Chapter 502: The Underworld

The Underworld, Samsara.

In the pitch-black world, Xu Zhi sat quietly on a divine throne, silently flipping through the Book of Life and Death. He glanced at Li Sansheng, who was now in his seventh life.

"Trait: 'Flames of Love' — generated by an intense internal passion stemming from infatuation with another...?" he read. "This flame doesn't seem strong in combat, but it can prevent some memories from being erased, even through reincarnation. It looks useless, yet it's quite interesting..."

He only paid a little attention before skipping this page, continuing to browse the information in the Book of Life and Death. After all, with six hundred thousand biological entries, it was an immense volume. There were always some unique beings with special inherent talents and characteristics that he needed to note. After all, Cthulhu evil gods can possess any characteristic imaginable.

He had painstakingly established Samsara and constructed the mythical Underworld; only he knew how difficult it had been. The principle was relatively simple. It was similar to a Mengmei-style online game, where players' actual bodies remained indoors while they logged in to control characters in another world. Currently, these six hundred thousand small "magic cubes" were collectively sleeping in game pods, converging to form the entire interwoven black-and-white cycle of reincarnation. They controlled characters in the outside world as if playing a game; upon death, they would simply restart.

"The Underworld, Samsara... this system originated from Mengmei's idea, which I then expanded upon and transformed into my own innovation. As long as this divine artifact, 'Samsara,' remains unbroken, the true spirits will never perish. After all, those outside are essentially like players controlling their own evil gods; dying simply means their level is reset to zero..." Xu Zhi looked at the entire circular wheel, where the numbered small cubes, deep in slumber, were experiencing what felt like their own life's dreams. In reality, everything occurring was already considered to be genuinely happening.

Their lives were like brains in a vat, studied by mad scientists. "It seems like their memories are constantly being wiped, and after death, they 'reload' without gaining anything... but in reality, they become stronger. Their innate characteristics, their inherent talents! They continuously grow through successive reincarnations, generation after generation."

Take the characteristic of White Emperor, for example. Initially, it was quite useless, a low-tier talent that could only make a few ordinary animals kneel. Through countless reincarnations and persistent cultivation, after accumulating experience over a dozen lives, they would be born with a high-tier talent capable of influencing even powerful individuals to kneel. If this development continues, eventually, their characteristics will approach the unreasonable evil god traits found in the Three Realms. After all, the Three Realms' traits were forged from the collective thoughts of tens of millions, even hundreds of millions, of powerful individuals and ordinary people. With only six hundred thousand entities currently, it would naturally require a very long series of lives to reach that level.

"It's like tempering their law fragments through countless reincarnations in the mortal world..." Xu Zhi murmured, gazing at the circular wheel. "And these countless law fragments will assemble into the world's most powerful treasure – Samsara!" This effectively constitutes a Cthulhu evil god, where every cell now carries a law fragment. Each fragment is akin to a minor evil god or grotesque entity from the Three Realms, coalescing. Xu Zhi could not even imagine what kind of aggregated monster this would become! Perhaps this was the true Cthulhu evil god! The unspeakable form of the body, combined with the unspeakable nature of the soul, truly a composite being! This was something Medusa could not achieve, unless she were willing to abandon her consciousness and relinquish her authority to control the Cthulhu body.

As for the Cthulhu evil god before him – in its Samsara form – each "magic cube" practiced two major cultivation systems simultaneously: their original system (Martial Arts, Witchcraft, Inner World...) and the Faith and Incense system. It was already formidable for countless Cthulhu cells to cultivate just one system. Like Medusa, it took a long time to reach the point where every cell became an Emperor cell. But for every Cthulhu cell to cultivate *two* systems? The difficulty would increase exponentially!

"The time required will be even longer, unimaginably long," Xu Zhi murmured, shaking his head with a bitter smile as he sat on the divine throne in the Underworld, dark light drifting around him like silk threads and willow catkins, mysterious and unfathomable. "I'm even more ambitious than Medusa! Humans, you see, when they encounter a new and unique system, they can't help but want to cultivate an additional one. They're always looking for something better, unable to control their 'itchy hands,' always striving for greater perfection." Just like himself. He was cultivating four major systems concurrently: Witchcraft, Inner World Dao, Demonic Core, and Ancestral Witch True Body. He was even eager to try the fifth system, Martial Arts... it was as if he couldn't stop stirring up trouble for himself.

While cultivating multiple systems simultaneously indeed made one stronger and closer to perfection in combat, the cultivation progress was slow, requiring an unimaginable amount of effort. He quietly calculated. "Medusa took over four thousand years to achieve an average of Emperor cells per person... For me, cultivating two systems concurrently, it would probably take more than twenty thousand years, right? That's truly too slow; it's equivalent to cultivating for over half a year in real time."

In reality, while the entire Underworld appeared grand and sophisticated, a considerable amount of thought and effort had gone into its creation. Meng Po's Soup, which wiped memories from souls, was relatively manageable; its successful development after extensive research was achieved in conjunction with the Insecta Empress's authority. As for the Three Lives Stone, which allowed one to see their past and present lives, its principle was also quite simple. When memories were being wiped, memory sticks were used to copy significant events from their lives and condense them into brief two- or three-minute videos.

"This was a semi-technological extraordinary technique from the Ishutar people. Then, an equivalent of 1000 GB of demonic core capacity was set up, and projection technology was used to display it. The Three Lives Stone was essentially a computer placed at the entrance... However, previously, with only twenty thousand people, 1080p quality was used, and the storage capacity could handle it. Now that the population has grown to six hundred thousand, the storage space needs to be massively expanded again."

He continuously organized his thoughts. Establishing a mythical Underworld was no easy feat. Every aspect needed to be managed, especially the sheer volume of data storage, which was immense! The most significant challenge was the Three Lives Stone, archiving and preserving memories of their lives, which was truly difficult. "Such a massive storage capacity, and it's still rapidly increasing. Acquiring more high-tier demonic cores is a bit challenging; it would probably require hundreds of Emperor-tier ones. Should I just order a few hundred terabytes from Taobao? Although they would take up a lot of space, I could temporarily use quantity to make up for quality."

In reality, Xu Zhi opened his eyes. "Never mind. I'll get some for now to ease the Underworld's big data operational pressure. After all, the main operating cost lies with the Three Lives Stone." He went to the living room, opened his computer, and placed an order on Taobao. He was not a pedantic person; he prioritized practicality and knew his own situation. Building an Underworld as merely a Seventh-Tier Heavenly Emperor? That was something even deities would find difficult to achieve.

"Huh? You need that much?" The customer service representative was startled by the large order quantity, thinking it was equipment procurement for a company. They even teased, "Brother, are you planning to open an internet café? Or are you setting up a cloud storage service?"