'Let's start from the beginning. The woman is dead...right?' Pef asked inward, to make sure.

'Yes. But at the same time, she is in pain. Suffering is the privilege of the living.' the Icefire answered first, using its senses to detect the suffering.

'Ignore that. The state of her body is irrelevant. Her soul is locked...I assume by her father. I also assume he prepared her to become a Lich, transferring her soul into a phylactery, when something went wrong.' the glove spoke in a somber tone.

Pef turned towards the worried father and held a hand out. "Hand me her soul." he demanded in a curt voice.

The Serghoul hesitated, perhaps understandingly. Then he grit his teeth and took out a black jade box, reeking of Death. "Careful..." the ghoul urged the Veritas Soldier, as if words could help.

Pef ignored the ghoul and instead crafted an ice mirror at his side, using it to reflect the dead woman on its jade bed. "Look what I found for you, Mirror Goddess. I already have all the ingredients here, but simply lack the strength to redirect the Paths, yet." the blonde teenager whispered as a drop of blood emerged on his fingertip, glowing with a potent glow of Preservation Dao.

A silent breeze blew over the ice cavern, perhaps simply a consequence of fate and destinies changing in contact with the Mirror of Samsara.

"It has not been a year, and you're already changing destinies. But at least you're wise enough now to ask for advice." a soft voice answered through the mirror, and the black jade box shattered into motes of Death Dao, swiftly absorbed into the ice mirror.

A sickly looking spirit remained, shaped as the young woman on the bed, but its eyes glazed over as if unseeing or dreaming.

At the same time, a spirit bamboo leaf emerged from Pef's chest, and glided over to the sickly spirit, then grew and folded over it like a green blanket.

"Thank you, Nine Shades." Pef murmured as his azure flames poured into the green spirit, and refined it almost like it would an infected golith victim. Only this time, the spirit didn't departed into the Resurrection Paths, but was instead deflected by the Mirror right back into the woman's body.

With a mere trick of light and mirrors, the dead woman returned to life and swiftly began to Ascend as the devil blood inside her was powering up through meridians and her dantian.

Pef sucked his finger in an innocent gesture, doing much the same with the drop of devil blood he 'acquired' just now. On his inner screen Preservation Dao appeared as well, rising to 1 percent from the small infusion. It was just a little, yet enough to start.

The green shape of the bamboo spirit blanket followed the woman's soul and wrapped around the resurrecting body, until she drew breath on her own, then vanished into green motes that returned into Pef's body.

'You took a great risk, young one. But now I must sleep, for I was weakened even more.' The World Tree sapling whispered in his mind, before curling down into a small seed and becoming silent.

'Can we return to fighting now?' the Heart Ruler asked with an unconcerned voice.

"See you soon Mirror Goddess." Pef spoke in a level voice, and nodded towards the ice mirror before he dispelled it. He then turned towards the Serghoul, who was standing beside his daughter looking relieved and grateful. "I need time to meditate now." the blonde teenager asked in a casual tone.

"Yes, of course. How long?" the ghoul asked while nodding.

"Until I ascend." Pef answered simply, and sat down right in the middle of the cave. Location wasn't important, only time.

As time slowed down and froze around his real body, Pef gazed inward and fell into his Avatar, once more on the beach.

He waved a hand around, producing a thousand screens floating in the air all around, each showing a different section of the inner screen, and the underlying code.

"Now, my Orange Glove. It is time to teach me how to become strong." the Avatar asked as a thousand copies manifested in front of each screen, ready to start.

Another screen appeared, smaller and encased into a harp-shaped brass table. "Place your Avatar here, and open the eyes wide. The information transfer will not be painless." the glove spoke through the screen, and as soon as the Avatar leaned over to stare into the screen in burst out into a powerful orange beam.

Days and months passed, then years and millennia. Luckily, time had less importance now, and the glove could instruct its host in a comprehensive manner.

Perhaps it wasn't the normal way cultivators learned, through patient lessons or exposure to the elements, or even through combat and strife.

But information was being transferred all the same, and perhaps even more efficiently. Direct mind download was normally rarely used among cultivators, because of the great risks involved. The tiniest error could damage both the student or the teacher, and outside interference could interrupt the transfer if it took too long, with deadly consequences.

Of course, right now there was a little chance for that, so the glove could transfer all it knew into his host. And so it did.

Billions of years of knowledge and thousands of libraries and secrets were uploaded into Pef's mind, including things a normal Legion glove had no business knowing about.

For the glove had been very busy lately, copying or stealing every scrap of information it could acquire, then analyzed it and stored it into a complete database of the universe. And not just this universe.

One after another, minor Daos and then Greater Daos were being filled, all range of cultivator experiences and skills, then beast lore and skills, and then other races. This included the knowledge obtained by the glove's creator as well, and the latest updates. The Legion's General had been collecting a huge amount of information during her hundred lives, all to make her own Skill work to the maximum.

In the outer world, the Serghoul felt the drain on his reserves caused by the prolonged time sink, but he was too glad for his daughter return to care. The Veritas Soldier may be abusing his gift, but he felt it was well-deserved. Plus, he knew all-too-well how difficult reaching Dian Realm was, even in the second life. If he had to spend a billion of stored years, so be it. Years and souls could be harvested back from the golith battlefields, without much problem.

However, even after the transfer was finished, and the blinking inner screen pointed at the available Ascension, Pef chose to stay inside the frozen time, and work on the other problems.

A billion stolen years later, the Icefire flame Ascended into Tier 7, and became an immortal flame.

Yet Pef still forged on, adding more and more percents into both the Devouring and Preservation Daos, beside polishing up his Sword Dao to the end.

He wasn't simply trying to win over the Taotie, but actually beat the beast into submission, just like he had the Desolate Beast.

'The Serghoul has begun to notice something, Sergeant. We don't have long now.' the glove spoke one day, pointing to their delayed Ascension button.

The main Avatar opened his eyes, and looked around at the other screens, finding them filled with Dao insights.

"How many Skills can I make?" he asked instead, pointing to the nearest screen showing the Voidcutter Skill at 91 percent.

"I suppose you can support up to 5 Skills right now. The same as the General herself." the glove answered in an approving voice.

"Yes. But how many can I make? For other people?" Pef wondered as he opened another screen to work on the Skill he had in mind.

The armor he received from the Fay Goddess was skillfully converted into a defensive Skill, that he named Armor of Faith. Imbued with Void and Preservation Dao, the new armor seemed quite durable. As a test, he used a volley of Void Swords to attack an Avatar covered with the Armor Skill, then teared at it with furious Void Claws and a barrage of elemental spells. Beside a substantial decrease in qi reserves, the target Avatar was undamaged.

"What do you say?" Pef asked curious.

'I can break it!' the Heart Ruler claimed cheerfully.

Pef sighed and scratched at his cheek. The Ruler wasn't helping. 'You can probably kill Hualitep now, big sword. We shall see how well you perform against the Taotie.'

"Your Skills are still too weak now, Sergeant. Only useful to bestow upon regular Soldiers. As for how many...well. We can make thousands of Skills. But the energy to support them, that is the bigger problem." the glove answered in a calmer tone.

"Hmmm. We need to detach the energy requirements from the user." Pef concluded after thinking on this for a while.

"Indeed. Which is why the General uses artifacts for her Soldiers, powered by energy such as spirit stone and jade crystals." the glove said in agreement.

'I don't need energy crystals though. The whole universe is my battery!' the Heart Dividing Ruler proclaimed in a vainglorious tone.

Pef raised an eyebrow as he suddenly had an insight.

"Formation arrays? We don't have anything that powerful..." he realized in a sad voice.

"But, we know who did. You just need to receive the inheritance of the Jade Emperor, and all his techniques...including the Formation arrays." the glove said with a teasing voice.

With a decisive nod, Pef pressed the Ascension button, and returned to the ice cavern, just as the time freeze ended.