Zhang Shou gazed at the golden staircase, a tumult of emotions welling in his chest.
Tightening his grip on the saber in his hand, he ascended step by step. When he reached the final stair, he halted, turned back to look at the crowd, and smiled. "Everyone, Old Zhang here will go on ahead!"
"Go on, go on! We'll catch up shortly," Cheng Pi chuckled.
Jin Sheng smiled without a word, simply waving goodbye over and over.
In fact, stepping off the final stair did not take Zhang Shou straight into the Tree Universe. Instead, he returned to the White Space, where he could choose the exact point in time he wished to return to.
"Send me back to the second day after I entered the Zhen Realm," Zhang Shou decided after a moment's thought.
In the next instant, he was teleported into the bridge of the Aska.
Muse, sounding both familiar and distant, spoke up: "Welcome back."
In truth, Zhang Shou had no spare attention to deal with the outside world. The moment he left the Zhen Realm, he felt like a sponge that had never absorbed a drop of water, or a rubber ball compressed to its absolute limit.
Now, it was as if he had plunged into water, or as if the compressed coils were beginning to slowly release. Boundless, inexhaustible potential inside his body began to unleash step by step.
Truth be told, right at this moment he felt like an omnipotent god, unimaginably powerful.
His perception seemed boundless, stretching outward at an insane pace. Everything outside the Aska—from an entire world down to the tiniest speck of energy in the Tree Universe—registered with absolute clarity in his mind.
Originally, his realm had been roughly that of the unity of man and saber. Now, however, he felt that every single part of him was a saber. It was no longer man and saber becoming one; it was that he was the saber.
His thoughts grew razor-sharp. He felt as though his very senses had turned into blades; as if so long as he willed it, anything he perceived could be cleaved in two in an instant.
One world, two worlds, three worlds...
He remained lost in this continuous deluge of releasing power until Little Nora rushed over from the sunroom and slapped him hard across the head.
That slap immediately brought Zhang Shou back to his senses.
"Quick, rein in your thoughts!" Little Nora warned.
Zhang Shou didn't dare lose focus. He immediately gathered and pulled back the countless tendrils of his perception and thoughts.
The closer matter was to the Aska, the more severely it was affected. When his perceptual thoughts washed over surrounding objects, distinct blade marks instantly appeared across countless drifting wrecks, ruined walls, meteors, corpses, and debris scattered throughout the Tree Universe.
"Whew... Thank you, Little Nora," Zhang Shou murmured after a good while, finally bringing his power under complete control. He opened his eyes and looked at Little Nora.
Little Nora giggled. "Big Bro told me to keep an eye on you just now. He said the Zhen Realm is like file compression software—everyone who enters gets packed with massive amounts of data and heavily compressed. Once you leave the Zhen Realm, the compression unzips, and all that data gets released at once.
"When an ordinary person suddenly gets this strong, it's very easy to lose themselves. That's why Big Bro told me to watch over you."
"Indeed. That feeling just now was intoxicating. It felt like everything was under my absolute control, without limits, without restraint. If not for you, it probably would've taken me a very, very long time to break out of that state," Zhang Shou said with a nod after pondering it.
If spending a thousand years cultivating in the Zhen Realm was considered a long time, then being lost in a state like that—he estimated that without tens of trillions of years, he might not have ever been able to let go.
"All right! Since you're fine now, I'm heading back to stream," Little Nora said, nodding with a beaming smile.
Zhang Shou quickly followed. "Wait up! It's been ages since I had food conjured by you, Little Nora. Share some with me, and let me piggyback on your stream for some screen time!"
"Mm-hmm! Eat as much as you want, then!" Little Nora cheered.
As the two walked and chatted, a thought suddenly struck Zhang Shou. While a thousand years had indeed passed inside the Zhen Realm, the point in time he had returned to was the day after entering it.
Logically speaking, Little Nora shouldn't know anything about what happened in the Zhen Realm a thousand years later.
"Little Nora, it's true I spent a thousand years in the Zhen Realm, but the point in time I returned to is the day after we went in. You only saw me yesterday—how do you know what happened a thousand years later?" Zhang Shou looked at Little Nora, curious.
Little Nora answered as they walked, "Because the Tree Universe itself has no time! Think of it like this: if beings living inside a universe are three-dimensional, then beings outside watching everything in that universe are four-dimensional.
"Big Bro gave me an authority ring, so I can fast-forward through everything happening in the Zhen Realm, and I can also receive Big Bro's messages from outside. Your thousand years in the Zhen Realm was really just a matter of dragging a progress bar for me!"
"It's that amazing?" Zhang Shou marveled.
Little Nora nodded. "Mm-hmm, that's just how amazing it is! Though I usually don't watch on fast-forward. It was only because Big Bro contacted me that I fast-forwarded a tiny bit."
The two arrived at the sunroom, where the food Little Nora had conjured was piled high like a small mountain.
In the past, Little Nora's food needed Muse's help to stay fresh. But now that Little Nora was a Mighty One, its food left here naturally never rotted, never spoiled, never collected dust, and no microorganisms could ever approach it.
No matter how long it sat, the food would remain in its freshest state. Although Little Nora didn't really need to eat to grow stronger anymore, eating was its hobby; being able to feast was pure bliss for it.
"Everyone, I'm back! Look, who's this guy?" Little Nora plopped down right into the food pile, grinning at the viewers in the livestream room.
Zhang Shou sat down beside Little Nora, grinning broadly. "Long time no see, everyone! That's right, it's me—the dashing, handsome Big Bro Zhang!"
Namo Prajna Buddha: *Holy crap! You're Zhang Shou? Did you get plastic surgery?*
Gemisky: *You didn't steal someone else's body, did you? How sinister! Little Nora, get away from him!*
Jiang Li: *Zhang Shou, I now suspect you of being a genetically recombined human. Please accompany me for questioning.*
Niu Niu Niu: *This change is way too drastic! It feels completely different from the Zhang Hiccup in my memory. What on earth did you go through?*
The viewers in the livestream room went wild, firing off messages in rapid succession to express their shock.
Mainly, Zhang Shou used to be a stocky adolescent boy—people could picture Gian from Doraemon in his youth.
Now, however, Zhang Shou was not only taller and looked more mature, but he also carried an indescribable aura.
It was roughly like Gian turning into Shunsui Kyoraku from Bleach. It was an entirely different art style. It would have been weird if people weren't shocked!
Of course, none of the viewers could tell how powerful Zhang Shou had actually become. Every one of them just suspected that he was faking it or using some trick to make himself look like this.
Chapter 619