If a roommate played movies next to you 24 hours a day

Huang Si threw the prosthetic body back into the warehouse and returned to the Data Space.

Xiao Hua's soul did not follow him in.

Huang Si's consciousness returned to reality and he asked, "You won't come in with me?"

Xiao Hua looked blankly at him. "What is that place? I don't understand."

Huang Si then tried to wrap his mental power around Xiao Hua's soul, forcibly shoving her into the Data Space.

Xiao Hua let out a painful moan.

Huang Si stopped the forced insertion and probed Xiao Hua's condition with his consciousness.

Well, her soul was slightly damaged; Huang Si felt he had been too rough. Just like plugging in a memory stick, forcing it in clearly didn't work.

"Can't be digitized? Fine, then come with me; we have things to handle first."

Before taking Xiao Hua away, Huang Si remembered there was still a loose end to tie up.

Huang Si's mental field expanded instantly, enveloping a space with a radius of about five kilometers.

Then, his mental power clamped onto Xiao Hua and dragged her soul along.

"Being in a soul state is better after all." Huang Si nodded with satisfaction. If she were a human with a physical body, they wouldn't be able to move this quickly.

Souls could move at high speeds; he could transport a soul as fast as his mental power could extend.

Xiao Ke had been tracking Hei Zi's situation the entire time. When Huang Si asked for it, Xiao Ke immediately sent over the precise location.

Huang Si expanded his mental field once more and shifted Xiao Hua over.

If it were just Huang Si himself, he wouldn't need to go through such trouble; he could simply digitize and travel instantly along the network cables.

By this time, Hei Zi had already fled to the vicinity of a river.

He looked incredibly wretched; his right leg and chest were fractured from when he jumped off a cliff in a panic while being pursued. His ammunition was also spent. He had tried a few times, realized it was useless, and thrown the gun away.

By the river, Hei Zi drank some water and washed his filthy body, then lay on the bank like a stray dog, panting heavily.

Hei Zi knew he couldn't rest here for too long. What if someone hadn't given up and was still chasing him? What if there were predators in the woods? Furthermore, he still had to find food for himself.

After lying there for a while, just as Hei Zi was about to get up, he suddenly heard a voice ask:

"Your mental state seems quite good? Now, can you tell me what it is you truly love?"

At the familiar voice, Hei Zi turned his head in a panic, but as expected, he saw nothing.

He immediately flipped over and knelt, kowtowing desperately. "Great God, Heavenly God, you have finally come! You've come to save me, haven't you?"

Huang Si: "...No, I'm just curious, so I came to ask you a question. Your state was too poor before, and you hadn't answered me yet."

Hei Zi had long forgotten what he had said. In his memory, he only remembered that the God favored him, and that he was the one chosen by the Heavenly God, naturally superior to all others.

Seeing Hei Zi's blank expression, Huang Si repeated his question:

"Why are there things you would risk death to pursue?"

Hei Zi's eyes darted around. He knelt on the ground and shouted, "To uphold the majesty of God! God is not to be offended! Great God, please make me your follower! I will sweep away all those who worship false gods in this world for you!"

Huang Si let out a soft laugh.

Was this ape-man trying to start a religious war?

Becoming his follower was not a good thing. Huang Si glanced at Xiao Hua; she had no reaction to the man kneeling before them, merely floating to the side in a submissive manner. A soul truly possessed no memories of its former life.

Xiao Hua had been saved, but the price was the loss of all autonomy, her soul becoming a subordinate to another.

"You know full well that this isn't what I asked, yet you say these things to curry favor with me." Huang Si's voice betrayed no emotional change. "However, that is not important."

"You will not die," Huang Si said coldly. "I will make you live."

Hei Zi's eyes filled with ecstasy. Could it be? Could it be that God was about to bestow some reward?

Huang Si created a dose of Life Support Serum and injected it into Hei Zi.

After the injection, Huang Si used his mental power to disintegrate the syringe.

"You will live on, until you are nailed to the pillar of shame in history."

With this dose of serum, unless he suffered a fatal wound, Hei Zi would not be dying anytime soon.

Having settled matters here, Huang Si took the opportunity to check on the Ape-man Tribe.

Dong Yao, Xi Yuan, and Li Huo were hiding nearby, watching. After all, Huang Si had told them not to show themselves personally without reason.

Besides, it was useless for them to appear; the dead could not be brought back to life.

As soon as Huang Si arrived, he notified the three of them: "The three of you, reveal yourselves. Call the leaders of the Ape-man Tribe and educate them on the knowledge of dynasty building and religious worship. Oh, and regarding that Shu Zi, tell him that his wife can be resurrected, provided he achieves enough merit for the gods. Also, he must be eager for revenge right now; tell him to gather and train the tribe first. Once a stable rule is established, he can go for revenge. His enemies have already been marked by God and won't be able to escape. Tell him not to be impatient."

With his instructions given, Huang Si took Xiao Hua and left.

The specific details were, of course, left for the artificial intelligences to handle.

Once the task was finished, Huang Si clamped onto Xiao Hua with his mental power and ascended in a straight line into the high sky.

At an altitude of 5,000 meters, near the Ring.

This place had been fully equipped with facilities by Huang Si; the surroundings were not only mounted with solar panels and signal base stations, but also various instruments, salvage nets, and more.

Huang Si placed Xiao Hua's soul before the Ring and said to her, "Are you going to walk through yourself, or do you want me to shove you through?"

Xiao Hua really didn't want to be shoved again. Fortunately, her soul was now solid enough that she could drift about as she pleased, so she hurriedly floated toward the black hole at the center of the Ring.

Then, the black hole, which should have allowed objects to pass through freely, blocked Xiao Hua.

Xiao Hua drifted up and down for a long time, unable to find a path, and finally had to say, "Master, I can't find the way."

Huang Si was speechless. He casually poked the surface of the Ring with his mental power, and sure enough, it was bounced right back.

It had been tested: the Ring's passage could not accommodate a soul in its normal state.

"Forget it, if you can't get through, you can't get through."

Huang Si left Xiao Hua near the Ring and said, "Stay here. Don't drift around, or you might get blown away by the wind."

Now that Xiao Hua had been assimilated by him, the feeling of being able to grasp every detail of another soul wasn't actually very pleasant. Huang Si felt that it was like having a roommate playing a movie 24 hours a day right next to you when you didn't want to watch one—and it was the same movie, too.

Before you learned how to ignore them, you would really want to beat them up.

Therefore, Huang Si would rather let Xiao Hua blow in the wind on the Ring platform than put her in a place with a high volume of information. Otherwise, it was just annoying.

Of course, he wouldn't let her have a body and go back just yet; it wasn't the right time.

Huang Si's consciousness descended onto the land of the Green World.

His mental field enveloped the surroundings, sensing the countless animals and plants nearby.

"A black bear? Sleeping? You'll do." Huang Si selected a large animal, a black bear.

For one, a large animal should have a larger and stronger soul; for another, it being asleep meant there would be little resistance from its soul.

Huang Si arrived beside the black bear.

The black bear was curled up in the hollow of a giant tree, its head resting on its arms, sleeping exceptionally soundly.

Huang Si's consciousness scanned the black bear's entire body. Minutes later, he had completely analyzed its physical composition and entered it into the Creation Book, occupying half a page.

"Is the complexity only half that of a human?" Huang Si thought.

Next, Huang Si covered it with his mental field, attempting to locate its soul.

However, a soul that had not yet left the body was truly too difficult to perceive. Huang Si stayed by the black bear for a full two hours without discovering its soul.

The black bear yawned, on the verge of waking up.

Huang Si grew impatient and simply used his mental power to evaporate the black bear's body.

Sure enough, the moment the black bear died, Huang Si caught a faint fluctuation.

He immediately used his mental power to encircle this fluctuation.

Then, he switched to a microscopic perspective.

The microscopic composition of the black bear's soul unfolded before Huang Si's eyes: dense, identical transparent crosses suspended in the air.

"Why do all souls look the same? Are both humans and animals just small transparent crosses?" Huang Si was very curious. Could it be that only his own soul particles were different?

He used his consciousness to take out a golden sphere and gently touched the black bear's soul.

The gold instantly dyed the black bear's entire soul.

"I seem to have forgotten to let this bear agree to be assimilated, but the resistance seems relatively weak?" Huang Si only then remembered the second prerequisite for soul assimilation—"willing to be assimilated." However, compared to intelligent ape-men, animals like black bears seemed to have weaker soul resistance.

Thus, Huang Si assimilated it without much effort.

Next, Huang Si used his Creation Power to create a new body for the black bear and shoved its soul inside.

The resurrected black bear opened its eyes and let out a confused roar.

Had it died just a moment ago?

Why did it seem like nothing had happened now?

Just as the black bear was still confused, Huang Si pulled its soul out of its body once again.

The black bear immediately lost its memory.

The black bear's soul floated in place, dazed. It could feel that it belonged to some great existence and was unable to resist any command from this existence. But beyond that, it knew nothing.

Huang Si nodded with satisfaction. It seemed that the creatures he had created with his power before were dead because they lacked souls.

Once they had a soul, they were exactly the same as they were in life.

Huang Si had tried; he could interpret souls, but he could not record or manufacture them.

Cannot be recorded, cannot be manufactured, cannot be replicated, cannot be digitized, and cannot pass through space-time channels—souls were truly mysterious.

Huang Si sighed. Where did the soul come from, and where did it go? He didn't know either.

A soul could be erased by him, and it could be assimilated by him, but it could never be replicated or created by him.

It was as if it were a forbidden zone.

Huang Si looked at the black bear soul before him.

Huang Si could feel his connection to the black bear's soul. Moreover, as long as Huang Si wished, he could feed his mental power to the black bear at any time, making its soul unprecedentedly powerful. If he strengthened it further, he could even grant it various special abilities.

The same went for the flesh. Huang Si recreated the black bear's body and pushed the soul back inside.

Huang Si could alter the body he possessed at will. He could strengthen its muscular power, making it infinitely strong, even capable of moving mountains and filling seas. He could also reinforce its nerves, making it more agile and precise.

Under Huang Si's manipulation, the black bear's physical strength was instantly boosted to ten times its original level.

It struck the ground with one palm, and the earth instantly collapsed, leaving behind a massive crater.

The black bear was stunned; it knew nothing of its new physical power. What had happened? Was it an enemy attack? The black bear turned to run.

Huang Si glanced at it, extracted its soul once more, and then vaporized its body with his mind.

The black bear's soul floated in the air again, though this time, it had become even weaker.

Yet, even in such a weakened state, the golden hue stained upon the soul remained unchanged.

"How exactly do I undo the assimilation?" Huang Si carefully observed the black bear's soul at a microscopic level, then summoned a golden orb and placed it upon the soul.

Can this gold be absorbed back? Huang Si wondered.

After trying for a day, Huang Si gave up.

It really didn't work.

However, it wasn't without new discoveries; Huang Si finally found a way to avoid being affected.

He could actively sever the connection between the assimilated soul and himself. In other words, the subordinate relationship remained, but the one-way flow of information from the assimilated soul to him could be shut off.

It was as if Huang Si had finally smashed the screen of a roommate who loved playing movies; it felt great.

After turning off the information synchronization, Huang Si casually crafted a body with comprehensively improved strength for the black bear, stuffed the soul back in, and tossed it back into the forest.

"Go play on your own, and don't bother me unless necessary," Huang Si transmitted a thought to it.

The black bear let out a joyful cry, feeling free and liberated, and vanished without a trace in the blink of an eye.