The past?

A voice, faintly ethereal, came from behind Lin Mo.

That voice sounds a little familiar...

Lin Mo turned around, but what appeared before him was an illusory figure.

The figure seemed shrouded in a curtain of light, making his face impossible to see.

"Who... are you?"

Lin Mo looked at him in confusion.

"Seriously, Little Mo? Did you sleep yourself stupid? Come on, come on! The boss said he's treating us to barbecue."

Those casual words became a key that unlocked a few of Lin Mo's memories.

"Yang... Yang Fan?"

He stared at the figure in disbelief.

"You suddenly disappeared, and everyone..."

Before he could finish, the light gradually faded, and the figure faded with it.

Lin Mo was about to run toward him when he heard an even more familiar voice.

"Little Mo..."

The voice carried the same weathered quality as Electrolux's, yet it was affectionate and gentle, with a firm timbre Lin Mo knew all too well.

Lin Mo froze.

"Grand... pa..."

"Be good. This is the world where you belong. Don't let Grandpa down. Protect this place well."

This time, Lin Mo did not even have time to turn before the figure vanished.

"Grandpa!"

Lin Mo turned and ran toward where that figure had disappeared.

"Damn it."

Lin Mo cursed, and the Mystic Sword slowly materialized in his palm.

He gripped the Mystic Sword tightly, preparing to try cleaving this accursed place open. In the next instant, a streak of gray divine sense tore through the white space.

Under that strike of divine sense, the space slowly dissolved, its pure white expanse breaking into a swirling multitude of white motes that scattered and vanished.

Lin Mo discovered that he was actually inside his own Sea of Consciousness. Clutching his head, he shakily stood up. Before him was Electrolux, who had already recovered considerably-even his appearance was now clearly visible.

"You are...? Teacher! Have you already recovered this much?"

"Are you all right, Little Mo?"

Electrolux bent down and gently placed a hand on Lin Mo's head.

Gray energy softly enveloped Lin Mo, then slowly disappeared.

"I'm fine. I'm just not quite sure what happened."

He first checked himself over, then looked at Electrolux with a slightly puzzled gaze.

"Do you remember what happened? That curtain of light just now, for instance?"

Electrolux withdrew his hand, confusion lingering on his face. His examination with divine sense had revealed no injuries or abnormalities in Lin Mo. On the contrary, his soul was exceptionally stable.

"..."

Lin Mo was about to speak when he realized he seemed to have forgotten something.

"Sorry, Teacher. I don't seem to remember."

He tried recalling what had just happened, only to find a complete blank.

"A complete blank?"

"Yes. All I remember is that I seemed to enter some pure white space, then heard someone's voice. After that, I don't remember anything."

Lin Mo still seemed somewhat uncomfortable.

Electrolux waved the staff in his hand, sending a gentle aura into Lin Mo's body and making his awareness feel a little clearer.

After collecting himself, Lin Mo stood up, and the two began exchanging what they knew.

Electrolux told him that he had been unable to contact him after the lightning tribulation struck, as well as about the pair of silvery-white eyes that had met his gaze beneath the Sea of Consciousness.

Compared with Electrolux, Lin Mo had very little information to offer. His only impression was that he seemed to have entered some strange place after being struck, but he had no memory whatsoever of what he had encountered there.

After briefly comparing their information, Electrolux looked at Lin Mo with a somewhat complicated expression.

"Little Mo, I have a question for you. Of course, you may choose not to answer."

Seeing Electrolux's complicated expression, Lin Mo could not shake a bad feeling.

"Little Mo, should I say that you don't seem to be from this world, or at least that you once existed outside this plane?"

Electrolux's voice was fairly calm, though his tone held a probing note.

Yet that calm tone made Lin Mo's entire body stiffen.

"If you can't answer, you don't have to. I'm merely asking."

"As expected of you, Teacher. You could even notice that."

Hearing those words, Lin Mo shook his head.

"As expected of you, Teacher. I really wasn't originally from this world. I accidentally came here when I was five or six."

Lin Mo explained his situation, but did not mention that, in his own world, they were merely characters in a novel.

Quite apart from whether Electrolux would believe such a thing, explaining it alone would be complicated.

"Speaking of which, Teacher, how did you discover it?"

Asked about his reasoning, Electrolux shook his head and replied.

"It was actually an accident. While checking you for injuries just now, I noticed that your soul was very unusual."

As he spoke, he manipulated his staff, and two miniature three-dimensional terrain maps and a gray soul instantly appeared in the air.

Snow-white particles of energy also drifted from one of those miniature maps.

"After entering your body, I noticed some subtle changes in my own soul. It seemed to be undergoing assimilation by this plane. Although those changes did not affect me or produce any other effects, that unusual phenomenon caught my attention."

"Assimilation?"

Electrolux nodded, then continued.

"Look. Take this soul, for example."

As he spoke, the gray soul floating in midair drifted on its own above the miniature terrain map that radiated gray-black light energy.

"This soul belongs to this world, so it is naturally gray. But if we transfer it to an entirely new continent like this..."

As he spoke, he guided the little cartoonish soul over to the snow-white terrain map.

Lin Mo's gaze likewise shifted to the other map.

"At first, the soul undergoes no changes. But as time slowly passes..."

He did not continue speaking. His staff merely glowed faintly, and before long, the originally gray-black soul began changing above the map that radiated snow-white light.

Snow-white patterns slowly emerged across its gray surface. Beginning as tiny marks, they spread farther and grew thicker, until the originally gray soul became snow-white.

"That is the principle behind it-a theory I deduced from the phenomenon I observed in myself. Applying that theory to you, I reached a conclusion: nearly half the energy within your soul, as I observed it, does not belong to this plane."

"So that's how it is. As expected of you, Teacher."

Lin Mo was not particularly shocked that Electrolux had deduced his origins. Or rather, it was only a matter of time before Electrolux learned that he did not belong to this world. Lin Mo had also considered the matter of their souls, since neither of them came from this world.

"But that isn't the most important point, Little Mo."

Electrolux slowly drifted down, lightly tapping his staff against the surface of the Sea of Consciousness beneath their feet.

"Although we have little information at present, I can roughly infer one possible explanation for what just happened to you."

He did not give Lin Mo a chance to speak, simply voicing his thoughts.

"I fear that someone-or some will-several times more powerful than me pulled you from another world into this plane. I do not yet know their purpose, but what just happened to you was probably connected to it."

After hearing this, Lin Mo fell into thought. He strained to recall what had just happened, but could remember nothing. Yet Electrolux's words seemed to stir a faint impression.

"Now that you mention it, I think I remember a little. That curtain of light I experienced seemed connected to the other world where I used to live."

They spoke a little longer, but found no further clues regarding the matter and left it there.

"As for those eyes, your Sea of Consciousness has been sealed by an even stronger power, so I cannot examine it. I suspect even you cannot examine it yourself. But for now, it does not appear to be a bad thing, so rest easy. I will help you keep an eye on it."

"Thank you, Teacher."

Lin Mo looked gratefully at the teacher before him, who had given so much for his sake.

After speaking with him for so long, he had also noticed that although his teacher had successfully formed a body and visible features, his divine sense was somewhat weaker than before.

"All right, there's no need for that. What you must do now is grow stronger as quickly as possible. Once you become stronger, everything will be easier to resolve."

"Rest assured. Your student will not disappoint you, Teacher. In the future, I will definitely find a way to help resurrect you."

Electrolux said nothing more at those words. He merely smiled in gratification, then patted Lin Mo's shoulder.

"All right. Knowing you have that intention already makes me very happy. You should hurry outside now. That girl is terribly worried about you. She's even been crying."

"Ah! Little Yao!"

Only then did he remember that he had remained in his Sea of Consciousness ever since surviving the lightning tribulation, without once going outside. He immediately panicked and hurriedly vanished from the Sea of Consciousness.

Watching Lin Mo disappear from the Sea of Consciousness, Electrolux did not return to his divine stone fragment as usual. His eyes were deep as he quietly gazed toward the seabed.

In that brief span, a full two hours had passed outside.

In the dueling arena, several medical staff were busily moving medical equipment around, while Kong Deming, Jing Hongchen, and Xuan Ziwen stood at the center.

Lin Mo had been placed on a hospital bed. Beside him, Huo Yuyao lay gripping his hand tightly, with tears still wet at the corners of her eyes.

Xiao Xiao, Meng Hongchen, and Jing Ziyan stood before the bed, tending to the two of them. Though it was called tending to them, it mostly amounted to continually wiping away Huo Yuyao's falling tears.

As for Xiao Hongchen and Ji Juechen, the two boys helped the medical staff with miscellaneous tasks.

An hour earlier, after the lightning engulfed Lin Mo, his screams had abruptly stopped, as though someone had seized him directly by the throat.

Then they saw the lightning slowly disperse, revealing Lin Mo collapsed unconscious on the ground. The two Titled Douluos stepped forward to examine him but found nothing wrong. Jing Hongchen immediately summoned doctors to run tests, yet after half an hour, every result had come back normal.

Huo Yuyao seemed to have lost her pillar of support in an instant. She cried incessantly, clutching Lin Mo's hand and refusing to let go. After sobbing like that for over ten minutes, she slipped into something resembling unconsciousness.

The medical staff initially wanted to separate them and prepare another bed for Huo Yuyao, but discovered that her grip was so tight they could not loosen it at all. Left with no choice, they pushed two beds together and moved the pair onto the new bed.

Seeing this, Meng Hongchen and Jing Ziyan also learned more precisely about their relationship and family circumstances from Xiao Xiao.

Having already lost her mother, the girl had only this brother, close to her own age, who could still be considered family in the world. Yet now her brother had suffered an accident. Anyone encountering such a situation at only eight years old would have found it hard to bear.

Inside Huo Yuyao's Sea of Consciousness.

"Little Yao, do you really want to do this?"

The Sky Dream Ice Silkworm spoke with some reluctance.

"I have to know exactly what's happening to Brother Xiao Mo right now. So please, Sister Tian Meng, help me."

Looking at the girl's resolute expression, the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm sighed helplessly.

Just moments earlier, when the girl had come to her Sea of Consciousness halfway through crying to ask for a solution, he had inadvertently mentioned that, by clasping palms, one could use powerful spiritual power to probe another person's Sea of Consciousness and examine their condition.

He had not expected Huo Yuyao to ask him to do it immediately.

"If this ability isn't controlled properly, you could be harmed too. If anything goes wrong, your spiritual body will have left your physical body and been rejected by the other person's Sea of Consciousness, causing it to dissipate from this world completely. That would mean your death, with no possible way to resurrect you."

The Sky Dream Ice Silkworm spoke to her sternly, his expression grave and solemn, even carrying a hint of intimidation.

"Then... then what would happen to you, Sister Tian Meng?"

The girl seemed genuinely frightened and hurriedly asked what would happen to the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm.

The Sky Dream Ice Silkworm had not expected that question and could only answer honestly.

"If your spiritual power leaves your body and dissipates completely, although it would take some effort and require me to fall into a deep sleep, I could replace your spiritual power and use this body. Put simply, I would possess it. At that point, this body would no longer be you, Huo Yuyao, but me, the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm."

The Sky Dream Ice Silkworm had intended to frighten her with those words and make her retreat before the difficulty, but instead, the girl gave him a smile of relief.