Too Little Information

- Host's Mind: Layer 2 -

Sitting comfortably in his seat, wrapped in shadows, he held a file labeled: 'Xue Jia - The Scientist(2)'. As he opened the file to read it, the demon sitting at the other end of the table reached for a tree branch before snapping it off and squeezing it between his hands. Flames spewed forth from the gaps between his fingers as the sound of crunching and burning wood echoed.

Upon opening his hands, a piece of charcoal stood in place. Picking up the charcoal with his free hand, he plopped it into his mouth and began chewing.

As he chewed, the demon began talking: "It took me a while to go through all the memories in my head, on account of being recently made. . . Would it be correct to call them memories when technically I never experienced them?" He brought his fingers to his mouth, sucking the left-over charcoal dust off of them. "Well, whether or not they are called memories, none the less, they are a little foggy. Do you remember the deal that the host of his body made with that grotesque slug?"

~ "Oh, yeah, nice poem: His perception is like a tapestry woven with threads that carry every detail, and in the grand mosaic of life, he is the master weaver, ensuring that no loose end goes unused." The demon mockingly smiled, as if trying to hold on to a laugh.

With a sigh, the shadow gently placed the file on the table as he raised his head, staring coldly at the sky that never seemed to end. "Since it's likely that we're stuck with each other, I'd prefer it if we referred to each other with names; I'll be Shadow. And as for your question, I believe the progenitor: Our creator asked 004 how to erase one's own existence."

"Tch." The demon showed clear disdain for such a concept: "Erasing one's own existence?! What's the point of power if you can't use it to exploit others?" His hand reached for a supple fruit hanging on a tree before crushing it with his grip, causing it's juices to leek onto the grass. "Oh yes, since we're going with names, I'll have Demon as my name."

Shadow gave Demon a side-eye as he took note of its true colors. "If our creator had ultimate power, I would also agree with such sentiment; however, he doesn't! I believe his intentions are likely to play it safe and openly make himself look weaker. That way, he can buy time till he does become strong."

Just as he had finished his statement, a fruit fell from one of the trees. Hitting the ground with a heavy thud, the fruit cracked open as a foul stench rose from its rotten core.

Within a matter of moments, it rapidly began decomposing. The odor became more putrid with every ticking second. The tree that once held the fruit also began to die, dropping more fruit, each hitting the ground, before they too decomposed.

"What a pleasant smell!" Shadow spoke in a sarcastic manner, waving his hand in an attempt to waft away the decomposed smell.

"What's happening?"

"The same exact thing that happened when you were born. One of these trees died before spawning in a new life form."

Looking around, Demon counted 7 trees: 6 of them were healthy and 1 was rotting. "Did it also smell this putrid when I came into being?"

"No, your tree lit aflame, like a barn fire in a festival, causing nearly every shadow on my body to disappear like a bad dream." As he continued to wave his hand in an attempt to get rid of the smell with little success, Shadow accepted that he would simply have to tough this one out.

Not long after, hundreds of bugs crawled out of the fruit, all converging upon the tree, before consuming it at a rapid pace, until the only thing left was a large collection of bugs crawling on top of one another.

"Ugh," Displaying clear contempt for the bugs, Demon turned his head back to Shadow and asked, "Any ideas as to why we exist?"

"I have a theory," Staring at the bugs with narrowed eyes, Shadow reminisced about the strangeness of this world and even more so of his creator's possible intentions of coming here: "I have memories of when this garden first came into being. There are five times upon coming to this world that, by all means, this body should have died. Times when the skill shouldn't have been enough to explain how we survived."

~ "The Blood Path Cultivator is the first; being given a Gu Worm upon first coming to this world is, in all cases, an extremely unlikely event. Even if the reason we were given a Gu in the first place was for it too be ripped out of us, it is still an unlikely event." He then picked up his hand and pointed it at his chair, with red veins that grew along it, each pumping like a heart.

~ "That time we felt a huge pressure coming from the Central Continent looking down on us," he said, moving his hand over the table as blue lights zipped across it constantly, like electricity or neurons in the brain.

~ "Our encounter with the Demonic Gu Master duo Hun Cho and Qi Cuo wasn't an impossible event; what was impossible, however, was them sparing our lives." He turned his hand to point at himself.

~ "The fourth was surviving the collateral damage of a Gu Immortal," he stated as his hand pointed at Demon.

~ "And lastly, the fifth is our current situation with Vai Tao. That attack, by all means, shouldn't have been dodged." This time he turned his head to look at the pile of bugs as they slowly began to take the shape of a humanoid creature.

Demon leaned forward over the table, placing his elbow on the table with his hand on his chin in a resting position. He looked through the memories transferred to him upon existing, finding himself quickly agreeing a lot with Shadow's points before raising a question: "It's a fun theory; however, the only proof for it is our current memories, which are possibly fake."

- Southern Border: Croaking Mountain Swamp -

The morning sun crept over the mountains, barely warming up the cold, humid Croaking Mountain Swamp. As many beasts began to wake up, they could feel a heavy tension in the air, threatening any plans they had for the day.

The mud under Xie Ling's feet slowly began to soften without the support of Hao Lee's method of turning it solid.

Vai Tao used his many Investigation Path methods to watch Xie Ling, each one delicately and masterfully performed, showing no error on his part.

It was at a standstill. Xie Ling stared at Vai Tao and vice versa as blood slowly seeped from his leg. He showed little to no interest in the blood pouring from where there was once a whole leg, causing Vai Tao to further his caution in response.

Inside Xie Ling's aperture, he began waking up many of his Gu Worms from hibernation. The reason they were hibernating was to reduce feeding costs; however, it comes at a great loss because the Gu Worms are in a weakened state. Naturally, putting a Gu Worm into a self-induced coma would result in a series of consequences, one of which is that it is too weak for active use. Some would die from one use if not given some time to recuperate, and others wouldn't even be successfully activated before dying.

While Xie Ling held more than enough food to feed them, there was no reason to waste resources on Gu Worms he wasn't going to use. His current problem stems from him not accounting for an enemy that could stay completely out of his senses and attack him from over half a kilometer away; this was his mistake and poor assumption.

"It would seem that while the 'thing' can't sense me, it has nonetheless already made moves to counter me should I ever appear on its radar." A deep frown grew along his face, as this meant he wasn't truly free from its clutches; these claws adorned across his body at best made it more difficult for it to find him.

~ "I can't stay here as the thing in the sky is likely preparing more things as I stand here; however, I can't leave either because this man is definitely being used as its pawn, meaning if I don't remove him, then that thing will always know where I'm at." As Xie Ling thought more and more about the situation, the less it made sense.

~ "However, this mountain should be full of beasts, yet none of them have attacked me; does that mean it can't control beasts, or am I blowing things out of proportion?"

~ "But then why does this man perfectly stay out of range for me to sense his will?"

That's when Xie Ling had a sudden realization: "I made two wrong assumptions on the day I received the remnants of an attack by that Gu Immortal."

~ "The first was that I believed these claws on my body meant that it could no longer do anything to me. It was foolish of me to assume it couldn't deal with things outside of its vision, meaning it's slightly more intelligent than an immune system reacting to a virus."

~ "My second wrong assumption was believing that by leading a Gu Immortal to me, this thing would stop at nothing to kill me. The fact that it sent a rank-5 Gu Master instead of a Gu Immortal proves that it's desire for me to die isn't that strong. I had thought it wanted me dead, leaving no room for negotiation. However, what if it's the opposite? Its goal wasn't actually me as a person, but rather the change I would bring to the world. In other words, to it, I'm nothing more than a bug in its garden. Compared to the Immortals of this world, I'm, in all honesty, nothing. This means that as long as I play by its rules or at least do not step on the bugs that it likes, it will leave me alone entirely."

Xie Ling looked down at the unconscious Hao Lee and concluded, "Killing this man is no different than stepping into a trap. Surviving that encounter with the Gu Immortal was incredibly lucky, and even better yet, that thing in the sky considers me a mere ant, only sending things after me based upon the changes that will happen from them. However, this raises a big question: How does it know what will happen when I do something?"

~ "Either it's really smart; in that case, all my past things to recreate balance shouldn't have satisfied it, or it can see the future. If it can see in the future, how far can it see? Ten years? A hundred years? 'Five hundred years'?"

Truly, the number of possibilities was practically endless. Was its goal in life to make things balanced, or does it simply react to imbalances? The first would be a problem, as that would mean it wanted him dead. The second was also bad, but much better, as it would mean only when he stepped out of line would it try to push him back, like trying to correct a criminal's actions rather than killing the criminal or treating the symptom as opposed to treating the root problem.

Xie Ling's mind rushed to understand this thing's intentions. For all he knew, all those attempts on his life were simply because it wanted him to make changes elsewhere, or even worse, an attempt to convert him into a good person so that he could offer his services to this world. It was like a pet dog trying to understand what its master meant when his master said the word "sit", There was a serious communication barrier between the two of them. Not to say he had nothing; rather, it was simply too little to go off of.

In the end, none of Xie Ling's guesses were correct; Heaven's Will simply didn't want him in Shang Clan, as that's where it planned to take its other pawn.

Vai Tao watched as Xie Ling stood there, only ever moving his head every so often to switch from looking at the sky to Hao Lee and then back to him. Next, he noticed ice growing from the end of Xie Ling's leg as it took the shape of a mold.

Xie Ling had activated an Ice Wall Gu and an Ice Form Gu, forming a mold in the shape of a hook.

He then willed for a Wood Expansion Gu to fly outside his aperture and pick up a small splinter of wood on the ground left over from the damaged treehouse.

Taking the splinter, Xie Ling placed it into the mold before activating the Wood Expansion Gu, causing the splinter to expand and fill all the gaps and crevices in the ice mold, taking on the shape of a sports running blade used by amputees.

When the mold was completely filled, Xie Ling turned his eyes back to Vai Tao. "Hey, are you interested in doing business?" His words were soft, without any malice or deep-rooted deceit.

They were so soft that, for a moment, Vai Tao internally questioned if those words were for someone else. However, since he was the only person those words could apply to, it had to be him.