Chapter 91: Simulation Inside the Possessed Primeval Universe

The simulation continues.

You are not eager to display your differences, but instead quietly improve yourself.

Your cultivation manual was downloaded from the Starlight Human Empire's official website; it isn't high‑end, but after practicing it to an extremely high level, your speed of absorbing cosmic energy still became extremely fast.

At eight years old, you broke through to the planetary level; this breakthrough delighted your parents greatly, but it did not attract much attention, and outsiders merely thought your parents had spent their savings to buy you some treasure to help you.

After breaking through to the planetary level, you found that your thought speed also received a considerable boost again, and you felt quite pleased.

Soon after, your parents took you to the local official agency for a star‑level assessment. You had only seen it online before; different strongmen have star‑level assessments—Cosmic‑level strongmen are usually one‑star, Domain Master‑level strongmen are usually two‑star, and so on. At that moment you realized that, if one is sufficiently talented, even a planetary level can have a star rating.

The star‑level assessment was very formal; after multiple tests and recordings, you were assigned to battle several intelligent robots.

You still chose to stay low‑key, not showing off excessively; faced with an increasing swarm of intelligent robots, you lasted only one minute.

After leaving the testing arena, you saw the staff's surprised gazes; they told you that your combat video needed to be reviewed by higher authorities and that a result would come soon.

Three days later, the local planet governor personally came to your home and announced that you had become a Star-level Warrior; only then did you realize that Star-level Warriors are indeed different.

You received many cultivation resources and the qualification to log into the Virtual Source Realm.

The Virtual Source Realm is a virtual world, and within it there is no difference from reality; any strongman can fight and battle there. You felt surprised, as it is clearly identical to a virtual universe.

What surprised you even more was that you quickly learned that within the Virtual Source Realm there are not only human warriors; countless lifeforms from the entire universe also reside there.

You suddenly realized that the universe you traversed to is not the primeval universe you are familiar with; this may be another primeval universe. The only thing that puzzled you is how, in that other primeval universe, someone could happen to create a secret technique identical to the 'Primordial Ancestor'.

Your doubts can only stay in your heart. Within the Virtual Source Realm you also learned more: Star-level Warriors must undergo an assessment periodically; the difficulty continuously increases, failure leads to demotion, success yields further resource rewards, and one can voluntarily attempt higher‑level assessments, which raise the star rating upon success. However, subsequent assessments no longer occur in reality; they all take place within the Virtual Source Realm. There are twelve Star Towers in total, and each tower you clear raises your star level once.

Soon you discovered that star‑level assessments are not just a matter of the Starlight Human Cosmic Nation; all life across the universe follows the same, which you found incredible, truly not knowing who established the universally recognized rules.

You know that overthinking now is useless; after returning to reality, you rely on the resources obtained from passing star‑level assessments to continuously improve yourself.

The assessment for a planetary‑level one‑star warrior occurs once a year; in the following years you kept passing subsequent assessments, and you gradually learned that star‑level assessments are linked to many factors, one of which is age—the younger you are, the greater the advantage.

At fifteen, you broke through to the stellar level, and your thought speed improved again. After several years of passing assessments, you saved up some money and decided to move with your parents to the well‑secured Dark Dragon Star, which is the core administrative star of more than ten nearby star systems. In the legends of the Virtual Source Realm, a terrifying seven‑star strongman lives in seclusion there.

The local planet governor tried every means to retain you, but you were not surprised; having learned early in the Virtual Source Realm that your staying would count as a significant achievement for the governor, bringing yearly benefits, you still left.

After settling on Dark Dragon Star, you gained a safer environment for growth. Your years of understanding the warrior star‑level system made you realize that in the Starlight Cosmic Nation, geniuses receive preferential treatment. You felt a restless urge and wanted to fully display your strength. At this point you chose: 1. Reveal your power. 2. Continue to hide.

"Another primeval universe?"

Zhou Yu felt surprised at this moment; enabling all life in the entire universe to enter that Virtual Source Realm and recognize the Star-level Warrior system is certainly not something ordinary people can achieve.

"This universe is not an ordinary primeval universe," Zhou Yu realized.

"However, since revealing strength offers greater benefits than risks, I'll reveal it," Zhou Yu quickly made his choice.

You decided to stop hiding, entered the Virtual Source Realm, and tackled higher‑level Star Towers. You breezed through the Two‑Star Tower; the Three‑Star and Four‑Star Towers did not trouble you. The Five‑Star Tower presented difficulty, but thanks to your past‑life accumulation and deep insight into spatial laws, when you fully revealed yourself you easily cleared the Five‑Star Tower, then the Six‑Star and even the Seven‑Star Towers, all of which you passed. However, the Eight‑Star Tower was still too hard; you failed the moment you entered it.

The news that you cleared the Seven‑Star Tower shocked countless strongmen; in an instant you received countless invitations, and you soon also received a massive resource reward from the Starlight Human Cosmic Nation, said to be equivalent to the entire wealth of a five‑star strongman. You know that a typical five‑star strongman is an extremely powerful immortal.

You are relieved that this resource was not transferred directly into your hands but was issued as virtual currency within the Virtual Source Realm; otherwise, even living on Dark Dragon Star, it would probably be very dangerous.

You quickly decided to find a patron for yourself; faced with numerous invitations, after careful consideration you chose to join the Starlight Human Cosmic Nation's officials.

You were taken to a secret realm for cultivation, where you accessed more high‑level resources.

You quickly reached the Cosmic level and planned to challenge an eight‑star warrior, but the Eight‑Star Tower's difficulty was too great. Although you have past‑life cultivation experience and thought speed far surpassing peers, after several years you still could not pass the Eight‑Star Tower.

After extensive inquiries you learned that a normal eight‑star strongman is usually already a Cosmic Lord; for a genius to reach eight‑star level without showing any Cosmic Lord qualifications, the difficulty of the Eight‑Star Tower would be extremely high.

You understand that you must cultivate the Time Principle or the Fusion Principle to lower the Eight‑Star Tower's difficulty; at this point you choose: 1. Time Principle. 2. Fusion Principle.

"Time Principle," Zhou Yu made his choice.

His innate talent for time is actually decent, but the Fusion Principle— that remains unknown.

You ultimately chose to comprehend the Time Principle; the Starlight Human Empire's officials also supported your comprehension, giving you some assistance, and you used the previously obtained resource reward to purchase many resources.

You indeed have some talent for the Time Principle; with massive resources, the entry‑level of the Time Principle did not trouble you, which relieved you. However, your speed of comprehension was not very fast; you estimate that your talent for the Time Principle is comparable to a four‑star genius, but thanks to your thought speed surpassing peers, your apparent comprehension speed seems equivalent to a six‑star genius.

At twenty‑five, you once again attempted the Eight‑Star Tower; you succeeded, but you also know that this may be the only time you will clear the Eight‑Star Tower for a long future, because your talent is not as overwhelmingly extraordinary as it appears, and your past‑life accumulation cannot sustain you indefinitely.

The good news is that, having cleared the Eight‑Star Tower, you accessed a mall in the Virtual Source Realm open exclusively to eight‑star and above warriors, filled with all kinds of overpowered treasures and even inheritances; you are convinced many of them are items that even Cosmic Lords would covet, and you were utterly stunned.

You carefully examined all the treasures and found that the resources you obtained from clearing the Eight‑Star Tower once could not afford almost any of the items, but you were also pleasantly surprised to discover that there were a great many dormant special lifeforms available for exchange.

You guessed that these special lifeforms are specifically offered for exchange to geniuses who have cleared the Eight‑Star Tower, but some of the overpowered special lifeforms are beyond your means; having cleared the Eight‑Star Tower only once, you can exchange only very ordinary special lifeforms.

You understand you have no choice; in the long future you will almost certainly have no second chance to clear the Eight‑Star Tower, so after careful selection you chose a special lifeform called Heavenly Shadow Tree with a gene level 120 times the norm. Although its gene level is not high, its size is large, and it possesses a clone‑type talent technique; it can only spawn one clone, but that is sufficient. Generally, exchanging for this kind of special lifeform is equivalent to obtaining two special lifeform clones, and you could never afford those special lifeforms that can spawn multiple clones.

After you exchanged for the special lifeform clone in the Virtual Source Realm, it wasn't long before a strongman sent that dormant special lifeform over. You learned that the strongman belonged to a faction called the Holy Origin Sect, and you realized that this 'Holy Origin Sect' must have an inseparable connection with the behind‑the‑scenes existence of the Virtual Source Realm.

But you also understood that now is not the time to investigate these matters; faced with an unresisting special lifeform, you easily employed the soul‑stealing technique to possess it.

The Starlight Human Cosmic Nation, upon learning that you had possessed a special lifeform with cloning ability, opened a resource repository for you; it contained remnants of various special lifeforms. After selection you chose a special lifeform called Star Soul Body, which excels at perceiving the Time Principle and possesses a certain transmutation ability.

The Star Soul Body's gene level is about 230 times the norm, not exceeding its breeding limit; you quickly succeeded in breeding it, thereby obtaining two special lifeform clones—one adept at perceiving time, the other adept at perceiving space. Your foundation was greatly enhanced.

At 1,025 years old, you had reached the peak of the Realm Master level. You attempted the Eight‑Star Tower again; as expected, you were decisively defeated. Fortunately, with the special lifeform clones and your extremely fast thought speed, you still counted as a genius, and when you tackled the Seven‑Star Tower, you could still pass it.

In the same year, you received a message from a Cosmic Lord of the Starlight Human Cosmic Nation, who expressed willingness to take you as a disciple. At this point you choose: 1. Agree. 2. Refuse.

Zhou Yu unhesitatingly chose to agree.

【You agreed, but when you went to meet that cosmic lord, you were somewhat surprised to discover that he was actually the seven-star level expert living in seclusion on Dark Dragon Star】

You accepted, but when you went to meet that Cosmic Lord, you were startled to discover that he was the very seven‑star strongman who lives in seclusion on Dark Dragon Star.

However, you are not surprised that a Cosmic Lord is a seven‑star strongman; as time passes, the difficulty of the Star Towers gradually rises, and a strongman who does not progress for a long time will see his star rating decline, since each tower clearance yields resource rewards, and such rewards cannot be unlimited.

After taking the master, you learned many previously unknown facts from your teacher, such as that across the entire universe there are over one hundred thousand Cosmic Lords, and there are also hundreds of strongmen who surpass the Cosmic Lords.

You were shocked by the sheer number of such strongmen; your teacher told you that the cause of all this is the existence behind the Virtual Source Realm. Curious about what that is, your teacher explained that it is the will of the primeval universe.

You paused, then realized that this is certainly not the original cosmic will, but rather that some strongman has seized the primeval universe. At this point you also understood that the incredible treasures and inheritances you saw in the mall exclusive to eight‑star strongmen must have been the work of that strongman.

Your teacher told you that the cosmic will strives to cultivate strongmen; while providing massive resources, it also encourages battles. Any strongman above a Cosmic Lord can acquire resources not only by improving their own strength and repeatedly clearing Star Towers, but also by establishing a faction to nurture geniuses and strongmen. For example, as a Realm Master‑level genius who has cleared the Seven‑Star Tower, each clearance brings some benefit to the ruler of the Starlight Cosmic Nation. You alone are insignificant, but in large numbers that becomes an objective figure.

However, cultivating geniuses requires sufficiently vast territories, which leads to extremely fierce battles over territories throughout the universe.

In addition, the cosmic will also actively triggers various battles and conflicts, likewise causing many strongmen to die.

Your heart trembles at this, but fortunately these are still far from you, and your strength is not great; even if you die, you can be resurrected by reversing time and space.

After taking the master, you began a long period of accumulation at the Realm Master level. During this period, every thousand years you must clear the Seven‑Star Tower. Fortunately you are in a phase of rapid growth, and the difficulty increase of the Seven‑Star Tower cannot keep up with your progress, so you have continuously maintained the status of a Seven‑Star Warrior.

Relying on two major special life avatars and an extremely exaggerated thought speed, you, in the Realm Lord stage, had accumulated 1,000,000 years and thus comprehended all directions of the time law and space law, but you knew this wasn't much; the real difficulty was comprehending the complete law. At this point you lacked confidence, yet you also knew that continuing to stay in the Realm Lord stage was meaningless, so you chose to break through.

After breaking through to Immortal, under your teacher's arrangement you joined a unit of the Starlight Human Cosmic Nation, where you fought for nearly 500,000 years against alien cosmic nations and other human cosmic nations; your strength was extremely great, you earned much merit, but at this time your main way of acquiring resources was still to challenge the Star Tower.

At 1,500,000 years old, you created the ultimate secret technique and chose to retire, returning to the Dark Dragon Star.

Your teacher was fairly satisfied that you could create the ultimate secret technique so quickly, but you knew that, thanks to your fast thought speed, these 500,000 years after breaking through to Immortal were at least equivalent to 50,000,000 years of normal Immortal cultivation.

At 10,000,000 years old, your parents reached their end; unlike the previous transmigration, this time you became completely alone.

You left the Starlight Human Cosmic Nation and began to wander the universe.

At 80,000,000 years old, after witnessing various cosmic strange sights, you finally broke through that bottleneck, fully comprehended the complete space law, and became a Cosmic Venerable.

Having become a Cosmic Venerable, you were initially happy for a while, but gradually you realized that breaking through the time law would be infinitely harder than breaking through the space law.

You went to ask your teacher, who told you that the Eight-Star Tower was your hope; as long as you could clear the Eight-Star Tower, you could access some high-end resources through the shop open only to Eight-Star and above powerhouses, and many Cosmic Venerables had become Cosmic Lords this way.

You understood that the Star Tower tests talent potential; you must possess sufficient strength in a short enough time to have any hope.

At 80,000,000 years old, for a Cosmic Venerable you were still relatively young, but not among the youngest batch of Cosmic Venerables; you could not afford to delay.

Relying on your extremely fast thought speed, at 250,000,000 years old you created the Cosmic Venerable Peak Secret Technique; in the Primordial Universe you were familiar with, you could already be called the Universe Overlord, and in that universe you were also a genuine Seven-Star powerhouse.

But this was not enough to clear the Eight-Star Tower; you realized you needed to create a Cosmic Venerable-level ultimate secret technique to have any hope.

However, the Cosmic Venerable ultimate secret technique stumped you; you believed there was no hope of creating it in a short time.

At 800,000,000 years old, the Starlight Human Cosmic Nation and the neighboring Flourishing Star Monster Cosmic Nation launched a full-scale war; you had to join, the battle was extremely fierce, and your avatars died multiple times.

That war ended with the Starlight Human Cosmic Nation victorious, gaining a sizable territory and receiving considerable war reparations, which included some inheritances; you knew these inheritances were what Cosmic Nation lords exchanged resources for in the Eight-Star Shop to cultivate geniuses, and your growth to now has also relied on a certain inheritance explaining 'time-space'.

From those reparations inheritances you discovered one named the Twelve Revolutions Star inheritance, which stirred your memories of comprehension in the formation path.

Although your current strength had long surpassed that of your previous life, some ideas from that previous life, different from this world's, still occasionally influenced you.

You hit a bottleneck in creating time-space type secret techniques; you somewhat wanted to try another path, but you also feared wasting time, so you hesitated for a while.

At this point you chose: one, give up; two, make an attempt.

"Give it a try." Zhou Yu quickly made his decision.

You chose to attempt, purchased the permission to study this inheritance, and began to focus your research.

You made a surprising discovery: your progress was extremely rapid, and in less than a hundred million years you had created another peak secret art of the cosmic venerable. Realizing you were on the right path, you began to immerse yourself deeper in contemplation.

At a billion years old, you finally created the ultimate secret art of the cosmic venerable. Even more surprising, the spacetime-direction secret art that you had been stuck on also showed signs of progress; after spending a little time, you created a second ultimate secret art of the cosmic venerable.

After making sufficient preparations, you launched another assault on the Eight-Star Pagoda. At just a billion years old, the difficulty of the Eight-Star Pagoda had not yet reached an unimaginable level; having mastered two ultimate secret arts of the cosmic venerable, you ultimately managed to break through.

Over the next hundred million years, you repeatedly cleared the Eight-Star Pagoda, accumulating considerable resource rewards. After browsing the Eight-Star Pagoda's shop, you ultimately chose the special opportunity 'Observing the Evolution of Spacetime'.

Observing the Evolution of Spacetime requires traveling to another universe, and such an opportunity arises only once every billion years. Fortunately, when you redeemed this opportunity, the start was already less than a million years away.

You waited peacefully, and after 800,000 years, the Universe Lord of the Holy Origin Sect took you away. Through the cosmic passage, you and twelve other cosmic venerables who had likewise redeemed this opportunity arrived at another universe.

The Universe Lord of the Holy Origin Sect told you that this universe belongs to a great existence; it is only slightly smaller than the primordial universe, equally vast beyond measure, and has nurtured many powerful beings.

You immediately guessed that this must be the universe of that powerhouse who seized the primordial universe; if the Universe Lord is not boasting, such a vast universe should belong to a certain God-King-level existence.

You were secretly shocked, but did not show it; your immediate priority was to break through and become a Universe Lord.

You were brought to a mysterious place, empty and void, with only an endless starry sky.

You don't have many memories of that place; you only know that in that endless starry sky, spacetime underwent an extraordinarily complex evolution. Although you cannot remember everything, your thought speed is much faster than that of other cosmic venerables, equivalent to having observed the evolution for a longer time.

After returning to the primordial universe, you immediately entered seclusion. According to experience, among your batch of cosmic venerables, if one can become a Universe Lord it counts as success; you hope you are that successful one.

This time your seclusion did not last long; only about a thousand years later you emerged.

You comprehended the temporal law.

You chose to break through to become a Universe Lord.

Simulation succeeded.

(End of chapter)