I Can Assimilate Everything-Chapter 600: Tian!
The idea of being unkillable was a unique one.
With a Primordial Civilization, such a thing was possible. It was like being killed, only to rise up eons later while claiming that yes, you were dead, but not really. The foundations of what you represented persisted even when your active existence did not, waiting for conditions that would allow resurrection to begin.
At this moment, THE Endless Dream was experiencing such a phenomenon in its most accelerated form.
She sat upon a sandy silver-gold throne while looking toward Achilles with astonishment that she could not suppress despite eons of practiced composure. She felt her Way of Dreams being stitched back together as the very cracks and damage that had proven so difficult to heal across countless years of careful cultivation now rapidly melded and disappeared.
Her Depth was returning imminently, weight that she had lost during the Age of Collapse flowing back into her existence with speed that defied everything she understood about recovery from such catastrophic damage.
She couldn’t believe it.
Out of all those Collapsed Civilizations from the past Age, Dreams would be the first to rise from Collapse. Not through eons of patient rebuilding, not through desperate scrambling for scattered fragments of former glory, but through alliance with something that had rewritten the rules of what advancement and healing could accomplish!
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As one Collapsed Civilization revived in a corner of Observable Existence, in another corner entirely different events were unfolding with equal significance.
The space between spaces where THE entities had gathered for their unprecedented meeting now blazed with light that made their previous displays of authority seem dim by comparison.
Multiple Keys had lined up in configuration that resonated with waves none of them fully understood, geometric impossibilities finally finding their complementary shapes after eons of separation. The combined artifacts radiated splendorous golden light that grew brighter with each passing moment as whatever mechanism they contained activated for the first time since THE Resplendent Paradox had departed toward unknown fate.
A massive golden gateway bloomed from the cluster of Keys with majesty that made every THE entity present hold their breath in anticipation. This doorway gushed out unfathomably dense waves of pure THE Civilizational Authority, concentration so intense that it felt like standing at the source of a river rather than somewhere along its flow.
All the entities present looked upon this manifestation with fervent light burning in their eyes as they recognized opportunity that they had spent eons fighting and dying and collapsing over.
THE Corpse Hierophant began to shine brilliantly as his manifestation became more real, more substantial, more present than any projection should be capable of achieving. He had shockingly brought most of his weavings here, risking his recovering core on the gamble that what lay beyond this doorway would be worth such vulnerability.
THE Slumbering Genesis did the same, his massive draconic elephantine form condensing with weight that suggested his true self rather than mere projection. THE Sovereign Catalyst followed despite the damage he had suffered from Achilles’s consumption of his previous manifestation, liquid-metal form solidifying into something approaching his original state.
One by one, all THE entities present rapidly and with desperate haste brought their actualized forms to this space between spaces. The risk was immense, but the potential reward had driven them to cooperation in the first place, and now that the doorway stood open before them, none were willing to let others claim its benefits alone.
With THE Corpse Hierophant in the lead, they stumbled into the doorway shining in gold.
BOOM!
Their existence buzzed with brilliance as they crossed threshold between ordinary reality and whatever lay beyond.
THE Corpse Hierophant was the first to arrive, and the moment he did so, his body shuddered with sensation that overwhelmed his ancient consciousness.
He felt an influx of extremely pure THE Civilizational Authority that seemed to be tens of times more concentrated than any Sacred Domain he had ever come across. No, perhaps a hundred times more concentrated. The very air here, if it could be called air, was saturated with power!
But he couldn’t even focus on himself at this moment because what he saw and felt of the surroundings demanded every fragment of his attention.
Oh.
Oh!
It caused obsidian tears to begin leaking from his empty eye sockets as emotions he had thought long dead stirred within his ancient existence.
Because he saw utter wonder.
Golden clouds permeated over a stellar landscape extending for Gigaparsecs in every direction, their surfaces shimmering with light that contained meaning beyond simple illumination. Golden river passageways bloomed all around in networks that defied conventional geometry, and these waterways shimmered not just with THE Civilizational Authority but with something even more fundamental.
Phonemes of The First Tongue.
The very language of Existence itself flowed through these rivers like water through streams, accessible and abundant in ways that their stunted Observable Existence had never permitted.
Cloudy golden mountains shining with crystallized white glows of Phonemes gravitated everywhere like stars scattered across impossible sky, each peak containing concentrated understanding that THE entities had spent eons desperately seeking. Everything looked so grand, so pristine, so utterly beyond anything they had imagined when they first learned of the Keys and what they might unlock.
THE Corpse Hierophant and all others that arrived here were driven to stupor at this place they had entered. None of them knew where they were or how it connected to their Observable Existence or why THE Resplendent Paradox had left Keys leading here rather than simply sharing this location openly.
But within a matter of seconds, a word appeared in their minds as if the environment itself chose to introduce itself to newcomers. The distinction resonated through their consciousness with weight!
|Tian!|
Tian.
That was the name of this place.
And just by arriving here, they all felt the weavings of their Collapsed Civilizations rapidly being melded and recovered as pure atmospheric Phonemes flowed into them and mended damage that had persisted since the Age of Collapse. Cracks sealed, wounds closed, foundations stabilized under the nurturing influence of an environment that seemed designed to elevate those who found their way to its embrace.
As such a glorious thing happened, causing all of them to be frozen in shock at the implications of what they had discovered, none of them sensed or realized that within this place, atop a cloud that drifted with lazy majesty across golden sky, a hazy entity watched them with gaze of mild interest.
His skin appeared to be golden crystallized material similar to the very makeup of this realm, as if he had been born from Tian itself or had become so attuned to its nature that the distinction no longer mattered. He sat calmly upon his cloud with a posture that suggested patience measured in eons rather than moments.
His Depth was something those newly arrived had never reached, weight so profound that it exceeded anything they had experienced even before their Civilizations had collapsed. It was high enough that he could gaze directly at them from relatively close proximity, observing their wonder and their tears and their desperate hope, and they didn’t even know he was there.
They couldn’t sense him at all.
To their perception, he simply did not exist despite being close enough to touch if they had known where to look!
