[Against that unapproachable entity, you must gather all your power, not to triumph against them, but to escape from them]
"How ridiculous!" from his True Spirit, Xu Fu received this message from another 'himself', but it was this final line that caused him to become livid.
After awakening his True Spirit, Xu Fu understood the essence of his existence was none other than this True Spirit, and the one who sent this message through the True Spirit was another 'him'.
But it was because he understood that perfectly that Xu Fu was furious. How could another 'himself' be so weak-willed that their thoughts when facing a strong enemy wasn't how to fight and win, but rather how to escape.
Gradually, Xu Fu also understood the ability he gained from awakening his True Spirit, [Soul Split].
Xu Fu was capable of splitting his soul and nurturing more than one soul at once. Each of these split souls was his true self, naturally born with a mutual connection to one another. The split souls were able to reside within every bit of his flesh, including when he implanted his flesh into the bodies of others. This way, he would be able to consume the soul of the flesh's host when necessary and inherit their abilities.
It was due to this ability that he managed to realize the changes of this world, as well as contact his other 'selves'.
From an unknown point in time, this world had begun to slowly change, everyone within was gradually split apart together with the world.
Due to the [REDACTED] sword causing the Inexistent World storm, countless previous timelines were reintegrated into this timeline as interfering factors, giving it literally infinite possibilities.
Whenever an individual made a choice that could change the world, due to there being several different choices, the world would proceed differently. Negary then borrowed this choice to split the world, or rather, to create parallel worlds.
For example, the world split off into a different branch when the Ultra Space-Time Squad went to rescue Mi Liang, they arrived one step too late due to temporal interferences, leading to Mi Liang's death. Without the suppression of the Mi clan, the undead quickly grew in number, leading to Xu Fu being found and resurrected much sooner.
The Xu Fu of that parallel world awoke several hundred years earlier compared to this Xu Fu, but due to the lack of competition, the undead tribe had no reason to improve themselves quickly, even Xu Fu eventually went into hibernation due to the dull living conditions. At this point in time, the only things that parallel world had developed were blood aura and some basic secret techniques.
Or during the Tower of Babel incident, humanity didn't manage to hold off the Dino Sapiens and undead, allowing them to come into contact with the Divine flame and eventually developed into a completely different world.
Both of these were parallel worlds that split off due to the stone demon mask's interference, but the stone demon mask wasn't the only interfering factor, in fact, the stone demon mask was the third anomaly that Negary modified into existence.
The scene in Negary's vision was indescribably colorful with all sorts of different rays of light reflecting off one another. Everything from the lowest lows to the highest highs within a single parallel world only appeared as a single ray of light in this place.
〖 There are still some careless mistakes 〗Negary's gaze was focused around a cluster of approximately 300 rays of light, with each of those rays of light containing a single glowing sprite. These sprites of light were intertwined with one another at a deeper level, conducting information sharing, discovering the existence of these parallel worlds.
Negary understood that this was because these sprites of light had the same [Origin], even though he had managed to split this world into 8888 parallel worlds, he still couldn't split the [Origin] no matter how hard he tried, so things ended up as 8888 living beings sharing the same [Origin] at almost every moment.
Xu Fu's [Origin] was related to souls, so if he came into contact with the stone demon mask, that 'him' would almost always awaken the [Origin] ability of [Soul Split]. After one of these Xu Fu achieved the second stage of release, he would be able to find his other selves through his [Origin] and establish contact.
However, it was also this second stage of release Xu Fu that discovered Negary's existence, as well as their abnormality. Due to the world being split into so many parallel worlds, each of the parallel worlds only contained a fraction of the original world's matter and energy, 1/8888 to be exact.
Both their souls and body were in a castrated state from the beginning, so without resolving this issue, they would never be able to achieve the third stage of release, let alone obtain enough Principles from their [Origin] to proceed further.
〖 Of course, this is only temporary. If these souls with different experiences that came from the same [Origin] were allowed to fuse with one another, they would be able to instantly achieve the third stage of release, as well as achieving considerable progress on their pathways 〗Negary understood this perfectly.
In the end, Negary wasn't the world itself, not yet. He had managed to infect over half of this world and split it into this parallel world state, but he still wasn't capable of manipulating the flow of everything. Most of the time, he would simply let the world take its natural course while manipulating only the crucial links of the chain.
Due to the existence of parallel worlds, Negary's progress in analyzing the remains of the previous timelines had sped up considerably. For example, the stone demon mask had created a total of 686 distinct parallel worlds, thus putting all of its aspects and variations on display.
Negary had been able to infect this entire world, allowing him to manipulate it to grow like he currently was, as well as madly absorb every last bit of benefits from it. Most of this was thanks to this world's unique temporal structure, otherwise, Negary wouldn't be moving along so quickly.
〖 8888 normal worlds is already the maximum limit. Continuing to split would only cause the parallel worlds to lack both matter and energy, easily leading to collapse 〗
In fact, among the parallel worlds Negary was observing, some of them had already collapsed or ran out of energy, leading to the death of all living beings within.
〖 I can still split this world up further, but that would be a one-time harvest, and it isn't worth it 〗
Negary proceeded to repair the parallel worlds' structure. If a certain parallel world became silent and no longer had any potential to develop further, a single opportunity would be given before the entire parallel world collapsed. The energy and matter of the collapsed world would then be absorbed by every other world and wait to be split off into another parallel world.
The reason why Constantine felt her spell-casting abilities becoming weaker despite the spell succeeding was due to her soul being unknowingly split off into several parallel worlds during the Tower of Babel incident. At the same time, her spells succeeded because the parallel world she resided in also became weakened in that process.
As a first-rate grandmaster of Mysticism, Constantine was naturally sensitive to her own soul, managing to notice some changes despite Negary preparing measures to adjust everyone's senses.
〖 The Omniscient Eye still requires some adjustment, although it's more appropriate to call it the Eye of Multitudes now 〗
Among the countless parallel worlds, a single golden eyeball was connected to all of these parallel worlds.
The majority of beings in every parallel world now carried Negary's virus, their excess Soul Essence being collected by Negary and stored within the Eye of Multitudes. And it was through this eye that Negary was regulating everyone's sensations and even memories in every parallel world.
When the majority of their information was under Negary's manipulation through the Eye of Multitudes, it was natural that they didn't notice the world being silently split into 8888 parts. Only an entity who stood above every other living being would be able to escape from the Eye of Multitudes' obscurement and discover the true world.
〖 Exert your full power, Xu Fu, show to me the extent to which you'll be able to reach 〗Negary had put Xu Fu into his list of primary observational subjects. Before his appearance, Negary didn't pay much attention to observing this parallel world as a whole, only leaving the Divine flame to passively record everything.
After all, the living statues civilization wasn't particularly strong among the timelines, and there were many other parallel worlds worthy of Negary's research efforts.
