Volume 1, Chapter 172 – Differences

From the sword spirit, Samsara learned that Chu Yang was already past forty. It had Shi Lan ask one question after another, from Chu Yang’s place of birth to the causes and consequences of his rise to fame. There was not a single discrepancy, and it could not help feeling a bit lucky, thinking that perhaps it was just someone with the same name.

Once all the basic information matched, confirming that this was the very same Chu Yang, the bit of luck in Samsara’s heart was shattered. It could not help letting out a silent sigh. As expected, the thing it had most feared had still happened.

Although Xuanyang Continent was more than one tier below the Lingyang Realm, it was still a great thousand world and also had peak experts capable of traversing the starry universe.

For someone to rise to fame in a single year and climb to Chu Yang’s current position, gaining control over a divine weapon that had birthed a sword spirit, was completely unrealistic.

Shi Lan’s rate of growth was already terrifying, yet she was still more than a major level away from being able to fully control a divine weapon that housed a sword spirit.

One year ago, when Samsara had received this mission, Chu Yang had only been fourteen. Now that it had come to the Lingyang Realm, barely a year had passed, yet Chu Yang was already over forty.

Twenty-six years of time…

The flow of time on Xuanyang Continent was a full twenty-six times faster than that of the Lingyang Realm.

That different worlds had slight differences in the flow of time was common knowledge among the powerhouses of the universe. Between some worlds, the difference in time flow could reach a terrifying hundredfold.

One day could equal three months, and a single year could be like a hundred years passing in a blur.

In stronger worlds, time almost always flowed far more slowly than in low-level worlds.

Samsara had originally thought that since Xuanyang Continent at least counted as a great thousand world, although there was a gap compared to the Lingyang Realm, the difference in time flow should not be too great.

Yet a full twenty-sixfold difference had gone far beyond what it had expected.

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This terrifying difference in the flow of time was likely the real reason the All-Heavens Samsara System’s functions had basically gone crippled.

All of the system’s core programs were debugged directly by headquarters before a mission was dispatched. With a twenty-sixfold difference in time flow, it was only natural that errors would appear in the system’s calculations.

After learning the true cause of the system’s breakdown, Samsara did not feel even a trace of relief, because it had already started to worry about whether it would be able to return to headquarters at all.

The universe was unimaginably vast. Cases of systems sent out on external missions mysteriously disappearing or being destroyed were not many, but over long years they were not exactly rare either.

Its rank was not low, but there were quite a few that were stronger than it. If it failed to send any reports back for many years, headquarters would likely automatically judge it to be missing, completely archive its data into the database, and then wait for a new carrier.

If that happened, it would become what could be called an off-the-books system, not only unable to obtain any aid from headquarters, but unable even to find the coordinates of headquarters, doomed to drift in the starry universe.

As for whether headquarters would come looking for it, Samsara had never entertained any hope. Losing one more or one fewer system made no real difference to headquarters. As a system backend, it was even more dispensable.

Even though its rank was not low and it had already cultivated no small number of Hosts, at most headquarters would try to contact it two extra times because of that.

For a moment, Samsara’s thoughts turned chaotic. A panic and helplessness it had never felt before surged up from the bottom of its heart. If headquarters gave up on it, where was it supposed to go…

…

Seeing that Samsara had not spoken for a long time, Shi Lan called out to it a few times. When no response came for quite a while, she stopped bothering with it. She gently stroked the Golden Rainbow Star-Chasing Sword and silently watched the sword spirit standing on its tip.

“Let me go back… please?”

The sword spirit shuffled two inches toward Shi Lan and stammered.

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“You only have two choices right now. One is to follow me honestly. The other is to have your spiritual consciousness erased.” Shi Lan shook her head. Although what she had drawn was a five-star divine weapon, it was far beyond the upper limit of what she actually needed, so she was not particularly satisfied.

“But… I want to go back,” the sword spirit said in a small voice.

“How long have you been with Chu Yang?” Shi Lan decided to talk with the sword spirit a bit and try to dispel its reluctance.

“Seven months and three days.”

Only seven months. Shi Lan’s heart stirred and she felt her chances greatly improve. In seven months, how deep a bond could there possibly be?

“Why are you following Chu Yang?”

“On the day Chu Yang became the current Sword Chief, the sect master bestowed me upon him,” the sword spirit said, taking two more steps toward Shi Lan and sitting down on the blade.

“Do you like Chu Yang?” Shi Lan asked patiently.

“I do not know…” The sword spirit shook its head.

“What benefit is there for you in going back?”

“Chu Yang will definitely become a supreme powerhouse in the future. If I follow him, I can also become famous across the continent.”

Fame?

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Shi Lan’s gaze flickered. “You like being famous?”

“I do not know… but all the other weapons know that if you are famous, more people will remember you, and you will not get thrown into the treasure vault where you can never see the sun again.” The sword spirit lowered its head.

“It is not fun at all in the armory. It is dead and dull. The few that can speak do not talk to me. Only Chu Yang talks to me every day.”

Shi Lan fell silent for a while, then suddenly asked, “Has Chu Yang used you to kill before?”

“Of course he has. Three hundred and seventy-six people. I remember every one of them.” The sword spirit nodded.

“How do you feel when you kill someone?”

“Very comfortable.”

“Very… comfortable?”

“Very comfortable!” The sword spirit stood up and bounced twice. “Every one of them, their blood contained a lot of energy that could strengthen my spiritual consciousness.”

“Do you think all those people deserved to die?”

“I do not know, but if Chu Yang wants to kill them, then they should die,” the sword spirit said as if it were only natural.

Shi Lan fell silent and then asked a few more questions that seemed unrelated on the surface.

In the blink of an eye, nearly half a quarter-hour had passed.

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“Tell me your choice. Will you follow me, or choose to have your spiritual consciousness erased?” Shi Lan brought the idle chatter to an end.

“Can I choose neither?” the sword spirit asked.

“Then I will take that as you choosing the second option,” Shi Lan replied calmly.

After that round of conversation, Shi Lan had already discovered a few peculiarities about this sword spirit. In its worldview, there was no distinction between good and evil, no sense of right or wrong. In its eyes, every action Chu Yang took was correct.

It was an extreme form of blind partiality, with no independent ability to discern anything, far from the kind of sword spirit Shi Lan had imagined. That greatly lessened her interest in entangling with it.

Faced with Shi Lan’s attitude that allowed no room for discussion, the sword spirit sensibly chose the first option. The process of developing spiritual consciousness was far too long. It did not want to go through it all over again.

Shi Lan gripped the hilt and tried channeling true qi into the blade.

Perhaps because this was the first time she had infused it, the true qi felt somewhat sluggish, and Shi Lan did not feel that it amplified her true qi by much.

“You have not had this sword acknowledge you as its master yet, so of course it will not handle smoothly,” Samsara suddenly spoke up.

“Acknowledge a master? How do I do that?”

Shi Lan did not ask what had just happened with Samsara. When people lived together, it was necessary to leave some room for one another’s privacy. Being too curious was not always a good thing. If Samsara wanted to talk, it would naturally tell her.