emblem only lasted nine seconds. Gila should have at least tried to fight back, yet he surrendered completely. His serious injuries appeared to be the only explanation.

Rosen approached and pried open Gila's hand, revealing a thumb-sized scarecrow in his palm.

"Mind if I explain myself first?" Gila pleaded.

Rosen nodded and summoned the Void Gallery, which swallowed Gila and sent him to the Void Prison.

It was clear that Gila had his reasons for betraying the World Government, but what did that have to do with Rosen? He had no desire to become a scarecrow himself.

Through interrogations in the Void Prison, readings from the Ashen Veil, and by delving into Gila's nightmares, Rosen quickly pieced together Gila's story.

Gila had been born in this coastal village fishing and raised by its people, who had been proud of him.

However, after completing a mission for the World Government and losing contact with the village for several years, he discovered upon returning that the village had been wiped out by pirates, with no survivors.

Initially, Gila had planned to hunt down the pirates for revenge, but instead, he uncovered a secret within the village.

The village had long worshiped a stone scarecrow, a relic of a time when the village had faced an existential threat. A villager, possessing a special transcendent sequence, had turned into a scarecrow to fend off the danger.

Since then, the villagers had carved the stone scarecrow and crafted regular scarecrows as a form of psychological comfort.

Gila discovered that the stone scarecrow contained the spiritual essence of all the dead villagers and had evolved into a unique spiritual realm. He immediately envisioned becoming a Sovereign Lord and taking control of this realm, using a transcendent residence to fully revive the villagers.

However, with his power alone, controlling a Sequence 4 spiritual realm was impossible.

Gila didn't covet the realm itself—he only wanted to bring the villagers back to life.

After careful consideration, he decided to report the discovery.

What Gila didn't know at the time was that greed knows no bounds.

His superior wanted to claim the realm for themselves and had no interest in wasting transcendent resources on reviving a handful of villagers.

The superior even tried to kill Gila to silence him, but Gila was revived within the spiritual realm.

Although greatly weakened by the resurrection, Gila had gained partial control over the realm, which allowed him to imprison Rosen.

As for the thumb-sized scarecrow in Gila's hand, it had appeared there after his resurrection.

Rosen tossed the small scarecrow into his Bag of Miracles and quickly identified it.

It was the control core of a relic, with the stone scarecrow being the relic itself.

Relics are born from faith, but not everything can become a relic.

The stone scarecrow had been an ordinary stone carving made by a village ancestor, and the villagers' faith had been meager at best, far from sufficient to birth a relic.

The essential condition for a relic's creation was an ancient god's remnant.

Rosen surmised that the villager who had turned into a scarecrow must have carried the bloodline of an ancient god.

For unknown reasons, the villager's ancient god bloodline had been activated, allowing him to repel the threat.

After the villager's death, the power of the bloodline was likely transferred to the stone scarecrow through the villagers' faith.

This stone scarecrow was the second ancient god-related object Rosen had encountered.

Rosen summoned the Ancient God Relic from within his heart and tried to interact with the stone scarecrow.

Immediately, the scarecrow came to life, with a single straw piercing Rosen's finger and drawing a drop of blood before returning to its inert stone form.

At that moment, the realm's suppression over Rosen vanished entirely.

Rosen attempted to communicate with the stone scarecrow through his spirituality and was surprised to find that he could easily refine the relic.

It seemed that the Ancient God Relic was a superior form of relic, likely a transcendent treasure from the ancient god civilization, surpassing Sequence 0. In contrast, the stone scarecrow was a lesser relic born from the remnant bloodline of an ordinary person.

Once he had fully refined the stone scarecrow, Rosen discovered that the spiritual realm's level was deceptively inflated.

Though it appeared to be Sequence 4, it was, in reality, only Sequence 9.

The reason it could manifest Sequence 4 power was that the stone scarecrow itself held that level of strength.

As long as one strayed more than 100 meters from the stone scarecrow, they would find that the spiritual realm was, in fact, Sequence 9.

The stone scarecrow could absorb faith, gradually evolving the Sequence 9 spiritual realm to Sequence 4 at most. It could also seal intruders within a 100-meter radius, transforming them into scarecrows. Finally, it could shelter those who believed in it, allowing them to be resurrected within the spiritual realm.

The scarecrow also had powers of death substitution and curses, with particularly strong anti-curse capabilities.

Rosen exited the spiritual realm and moved the stone scarecrow to his divine domain.

This granted him an additional Sequence 9 subsidiary realm, which could also provide a steady supply of seafood.

More importantly, in critical situations, the stone scarecrow could be moved into the Void Gallery. Without Sequence 4 strength, it was nearly impossible to break free from its seal. However, the most valuable aspects were the scarecrow's death substitution and curse powers.

Rosen conducted some tests and found that the scarecrows woven by the villagers in the spiritual realm could be exchanged for special Substitute Scarecrows and Curse Scarecrows by consuming a large amount of spiritual energy.

A Substitute Scarecrow could block one fatal blow, while a Curse Scarecrow could enhance the power of curses and absorb the backlash if the curse failed. The more he thought about it, the more valuable these abilities seemed.

[Fishing Village Realm: Spiritual Realm]

[Level: Sequence 9]

[Range: 10 miles]

[Population: 560]

[Relic: Sequence 4 Stone Scarecrow]

[Special Products: Various seafood, Substitute Scarecrows, Curse Scarecrows]

Rosen exchanged his spiritual energy for one of each scarecrow, refining them and merging them into his spiritual sea.

You could never have too many life-saving tools, especially with the major trouble looming on the horizon.

Gila hadn't betrayed the World Government or stolen important documents—it was clear that his superior had framed him.

Unable to locate Gila, the superior had likely manipulated events to get a Sequence 6 hereditary duke with a disciplinary task to hunt him down. But why had they assumed Rosen would be able to find Gila?

Rosen's instincts told him there was more trouble brewing beneath the surface.

In the Spirit Realm Dark Web, Rosen submitted the task.

Waiting for just half an hour by the coast, he sensed something entering reality from the spirit realm.

A ripple appeared in the air outside the village, materializing into a masked assassin.

"I'm here to take custody of Gila," the assassin explained calmly, approaching Rosen.

"Identification?" Rosen asked, scrutinizing the masked figure.

The assassin produced a metallic ID card, which Rosen read with his spiritual perception to verify the identity.

Logging into the Spirit Realm Dark Web, Rosen confirmed the authenticity of the ID.

"Remove your mask," he began to say.

Suddenly, dizziness overwhelmed him, and he nearly collapsed.

Despite his precautions, he had unknowingly fallen into a trap.

If he had been a normal Sequence 6, he would have already been at the mercy of this assassin.

But with his golden divinity, the Dragon King's Blessing, and his immense vitality, Rosen possessed resistance far beyond what anyone could imagine, both physically and spiritually.

After a moment's hesitation, Rosen decided to feign unconsciousness.

If the assassin fell for it, Rosen would lose nothing. If the assassin tried to finish him off, he could counterattack and kill them. And if they tried to take him alive, Rosen could use the opportunity to track down Gila's superior and resolve the issue once and for all.

The masked assassin took out a small bag, moved closer, and sucked Rosen into the pouch before slipping back into the spirit realm, eager to reap the rewards of completing this task.

(End of Chapter)