Chapter 2521

2521 - The Variable

Amidst the enchanting nature, the All-seeing God continued to stare absently at the horizon…

The situation had become terrifyingly complicated.

The owner of a universe or its official patron was nothing more than a title and an official ownership before the common people. He did not refine the universe or control it in any way; rather, it could be said that the system of planet formation, life extension, soul strengthening, and the like was a method of supplying conflict and encouraging invasion and wars.

It was a tool designed by the Transcendents to manipulate their subjects. All those Planet Spirits were merely illusory workers planted in the planets to serve them, exactly as the spirits of the Soul Society operated, and all the benefits obtained by those they polished were benefits permitted by The Court and placed within the list of The cycles.

Planet Spirits of rank C, for example, granted fewer benefits than distinguished Planet Spirits, but all of them played within the boundaries drawn for them, without any life.

Therefore, *refining a universe*, controlling it, and knowing what was within it—this was something that did not exist. Neither the universes nor the planets were created by the Transcendents; they could only influence them to the extent their power allowed… But creating a universe spirit solely for the purpose of monitoring and controlling an entire universe was something extremely costly in terms of momentum, and there were only very few Transcendents who undertook it.

They are the whales who want to guarantee even a slight win in every cycle, even at the cost of mortgaging twenty or thirty Seals and using them to closely monitor the universe through a cosmic soul… but The All-seeing God and his like among the ordinary Transcendents cannot afford that.

If they mortgaged that number just for monitoring, they would become like sleeping ducks waiting for imprisonment and bullying.

So how does he monitor the universe?

First, through the candidates' shards; second, through shards he left with sleeper agents.

All these shards result from mortgaging only one Seal, no more.

As for the shard he left with his last candidate, Robin, it was destroyed a very short time after the last time he saw him in a fight against The Executioner—specifically, after about two months.

That day, the destruction of that shard came to him like a thunderbolt. A long period had already passed since his fight against The Executioner, and during that period Universe B-14 had not been invaded. So could the fight really have lasted two months?

After that, he used his sleeper agents to investigate the situation, and he found no trace of an invasion by The Executioner. On the contrary, he found preparations on the part of the True Beginning Empire and its followers to expand their invasions… That was when he began to wonder what had happened, in great bewilderment.

Then news came to him from his agents of the appearance of two fully Unbound ones, and through one of his fragments with the agents he saw the broadcast of Renara and Hedrick using the Golden Seal on their foreheads…

How?

Who had unbound them? And why did they have golden momentum in such abundance?!

Was there a new Patron who had intervened, pumping in those quantities of fake momentum? But who had an interest in something like that? And even if it happened that one of the Transcendents did something like this, it would undoubtedly become known… yet there was no Thread linking any known Transcendent to what was happening.

…The world of the Eternal Sanctuary had been turned upside down over his recklessness, with rumors about his greatest bet on this cycle, etc.~ But he truly did not know what was going on.

And today… today Robin had destroyed all the Buffer Zones using the same golden momentum!!

The Copyist was holding meetings; surely The Oppressor and The Resentful One and the rest of the fellows there, all of them would try to unravel the mysteries and understand the All-seeing God's way of thinking and the extent of his public interventions and how to exploit his weakness… even though he had done nothing.

The Giver and the other neutral Transcendents were watching with great enthusiasm, and The Arbiter and the other leaders were observing him with furrowed brows, trying to understand his successive strange choices, like summoning the Court and then acting individually… even though he had done nothing.

But he could not say he had done nothing!!

How could it be—a Ninth-Grade Causality user, someone whom even the Weaver and other great Transcendents of Causality feared to plot against and treated as a peer—did he not know what was happening inside his own universe?!

If that news spread, if he showed even for a moment that he was ignorant of something, in the next moment he would be hunted down.

All he had to do now was bear the responsibilities of what Robin was doing and weave plans and excuses for anything he did, so that it would appear as though it were a grand plan he himself had approved—otherwise his fate would be decided long before the end of the cycle.

*Screech* The All-seeing God ground his teeth to powder, then *bam* he struck the mountain beneath him.

*Krrrrr*

The great suspended mountain turned to dust and collapsed beneath him.

But *whoosh* the dust quickly gathered and solidified once more into the same form, returning to lift the All-seeing God above it before he could begin to fall… even the animals and insects walking upon it had their severed parts reassembled and returned to walking and eating immediately, as though they had not just been killed.

"Little brother…" The All-seeing God stared at the horizon with a hint of anger visible on his beautiful face, "If a whale of seals had tried to imitate my momentum, I would have known. That is the level of my power, my standing, and the extent of my control over the Law of Causality. But since I felt nothing, there is only one explanation… You are the source of the momentum. You are the one who became a Transcendent."

Then his expression sank further, "This is the reason I chose you. When I saw you, I did not hesitate because of it—your absolute detachment from Causality. Because you were the only person I saw before me who breathes yet has no Path I can see. Because you are a variable whom my enemies cannot predict or hunt, and my winning card that I can play freely…"

Then he continued after a slight pause, "…Has my most important choice, my greatest discovery, the very reason I poured all this effort, time, and planning into you… turned against me?"