A Millennium in a Snap

"Xiao Si, are you certain you have the ability to separate these memories?"

Luoluobai Muye temporarily exited the Virtual Universe to communicate with the Soul-Devouring Tree seed within his sea of consciousness.

After its reincarnation, the Soul-Devouring Tree had returned to its original seed state, losing the worldly wisdom it had honed over endless ages. Its current temperament was much like a child's—immature and haughty. Since "Soul" (Shi) and "Four" (Si) sounded similar, Luoluobai Muye simply called it "Xiao Si."

"I told you not to call me Xiao Si. I am the great Soul-Devouring Tree..." the Soul-Devouring Tree seed said, clearly displeased. "At my peak, even the Hunyuan Progenitor could do nothing to me..."

"But right now, you're just a seed!"

"..." The Soul-Devouring Tree seed was choked into silence, unable to retort.

Luoluobai Muye had no concept of what the Infinite Hunyuan Space or the Hunyuan Progenitor were, so he naturally felt no awe. Given his personality, even if he did know, he would likely still call it "Xiao Si."

After a long silence, just when Luoluobai Muye thought it wouldn't answer, the Soul-Devouring Tree seed sent a thought: "The ignorant are fearless; I won't hold this against you..."

Having steeled itself, it continued: "Even in my seed state, separating memories is effortless for me. Don't forget who I am? I am the Soul-Devouring Tree. I can devour souls, let alone perform a mere separation of memories..."

"Are you sure I won't be assimilated by those memories and lose my sense of self?" Luoluobai Muye confirmed repeatedly.

He couldn't afford to be careless; if he lost himself due to merging these memories, it would be no different from death.

"I can completely strip away the emotional factors contained within those memories. Of course, the domains he comprehended contain a small portion of the laws of the world. After you fully merge with them, your personality might be insignificantly affected, but your core consciousness will remain in absolute control. You will not be assimilated, nor will you become someone else!"

This was exactly what Luoluobai Muye was worried about.

After considering it silently for a while, Luoluobai Muye finally spoke: "Fine, start separating the memories. Strip away everything containing emotions; keep only what is related to combat!"

"A wise choice." The Soul-Devouring Tree seed extended its roots.

A second later, it retracted them: "Done."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive!" The Soul-Devouring Tree seed said impatiently. "You need to trust the abilities of Fourth Master!"

It was annoyed that Luoluobai Muye called it "Xiao Si," so it simply started referring to itself as "Fourth Master."

Luoluobai Muye sensed his own state; sure enough, the instinctive, deep-seated sense of crisis he had felt when facing the massive influx of memories was gone.

"Xiao Si, how long will the fusion take?"

"Call me Fourth Master." Xiao Si had already been led astray. "This is different from just viewing them. A full fusion means completely absorbing those memories and making them your own, as if you had truly experienced those training sessions and battles. It will take much longer. Hmm... about a month, I suppose."

Luoluobai Muye arrived at his Training Room. Only he had the authorization to enter this room, though Bastian, possessing the highest authority, could naturally enter at any time.

However, for Bastian, unless he was coming to summon him for a life-or-death battle, he would never set foot in here.

In the Martial Arts Arena, a youth swung a long staff incessantly. The air whistled as the staff cut through it, while an old man nearby nodded frequently...

On the ground, an armed youth sprinted, hunting down a Planet Rank Fierce Beast...

"Teacher is right; only by doing this can I increase my leg explosive power and run faster..."

In a canyon, facing a siege by several Planet Rank Fierce Beasts, Luoluobai Muye danced his long staff with impenetrable precision...

"The spear fears the shaking, the staff fears the point. So that's how it is; this is the Artistic Conception level of staff technique..."

In a training camp buried deep underground, facing an equally ferocious opponent, he used every trick in his book. Risking having his left leg severed by the opponent's blade, he finally smashed the opponent's skull with a single strike...

On a planet filled with magma, facing an opponent who was also at the Universe Rank Level 1, he used superior force to deflect the opponent's weapon, then tapped his staff against the opponent's forehead—brains splattered, red and white everywhere...

Above a boundless sea of forest, he retreated in a sorry state, desperately defending against Telepathic Weapons that pierced toward him like ice cones from all directions. In a desperate situation, wisps of silver-white lightning rippled around his body...

"Is this the Lightning Domain? Die!"

On an endless ocean, two figures fought from the air to the surface, then from the surface into the depths, and back out again. A silver-white domain and a Fire-Red Domain shimmered in tandem...

On a White Dwarf Star with immense gravity, the long staff, carrying unparalleled speed and extreme explosive power, slammed into the chest of a three-meter-tall minotaur...

On the floor of the Training Room, the silver-white lightning around Muye suddenly surged. With a crackling sound, the lightning grew denser, illuminating the entire room...

Luoluobai Muye, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the Training Room, opened his eyes. His gaze was cold and tinged with a hint of vicissitude.

"Two months spent living through thousands of years of life; it truly was a millennium in the blink of an eye..."

He closed his eyes again. These two months felt as if he had lived for thousands of years.

In the final stages of the fusion, he had subtly sensed the mental collapse of Luoluobai Muye. Thousands of years of training and combat, always under immense pressure without a shred of entertainment or relaxation, had left him incredibly numb. This life seemed to have no end in sight.

The opponents in his life-or-death battles grew stronger one after another. In the most recent battle, the opponent's strength had cracked his firm conviction, and he had begun to doubt whether he could truly persist until the day he defeated his 1,000th opponent.

Therefore, after he was reduced to nothing but a head, his conviction had actually already crumbled. Even without Luoluobai Muye, he would likely have just become another Universe Rank vegetable.

If he had merged the memories normally, a month would have been enough. But when he reached the nine-hundredth life-or-death battle and the comprehension of his domain, Luoluobai Muye had tried to slow down the fusion process to have more time to experience the process of combat and the cultivation of the domain, which was why it had taken twice as long.

But the Soul-Devouring Tree was clearly unaware of this. Seeing that he had finished the fusion, it said with a bit of a guilty conscience: "Are you alright? Ahem... perhaps there was an issue with the time flow of this plane... Yes, that's it, it was the time flow. Fourth Master would never make a mistake..."

Luoluobai Muye opened his eyes. His temperament had changed significantly compared to two months ago. He knew he had been affected; thousands of years of hellish training and over nine hundred brutal life-or-death battles, even with the emotional parts stripped away, had inevitably changed him in many ways.

However, he felt this was trivial. As long as "I" was still "I," then a bit more calmness, resilience, and decisiveness were not bad things.

"Not great..." he sent a thought back. "I was 'contaminated' after all. Although it won't endanger my core consciousness, I have been influenced to some extent..."

"Uh..." Xiao Si felt a bit embarrassed at being called out. "How about this: from now on, you handle the killing of enemies, and after I devour the soul energy, I'll transmit the memories over to you..."

It emphasized, "Of course! Rest assured, I was just a bit reluctant to waste energy earlier, which is why it might not have been completely separated. Fourth Master guarantees that future memories will be absolutely clean; I will scrub them a few more times to ensure no 'contaminated' material remains..."

"Speaking of which, you bragged that even the Hunyuan Progenitor couldn't do anything to you at your peak, so you must have plenty of peerless techniques and secret manuals, right?"

"That wasn't me bragging, Fourth Master is merely stating facts!" Xiao Si sounded somewhat exasperated. "Although I have nirvana-ed back into a Seed state and most of my memories are sealed, the things you want are merely low-level memories to me. I do have them, but your strength is too low; you can't practice any of them..."

"You simply don't understand how terrifying those who have jumped out of the Cage are. Some things, let alone touching them, would cause your soul and body to vanish into nothingness if you were even glanced at... That gap is like you being a grain of sand on this planet, while the other party is the entire Source World!"

"Source World?" Bai Muye heard something he didn't understand again and couldn't help but sigh, wondering if he had read a fake Swallowed Star?

"Simply put, the universe you are in is just one of many dimensions of this Source World, and the many dimensions must have a center. This center, combined with the many dimensions, makes up the Source World!"

"This..." Bai Muye was stunned. This had been mentioned at the end of the original work, but was this something that could be talked about? Wasn't it said that the will of the Primitive Universe didn't allow it to be mentioned? That was why it could only be referred to as "ancient civilization."

He threw this question over, and Xiao Si said disdainfully, "Forget about the tiny Primitive Universe; even the Supreme Rule of this Source World cannot restrict me... Rest assured, with me here, I can isolate all karma and attention on you. The Primitive Universe and the Supreme Rule won't be able to notice you..."