As time stretched infinitely, Zhang Haoyun continuously lost all feelings from his senses and entered a mysterious state.
At some point, he even felt weightless as though he was suspended freely in midair. His consciousness slowly disappeared like a flickering flame in the presence of a raging storm.
Nevertheless, he still tightly held onto the Golden Box that was clunged unto his chest, intending to part away with it in death.
In his last moments, memories of his past flipped rapidly like overturned pages in a book. As he reflected on them, a calm and relaxed smile appeared on his face. He had succumbed in the end to the doings of fate.
However…
Before his consciousness could completely dissipate, it was caught onto by a strange power that had appeared mysteriously out of nowhere. In his eventual death, he held firmly onto the Golden Box while breathing his last.
Not long after, this subtle action caused a ripple effect in the flow of time around Zhang Haoyun.
First of all, the box broke off his embrace and sucked in all of his fading consciousness. It did so while exhibiting intelligence and a strong sentient nature.
Its actions indicated choosing Zhang Haoyun as its fated owner which explained while it sought to save and collect the latter's consciousness.
For an unknown amount of time, the collection process continued on and on. Eventually, it had collected all of Zhang Haoyun's consciousness.
The Golden Box then proceeded to shrink itself in size till it became as little as a microscopic dot before shooting into the skies and vanishing out of sight.
***********
Purple Dragon Continent: Zhang Clan,
A figure laid in a closed room completely tattered and with little scars all over. The figure was dormant which inclined that it was stiff and likely unalive.
There were wild weapons all over the room and even a few of them had recent blood stains left on them which revealed a suspicious and abnormal connection to the figure laying still.
Despite the clothes on the figure being tattered and rumpled, it still gave off a subtle feeling of nobility. This gave the impression that the one who was adorned in them was likely a young master or son of a wealthy merchant.
It was unusual for such a figure to be beaten up and left for dead in a place as such. But life always had its surprises.
Right then…
WENG!
A narrow glitch appeared in the room, causing a strange aura to descend as well within the room. A narrow and tiny rift had opened up to the ignorance of the people around.
For a moment, the closed room had become isolated from the rest of the continent as space and time came to an involuntary halt.
The presence that emerged from the narrow rift finally revealed itself after causing such a widespread commotion all over the place.
A microscopic, atom like golden substance stepped out of the narrow rift and descended into the closed room. It hovered around the room for a while, cautiously scanning the whole place with care.
It suddenly halted its tracks on noticing the still figure that was laying on the ground. It lowered itself and began hovering around the still figure for a while once more.
SING!
The golden substance eventually stopped again. But this time around, it shot into the still figure's body.
After a while, the oppressive aura was dispersed and everything became normal once again. It was questionable why or what had happened, but nobody in the entire continent seemed aware of what even went on in the first place.
About several incense sticks time later, the still figure suddenly made movement. It was subtle and unless one was actively studying the figure with intensity, they would likely not realize this fact.
Shortly after again, the movements became more frequent with subconscious finger tapping on the ground. Though, no other sense of activity could be determined any further.
Following that again, it seemed the static figure had fallen asleep for a while and then it suddenly rose up with a start.
The figure immediately sat meditatively in a lotus position on waking up. His forehead shimmered with golden light that flashed continuously in a blinding manner.
Ten minutes later, the static figure opened his eyes and a fierce and ruthless glint flashed in them. The feeling in those eyes spelled arrogance, evil and mischief.
For a moment, it overlapped with the already fallen Zhang Haoyun in its appearance.
"Hahaha! That's very stupid, I actually reincarnated!" The still figure cackled to himself in excitement.
He then took time to inspect his body as though confirming for himself a new accessory or item that he had recently purchased.
"Not bad. But I expected more!" He blurted out with a bit of indifference.
Next, he closed his eyes and opened them shortly afterwards.
"Holy Shit" he called out without restraint, his eyes glowing with excitement, "The Golden Box? It actually followed me here…this is interesting"
At this point, it was clear as day that somehow, the still figure that was laying dead earlier had been mysteriously revived by the golden light that had appeared earlier on.
As for why this body returned to life, it could equally be pointed out that the Golden Box that was the golden light from earlier on was most responsible. It had mysteriously bonded Zhang Haoyun's scattered divine consciousness to the still figure's own that was waning.
Zhang Haoyun felt awed by how quickly the bonding of the consciousness happened despite he himself being a True God.
The box had a means of leverage to compensate the soul of the initial possessor of this body and made the costly transaction earlier on before redeeming his consciousness back.
"This is too good a news!" Zhang Haoyun continuously laughed to himself in anticipation.
From his finding, the Golden Box had already united their existences making him the owner of this mysterious treasure. Even in his past life as a deity, he had been unable to unravel the secret of the Golden Box.
Though he knew it was likely a powerful divine artifact, he had underestimated it greatly.
How could a treasure capable of reincarnating an already fallen deity be any ordinary divine artifact?
It likely had many mysterious secrets which he couldn't wait to unravel step by step. But while Zhang Haoyun was excited about his reincarnation, he could smell trouble coming his way.
KNOCK!
A chaotic knocking resounded on the door from outside the closed room. It stopped for a while and resumed violently half a minute after again.
"Who the hell is there?" Zhang Haoyun frowned as his meditation session was cut off by the thunderous banging.
He quickly flipped through the memories of the body's initial possessor.
"Is this a joke? The owner of the body is the Young Master of the Zhang Family. Coincidentally, he also bears my name but his profile is a little too weak" Zhang Haoyun bluntly commented in his heart, paying no heed to the thunderous knocks that threatened to detonate the door.
"Zhang Haoyun come out now. We know you are in there"
"If you don't come out and let us break in, you'll regret being born"
Voices came from the outside but Zhang Haoyun turned deaf ears to them and gently waited for their provocation on a more passive note.
He flexed his wrists, causing the latter to release a somewhat creaking noise.
"Zhang Haoyun, you don't know your place as trash, come out now and kiss Senior Brother's feet!" One of the voices tried to incite him by mockery.
"Pfft! What a nasty pervert?" Zhang Haoyun had a stern look and his eyes flashed coldly.
BANG!
Finally, the cultivators outside successfully broke into the room by blasting the door with condensed auras.
There were two of them and Zhang Haoyun could identify the two due to his earlier skimming on the memories of the body's previous possessor.
They were Zhang Yunshan and Zhang Zhehan, two troublesome characters back in the Zhang Family. As they were the grandsons of the Sixth Elder, they had all the guts to rant around and cause unnecessary trouble.
Most times, they would pick up on the Young Master and taunt the latter to a fault. Today was just like one of those days and they came to cause trouble as usual.
But it was too bad for them, they were quite unlucky today since they couldn't even try to read the room before they ignited the flames to cause trouble.