The pot-bellied boy held back a smile and tilted his head back. Tossing his white hair back over his shoulder, a slight tint of color climbed onto his cheeks. Then he coughed gentle into his fist, looking up into the air as he spoke.

“This one is known as Tao Ba.”

Sage blinked, this sudden change in attitude was unusual. The boy went from rude and wild to a shy gentleman. After a moment, Sage was quite happy as he realized the difference. Flattery seems to be the key with this guy!

It was an area he was quite versed in, taking humility and politeness to the extreme in the past to try and get good business deals this fellow seemed to respond to it perfectly! Testing his hypothesis he started talking…

“What a most magnanimous and handsome fellow you are. I’m so honored to be in your company. The great Tao Ba. To think I could meet such a spectacular personage!”

“Why… yes, I am quite spectacular.”

“To think that just a little flake of your skin was so powerful. I bet with just one of your nail trimmings a legendary weapon could be forged. The great… no, the magnificent Tao Ba. Who could compare to such a figure? I bet all my friends will beg to sniff my clothing merely because the magnificent Tao Ba has looked at them.”

“Ahum, Ahum. Why of course, wherever I look is of course improved.”

An hour later, Tao Ba was sitting at a table and drinking some tea. The furniture was snatched out of the air by Tao Ba after Sage showed his regret at not being able to pour and serve him some. It took some time, but he managed to weasel out some information.

“The storage ring you were given was actually just a tiny sliver taken off from the Universe Ring. I am the guardian and caretaker of the Universe Ring, this area has been allocated for your usage.”

“I could never enjoy the service of such a person as you, Wondrous Tao Ba. You should consider me your assistant! It is only… it would be hard to assist you without my old possessions.”

“Haha, don’t worry. That little sliver has been reabsorbed into the Universe Ring. Look.”

The boy waved his hand and just beside the piles of insect cages from the Beast Bag, the whole contents of the storage ring appeared. They were all still floating in the air just as they had been in the ring.

“This is a fully functional world here, but you have been given the right to designate areas that can be put into stasis just like that ring of yours was before. You can also withdraw or deposit objects just as you could before.”

Thankful for the tips, Sage started another round of flattery doing his best to keep on the boy’s good side. He had said he served a ‘Master Huang’ so it was similar to Sage having him on retainer for a while. He wasn’t sure how long that would be, so it was best to stay on his good side to gain more benefits and possibly earn some goodwill. After some time they moved on to other topics, with Sage steering the conversation very gently.

“Great Hero Tao Ba, your knowledge is so deep and profound. It would be so very meaningful to me if you could tell me more about what happened to me when I entered the tomb.”

“Oh yes, that. Completely merging is called a semi-forbidden technique for a reason. If you aren’t compatible enough with the target or take enough time afterwards to adjust it can cause the problem you ran into. You should have easily been able to be the dominant persona after merging, but you probably merged many times very rapidly. All those weak minds worked together. They suppressed your mind and the combination of them all took over. This isn’t the first time such a thing has happened. Master Huang forced you to merge with the egg of a Silver Liberator Butterfly. They were created for just such a thing. They give the power of that chrysalis, burning up your cultivation to unify the mind and force a rapid metamorphosis. Okay, enough of that. Fetch me more tea.”

Sage bowed and scraped, thanking Tao Ba and serving him some more as he thought about what the boy said. He’d assumed something along those lines, but it made sense now. Those disjointed memories he saw showed him the culprit. He wasn’t wary of the issue and that toad was far more powerful than he thought. It might even have teamed up with the Twin Ringed Serpent and urged him on towards more power. Each merging made him feel more and more powerful so it only became easier as it went along till finally there were enough other personalities to team up against him. While his memory of that time was still a patchwork mess, he found a few new sets of ancestral memories.

There were no new memories of any lifetimes, as he’d merged with eggs each of these times. Instead it was only the ancestral memories from the toad, the Charming Lance Beetle, and the Stonecutter Ants. The toad had a singular technique called ‘Hypnotic Eye’, which wasn’t surprising. The Stonecutter Ant’s memories had no techniques, but was actually a sort of manual of behavior. The ants worked many jobs all on their own, these memories were their training guide. How to dig their tunnels, raise the young, process spirit stones, grow their fungus crops, and even battle tactics. Interesting. If I change these and pass them down… would that completely change their behavior?

Lastly, most interesting was the Charming Lance Beetle. He’d created it from the Succubus Beetle, and a Lance Beetle. The Lance Beetle was a creation of his own from a crimson rhino beetle with thick armor and a fist sized mosquito he got from the Saffron Swamp. Contrary to what he imagined, the Succubus Beetle did not have the greatest lineage. It didn’t even have any techniques, it was similar to the ant in that it just had instincts and instructions for its descendants to use their pheromones, sounds and touches to influence other insects. It also wasn’t the Crimson Rhino Beetle he’d got from the Insect Tamer Pan Ping. Despite being one of his prized specimen and having a decently pure bloodline, the surprising ancestral memory came from the unknown mosquito. Despite being the size of a fist, Sage thought they were completely normal insects living in the wilds.

He was wrong. They had a deeper background. There was something far more powerful in their past. While the memories weren’t strong enough to trace their origin, they held a powerful technique.

‘Blood Refining.’