Although the specifics of the Ten Cold World's internal rules remained unclear, they were certainly different from those of an ordinary world.
Their own worlds differed from one another as well, but the gap between them was nowhere near so dramatic.
Child of Nature: "The chat group should possess the ability to convert our powers into forms that comply with the rules of other worlds."
Child of Nature: "Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to retain our own combat strength when we travel to other worlds at all."
Perfectly Ordinary Group Owner: "@Chat Group—can you actually do that?"
"Ding. Detection of group owner questioning the chat group's capabilities."
"Ding. This is a fundamental capability of the chat group."
The chat group's cold, clinical voice rang out in everyone's ears. The answer, as it turned out, did not disappoint.
Perfectly Ordinary Group Owner: "You've finally lived up to expectations."
Perfectly Ordinary Group Owner: "I was genuinely bracing myself for the possibility that you couldn't."
Of course, in certain respects, this chat group truly was lacking.
Especially considering that she—as the group owner—didn't even possess group owner privileges. Apart from a discount on purchases or the like, there was nothing.
A group owner who couldn't kick people or mute them—could that really be called a group owner at all?
Electromancer: "So if something comes up on my end in the future, I can actually call for help?"
Electromancer: "Even if it draws the Gods' attention, it'll be fine?"
Perfectly Ordinary Group Owner: "It should be fine—though the Gods' power is formidable, but—"
Perfectly Ordinary Group Owner: "Concept Gods!"
Perfectly Ordinary Group Owner: "There's no way we could win against them."
Perfectly Ordinary Group Owner: "And he's just a River God on top of that. Who knows how much stronger the other major Gods in there are."
Perfectly Ordinary Group Owner: "Nüwa, Odin, Zeus—those three are the real heavyweights, right?"
Back when Brandon White had first told her that Thor was a genuine powerhouse, she had dismissed it without a second thought.
She had been entirely convinced the chat group was already overflowing with powerhouses.
Uchiha Madara, Whitebeard, Tokisaki Kuroko, the Ancient One—any one of them could be called a powerhouse.
That had been, until Brandon White uploaded the Ten Cold memory copy—and she actually read through it.
My sincerest apologies.
She had gotten a bit too cocky earlier.
This was not a world where combat power alone determined anything.
"A galaxy is still a river, you know~~~"
Was this really something a small River God should be saying?
Even if placed in the high-tier versions compiled in previous lives—the Mythological Honghuang settings—this being would have to rank at least as a Heavenly Immortal, wouldn't it?
Roxie Vale's mind wandered to the various realm definitions within "Mythological Honghuang," and she couldn't help but shake her head.
The capabilities described at each realm were absurdly exaggerated. An Earth Immortal placed in another Honghuang world would already rank at the Grand Luo level. A Heavenly Immortal would already command concepts. True Immortals and Mystic Immortals went without saying—even compared to the Great Dao realms set in standard Honghuang novels, they were more extreme.
But then again—since anime, novel, and manga worlds had all become truly real, existing places, it wasn't entirely inconceivable that a "Mythological Honghuang" genuinely existed somewhere. And the powerhouses within it might truly possess abilities on that scale.
It was even possible that someone from a high-tier Honghuang world would join the chat group someday.
No, no—that wasn't right.
If it were that Honghuang, the chat group would surely be discovered, wouldn't it?
Most Ancient God-Slayer: "@Holy Lord, @Uchiha Dance King—who won your battle?"
Uchiha Dance King: "Obviously me."
Holy Lord: "All you did was transport me into some bizarre pocket dimension."
Holy Lord: "If I had already broken through the Dou Zun realm, I could traverse space on my own. Your pupil techniques wouldn't have been able to contain me."
Uchiha Dance King: "Stubborn."
Uchiha Dance King: "Before I deployed Ame no Onaka, you were at a disadvantage from start to finish."
Uchiha Dance King: "Beneath these eyes, nothing of yours escapes my control."
Uchiha Dance King: "If not for the Dog Seal, you'd already be dead."
Uchiha Dance King: "Or you're welcome to try again. I'll show you just how formidable the enhanced Rinnegan has truly become."
Uchiha Dance King: "Stripping away your abilities and reforging them once more into the Twelve Seals—that isn't beyond what I can do."
The Sharingan was the Eye that Reflected the Heart and Soul. It was precisely because of this that, upon evolving into the Mangekyo, the abilities it birthed were shaped by the wielder's own deepest desires—as kaleidoscopically varied as the Mangekyo's very patterns. The Rinnegan was no different.
Each pair of Rinnegan gave rise to entirely different capabilities.
Perhaps it was because of the resentment Madara had come to harbor toward Holy Lord's Dog Seal—its undying nature and its property of repairing damage inflicted by external forces, one atrocity compounding upon the last—that such a fixation had taken root within him. And from that fixation, his Rinnegan, upon enhancement, had given birth to precisely this ability.
The previous battle had simply been a matter of unfamiliarity with the enhanced Rinnegan's new capabilities. If Holy Lord wished to experience it again, Madara would be more than happy to let him taste the feeling of having his abilities torn away once more.
Holy Lord: "You think saying that is going to scare me?"
Uchiha Dance King: "Then come."
Holy Lord: "After I break through Dou Zun."
No matter whether Uchiha Madara could truly accomplish what he claimed—converting Holy Lord's abilities back into seals and stripping them away—he needed to wait until after breaking through Dou Zun first.
At the Dou Zun realm, his mastery over space would expand immensely. Every ability tied to spatial manipulation would become trivially easy to wield.
Whether it was spatial exile, spatial lockdown, spatial compression, spatial severance, or instantaneous movement—all of it would fall within his grasp.
Uchiha Madara wouldn't even be able to lay a finger on him.
Gravitational and repulsive forces—those too could be nullified simply by warping the surrounding space.
Fighting now meant losing no matter what. He had no interest in participating under those conditions.
Perfectly Ordinary Group Owner: "Breaking through Dou Zun? What realm are you at currently?"
Perfectly Ordinary Group Owner: "Dou Zong?"
Holy Lord: "Dou Huang. That's all."
Holy Lord: "Though I'm not far from Dou Zong. Thirty days at most and I'll break through."
Perfectly Ordinary Group Owner: "...!"
Perfectly Ordinary Group Owner: "You only received Burning Verdict recently. Even accounting for differing time ratios, that's a few months at most on your end."
Perfectly Ordinary Group Owner: "Never mind a few months—from no realm at all, straight to Dou Huang in a single year?"
Perfectly Ordinary Group Owner: "This one is terrifyingly talented!"
At this rate, Dou Di couldn't be far off either.
Though ascending to Dou Di supposedly required something called Origin Qi, the Burning Verdict the chat group had granted Holy Lord was almost certainly a different cultivation system from the genuine article.
Otherwise, Holy Lord couldn't have possibly trained with it in his own world in the first place.
His world didn't have anything like Dou Qi.
If it did, his father would have been casting Dou Techniques, not magic.
Holy Lord: "The reason cultivation is progressing so quickly right now is simply that my own base power is already considerable."
Holy Lord: "The amount of energy I can absorb and withstand is correspondingly greater."
Holy Lord: "But that can only sustain itself up to Dou Zun. Beyond that, it won't work."
Compared to the truly formidable cultivation worlds out there, the Dou Qi World naturally couldn't claim a top ranking. But it held its own—better than some, worse than others. The combat power at each realm was absolutely not weak.
A somewhat powerful Dou Sheng practitioner could even carve out a small world of their own. At Dou Sheng Six Stars and above, a single full-powered strike obliterating a small-scale planet was well within the realm of possibility.
(End of Chapter)