Rivers of the Night

Chapter 784: Theron’s Hiatus (4)

The Law of Absolute Calm.

The Law of Unrestrained Fury.

The Law of Absolute Chaos.

The Law of Unrestrained Order...

These were the four Gold Laws that Theron had grasped in order to complete his Mandates. Many might not even grasp a single Mandate with a Gold Law in its midst in their lifetime. But Theron had grasped four. Not only had he grasped four such Mandates, but they co-mingled and intermingled perfectly with one another.

And in that moment his father’s necklace reacted, Theron also felt something else... something deeper.

His Calm... His Fury...

That was him.

Chaos... Order...

That was the universe.

One side of the coin was himself. The other side of the coin was the world.

It was quite beautiful when he thought about it like that. That was what it meant to cultivate, did it not? To give of yourself to the world, and to take of the world for yourself.

You grew, you improved, you faced tribulations, and you survived. One step after another, you found reflections of yourself in the world around you, and you hoped that the world responded to your own personal efforts.

It was only during that fourth month that Theron realized the reason he hadn’t been able to see beyond his Mandates yet. He had been obscured by his distaste of his own path.

It wasn’t just the fact that he didn’t like Dark Mana, but also that he hadn’t reached a balance in himself yet. So how could he possibly grasp such a profound truth?

He wasn’t worthy of comprehending something with as powerful a foundation as he had laid... until now.

And when he finally did comprehend it, the bottleneck that he would have faced to the Dome of Heaven Realm vanished... then went the King Realm bottleneck... and then went the Saint bottleneck.

One after another, they vanished into the void. And something told Theron the fact that he had phrased it exactly like that held a substantial amount of weight...

He just didn’t know quite how, yet. But he might very well learn soon.

Profound Truth.

The name of the insight came to mind, and he subconsciously understood that this was something that only Saints should have. And yet, he had grasped it in the Cloud Realm.

The problem was that his Mandates... were far too profound.

Theron was right about one thing. The treasures born in Sadie’s dantian were bred specifically for Goddess Sacharro’s purpose. She needed them in order to accomplish something. But for whatever reason, she had left them with Theron.

If Theron had to guess why, it was probably because she had plenty of other incarnations out there, real ones like Sadie. Each one probably had their own slate of powerful treasures, and since he had killed Sadie, rather than trying to craft another perfect incarnation, she was hoping that he could take Sadie’s place.

The Mandates that these treasures could lead Theron to were certainly anomalies amongst anomalies.

But...

There was one problem with that conclusion. And that was that Theron was an anomaly himself.

He was Goddess Sacharro’s Heart Demon, the antithesis of everything she wanted to accomplish, an amalgamation of her failings and her feelings of doubt.

In such a situation... were these treasures really her creation? Or were they the opposite of what she wanted?

Theron really didn’t know the answer to that. But what he did know was that even if Goddess Sacharro was responsible in part, it could only be toward a portion.

His Absolute Chaos Mandate and his Unrestrained Order Mandate—these were comprehended on his own, outside of Sadie’s dantian, with his father’s necklace dormant, and using his own Water Mancy as a mirror, whereas Sadie was originally a Dark Mancer.

That was to say that whatever Goddess Sacharro had planned...

Theron had in all likelihood long since evolved beyond that.

...

Following this change, it could be said that even while not chasing improvement, Theron improved nonetheless at breakneck speeds that made little to no logical sense.

His Third Eye underwent another massive evolution after he found his Profound Truth. So his pace of going through the library accelerated, along with how well this foundational knowledge helped him grasp the Angel and Demon Doctrine.

He was hardly trying to actively improve his Formation Mastery at all, and yet he steadily progressed to full mastery of the Silver Grade, to full mastery of the Gold Grade, just a single month after he grasped his Profound Truth.

It was also then that Theron learned of what the Mandate Core was truly capable of.

It had to be remembered that before, Theron would use the Mandate Core to attempt to grasp new Laws—Laws that eventually became the foundation of his Mandates, which in turn became the foundation of his Profound Truth.

What he hadn’t known was that the Mandate Core could do far more than just absorb things and allow him to comprehend them through its existence. In fact, it didn’t seem to have wanted to display its true power until he grasped a Profound Truth first.

The Mandate Core was able to resonate with his soul, sensing regions that had things that would perfectly apply to his Profound Truth, and then lead him toward them.

Once it arrived, it was able to absorb them, amplify them, and even fuse them into his Profound Truth. Theron could then comprehend them on his own, and strengthen his Profound Truth even further.

This was when Theron learned of the true power of a Profound Truth... because it was no longer just an amplifier of his Mana. It was a vessel that could change and shape Mana.

A method of well and truly crafting his own methods of attack with his body...

Every movement he made now came with a Profound Truth, one that forced Water and Darkness to bend to his will without even the movement of his own Mana.

What was truly shocking, though, was that this was when his body really began to evolve with the world.

He didn’t just have a body "like" a Beast. It was well and truly one now.

In fact, it was like he had formed the body of a Beast a half-step from Voidwrought Resonance because of it.

Simply put...

Theron was an absolute monster by the seventh month, his Mandate Core dictating the directions he went.