After taking stock of the gains in an extremely short time, Zhao Cheng entered the second act of the instance.
As space and time shifted, the pet slot on the Panel was unlocked as well. A miniature King of Light reappeared. Her power had returned to its starting point, but her memories continued from the previous cycle.
When the King of Light realized that she seemed to have "been reborn," an idea immediately came to her. She promptly said, "Zhao Cheng, I know you're strong, but let me tell you, I'm actually from the future. In the near future, you get smashed to death by a monster. Let me describe it—you went bang, exploded everywhere, and died so horribly you were reduced to ashes."
"This world is beyond saving. If we run now, there's still time."
Zhao Cheng did not respond directly. Instead, he pondered the operating rules of the Panel revealed by the phenomenon before him.
If the Panel had versions as well, then undoubtedly, the old version with the pet slot ranked far below the current version in priority.
Zhao Cheng's own simulations could preserve his strongest state, utterly unconstrained by time, space, causality, or karma—but the pet module could not.
Not only had it been sealed in the first act due to temporal and spatial factors, but even in the second act, it had failed to preserve the power of its peak state.
As for why she retained her memories, it was most likely not a power of the old template, but a beneficial bug produced by the current version of the Panel running an old module.
"Run? Where do you think you can run to?!"
Zhao Cheng replied afterward. As he spoke, he had already drawn his sword and completed another kill.
"Didn't the contract say