Chapter 6: Memory Space

Chapter 6: Memory Space

After dinner, Chen Shouyi hurried back to his bedroom.

After racking his brains to finish the day's homework, he pulled out the wooden sword from under his bed and began practicing thrusts over and over again. But perhaps due to a genuine lack of talent, he simply couldn’t find the coordination point for his entire body’s muscles.

As for asking his genius younger sister for advice? Impossible. Absolutely impossible in this lifetime.

The last shred of pride he had as an older brother would never allow him to lower his head before her.

Despite the lack of progress, he stubbornly practiced for another hour. His swordsmanship level remained (Uninitiated), with no improvement whatsoever.

Chen Shouyi suddenly felt that life was inherently unfair. Why were some people intelligent while others were dull? Some were born with athletic prowess, while others were as clumsy as a lump of stone. Take his sister, for example—she never seemed to put in much more effort than him, yet she effortlessly surpassed her peers and was now on the verge of becoming a martial apprentice.

A wave of frustration washed over him, but the moment he thought of the "Book of Knowledge" inside him, the gloom in his heart was instantly dispelled like sunlight, filling him with renewed motivation.

He had the Book of Knowledge now.

The energy accumulation had already reached 0.32.

If calculated from the time he consumed energy for optimization yesterday evening until now at 10 p.m., nearly thirty hours had passed, and the Book of Knowledge’s energy accumulation had increased by 0.12. That meant roughly 0.1 points were added every twenty-four hours.

In just ten more days, he could perform another optimization.

His eyes sparkled with excitement!

Next, he exhausted all his strength practicing two sets of the Thirty-Six Body Refining Techniques, totaling eight repetitions.

After resting for a while and taking a shower, he finally lay down on his bed.

He called upon the Book of Knowledge, and his body once again entered the gray mist space.

Curious, he looked around. Though he had been here once before, everything still felt incredibly novel to him.

His gaze landed on the small tree at the center, where he quickly found the Knowledge Fruit representing the Thirty-Six Body Refining Techniques. Sure enough, it had grown slightly larger—from the size of a sesame seed to that of a mung bean.

Filled with intense curiosity, he turned his attention to the leaf at the top, which represented today’s memories.

The day’s memories were utterly mundane, like watching a tedious, drawn-out movie starring himself—no climax, no twists, no joys or sorrows, no love or hatred, as bland as a tasteless glass of water.

Yet Chen Shouyi watched with great interest. In a way, this was him examining his life from a different perspective.

Perhaps because he was too engrossed, the surroundings suddenly shifted, and he found himself back in the classroom.

On the podium, the middle-aged, balding math teacher was enthusiastically explaining a complex geometry problem, spittle flying as he spoke. Chen Shouyi realized that less than ten hours had passed since he last understood this problem, yet now it felt slightly unfamiliar again.

Suppressing his curiosity about this memory space, he focused and listened carefully until he finally grasped it once more. Then, unable to resist, he tried to glance around.

But the next moment, he was startled to discover that he had no control over his own body.

"Is this because memories can’t be altered?" he wondered silently.

"Can I change my perspective?" The thought had barely formed when he found himself detached from his body, looking down at the classroom from above.

Like an invisible ghost, he drifted several meters overhead, undetectable to anyone.

Perhaps due to the limitations of the original memory, his field of vision only covered about half the classroom and a third of the students. Beyond that, everything was shrouded in a dark mist.

For some reason, that black mist filled him with dread, as if entering it would bring him grave danger.

Chen Shouyi had no intention of taking risks. He immediately averted his gaze and, following his thoughts, began floating slowly around the classroom.

Some students hid novels under their desks, reading under the cover of textbooks. Others dozed off, while a few sneaked snacks into their mouths when the teacher wasn’t looking.

He felt like a god, observing the mortals below.

As he wandered, he gradually realized that in this Memory Space, his actions were unconstrained. The more he explored, the bolder and more reckless he became.

He even...

This was something he would never have dared to imagine before, but now he did it without hesitation.

Yet, after seeing enough and satisfying his curiosity, Chen Shouyi soon grew bored.

As he continued drifting, he accidentally bumped into a student in the aisle. Unexpectedly, his consciousness rapidly took over the student’s body.

"Huh?"

He was stunned. He could actually feel the student’s body—a sensation both familiar and strange, utterly fascinating.

He quickly withdrew. Then, he tried entering other people’s bodies and found that he could possess any of them.

Some bodies felt comfortable, others awkward (especially the girls’), and some downright unpleasant.

For instance, the body of the balding middle-aged Teacher Sun made him feel short of breath, his nose filled with the heavy stench of cigarettes, and his throat clogged with phlegm.

"Of course, Teacher Sun’s lungs have always been bad. He coughs all the time."

……

Through continuous experimentation, Chen Shouyi discovered he could control the flow of time in the Memory Space and even extract specific fragments.

A bold idea suddenly struck him.

Soon, the scene shifted.

It was now an afternoon Martial Arts class.

"The Lunge Thrust is the most fundamental move in swordsmanship, yet also the most commonly used. Master this, and you’ve mastered half of swordsmanship. Does anyone know who the vice president of the Dongning Martial Arts Association is?"

Class Monitor Zhang Xiaoyue immediately answered, "Zhou Shaofeng."

Chen Shouyi, floating above, couldn’t help but glance at Zhang Xiaoyue—just moments ago, he had been peeking at her.

"Correct. As they say, one move mastered can conquer all. Two years ago, Zhou Shaofeng relied solely on his perfected Lunge Thrust to kill two Barbarian Warriors from the Otherworld who had infiltrated Earth through a Hidden Space Wormhole in the Dongning outskirts. From start to finish, he used nothing but the Lunge Thrust."

Ever since merging with the Otherworld, Earth had been riddled with countless space wormholes—some spanning dozens of kilometers, others too minuscule to detect.

Some are located at low altitudes, while others are buried deep underground. The former are naturally detected as anomalies the moment they appear, but the latter are extremely concealed and difficult to discover. Often, Barbarian Warriors from the Otherworld sneak into Earth through these hidden and unknown Wormholes, not only stealing intelligence but even committing wanton slaughter.

Of course, there are even more Wormholes in space, but for the people of the Otherworld, these Wormholes are like death zones—emerging from them means certain doom.

"Now, everyone, watch as I demonstrate the standard Lunge Thrust!" the Martial Arts teacher said, then picked up a wooden sword and walked over to the human dummy.

"I've been waiting for this!" Chen Shouyi thought to himself.

With a swift movement, he merged into the Martial Arts teacher's body.

Instantly, an overwhelming sense of power surged from within him.

"Is this the body of a martial apprentice?"

He could feel the powerful beating of this body's heart, its muscles brimming with terrifying explosive force.

Immediately, he focused his mind—the demonstration was about to begin.

"He" stood before the dummy, feet positioned neither too wide nor too narrow, muscles relaxed yet ready. As he raised the sword, his entire body's muscles began to move in perfect coordination.

Since this was a demonstration, the Martial Arts teacher moved slowly, ensuring all students could see clearly. This also allowed Chen Shouyi to meticulously observe the intricate workings of this body's machinery.

As the foot stepped forward, power accumulated from the toes and rapidly transmitted upward, amplifying with each segment.

Like a whip flicked lightly, capable of producing a sonic boom at its tip, by the time the force reached his arm, he felt an irresistible urge to strike—as if holding back would injure his very organs.

The next moment, the sword struck the dummy's head with tremendous force.

The impact, delivered to a standard 80-kilogram dummy, nearly sent its head crashing to the ground while simultaneously sliding it a full meter backward, leaving it swaying violently.

"This feeling is absolutely incredible. The entire body is like a precision machine under perfect control. When will I ever reach this level?" Chen Shouyi marveled inwardly.

Next, the Martial Arts teacher demonstrated the technique twice more—once slowly, once quickly—before letting everyone practice on their own.

Fortunately, this was merely his memory, allowing him to control it freely.

He immediately rewound the memory scene. In the Memory Space, the "poor" Martial Arts teacher repeated the motion again and again.

Over and over, Chen Shouyi carefully absorbed the nuances of power generation. After hundreds of repetitions, the memory became deeply ingrained. He even began to feel the illusion that he had always known this technique. Even with his eyes closed, he could vividly recall the exquisite harmony of every muscle in the body.