NOVEL WEB Chapter 18: Rebirth
Holy Light, a vast expanse of Holy Light.
A world so white it was blinding.
All around was empty, not even a hint of color or outline. It was like a dream.
Gray floated quietly, no longer in the form of a Lich but transformed into a pale flame. Even his five senses had completely changed.
Although he had no eyes and there was nothing around him, he clearly knew his perspective had become a 360-degree view, and he could even see inside the pale flame.
Not only did he have a new awareness of visual perception, but his sense of sound had also changed. He could clearly perceive the smallest changes within a few hundred meters around him, even tracing the paths of sounds that were previously impossible to sense.
"You're awake?" a voice asked in Gray's consciousness.
"Who are you? Where am I?" Gray quickly asked.
"Me? Hmm... how should I introduce myself? This question stumps me. But I can answer your other question. You are no longer on the Keltos Continent. This is an alternate dimension. Or, more precisely, a spatial rift in the temporal turbulence surrounding the Keltos Plane."
"Spatial... rift?"
"Yes. Most spatial rifts are very unstable, some existing for only a few years or decades, and some only for a few seconds. However, the circumstances around the Keltos Plane are quite unique. The temporal turbulence here has existed for over hundreds of thousands of years, resulting in some particularly stable spatial rifts. This is just an insignificant one of them."
"Why am I here? Actually, I still want to ask who you are, but since you said it was hard to answer, I'll ask this first. I remember I was battling the Black Dragon Clan."
"Yes, you were indeed battling the Black Dragon Clan. Then you died, and even your soul was torn apart."
"Oh... really. So, is this the afterlife? I mean, after a soul dissipates."
"No. After your soul was torn apart, I saved you."
"You can save a torn apart soul?"
"Of course. There's nothing impossible in this world. If there is, it just means you aren't strong enough. Speaking of, saving a fragmented soul is indeed extremely difficult. Especially when doing it under the radar of Heaven, Hell, and the Black Dragon Clan. It's quite challenging. Normally, when a soul is torn apart, it disappears from the real world completely. Unlike smoke, which disperses but its components still exist. A soul, however, enters the 'inner world' in a scattered form."
"The 'inner world'?"
"The so-called inner world corresponds to the outer world. The outer world is the material world, while the inner world is purely a spiritual realm. All souls originate from the inner world and return there after dissipating. That's roughly the place. Because too many eyes are on the outer world, I can't do anything there. Once in the inner world, I'd no longer be able to find you. So the only way to save you was to wait in the passage between the outer world and the inner world and intercept all your scattered soul fragments when they passed through."
"You can actually do that? My God, I've never heard of such a method. In fact, I've never even heard of the 'inner world.'"
"That's normal. Most people don't know about the inner world because it's meaningless."
"Why is it meaningless? Didn't you just save me using this method?"
"That's just the beginning, child. Intercepting your soul in the passage is only the beginning. The next challenge is reconstruction. It's not the same as repairing a collapsed house. A house has blueprints, and even without them, you can make some judgments from the ruins. But a soul... once the soul core is shattered, it loses its cohesion, and it disperses. Normally, even if you intercept the scattered soul fragments, you would be at a loss. The difficulty is akin to finding a pile of rotten mud and trying to turn it back into the original person."
"How did you manage it then?"
"Time Holy Technique, have you heard of it?"
"Time..."
"Yes, time. Manipulating water, manipulating fire, those are low-level controls. Even manipulating space is trivial. Time is the most difficult thing to control. Among the secret techniques in Heaven, the most profound is the Time Holy Technique."
"To control time, doesn't that mean..."
"Hold on, hold on. It's not as impressive as you think. In fact, we wish we were that powerful. Unfortunately, the truth is, after researching it for hundreds of thousands of years, the progress in the Time Holy Technique has been extremely slow. Up to now, it can only be used for trivial things. Fortunately, your situation falls within that 'trivial' range. I tried using the Time Holy Technique to trace the original form of your soul, paired with some other secret methods, and then restored your soul. Honestly, it was the first time I did such a thing, and I didn't expect it to succeed. Hahaha, after a few more experiments, I finally proved that the success wasn't a fluke. This method is indeed feasible."