From the data that Nova could gather and share, they could see Aron floating silently in the middle of the tank as the materials in his surroundings were undergoing a reaction, with the central controlling and uniting aspect being the Fountain of Life. It was leading the reaction, making many connect it to alchemy, which didn't really seem too far off.

Other than that, his tainted mana still kept being ejected from his body, but unlike previously, where it was allowed to go everywhere, this time the Fountain of Life absorbed it like a sponge, not allowing even a thimble of it to escape the cylindrical tank despite it not having mana-blocking properties, and it showed no intention of getting full.

However, the Emperor's stillness didn't last long. In a single move, he started shaking involuntarily, as if he were trying to escape the cylinder or just wanted to do something to put himself away from the pain. It seemed like his body didn't really have enough power to do that, and his rapid movements acted as nothing other than a mixer for the materials that were in there with him. But before they could even get used to seeing the Emperor in that condition, the now-perfectly mixed materials, which had turned into a uniform colored liquid, started condensing towards a central point.

Slowly, piece by piece, a humanoid skeleton appeared, which kept getting more and more details as the liquid inside the cylinder continued condensing, making it clear to anyone who was watching that a body was being created. As more details of the body started to come into place, it was very clear that he was looking more and more like a copy of the Emperor, but not yet an actual body, just a look-alike in a condensed liquid form that looked to have turned into a solid, no different from a statue.

Then nothing happened for the next ten minutes as it continued absorbing the tainted mana that the Emperor was pushing out of his body. Only in the eleventh minute did something new finally happen.

The Emperor, who was now floating face to face with his statue-like doppelgänger while still having his eyes closed, extended his hand, placing it on the forehead of the doppelgänger. Lines upon lines of dark runes started coming from his finger, crawling into the doppelgänger's body, finding any empty space to take a position, covering its entire body with an unreadable amount of dense lines, turning him completely black, unlike the usual golden color of his runes.

…………………

"Oh my God!!!!!" Ayaka, who was watching from a distance, couldn't help but say in disbelief at what she was seeing.

"WE NEED TO STOP HIM FROM DOING THAT!!!!!!!!!!" she shouted in fear as she looked around, trying to reach Nova.

But before her words could even be registered, everyone else who was called for security precautions, and not stopping there, everyone who was on Mars, everyone who was in space, everyone who was on Earth, started looking at their surroundings as the solar system was now being illuminated with something that was not the sun.

Everyone could see the new light. It didn't matter if someone had closed their eyes, if they were sleeping, or even if they were thousands of kilometers underground. This new light wasn't stopped by any obstacle. When they raised their heads to try and see the source, they found themselves witnessing something that gave them an incomprehensible and profound feeling of fear, reverence, familiarity, home, and every other emotion as the entirety of their surroundings looked to be inside a solar-system-wide aurora.

{What is happening?} Nova, who had registered Ayaka's words, asked, as her sensors showed that this aurora, though originating from Mars, had in a matter of seconds already covered the entirety of the star system and kept spreading far beyond. She wanted to know what it was, if it was good or bad, or anything to bring her understanding of what was happening to a more grounded level.

"These are the veins of the soul, and the Emperor is trying to tamper with them," Ayaka said while shaking in fear as she looked at the aurora in disbelief.

As someone who was now a part of Laifu due to her awakening during the exploration mission to Proxima Centauri, she was more knowledgeable about life-related matters than anyone in the entire empire and Conclave. The only ones who could match her knowledge regarding it would be other reincarnations of Laifu, but there were few enough for her to be able to say with confidence that in the entire galaxy, she was the most knowledgeable one.

The only problem was that she didn't have access to that knowledge unless specific conditions were met, which was a safety measure taken by Laifu, who had used her body. The specific condition was seeing what was happening with her own eyes, which would trigger her having access to that knowledge. It was one of the reasons that the empire wasn't yet as knowledgeable regarding these matters when she was always with them.

{Veins of the Soul? Is he trying to counter mana poisoning by changing aspects of his soul?} Nova asked the logical follow-up question, having not even questioned the validity of Ayaka's words.

It wasn't that much of a surprising solution if you sat down and took his current situation into consideration, which was something Nova was one of those who could react like that, as it was in her nature to do so.

Although the trigger for his mana poisoning was a contract between two mortals, the enforcer was literally mana itself, albeit in its unconscious form, which didn't matter as it was an entity on the scale of the universe. So, unless someone had a loophole to actually deal with this situation, only another universe-scale entity could do that. The Emperor seemed to have decided to use the soul part of the equation in his punishment as a solution to his current problem, though only Nova knew that it was the system in his body that had come up with the solution.

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