Myriad Heavens: Rise of the Rune God

Chapter 215: Chapter 215: The Meeting of Two Wills

William noticed the anomaly on a Tuesday.

Not that he tracked days — time worked differently when you were the living consciousness of an entire universe. But he had long learned to pay attention to the rare moments when something genuinely unexpected happened.

The wormhole was small at first. A puncture in open space, far beyond the outer planets of one of his solar systems. He examined it without effort — Universal Wills didn’t need to move to observe. The knowledge arrived the way a body knows when a finger is cold.

Artificial. Someone had opened it from the outside.

He decided not to intervene. Not yet.

Let’s see where this goes.

Then it grew.

Kilometers. Then tens of kilometers. Then, as he watched, it kept going — past any scale he could still call casual — until it stretched light years across.

William extended his perception through it and understood immediately.

The solar system was moving. All of it. Planets, moons, the great Dyson Swarm, fleets, stations, and every living being inside them — drawn together by a single external power and descending toward the wormhole in one coordinated motion.

A migration. Someone was moving an entire civilization from one universe to another.

He held still for a moment.

Then he glanced across the full catalogue of what he contained.

He had more than 10²³ planetary systems. Losing one was the cosmological equivalent of a forest losing a single leaf. It genuinely did not matter.

But appearances had to be maintained.

A Universal Will that didn’t respond to something this blatant would invite assumptions. And assumptions left unchallenged became precedents. So he would appear. He would exert authority. He would look inconvenienced.

He was, after all, a professional.

Besides — if he was being honest with himself — he had been hoping for something like this for a long time.

His universe was peaceful. Had been for eons. His lifeforms were powerful, some extraordinarily so, but strength without contest was just stagnant potential. Invasions had been rare. Real threats, rarer still. He had watched a thousand civilizations rise and plateau with nothing left to push against.

The only thing that had genuinely interested him in the past century was the civilization on that third planet — specifically how fast they had developed, and more specifically the young man at the center of it who had somehow comprehended a Principle at his level. That was not supposed to happen. William had actually been planning to make direct contact soon.

And now his only source of entertainment was being migrated away.

Of course he had to appear.

His presence erupted through the wormhole like a supernova contained in a single instant.

He didn’t bother with a gradual entrance. He simply arrived — cold, ancient, and absolute — and with one casual wave of authority, he froze everything halfway through the tunnel. Planets stopped mid-descent. The Sun hung motionless. Wukong, on the other side, strained against the hold and found that for the first time in a very long while, straining didn’t help much.

Everything halted.

At that moment, another presence appeared.

She materialized in her ethereal form, her body composed of swirling galaxies and deep space — vast, powerful, clearly the Will of wherever this wormhole led. She arrived with full authority behind her, ready to confront whatever had stopped the migration.

Then she felt him.

Shit, Willith thought. This guy is freaking strong.

She had known he would be significant. You didn’t have a universe this old and this stable without the Will behind it being formidable. But the gap between knowing that intellectually and feeling it directly was something else. His presence pressed against hers the way an ocean presses against a cup. She wasn’t suppressed violently — he hadn’t even seemed to try — but the weight of him made it very clear where she stood.

She steadied herself and spoke before the silence could calcify into something worse.

”We mean no harm.” Her voice was calm, even under the pressure. ”Please. Let’s talk this out.”

William observed her for a moment.

Then he eased his hold slightly. Not fully — the solar system remained frozen halfway through the wormhole, planets and moons suspended in the passage like beads on a wire — but enough to signal that he was listening.

Willith wasted no time.

She explained everything. The Multiversal Truck-kun Institution. Reincarnators. Runar — who was not from the Orion universe originally but had deep ties to both, and whose existence spanned this very boundary. She explained that this was not an invasion or a resource grab. It was a family being brought together, a civilization being relocated for survival, and that the man who had arranged it had roots on both sides of the tunnel.

William listened without interrupting.

When she finished, silence held for a breath.

Then he spoke, his voice low and even, carrying the particular resonance of something that had existed long enough to stop needing to raise it.

”I understand,” he said. ”But I still require compensation.”

First Compensation.

”The wormhole stays open permanently,” William said. ”And it will not simply be a transit point. There will be formal exchanges between the lifeforms of both universes. Dao talks. Tournaments. Battle competitions. Ongoing contact.”

He let that settle, then added with the faintest shift in tone — not quite amusement, but adjacent to it: ”My universe has been peaceful for far too long. This arrangement will address that problem.”

Willith considered it for exactly as long as it took her to recognize that this was not just a demand but a genuine opportunity.

She agreed without hesitation.

The mechanics of it were already clear to her. William’s universe operated on a different scale — she had felt that the moment his presence arrived. His Laws were the equivalent of her combined Laws and Rules. What he called Rules or Divine Abilities matched what she termed Principles. Even his galaxy-level entities, like the one on the other side helping move the solar system, likely outstripped anything at the universe level within her domain.

Exposure to that would be invaluable.

Her lifeforms would encounter cultivation methods, combat styles, and comprehensions they had never touched. They would learn Intents, Laws, and Principles that didn’t exist within her origin. That knowledge would feed back into her core, enrich it, allow her to birth stronger geniuses and generate more unique paths for her children to walk. And in return, she would send them fighters, thinkers, and cultivators who might offer his universe the novelty it had been lacking.

It was mutually beneficial. Genuinely, not just diplomatically.

”I accept,” she said.

Second Compensation.

”I want Runar to recommend the Multiversal Reincarnation Academy send more reincarnators to my universe,” William said.

Willith blinked.

Then she smiled — and then, almost in the same motion, she frowned.

Because she had made that exact deal herself. With Orion. She had recognized immediately how valuable reincarnators were: individuals who arrived from elsewhere carrying ideas, cultivation concepts, and perspectives that didn’t originate from within her origin. Each one enriched her core in ways that native geniuses simply couldn’t, because native geniuses were still drawing from what already existed. Reincarnators brought the outside in.

So she understood why he wanted it.

What she didn’t understand was why he needed to ask.

”I made the same arrangement,” she said, studying him. ”But I’m surprised you haven’t had reincarnators already. A universe as strong as yours — as old as yours — should be among the first choices for the Academy. Your lifeforms are extraordinary. The cultivation paths here must be incredibly deep. Why haven’t they been sending people to you?”

William was quiet.

The silence stretched a moment longer than she expected.

”That,” he said finally, ”is a long story.”

Something in his tone shifted. Just slightly. The cold authority was still there, but underneath it was something older — something that sounded, if she was reading it correctly, almost like exhaustion.

Or regret.

Willith said nothing. She waited.

William looked through the wormhole — past the frozen solar system, past the tunnel, toward the empty dimension on the other side where two small figures were undoubtedly watching this conversation unfold.

”I’ll tell it,” he said. ”But not standing in a wormhole.”

End of Chapter 215