Lord: Sequence Master

Eternal Continent, Divine Painting City—once a sacred land for painters, now rarely had any permanent painters left.

What was once the stronghold of the Painter's Guild had been almost entirely replaced by Horror Park.

As the Guildmaster of the Painter's Guild, Sonia had spent these past years in constant anxiety.

The Law of Painting had been born, yet she wasn't the one who grasped it.

Moreover, Horror Park was on the verge of evolving into a True God-Level Spiritual Painting, and within the painter community, this signified the emergence of a True God-Level Painter.

The reason this figure had yet to show themselves was likely because they were still perfecting the painting of Horror Park.

Once that mysterious True God painter finished their work, what would become of her, a mere Sequence 0 Painter?

If the painter was an unknown human, that was one thing.

But if they were of another race, unbound by the restrictions of the World Government, then with the Law's absolute suppression over Rules, it would be far too easy for them to crush her.

Sonia had no intention of betting her future on a mysterious figure who had never revealed themselves.

And now, with Horror Park getting closer and closer to becoming a True God-Level Painting, her tension only grew.

Because this likely meant that the mysterious True God painter was about to finish their first creation after ascension.

Just as Sonia was frowning in distress, she suddenly jolted in shock.

Because on her self-portrait, a new line of text had appeared.

[I'm waiting for you in Horror Park…]

Sonia stared at the words—there was only one person who could do such a thing.

The one who had mastered the Law of Painting.

...

Upon reaching Sequence 0, upon becoming Guildmaster of the Painter's Guild, she had learned a secret that must never be revealed.

The Era of Sequences—was an era of despair.

Before the Sequence Era, in the previous supernatural system, a deity who wielded the Rule of Painting might struggle against a True God who wielded the Law of Painting, but as long as they had other powers to supplement them, victory wasn't impossible.

Even if they lost, they could still put up a strong resistance.

But after the Sequence Era began, True Gods of a Sequence completely overpowered all others of the same Sequence.

A True God wielding the Law of Painting could effortlessly erase every Spiritual Painting created by a deity wielding the Authority of Painting.

In other words, all supernatural beings of the same Sequence had no choice but to kneel before a True God.

The World Government forbade the emergence of True Gods within the Four Great Golden Sequences, and one of the reasons was that this secret must never be known to the world.

If this truth were ever leaked, the entire human supernatural system would collapse.

Countless supernatural beings would rise in rebellion.

After all, what kind of supernatural being would willingly cultivate their entire life only to be effortlessly crushed by a True God?

And now, Sonia's greatest fear had finally become reality.

If she refused to go to Horror Park, then one by one, all of her Spiritual Paintings would be erased.

...

Horror Park.

Rosen sat at the top of the Ferris wheel, watching Sonia through Hunter's Divine Eye.

Seeing her terrified expression, Rosen couldn't help but smile faintly.

The origin Laws of a supernatural Sequence gave the True God who wielded them absolute dominance over all others of the same Sequence.

But he wasn't a True God. In theory, he could use the Law Tree to erase Sonia's Spiritual Paintings, but in reality, the most he could destroy were those of Sequence 1 Painters. If he wanted to overthrow her completely, to suppress her entirely, then even with the Law of Painting, he still needed to reach Sequence 1.

The fact that he could leave words on her self-portrait while she was under the protection of her Divine Kingdom was already close to the limits of his current abilities.

But Sonia didn't know that. So it was only natural that she would be terrified.

As long as he forced her into Horror Park, whether she entered with her true body or a divine avatar, she was as good as dead.

...

After making every possible preparation, Sonia ultimately decided to enter Horror Park using a divine avatar.

Currently, Painters had two ways to enter Horror Park.

The first was to master the Mind Canvas, which would naturally grant access to Horror Park. There were already tens of thousands of eerie scenes within Horror Park, each governed by its own eerie rules, just like Divine Painting City. Countless Painters were fighting for control over these eerie scenes.

The second way was to paint a replica of Horror Park—once completed, the replica would serve as a portal into the true Horror Park.

Regardless of how one entered, as long as they fully conquered an eerie scene, they would gain the right to modify its eerie rules.

Fully controlling an eerie scene brought tremendous benefits.

Entertainment Mode allowed one to pull others in and let them experience the eerie scene as a horror game.

Slaughter Mode allowed one to drag enemies into the eerie scene through the Mind Canvas and use its eerie rules to eliminate them.

Entertainment Mode was also known as Management Mode—if managed well, an eerie scene could generate massive amounts of game currency, which could be traded in Horror Park's store for various legacies and treasures beneficial to Painters.

Although Horror Park was already vast, compared to the total number of Painters, it was still too small.

In the past, only a few high-sequence Painters had the power to control eerie scenes.

However, ever since Horror Park fused with the Evil God Source created by the Phantom Law, all eerie scenes had gained the ability to create infinite projections.

Regular Painters couldn't claim the original eerie scenes, but they could spend game currency to purchase projected versions.

Though projections weren't as powerful as the originals, they still retained about 60-70% of their eerie rule effects.

Sonia had studied Horror Park extensively, and she was the one managing the only Sequence 0 eerie scene within the park.

More than once, she had attempted to use this eerie scene to seize control of Horror Park itself.

But so far, she had failed every time.

At most, she had managed to earn a fortune in game currency.

Upon logging into Horror Park, Sonia, as usual, spawned within the eerie scene she controlled—Terror Gallery.

The irony was that, despite having mastered various Painter Sequence abilities, Terror Gallery remained her strongest weapon.

Just as Sonia waited anxiously, Rosen had already silently infiltrated the Terror Gallery.

Every eerie scene in Horror Park was ultimately owned by him.

At most, other Painters had user rights, but he held absolute ownership.

And ownership surpassed usage rights, so Sonia didn't even realize he had entered Terror Gallery.

Inside the Terror Gallery, there were countless paintings, each one a replica of an eerie scene within Horror Park.

For any being dragged into the gallery, looking at even a single painting would activate an eerie rule—their multiple personalities would then be extracted and projected into the world inside the painting.

With tens of thousands of paintings in Terror Gallery, seeing all of them would create tens of thousands of personality clones.

In the end, each pair of clones would be forced to fight—one must survive, while the other was destined to perish.

The standards for death were twofold—suicide or murder.

Suicide meant voluntary fusion, while murder meant forced fusion.

In voluntary fusion, both personalities would merge, sharing their fragmented memories. In forced fusion, the memories of the deceased would vanish forever.

The problem was—who would willingly die for a complete stranger that looked exactly like them?

"Let's see your strength."

With a mere thought, Rosen dragged Sonia's divine avatar into the Terror Gallery's eerie scene.

"Let's see your strength. I'll be waiting outside…"

A voice suddenly echoed in Sonia's ears.

The next moment, her vision blurred—when she regained focus, she was already standing at the entrance of the Terror Gallery.

Her expression instantly darkened.

She had spent so much effort managing and refining this eerie scene, and now, in the blink of an eye, someone else had seized control and turned it against her.

Fortunately, she knew every detail of the eerie rules within the Terror Gallery. Even so, not even she was confident she could make it out alive.

The moment Sonia laid eyes on the first painting, she immediately felt a fragment of her memory had been erased.

However, her vast pool of memories meant that even if they were split into tens of thousands of pieces, she could still maintain enough rationality and intelligence.

For a lower-ranked supernatural, if their memories were divided into that many fragments, their resulting personality clones would be no smarter than fools.

Hours later, Sonia reached the end of the gallery, having looked at the final painting.

At this point, she had already forgotten that she was inside the Terror Gallery.

The eerie rules of the Terror Gallery didn't just fragment memories into different personalities—they also gradually erased all recollection of Horror Park itself.

For each personality clone, it was as if they had been thrown into different eerie worlds for no reason, with no memory of how they got there.

No matter how long they spent inside their eerie scenes, once they escaped, the time they had been trapped would perfectly synchronize.

Then, in pairs, they would step out of their paintings—one after another.

Each eerie scene was deadly, but for Sonia's Sequence 1 divine avatar, none of them were fatal challenges.

However, just as her clones escaped those horrors, they were immediately confronted by an even greater nightmare—each of them saw another version of themselves standing across from them.

Any rational being—if they suddenly encountered a perfect duplicate of themselves—would instinctively believe that they were real and the other was fake.

Because each personality clone carried different fragments of memory, their behaviors and reactions varied drastically.

Some were cautious and logical, choosing to communicate first and clarify the situation.

But others, carrying Sonia's more paranoid and aggressive traits, immediately went on the offensive.

For them, capturing and subduing the impostor came first—sorting out the truth could wait.

However, the moment they made a move, they triggered forced fusion.

At its core, multiple personalities were simply different combinations of subconscious instincts and memory fragments.

The more memory fragments were lost through forced fusion, the more incomplete the original persona became.

The Terror Gallery wasn't solely Sonia's creation—Daisy had contributed her expertise wholeheartedly.

As a psychologist, Daisy understood the depths of sentient beings' paranoia and selfishness.

Selfless individuals willing to sacrifice themselves for others were always the minority.

Even if Sonia's personality clones were intelligent enough to realize that both were real, that they were merely different fragments of herself, there would always be hesitation—why should I be the one to die instead of them?

So, the few versions of Sonia who chose to commit suicide to complete their counterpart were in the minority, while the majority chose to kill first and fuse later.

What made it worse was that when the personalities were paired off, the Terror Gallery intentionally created an imbalance of power—in each pair, there was always one stronger and one weaker.

The strength of each version of Sonia depended on the difficulty of the eerie painting they had survived.

The more dangerous the experience, the stronger the resulting personality clone.

But regardless of the random pairings, the gallery always ensured that one was far stronger than the other.

With such a setup, the stronger version could easily kill the weaker one.

And once someone got used to winning, the idea of sacrificing themselves to let another live became even more impossible.

And so, Sonia's personality fragments were gradually eliminated, one by one.

More and more of her memories were permanently lost.

By the time only one remained, over 90% of her memory was gone.

At that moment, all the memories of Horror Park that had been sealed away instantly returned.

Realizing that her memory had massive gaps, Sonia remained completely calm.

Her Terror Gallery was nearly unbreakable, yet its fatality rate was zero.

If she had entered with her true body, losing 90% of her memory would have crippled her completely.

But since she had entered with a divine avatar, all she had to do was have her true self copy and restore her lost memories, and she'd be good as new.

This was precisely why Sonia hadn't panicked at all when she fell into the Terror Gallery's trap.

The moment she escaped, she immediately connected with her true self.

Of course, her true self wouldn't be foolish enough to step into Horror Park personally.

Instead, she sent another divine avatar and began the memory synchronization process.

As a Sequence 0 painter, Sonia had three divine avatars formed from self-portrait paintings.

Without even realizing it, two of them were now inside Horror Park.

"It's time to make a move…"

Rosen, without hesitation, threw Sonia's second divine avatar into the Terror Gallery as well.

As for the first one, now severely memory-wiped, he easily subdued and captured her.

While his true body took action, his Bronze Dragon avatar also traveled through data transmission.

Bringing along his now-empty Divine Domain, stripped of all buildings, he descended upon Sonia's divine kingdom.

The instant he arrived, he unleashed the Divine Domain and activated Tenfold Annihilation.

At that moment, Sonia's true self was inside her divine kingdom, but her mind was completely preoccupied with Horror Park.

The sudden ambush caught her completely off guard.

Before she could even react, the core of her divine kingdom had already been engulfed by the collapsing dimensions of Rosen's Divine Domain.

She desperately struggled to escape, exhausting every spiritual painting she had, but she couldn't break free from the spatial collapse of Tenfold Annihilation.

In the span of a single blink, a 950-kilometer-wide void appeared within Sonia's divine kingdom.

Everything within that area had been reduced to zero-dimensional space, completely erased by Tenfold Annihilation.

The Bronze Dragon avatar then withdrew the collapsed Divine Domain, and began rounding up all remaining life in Sonia's divine kingdom.

The believers were eliminated without exception—even if captured, they would be executed immediately.

As for the ordinary citizens, they were spared, but they would never have the chance to leave the Ancient God True Realm.

With Sonia's true self completely wiped out and two of her divine avatars trapped inside Horror Park, only one final divine avatar remained—the one she had sent to Wendy's divine kingdom.

Both were Sequence 0, but while Tenfold Annihilation could instantly kill Sonia, it wasn't guaranteed to do the same to Wendy.

Sonia was a newly ascended Sequence 0, whereas Wendy had been at the peak of Sequence 0 for years.

Since he couldn't eliminate that last divine avatar, Rosen's next move was to frame someone else for the crime.

He chose to make Wendy the scapegoat. When his Bronze Dragon avatar descended upon Sonia's divine kingdom, he used the Life Gene Atlas to perfectly reconstruct Wendy's appearance. No matter how far back the true gods traced time, the culprit they saw would always be Wendy.

To ensure this blame stuck for good, Rosen also forged records of heated disputes between Wendy and Sonia on the Deep Web of the Spirit Realm.

That still wasn't enough.

He also captured Sonia's severely memory-wiped divine avatar, planning to use this avatar's identity to issue a final statement—a supposed deathbed accusation claiming that Wendy was the one who killed her.

With this in place, clearing Wendy's name wouldn't be easy.

Since Sonia's true body had been killed too quickly, even her final divine avatar had no idea what had happened.

Like a frightened bird, would Sonia trust Wendy's explanation or her own divine avatar's final words?

The success of this entire framing scheme hinged on two key factors.

First, the further a god's true body and divine avatars were apart, the harder it was for their memories to synchronize.

Even if synchronization were possible, it would always be the true body syncing to the avatars—never the other way around.

After all, an avatar was far weaker than the true body. If an avatar carried all the memories of the true self, then if that avatar were captured, all of the true body's secrets would be exposed.

The very purpose of divine avatars was to serve as expendable pawns.

And since they were expendable, losing one should never endanger the true body.

Therefore, as long as Sonia's true body was killed instantly, her remaining avatar would be completely in the dark about her final moments.

Sonia, confident in the safety of her divine kingdom, would never have been paranoid enough to constantly synchronize her memory with her last avatar.

This meant there was a high chance that this third divine avatar wasn't even aware that the other two had entered Horror Park.

Given this situation, would Sonia's last divine avatar believe her other avatar's "final words" or Wendy's explanation?

Regardless of her final decision, the bond between Wendy and Sonia would be irreparably damaged.

And best of all, no one would suspect Rosen.

He had only ever displayed himself as a mere Sequence 3.

Even if someone knew he had become Sequence 2, they would still need evidence before accusing him.

Without any leads or proof, the Noble Council would never offend the Starcoin King by targeting him.

With Sonia's true body dead and only one divine avatar left, this assassination caused an uproar in the upper echelons of the World Government.

Because the attack had happened on the Eternal Continent.

If Sonia could be assassinated in her divine kingdom today, then who would be next tomorrow?

Unless they found the killer, no god would be able to sleep soundly.

After several rounds of investigation, Wendy's suspicions were officially cleared.

However, the damage was already done—her relationship with Sonia was shattered beyond repair.

Meanwhile, Sonia's divine avatar was only Sequence 1.

Reforging a divine core was already difficult, even with her divine kingdom's support.

And now, she didn't even dare return to her own divine kingdom to clean up the aftermath.

She couldn't rely on Wendy anymore, having offended her with suspicion.

More importantly, the mysterious assassin who had one-shot her true body was still lurking in the shadows.

She couldn't possibly hide in Eternal City forever.

Sonia, once a proud deity, had fallen so low that she now felt worse off alive than dead.

She sat blankly by the roadside in Eternal City, feeling as if everyone's gazes carried a strange meaning.

Of course, she knew she was just overthinking things.

But even so, she truly felt that she had been driven to a dead end.

She wanted to rebuild her divine core, but didn't dare return to her divine kingdom.

She wanted to seek refuge with Wendy, but their bond had already been broken.

And in the shadows, a terrifying executioner still lurked, capable of instantly killing her at any time.

She couldn't just spend the rest of her life hiding in Eternal City.

After calming herself down, Sonia finally made a difficult decision.

With her divine sense, she logged into the Deep Web of the Spirit Realm.

Gritting her teeth, she reached out—not to Daisy's second persona, but to the third persona that she had betrayed in Divine Painting City.

Annika.

(End of Chapter)