Past and Present Lives

Ling Yi has always been full of doubts about the Douluo Continent he traveled through. 🍧💋 ➅➈s 🐠🐯

When it's just a novel or an anime, no matter how many logical loopholes, contradictions, or other illogical points there are, as a reader or viewer, Ling Yi can just laugh it off and at most make a few comments like "didn't graduate from elementary school."

But when it becomes a real world, what Ling Yi faces is how those irrational aspects become reasonable after the world evolves on its own.

In his previous life, Ling Yi had a conversation with a female writer who wrote novels for female readers. She told him that the world he created was virtual, but it was also the world whose logic needed to be examined the most.

Reality doesn't need logic because no one will delve into it, nor can they delve into the vast and complex real world. But a fictional world like a novel is presented to the reader in a certain sense as 'complete'. If there is even the slightest inconsistency, it will be discovered by those who are meticulous or simply have nothing better to do.

Authors in the real world are all human beings, ordinary people. Everyone makes mistakes. Some people are more capable and can minimize their mistakes, while others are less capable and make so many mistakes that it's unbearable to watch.

"So, how can we avoid making this kind of logical fallacy?" Ling Yi asked during a moment when he was helping the other person find inspiration and play the role of a muse.

In response, the young woman, who was sitting naturally in front of the computer, typing away while absorbing the inspiration Ling Yi had brought her, was somewhat distracted due to her busyness. She answered intermittently, "It's... um... very simple... uh... just... just... ah... just don't... don't... don't... continue... um... don't be so clever..."

"Trying to be clever?" Ling Yi blinked upon hearing this.

The young woman bit her lip and winked, saying, "I wasn't talking about you~"

Receiving a meaningful look, Ling Yi, realizing he had misunderstood, scratched his head and looked at the young lady with some confusion.

"Ugh~" The young woman gritted her teeth, seemingly a bit sluggish from the interruption, and shifted uncomfortably in her waist before quickly replying, "Yes, it's just being too clever for one's own good. Many authors sometimes... in order to show off their... abilities, incorporate... real-world data into their novels, but... often this kind of behavior is the most foolish..."

"Indeed... admittedly, these data... seem... to make the content of the book... more intuitive, and... can... reflect a stronger... sense of realism, but... often these data... are the root cause of... logical loopholes... in the novel..."

"We novelists... are just ordinary people, not supercomputers. Unless we're writing about realistic themes where we can directly obtain relevant data from reality, otherwise... once we get into supernatural content, because it's... illusory and unreal, there's no material to compare it to in reality. We can only... only imagine it out of thin air..."

However, human cognition is limited; humans can only understand what they know. Beyond that, we can only expand, broaden, and associate with what is already in existence...

"In this situation, any real-world data presented is generally untenable."

"For example?" Ling Yi listened intently and quickly pressed for more details.

The young woman rolled her eyes, seemingly dissatisfied that Ling Yi hadn't given her a chance to breathe, but she still gave her answer immediately, "For example, in the novels written by Master Huang, when Martial Dao are cultivated to a certain level, one can ' Shattering the Void '."

"Have you ever seen what Mr. Huang wrote about how much strength these broken ones possess?"

"Uh~" Ling Yi blinked upon hearing this, thought for a moment, and said, "I don't remember, I don't think so—"

"So, how much power do you think these Shatterers possess to break through space and achieve ' Shattering the Void '? Ten thousand jin? One hundred thousand jin? One million jin? Or ten million jin?!"

The young woman took a deep breath and continued, "Isn't it terrifying that a human being less than two meters tall and weighing no more than two hundred pounds possesses the strength of ten million pounds?"

"But ten million jin is five million kilograms, which is five thousand tons."

"A few years ago, the Longguo Academy of Science and Technology developed a hydraulic press with a pressure of 80,000 tons. Do you think that hydraulic press could break through space?"

"Uh, that makes sense~" Ling Yi thought about it and realized that it was indeed true.

"So," the young woman paused her typing, tapped Ling Yi's apple with her delicate finger, and said with a smile, "The best way is to use some imaginary numbers or exaggerated adjectives. You can't just write them directly; you have to leave enough space for the readers to imagine and fill in the blanks themselves. This way, the virtual world will become real in the readers' minds, and they'll feel more involved..."

"Phew—!" Ling Yi let out a long sigh of relief, feeling quite satisfied. The young lady's answer and example had resolved his doubts.

"Continue?"

"Wait until I finish writing this chapter... Oh! Didn't you say wait until I... Ugh..."

With a story that required an extra fee and was difficult to describe in detail replaying in his mind, Ling Yi strolled along the less than half-foot-wide stone path of Hell Road, pondering the various illogical aspects of the Douluo Continent as he walked.

For example, how does the "Slaughter City," where fighting is happening all the time, manage to keep all the corrupt people inside alive?

For example, when Ling Yi unlocked the "Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well" blessed land map, he wondered how those rare and exotic flowers and herbs, and various precious medicines with conflicting attributes, could appear so coincidentally next to the Ice and Fire Twin Springs.

Although the blessed land is powerful, can those rare flowers, exotic plants and precious medicines grow out of thin air without seeds?

These seeds, like the first ginseng plant in the old forest behind Ling Yi's hometown village, were left there by bird droppings.

What kind of bird is so amazing? How can it accurately drop so many different kinds of seeds next to the "Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well" spring?

Therefore, before receiving the news of the "Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well" from Dugu Bo, Ling Yi had no intention of going to Sunset Forest alone to find the "Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well" and intercept those rare and precious flowers and herbs in advance.

No matter how you look at it, this "Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well" seems to be the backyard garden or herb garden of some being, where those rare and precious flowers and herbs with mutually restraining attributes are specially planted.

As the old man who delivers treasures in the original work, Dugu Bo, as an NPC, triggers the blessed land opportunity, which gives Ling Yi, an anomaly, more room for maneuver from the start.

As for the evolution of the world line, Ling Yi's appearance as an assistant invited by Dugu Bo can be considered somewhat reasonable.

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After all, even the original novel never mentioned whether Dugu Bo discovered the "Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well" alone or with others.

In any case, as long as the "general trend" remains unchanged—from the time when he, the "Poison Douluo" Dugu Bo, owned the "Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well" to the time when the "Destined Protagonist" Tang San used the "information gap" to seize all the rare and precious herbs and medicines inside—it will basically not touch the "mastermind" whose existence is unknown.

Furthermore, although those "named" immortal Immortal Herb were fragrant, they were not indispensable or urgently needed by Ling Yi, who was making steady progress at the time.

Even now, Ling Yi does not directly use those finished Immortal Herb, but instead uses them sustainably through methods such as cultivating and dividing them, in order to train his subordinates or trade with other people and forces.

As for Ling Yi himself, compared to these seemingly miraculous herbs with different functions, which were touted as Immortal Herb in the original work, he had more faith in the Blue Silver Grass that he had cultivated himself.

The problem with the "Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well" is the various rare and precious herbs and medicinal plants that should not appear at the same time.

As for Xiao Wu, who sacrificed her Hundred Thousand Year Soul Ring and Soul Bone, she chose Nuoding City out of all the cities in the Douluo Continent, and coincidentally, she ended up in the same year, dormitory, and even bed as Tang San, the protagonist with an unusual background and origin.

As for the "Slaughter City," which is one of the many opportunities for the protagonist Tang San, its biggest logical flaw is the fighting rules of the Hell Slaughter Arena.

As a super spiritual power user whose spiritual realm has reached "Meditative Trance and Constant Concentration" and has initially cultivated the "Holy Embryo", Ling Yi can transform all his memories from his previous life into an extremely detailed and clear movie. Therefore, when he retrieved the contents of the original novel and watched it repeatedly, he discovered details that many people had overlooked due to a superficial reading.

For example, when Tang San first entered the "Slaughter City", Hu Liena, who had entered a year earlier, had sixteen wins and could be ranked in the top 100 of the Hell Slaughter Arena.

The first place at that time had 67 wins.

For example, Tang San killed a three-digit number of people in just three days in the "Slaughter City," and the figure for a year later was "more than a thousand people."

For example, a month after Tang San entered the "Slaughter City", he mentioned a competition rule in the Hell Slaughter Arena, namely that the ten people participating in the Hell Slaughter Arena could not compete against each other more than five times.

Of course, there's a patch here: if someone can surpass everyone else's record by more than five times, this rule doesn't apply. That is, the person with ninety-nine wins doesn't actually need to collect nine more ninety-nine wins to determine the final hundred-winner; even if the other nine players all have fewer than sixty wins, the competition can still proceed.

Therefore, the Hell Slaughter Arena in the "Slaughter City" determines a hundred-victorious warrior who will be able to challenge the Hell Road. It is not, as those data enthusiasts on the internet in the previous life said, measured in hundreds of millions or trillions.

Even so, the number of people dying in the "Slaughter City" every day exceeds double digits, or even triple digits!

So how many people are there in one or two years? How many in ten or a hundred years? And how many in a thousand years?

In the original novel, the author did not provide an answer, perhaps because he felt that providing a "patch" would resolve the population issue.

But they forgot that even without the mandatory rules of the Hell Slaughter Arena, the environment itself, where killing can be done at will, is enough to turn Life into a string of numbers that can be easily erased.

Just now, Ling Yi discovered a possible 'truth'.

The "Slaughter City" is not only attached to the Douluo Continent, or rather, a sub-plane of Douluo Star, but it also connects to some other planes.

Thinking of the fleeting images transmitted back just before the power of the mind vanished: the abyss so deep that even birds couldn't cross it, the massive gate tower inscribed with the words "Tang Sect," and the agile figures leaping across it...

"I've long heard that the world of the Douluo Continent coexists with other worlds. The Divine Realm governs 108 worlds, such as Douluo Continent, Five Elements Continent, Mysterious Heaven Continent, Boundless Continent, and Yangguang Continent. Human cultivators in these high-energy worlds are more likely to comprehend the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth and reach the level of gods."

Ling Yi recalled his memories of his past life, searching for relevant information. "The Yangguang Continent of The Ice and Fire Chef, the Five Elements Continent of * The God of Wine , the Boundless Continent of Heavenly Jewel Change, the Jinyuan Continent of The Mad God, the Longinus Continent of The Qin Emperor... and, the Douluo Continent Douluo Continent!"

These are worlds with names and identities, but what about those worlds that are never mentioned?

"If a world's energy level is too low to produce god-like beings, what is the purpose of its existence? To provide population and faith?"

"So, was Tang San's martial arts world in his previous life one of those 108 worlds?"

So, is Tang San's existence a coincidence? Or was he a puppet from the very beginning? What is his relationship with the Asura God? What is his relationship with Tang Chen?

"In addition, in his previous life, Tang San created the Buddha's Fury Tang Lotus at the age of twenty-nine, and then jumped off a cliff to show his determination."

So, how did Tang San in his previous life manage to forge the material that required the cooperation of Tang Xiao, a Level 97 Super Douluo?

There are also the Torrential Pear Blossom Needle, which require Lou Gao, the creator, to Blood Sacrifice in the furnace to sharpen them; the Purple Demon Eye, which cultivates spiritual power through four levels: 'Comprehensive View,' 'Microscopic View,' ' Mustard Seed,' and 'Vastness'; the Guanyin's Tears, which can pierce the heart of Qian Renxue, who has just become Angel God; and the Mysterious Heaven Treasure Record, which contains information about the ' Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well ' and various rare and exotic flowers and herbs...

"If the mere Tang Sect Clan is this powerful, then what about the other top forces in the martial arts world? Wouldn't they be invincible?"

Only after walking all the way to the end of Hell Road did Ling Yi finally suppress the turbulent thoughts surging in his mind.

Looking at the dark cave entrance on the rock wall a thousand meters away, Ling Yi a step out and appeared three feet in front of the cave entrance. He floated in the air and looked at the exit of the Hell Road in front of him.

Ling Yi knew that he couldn't proceed with the next steps. He had previously used the power of the fallen titled Douluo, Sauron, to conceal his aura and thus wander around here as if he were invisible. This was only because he took advantage of Qian Daoliu's visit to attract the attention of potential enemies. However, if he were to actually enter the entrance space and receive the mark of the "Killing God Domain," he would be directly exposing himself to the eyes of the Asura God.

Not advisable.

Turning around, Ling Yi took another step, following the spatial fluctuations left by the Slaughter King, and returned to the Douluo Continent.

The two figures that came into view were the Slaughter King and Qian Daoliu.