"The injuries to the True Spirit are the most terrifying. Even beings who have touched the rules can only repair themselves slowly through a state of passive slumber after being wounded…"
Leilin smiled bitterly. "This is just the consequence of splitting off a tiny fraction of my True Spirit. If it were something like Belusebab, the complete annihilation of the original body would be entirely possible…"
"Hsss…"
Behind Leilin, the phantom form of the Targarian Wyvern also wilted completely, gradually fading into nothingness.
A tiny mote of light, tinged with a blood-red hue, drifted from the center of Leilin's brow and landed in his palm, flickering like a firefly.
This was the sliver of True Spirit Leilin had split off, and it needed to be experimented on immediately. Left exposed to the outside world for too long, it would simply dissipate on its own.
"Gate of the Starry Expanse! Open!"
Leilin murmured, and a process identical to last time began. His spiritual power traced along the vast River of the Starry Expanse, arriving directly outside the enormous Crystalline Wall of the World of Gods.
"The Mandehok Disc!"
The stone disc in Leilin's hand reached the edge of the Crystalline Wall, and the radiance it emitted caused a section to take on a melting appearance.
"Seventh-level Wizardry — Otherworldly Rebirth!"
The instant the passage through the Crystalline Wall opened, Leilin's eyes lit up as the colossal fluctuations of a seventh-level spell radiated from his body.
Time itself seemed to freeze in that very instant.
The sliver of True Spirit in Leilin's palm, swept up by the glow of the Otherworldly Rebirth spell, plunged directly into the World of Gods.
Everything happened with tremendous speed. By the time it was finished, the entire Mandehok Disc had long since exploded into a pile of powder, and even the Crystalline Wall rapidly sealed itself shut, leaving no trace of a breach.
"Now, it's all up to the True Spirit…"
The great Gate of the Starry Expanse gradually collapsed, and a bitter smile surfaced on Leilin's face.
In his current state of grievous injury, he could probably only slumber within the laboratory, waiting for time to slowly heal him, while directing his avatar in the World of Gods to begin its work.
"This injury will require at least several hundred years of slumber… If there aren't sufficient gains in the World of Gods, this will have been a colossal loss…"
With these thoughts, Leilin's body gradually sank beneath the floor of the laboratory.
As his main body fell into slumber, it allowed him to project his entire attention onto that single avatar.
The cleansing and refinement by a world's origin power was a terrifying process.
Leilin's True Spirit could feel that the moment it entered the World of Gods, a fearsome vortex of energy immediately formed beside it, ceaselessly scouring away every trace of its former power.
This was clearly the effect of the seventh-level spell — Otherworldly Rebirth. It had brought Leilin directly to the core of the World of Gods, subjecting him to a complete transformation by its origin power.
Once the transformation was complete, he might be able to wipe away every last trace of his otherworldly origins and truly become a native of the World of Gods.
The transformation proceeded with astonishing swiftness. First, the radiance carried by the outermost Mandehok Disc was stripped away. After opening the passage to the World of Gods, much of it had already been consumed, and now it was utterly obliterated, not a single trace remaining.
Next came the power of the seventh-level spell itself. The Rebirth spell, having delivered Leilin to his destination, saw its own light gradually fade as well.
Like layers of a coat being peeled away, once the Rebirth spell's glow had completely dispersed, Leilin's True Spirit was laid bare within a vast expanse of darkness.
Immense! Terrifying! Boundless!
These were the first sensations that flooded Leilin's True Spirit. Compared to this colossal world, his tiny wisp of spirit did not even qualify as an ant — it could only tremble in place.
Cold and overpowering force invaded the depths of Leilin's True Spirit in an instant.
Already a highly concentrated and condensed form of spiritual energy, the True Spirit nonetheless began to shrink slowly under the cleansing of the world's power.
"Even my Spiritual Power is being forcibly stripped away…" Leilin's True Spirit watched the process unfold, smiling bitterly to itself.
The constant scouring of his Spiritual Power brought with it a gradual blurring of Leilin's own will.
As the world's power delved ever deeper, it reached the innermost layer of his True Spirit — the place where all his memories and most vital essence resided.
The vast world power pressed onward without mercy, without the slightest hesitation.
"Could it… that I fail just like this? In such a laughable manner?"
At the threshold of oblivion, only this single thought managed to surface in Leilin's mind, as though making one final stand.
Hummm! At that very moment, a bright silver-white light emerged from the memory region of Leilin's True Spirit.
Under the influence of the white light, the world's power seemed to hesitate for just an instant — then it bypassed Leilin's memory region entirely and proceeded to transform other aspects instead.
"Is this… the power of the Otherworldly Rebirth spell? So it still had one final reserve of energy stored in my memory region? Or… could it be something else entirely?"