Far, far away in between the multiverses of the Low Realm, there was only void and darkness.

And yet, the void was not empty. A Dark Forest made of dark energies and dark matter concealed a strange ecosystem of prey and predators, beings that preyed on life and souls. Once in a while, they managed to breach a multiverse or another filled with warm blood, and rushed inside to consume everything, stars or living beings alike.

A flash of Sword Qi illuminated this Dark Forrest and millions of lower-ranked predators vanished, and on Pef's soul diagram array the experience level grew once more. Not enough to matter much though. The experience bar of a Tier 8 cultivator was near-infinite.

'You said this Hualitep would be here!' Pef grumbled at his glove. He had massacred goliths and other weird things for months, but his target was still alive.

'The thing is here. It's just that there's too many false positives. Plus Hualitep must be veiled as well.' the glove answered after a moment.

'Who cares! We're fighting and killing things. Everything is great!' the Heart Dividing Ruler added its own opinion. The giant sword had the time of its life right now, since every strike was guaranteed to kill at least a million creatures.

Pef sighed inward and clenched his fist, collecting the remains of his victims, cores and limbs, or even spines or bones, eyes and frozen blood drops.

These things weren't of much use to himself, but they could be refined and processed into pills or ink for his arrays, or even weapons and armor for lower ranked Soldiers of the Veritas Legion.

'There's another Kraken, five Blinks away.' the glove pointed calmly while marking the next target on Pef's inner radar.

Pef took out a pill and ingested it, then Blinked way. It wasn't a glorious job, cleaning the space between the walls of the multiverses, but at least he never ran out of targets. 'I have become Death, Exterminator of multiversal pests!' he announced semi-ironically as he slammed sword-first into the giant dark body of the void kraken. His Voidcutter scraped off the thick hide and bounced away into the void, killing a few million innocents.

The monster screeched and slapped Pef away, almost breaking his Preservation Dao armor. Damn Krakens were quite tough anyways but this one seemed rather strong too.

'Oh? This Kraken is a late 8 Tier Realm. Use the thing!' the glove advised him, quite responsibly.

Pef grit his teeth, anticipating the huge backlash of the Dimensional Blade skill. While it wouldn't kill him straight away now, it still hurt like hell.

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In another multiverse, Lady Lia faced a different problem.

She followed the crumbs of clues and reached the ancient hidden realm, but she couldn't open the door. Or even find the door.

In her hand, a Taoist diagram flickered, its energy almost depleted.

"It should be here, right?" Lia asked as she looked around. The white-blue mountain in front was obviously altered, its shape too regular and geometric to occur naturally. And the spring at her feet simply emerged from the rock, as if the mountain was sweating water.

"I need to use my mind and science." Lia decided as she landed and began setting up her laboratory tools.

Spectrometers and interferometers, mass-reading and core-probing arrays and dozens of other different tools, stolen or bought from a hundred different universes. The journey had been long and quite dangerous, especially the Devil Realm infiltration that provided her with the diagram.

She was close now. Soon the first reports began gathering on the scanning tools, all suggesting a weakened spacetime zone around the spring.

'Hypothesis: the treasure room is not located in the current universe. Mountain behind the spring is composed of solid granite, 72 billions years old. Three times as old as this universe. Water of the spring is perfectly pure, far beyond any natural spring can produce. Source of the spring likely a Water Dao array. Spacetime malleability implies the entry point is the same array.' Lia mused to herself.

Still, despite the scientific method imparted to her by her husband, he also advised her that science was only a tool and not infallible.

'If science is not enough, use faith. If faith is not enough, read the destiny. And if destiny fails, you still have willpower. In this world, our will is the last argument.' Pef said as he collected his shattered teeth and held them in his palm as proof, right after he easily passed the Tier 8 Tribulation.

Gritting her teeth, Lia bent down and scooped a handful of spring water and simply drank it.

The universe wobbled and turned inside out, transporting her inside the hidden dimension. Pain filled her mouth...

She quickly spat out the water, along with several teeth already decayed and pulsing with dark energy.

'Dark Qi!' Lia exclaimed inward as she scanned the new world around her.

The entire hidden realm was filled to the brim with Dark Qi, and even worse in front of her on a black marble pedestal rested an ugly object reeking of death and darkness.

Lia flared her own Light Qi, forcing the darkness away although the artifact on the pedestal remained covered in thick Dark Qi as if it was its source.

'My qi is depleting rapidly...was this an elaborate trap?' she wondered as she stepped closer to the object. She rapidly thought of the diagram compass that led her here.

Turning her hand, she brought out the Devil diagram. Without her prompt, the diagram unfolded into a giant array, placing her on the White side while the artifact was positioned on the Black side of the Taoist symbol.

At the same time, the ceiling of the realm turned into a glass-like mirror, revealing the true force behind the trap.

'The Mirror of Samsara? So it can truly read destiny. Was I fated to reach this place? What is the purpose?' Lia hummed inward as she raised her eyes towards the mirror sky. "Gena, I hope you know this will anger Pef. You don't want him as an enemy." she spoke out loud. She could only hope using her amazing husband as a deterrence factor now. If the Mirror wouldn't care, the user was still human.

A fairy-like beauty appeared projected in the mirror. "Of course I don't want your husband to smash my mirror as he ascends to the Middle Heavens. On the contrary, I hope he will bring us along. The Dark Heart is my gift for you." Gena Feng answered with a clear voice.

Lia glanced at the horrible object still covered in Dark Qi fog. 'How is this a gift? I will die soon...'

"It will take a hundred deaths to fully integrate this Dark Heart. I'm sorry for the pain." the Goddess in the mirror whispered in a sad voice as she vanished.

'What pain?' Lia wondered for a second, before the diagram collapsed into a single point, uniting and superimposing her own heart with the Dark Heart. Then she knew pain...for a short yet excruciating minute until she died.

A while later, she returned to life, once more on the Light side on the diagram. Lia glanced at the glinting cruel mirror above her. 'Instant reincarnation?'

Then the diagram collapsed. Lia died again.