The smoke started to spread through Shirong's body and both he and Lin Wu could feel it. The sensation of it was quite strange, to say the least.

There was no pain or discomfort they felt, except for at the start. After that passed, Shirong mostly felt numb in his body and couldn't tell what exactly was happening. His five senses had stopped working as well and he was trapped in his own mind.

Lin Wu on the other hand was still normal and could sense everything. But in addition to that, he started to get strange sensations from the smoke.

"What is this?" Lin Wu couldn't help but mutter.

It was now that the system suddenly sent out a new notification.

~Ding~

——

DATA NODE DETECTED: Intercepted successfully

ANALYZING: Large sized Data node identified

——

Seeing this Lin Wu was surprised and wondered if the Data node was from the smoke that was forcing its way into Shirong's body.

'May as well see what this is. At least till its time for the Silver Beak Sky Soar Eagle to wake up or for the barriers to collapse.' Lin Wu thought to himself.

"Alright system, show me what the data node contains." Lin Mu ordered.

~DING~

——

DECOMPRESSING DATA NODE: Please wait a moment

DATA NODE DECOMPRESSED: Transmitting data

——

Once the system gave the final input, Lin Wu's vision went dark. Then he felt a splitting headache, as if a mountain of information had just been crammed into his head and it was all threatening to burst out.

"ARGH! Dammit! Filter this out system!" Lin Wu yelled.

With that order, the information that was rushing into his mind slowed down and became a bit more streamlined. But even then it felt a bit too much for Lin Wu to focus on. It was as if he was trying to do hundreds of things at once and nothing made sense.

A few things even started to appear in his vision but they flitted by so fast he could not pay attention to them. It seemed to him like he was flowing through a river of memories and a lot of them were jumbled up.

There were tides in this river of memories as some went up and some went down. Some were more turbulent while some were calmer. Overall Lin Wu knew that perhaps this was the most amount of information he was being given at once.

~Ding~

——

WARNING!: Processing limits reached

DATA BANKS: Saturating!

EMERGENCY PROTOCOL: Activated

——

Lin Wu was stunned upon seeing these warnings and knew that the system was in trouble now. It had not had such kinds of problems since his cultivation base had increased as the system's capabilities increased along with it.

But he didn't have to worry for long since the system took corrective measures in a bit.

~Ding~

——

ACTIVATING ADDITIONAL PROCESSING POWER: Computational A.I.'s Added

COMPUTATIONAL A.I. NUMBER 3: Activated

DATA BANKS: Upper capacity increased

——

Once the third Computation A.I. was activated, Lin Wu felt the load on his mind significantly reduced and he could think straight again. If before he was flowing along with the river of memories while being tossed in it from time to time, now it was like he was floating above the river while being able to observe it more properly.

~phew~

Lin Wu couldn't help but take a breath of relief as the strain on his mind reduced.

"Now let's see what all this is…" Lin Wu muttered before picking a random place to start from.

The scene in front of Lin Wu changed and what replaced it was a pool of black tar. The tar looked to be still but there were still some movements from time to time. The pool of tar stayed in the same state for an unknown amount of time before it suddenly started to bubble.

The bubbling continued to get more and more intense before finally, it exploded. And from the explosion appeared a being that looked like a bare human skeleton. It had no skin, no flesh, no organs. All that was present on it were white bones.

The skeleton flew up in the sky and pointed towards a pool of tar that had become quite reduced in quantity than before. The tar started to flow up towards him before forming into a black robe with a hood.

The robe was over the side and his hands and legs could not be seen from it, thereby hiding the skeleton completely. With this done, the skeleton flew up in the sky and disappeared.

Lin Wu was rather shocked seeing this as he could feel the aura of the skeleton from this memory. It was easily the strongest being he had felt till now and could easily be compared to some of the beings shown in the memories of the Taiji Celestial.

"This skeleton… it's the skull god isn't it… or rather the cultivator that became the skull god…" Lin Wu muttered to himself.

The pool of black tar was also a bit familiar to Lin Wu. It was just like the corrupting fluid that was left behind by the Shadow calamity. But here it looked like it had done something completely different.

This confirmed to Lin Wu that the Skull god was definitely linked to the Taiji Celestial and might even be a by-product of his 'evil counterpart' which was nothing but the shadow calamity. Lin Wu also knew that while the Taiji Celestia had eliminate most of the traces of the Shadow Calamity, there were still some hidden traces that were missed by him.

That was entirely the reason why Taiji Celestial had left behind his inheritance.

"If the Taiji Celestial can leave behind his inheritance then perhaps one of his 'seeds' also left behind its own inheritance and it ended up being taken by this Skull god." Lin Wu understood.

He continued to watch the memories and waited for the new one to load.

In the new memory, Lin Wu could see the skull god standing on a large podium while commanding a large army below him. He pointed it towards what looked like a massive city and sent them off to battle.

The soldiers killed their way to the city only to be stopped by a few strange cultivators. The skull god didn't act through and simply watched as the two armies killed each other until only he and three other cultivators were left.

Here started the battle between the skull god and the three cultivators. They were different from normal humans though and were far taller, being at least three meter tall. They also had a few long feathers arising from the back of their necks and they were of different colors for each person.

Their faces looked like that of normal humans except for perhaps their noses being sharper.

An intense battle ensued between the skull god and the three cultivators which resulted in mutual destruction. The skull god was killed when one of the cultivators chose to self detonate while holding on to him.

This led to an area of over a thousand kilometers being reduced to dust, leaving behind a massive crater at the bottom of which roaring magma could be seen. Just from this, one could imagine how deep it went.

The memory ended here and left Lin Wu curious about what happened next.

"Is there more? Ugh! Finding anything in this chaos is impossible. All of the memories are broken in fragments and are in no proper order." Lin Wu understood upon sifting through a few of them.

Lin Wu could not estimate which memory came first and which one was later. All he could do right now was to hope that he could match them up according to the difference in the events of those memories.

At least from the two that he watched, he could tell that the first one that he saw was definitely set earlier than the one he watched just now.

"The first should be how the skull god was born perhaps and the one that I saw might be… his death?" Lin Wu couldn't help but wonder.

He looked in the river of memories and picked on that seemed to be the closest.

The scene in front of him changed to that of a starry sky.

"No wait… this isn't sky… this is… the outer space isn't it?" Lin Wu realized.

Here the skull god could be seen traveling on a large ship that was made fully out of bones. The five great masts of the ship were made from long bones that were straight and rigid, while the keel of the ship was made from the spine of some kind of a creature.

The ship soared thorough the space and passed by countless stars and asteroids. It sometimes came across planets and worlds, ravaging them. Some of the planets though were clearly avoided by the ship as if scared of them and some areas were bypassed as well.

"Huh… is he a space pirate or something?" Lin Wu couldn't help but say.