Jin Shu stared blankly into space for an indeterminate amount of ti before finally blinking and letting out an aggrieved groan.
“What great wrong did I commit in my previous life for things like this to keep happening to ?!”
“You have mories from your previous lives,” Shuang said mildly. “So… shouldn’t you already know?”
“I showed filial piety by saving my mother and the entire Azure Dragon Clan,” Jin Shu said, ticking the points off on his fingers. “Then I sacrificed myself for the greater good—nearly saving the world in the process. Which part of that qualifies as so unforgivable evil that I should be accosted like this in my next life?”
“Maybe it isn’t as bad as you think?” Shuang shrugged. “You always did secretly want to live a carefree life surrounded by beautiful won.”
Jin Shu stiffened.
He had never told anyone, but as a child, his dream really had been to live a life of pure decadence. Of course, the Jin family would never have allowed their heir to slack off—and even after his mother later arranged certain… conveniences, he’d still rebelled on principle alone.
Mostly to keep that particular dream a secret.
“That was then. This is now,” he protested. “My current dream is to live a carefree life without decadence.”
“Does marrying a goddess not count as carefree?” Gold chid in from the side, grinning.
Jin Shu chose to ignore him and turned to Nano instead, eager to change the subject.
“And what’s your deal?” Jin Shu asked. “Since when were you so kind of god?”
Nano blinked his digital eyes.
“I was never a god. In fact, I was unaware that I was an artificial recreation of a god’s consciousness until recently—specifically, when Wang Yue descended.”
“…What?”
“Allow to begin at the start,” Nano said calmly.
“When the planet I originated from was destroyed by the plague, its people were in the process of constructing a copy of their god’s intelligence—. They extracted the final sliver of their god’s remaining consciousness to create a weapon capable of combating the plague.”
He paused briefly.
“However, upon realizing their world was already dood, they repurposed the project. Instead of saving their own civilization, they redirected it toward saving another—Earth.”
“I was placed aboard a ship alongside the scientists responsible for my construction and maintenance. En route, those scientists beca infected by the plague. The ship crashed into Earth before I could be fully activated.”
Nano’s gaze softened slightly—which was quite the strange sight considering his digital features.
“I am uncertain what occurred between that mont and the ti you discovered in this world. What I do know is that when Wang Yue descended and her aura washed over your body, the dormant sliver of Nano Technica’s consciousness finally awakened.”
“I imdiately utilized that fragnt to devise a solution to your problem,” Nano continued. “As my primary directive is to protect the final survivor of Earth.”
Jin Shu listened quietly—then couldn’t help himself.
“He didn’t really survive, though…”
“Possession of a soul constitutes continued existence,” Nano replied without hesitation.
Jin Shu considered that for a mont.
“…Fair enough.”
He had other questions, but he really didn’t want to deal with them right now. Instead, he turned his attention to the four shiny new items hovering within his soul space.
A rock.
A sword.
A string.
And a book.
He reached for the sword first—it was the most familiar.
As expected, it was the modified tal Elent.
He extended his soul senses and probed the sword’s inner workings. A torrent of information surged into his mind: crafting techniques from another world intertwined seamlessly with the runic knowledge of his own.
If this had happened back when he’d first awakened the mories of his previous life, the sheer volu of information would have crushed him. But now, as a Spirit Realm cultivator, it amounted to little more than a sharp pinprick of pain.
He could have relied on Nano to relay the information gradually, but knowledge etched directly into his soul was different.
It was no longer borrowed understanding.
It was his.
Alongside the crafting knowledge ca insight into the tal elent itself—granting him control over most tals and the ability to sense rare ones. An indispensable skill for any blacksmith.
Less so for him.
After all, being absurdly wealthy ant he could simply buy whatever rare materials he needed rather than hunt them down personally.
Still, the elent possessed sothing no ordinary tal affinity ever could.
Unparalleled sharpness—sharp enough to sever foundational and even universal laws.
Once he finished digesting the sword’s contents, Jin Shu casually tossed it toward the corner of his soul space where his other elental affinities resided.
It looked slightly out of place among manifestations that resembled natural forces.
Yet in terms of sheer lethality, it surpassed them all.
Next, he picked up the small stone and let his senses sink into it.
Instead of crafting knowledge—which would have been strange for an earth-elent artifact—it contained Wang Yue’s personal insights.
Scenes unfolded in his mind.
A young girl—Wang Yue as a child—listening intently as her mother taught her about the earth elent. The vision shifted to her several years later as she successfully ford her earth affinity. It ended with her mastering a peculiar technique that allowed her body to liquefy into… mud.
“That’s an interesting way to combine water and earth,” Jin Shu mused.
Finding nothing else of value within the stone, he placed it beside the tal elent. It blended in more naturally with the other affinities—though it was admittedly a bit plain.
The next item was the string.
He didn’t touch it.
Instead, he wrapped it in an impenetrable barrier using his control over the soul space and flung it into the farthest reaches—so distant that it would never again have the chance to cause trouble.
Finally, he turned to the last item.
The book.
He didn’t recognize it, which ant it hadn’t co from him. After a mont’s thought, he concluded it must have been left behind as additional compensation—likely by Wang Yue, since she had promised as much.
The title read:
Seven Elent Fusion Art (Six Elent Edition)
He opened it carefully and scanned the first page.
Introduction: The seven elents are the cornerstone of life. Without even one of them, life could not exist within the myriad realms. However, certain lower realms possess only six.
Why is this, you ask? Because the final elent—space—is far too powerful to be wielded by mortals.
Thus, the universe forbids its manipulation within realms where mortals congregate in great numbers.
Space still exists within these worlds, but it may only be perceived—never altered. Any attempt to do so invites heavenly punishnt of the highest order.
This technique was created with those lower realms in mind.
Reading further, Jin Shu quickly realized the technique was far too complex for him to properly digest in the short term. With a shrug, he tossed the book toward Shuang.
“Here. So light reading for when you’re bored.”
“Gee, thanks,” Shuang replied dryly—though he knew the technique suited him perfectly.
Shuang was always the one who devised more efficient ways to utilize their elental affinities in combat. And from the few pages they skimd, the technique bore a strong resemblance to sothing he had already been developing—only far more refined, intricate, and comprehensive.
It even detailed thods for fusing elents to create secondary ones—lightning, ice, and more.
With nothing left to do, Jin Shu withdrew from his soul space and blinked his eyes open.
The first thing he noticed was that Jiao was gone.
In his place sat a small note on the ground.
See you in the future, dad!
Jin Shu’s eyes twitched.
He ignored the note and glanced around. The sun and shadows had barely shifted, despite it feeling as though half a day had passed inside his soul space. Clearly, no more than a few minutes had elapsed in reality.
Letting out a long sigh, he turned and started walking—only to realize he was heading in the wrong direction.
Clicking his tongue, he turned back around, deliberately stomped on the note, and continued on his way.
If anyone told him that his mother hadn’t orchestrated the absurd chain of events he’d just endured, he’d punch their front teeth in.
…But he’d still believe them.
After all, his mother wasn’t omniscient. There was no way she could’ve predicted him stumbling upon two immortals from a higher realm being ganged up on by bandits.
The urge to punch them would simply be because he really wanted to punch sothing right now.
Resolutely, Jin Shu shoved all thoughts of true gods, higher realms, unexpected wives, and two much—much—older children into the deepest recesses of his mind.
That was a problem for future Jin Shu.
And future Jin Shu could deal with it himself.
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