章節 26: Everyone Has Their Troubles.

There will be crying and happiness when the results are finally made known, but this hasn't tamped down the eagerness of those waiting. Some people of means have been able to know the well-being of their people in the tower.

In major families across the realm, the soul lamps of some people have gone out, while some select few soul lamps have shown brighter. The broken soul lamps will result in sighs and lamentations, and the brightened soul lamps will cause smiles and laughter.

The rise and fall of some families, some entire races, and some entire organizations will depend on the outcome of the end of the trial. For those that have been unable to glimpse the outcome, the wait and the anticipation are stifling. They can only hold on and hope for good tidings after the wait.

As the time for the release draws near, those in the tower are the most eager to get out. Their life has changed regardless of their different experiences in the trial. Gehald will also be able to bring his plan to fruition.

---------

Far up within the tower of heaven, on his opulent but elegant throne, sits the realm lord. He opened his eyes, and from them, divine golden light shown brightly. His eyes were like touches that could see into the very fiber of reality. He blinked, and the light was gone.

"It is time," he said, his face devoid of emotions.

It isn't that he is unhappy. He is just unfeeling about what will come next. It is simply his job. The position of the realm lord comes with perks, but it also comes with constraints. He indeed has the power to do anything and go anywhere within High Heaven, but reality has shown that he cannot. It is not because he is weak. It is because he is the realm lord and there are rules that he must adhere to.

A realm lord is shackled by rules. The lack of absolute control has gotten to him sometimes, especially when he knows that when he becomes a world god, he will be a god of a world he cannot fully control. But apart from that, it is a good thing to be a realm lord. Realm lords are among the richest individuals in the entire universe.

A typical one-star origin god will only be able to produce a single bead of origin essence every origin cycle, this rate increases, but among origin gods, no one can match a realm lord in the amount of origin essence he gets every origin cycle.

Originally, a realm tree was only able to produce a scant amount of beads of origin essence every origin cycle, which depends on the number of active planes the realm tree possesses. For the high heaven realm, it used to be 300 beads of Origin essence back when the high heaven realm had about 30,000 planes of existence.

That number increases 10-fold when a realm tree gains a realm lord, and the realm lord gains 10% of this amount. The rest goes into the trial of heaven as a reward for the sovereign and grand god trials.

The leftover is used to maintain the various functions of the realm tree and to increase the planes of existence. So it is because of him that mother high heaven got enough Origin essence to expand the number of planes of existence from 30,000 to 110,000 and the base Origin essence production from 300 to 1100, of which he gets 1,100 every Origin cycle.

Since he couldn't do much, he had to make do with little changes here and there, which have worked to further increase his wealth, if not his control of the realm. When he became a realm lord, he had put in place some things from his past life that the realm lacked.

One of them is the internet. The development of basic information exchange and storage technology had been stunted because of the lack of a need for them. People here live long lives, have near-perfect memories, and keep good records. They can communicate across long distances with talismans which were developed using magic.

So they never really needed something like the internet, but they accepted it readily. The integration of this innovation has been relatively low despite its acceptance, but it still has its uses, especially in instant communication.

The greatest success he has had is the origin store and delivery system he established. This started from his initial changes to the reward system of the trial of heaven. It wasn't so streamlined in the past, where they could use points to exchange for rewards.

He decided to make this available to everyone, but the will of the realm was adamant that every and all origin god it had a hand in producing must be the best among their peers. This made him suspicious again. Some rules have been set in stone in the universe, and they are inviolable. But who made the rules?

These rules are very specific and not some random things. He had asked himself and the will of the realm who made the rules, but she had said it had always been that way. The entire void universe is just too orderly for his liking.

So he had to settle with making the store available to just origin gods, from which he coined the name origin store. The origin store is accessible by every origin god that is born by the realm tree in any part of the universe, but the delivery system is only available in the realm for now. This won't change until he becomes a world god or a more powerful being.

The origin store and the auction at the meet-up of origin gods every origin cycle has made him even richer than some world gods in origin essence, origin stones, top-grade origin weapons, and artifacts. If it were not because universal-level artifacts aren't sold, he would have the capability to buy them. For now, he only has 3.