Douluo Continent: The Ruler of Time, Reigning Supreme

Chapter 3: Butterfly
The devastating energy storm triggered by the system crash not only tore his soul apart, but also brutally threw half of his soul and the three golden beams into the unknowable spatial turbulence.

When he regained his senses, he found himself in this bizarre and dangerous forest.

Worse still, having lost his original physical body, existing only as a soul, he could clearly feel that his existence was like a candle flickering in the wind, his soul becoming thin and transparent, about to completely dissipate into the world.

Just as his consciousness was about to vanish into nothingness, among the three golden lights that had been thrown to this place with him, one of them suddenly became incredibly gentle.

The light was no longer intense and dazzling, but rather like a babbling brook under the moon, warmly and peacefully enveloping his crumbling soul essence.

Immediately afterwards, the golden light slowly condensed and shaped before his eyes, eventually transforming into the outline of a flawless young girl's body.

Silver hair, purple eyes, pointed ears—that's exactly what he looks like right now.

It was during this process that a faint yet incredibly clear thought, accompanied by gentle kindness, was transmitted into his fading consciousness:
"Please...use my body."

There were no questions, no hesitation, only the purest and most selfless dedication.

It was at this moment that Yin Chen finally understood the true form of this golden light.

She was Xia Die, a character from a game in his previous life, the Demigod of Death.

She is also one of his fictional wives.

Only someone as gentle and kind as Butterfly would not hesitate to give up her body and offer it up completely as a sanctuary when she sensed that half of his soul was on the verge of extinction.

Yin Chen's fading consciousness was almost instinctively drawn in and pulled, like a fledgling returning to its nest, merging into the container that had been opened for him.

The soul and the new body quickly merged, the dissipated crisis was instantly resolved, and a grounded sense of existence returned.

However, he also clearly sensed that the moment he took over this body, Xia Die's consciousness, which was already weakened by resisting the impact of the system explosion, completely fell into a deep sleep.

She gave everything, including herself, to keep him alive.

At first, the one soul controlled two bodies, causing Yin Chen a lot of trouble.

His body was stiff and mechanical at home, and he could only stay in the room without moving. Fortunately, Uncle Grey thought that he had locked himself in the room because of the shock of his parents' death.

However, Xiaodie, who was located in the forest, fell down many times.

The pain from the fall was clearly felt by both the main body and Xia Die's body.

Two kinds of sight, two kinds of hearing, two kinds of touch... almost turned his thoughts into a tangled mess.

However, perhaps because the soul was forcibly split in two, a certain compensatory mechanism was activated.

Or perhaps, having survived an impact of the scale of a system explosion, his soul's resilience has already exceeded the norm.

After the initial chaos, sensory confusion, and intense mental discomfort, Yin Chen was surprised to find that he seemed to be adapting quickly.

Just as the brain is naturally able to process slightly different images seen by the eyes and integrate them into clear stereoscopic vision, his split yet co-existing core consciousness also began to instinctively learn how to process these two parallel and compatible sensory information flows.

He tried to build an invisible barrier in his mind.

At first, the barrier was fragile and full of loopholes, and information from both sides would still uncontrollably seep into each other. But gradually, as he focused his mind, the barrier became more stable.

He can choose to block out the senses of another body, gradually adapting to manipulating two different bodies, perfectly multitasking.

Having adapted to the dual sensory impact, another, more private and embarrassing issue emerges—the discomfort with this sudden female body.

When he looked down, he saw a flat chest, slender arms, and delicate fingertips belonging to a girl.

When he walks, he can feel the emptiness between his legs, a physiological structure that is completely different from the past.

When the forest breeze brushes against my neck and arms, the sensation on my skin seems to become more acute and...unusual.

All the information was reminding him that he was now a girl.

Yin Chen held her breath, pressing her petite body tightly against the back of an ancient tree covered in moss and exuding a decaying smell, her heartbeat almost stopping.

She could clearly sense a violent and scorching aura slowly moving not far away, each step causing the ground to tremble slightly, and the withered branches and leaves to crack under the weight.

That was at least a thousand-year-old soul beast, its specific species unknown, but it was definitely not something she, unarmed at the moment, could contend with.

"Go around to the left, behind that tree."

A cold, indifferent, yet strangely authoritative female voice resounded directly in the depths of her mind, without the slightest emotional fluctuation.

Without the slightest hesitation, Yin Chen, like the most nimble cat, acted as instructed. Using the twisted trees and dense, strange plants as cover, he silently changed his route, gradually distancing himself from that terrifying aura.

Only when the suffocating oppression completely disappeared from her perception did she dare to breathe slightly and slide down onto a cold boulder.

"Thanks, Ronawa."

She thought silently in her mind.

The area of ​​consciousness belonging to another guest in the mind only emitted a barely perceptible fluctuation, which could be considered a response.

This is her greatest asset in surviving to this day on the edge of the perilous forest.

It wasn't the death power of Xia Die, the original owner of this body, which required contact to take effect and was somewhat useless to powerful soul beasts. Instead, it was the demon god who controlled the power of death, the ruler of death, Ronawa, who descended with her soul and has now become her martial soul.

Yes, corresponding to the awakened Time Ruler Istaru of the original body Yin Chen, the martial soul born when her half-soul merged into Xia Die's body and completed the awakening of her innate martial soul was the Death Ruler who symbolized ultimate tranquility and the end of all things.

Ronawa was one of the three golden lights, and the last golden light, like the main body, was also untraceable.

Of the five golden legends, three belong to Xia Die, Ruona, and Ishtar, while the other two are hidden within Yin Chen and Xia Die's bodies, respectively.

Ronawa's form of existence is extremely unique.

She was neither completely asleep nor completely awake.

She herself seems unable to directly intervene in reality or use her powerful abilities to defend Yin Chen from enemies, at least not at the moment.

(End of this chapter)