"Master, thank you for spending precious resources to restore my body."
Feeling the Slave Chip in his head, Bai Muye could only suppress his frustration and thank him in a respectful voice.
After browsing the memories, he knew he was now a slave. Earlier, he had communicated with the Soul-Devouring Tree's seed and asked whether it could protect his soul if the chip exploded.
The Soul-Devouring Tree's seed had replied, "Don't, under any circumstances. Even if I could preserve your soul, I don't have the ability to let you possess another creature yet. In the end, we'd both perish!"
"So it can't do it yet, but it will be able to in the future?" Bai Muye had asked.
"If I can keep devouring soul energy, then of course I'll be able to in the future," the Soul-Devouring Tree's seed had answered matter-of-factly.
Now that he knew his circumstances, he had no choice but to bow his head for the time being.
"I spent quite a bit restoring your body this time." Bastian scrutinized him. "Now that you're healed, get back to training. I'll contact the Giant Axe Arena and arrange your next death match as soon as possible... Don't disappoint me!"
"Yes."
Bastian turned to leave, but Bai Muye hurriedly called out, "Master, I learned a few things in my previous fight. I'd like to request access to the Virtual Universe..."
Although Bai Muye had taken control of this body, he had only browsed its memories. He had no actual combat experience at all.
The memories included scenes of the original owner training in the Virtual Universe. Bai Muye knew it was an incredibly realistic virtual world, so he wanted to enter it and get used to killing as soon as possible.
As his body recovered, the vast memories had yet to fade. He could choose to absorb them all, but he worried that his own twenty-odd years of life wouldn't be able to withstand thousands of years' worth of memories. If they overwhelmed him, he would no longer be himself. So he had kept hesitating.
If training in the Virtual Universe could help him fully master this body's formidable fighting ability, he would let those memories fade away.
Bastian hesitated. He calculated the enormous difference between the cost of entering the Virtual Universe and his next appearance fee, then finally took out a Consciousness Sensor and tossed it to Bai Muye. "You get five days in the Giant Axe Arena's Killing Space. Make good use of them."
He left those words behind and walked away.
Bai Muye caught the Consciousness Sensor, and a wisp of his consciousness entered the Virtual Universe.
When he had first transmigrated, he hadn't been able to separate off a wisp of consciousness. But after taking control of the whole body, the powerful physique had nourished his soul, bringing it up to Cosmic Level strength.
It was an anonymous account with special permissions. Once logged in, he could only enter the Killing Space and couldn't publish any information to the outside world.
In the Virtual Universe, Bai Muye appeared directly inside the Giant Axe Arena. He glanced at the blood droplet in the hall, which inspired awe, then stood silent for a while before walking deeper along the hall's path.
As he went farther in, the surroundings changed. He appeared in a vast desert with no end in sight.
"Cheap. They couldn't even provide a Little Sprite..."
Grumbling to himself, he could only create an opponent manually: himself, with extremely rich combat experience.
Without any windup, the moment his opponent took shape, he unleashed his domain and charged with a staff!
Feeling as though he were bogged down in mud, Bai Muye belatedly unleashed his own domain. Against the opponent's powerful swing, he raised his staff to block—
Clang!
His hands shattered from fingertips to wrists to arms. The staff flew from his grip, and then everything went black as the opponent smashed him into a pulp with one blow!
The pulp on the sand eerily gathered together, rebuilding his body.
"So this is what it feels like to be smashed to death? The pain doesn't seem to last as long as being tormented by illness..."
He planted one end of his staff on the ground and felt his chest with his other hand. The opponent had struck him there, and the explosive force had torn him apart, starting from that point.
The prolonged suffering from illness in his previous life hadn't crushed his spirits. If anything, it had made him exceptionally optimistic.
"First, I didn't unleash my domain right away, so I started at a disadvantage..."
"Second, I didn't use the Force Application Technique properly. I blocked clumsily, and the opponent's greater explosive force shattered both my hands..."
"Third... There is no third. The first two were enough to kill me..."
After a thorough review, he created another opponent—
The same opponent appeared.
He unleashed his domain at once, but the first staff strike still knocked him aside. Then—
He was smashed into a pulp again!
"I was getting ahead of myself..."
He reflected once more.
"Even though I unleashed my domain immediately, I'm still not familiar enough with the Force Application Technique..."
"Right. I should take it one step at a time..."
For the third attempt, he set the opponent to himself with "ordinary combat experience."
The same opponent appeared.
He unleashed his domain immediately. His opponent was a fraction slower to do the same.
Bai Muye's heart leapt. This time, he should be able to—
Suddenly, his consciousness sank. His head grew hazy, and he couldn't react in time to the opponent's incoming blow. He turned into a pool of pulp even faster than before!
"What happened?"
He sank into deep self-doubt.
"Was that a consciousness attack? So warriors can attack someone's consciousness too?"
"No, it wasn't a consciousness attack. He released his killing intent in response to the situation. I... couldn't withstand it. The killing intent made my mind go hazy, and I lost even more miserably..."
"There doesn't seem to be any way to avoid that. I can only tough it out." Bai Muye gritted his teeth. "Then let's go again!"
Fourth attempt, fifth attempt...
Every time he was killed, he reviewed what had happened, learned from his mistakes, and tried to improve. But the results were meager. It took him a full day to finally trade blows evenly with himself set to "ordinary combat experience." The fight at last lasted more than a minute, but it still ended with him being beaten to death.
At first, it wasn't so bad. He died quickly, so the pain was brief.
But as his combat instincts slowly improved, he stopped dying so quickly. Often, his left hand took a blow one second, his right leg took one the next, and his back took one after that. The pain was worse than before.
After dying more than a thousand times, he had finally learned plenty from his mistakes, and his practical combat experience had grown considerably through those thousand transformations into pulp. At the very least, he was no longer a complete novice.
But he was still nowhere near able to defeat himself with "ordinary combat experience."
"Setting aside the original owner's cultivation talent, he really did have a gift for fighting..." After dying yet again, Bai Muye touched the head that had just been smashed. "I wonder if I can handle another Universe Rank Fifth Order now..."
With a thought, he created a Universe Rank Fifth Order Psychic, also with a Fourth-Order Domain and "average" combat experience.
His opponent appeared. Bai Muye unleashed his domain and charged forward to attack first.
But before he could reach his opponent, the Telepathic Weapon in the opponent's hand, something like a nine-section whip, lashed out. Bai Muye swung his staff to defend himself, but the whip's head turned sharply and stabbed straight into his skull at an uncanny angle!
"Looks like I still can't do it..."
No matter how optimistic he was, he couldn't help feeling discouraged.
"At this rate, even another five days won't be enough to build up the combat experience I need... I don't know how long it'll be until the next death match..."
The schedule for Universe Rank death matches wasn't fixed. Sometimes there was a year or two between them; sometimes another was arranged just a few months later. It mainly depended on the participants' wishes and the Giant Axe Arena's arrangements.
But judging by Bastian's attitude, he would probably ask the Giant Axe Arena to arrange the next match as soon as possible. That meant Bai Muye wouldn't have much time.
In his current state, Bai Muye had no confidence at all about surviving the next death match. He had already won 921 matches in a row, so his next opponent wouldn't be like the ones he'd faced when he first started fighting death matches.
The Giant Axe Arena wouldn't pair him with some rookie. That would just hand him another victory and appearance fee.
"Am I going to die in the next death match?"
After struggling against illness for years in his previous life, he had long since come to terms with death. But his current situation had instead awakened his will to survive.
He now faced a choice: should he absorb that vast mass of memories or not?
Before you continue