Xiao Shen blinked his eyes as his brain took a few minutes to register her words.

"Say what now?"

"I said you are in Heaven." The woman repeated herself with a lazy smile. She took another bite of her apple and tossed it up in the air, making it vanish without a trace. "As for your other question, I am what you would call the Master of Heaven, or the One Who Wields the Heavens’ Will."

"I am in heaven?" Xiao Shen had a blank look on his face.

He was actually in heaven!

Even if it was just a blank white space, it was the heaven that good souls who had done kind things in their lives went to!

The heaven that all dying grandpas and grandmas longed for.

Wait a minute...

In an instant, the blank look on Xiao Shen’s face immediately changed to that of disbelief. He cursed. "F*ck! Does this mean I’ve died for real?!"

Whenever he died the previous times, he had always ended up in the realm of Infinite spiralling clocks and had the chance to regress. This time, he was in this blank white space with this woman and she said it was ’heaven’.

Did that not mean that he now has no chance to regress?!

"Hmm? When did you get the assumption that all your other deaths were fake?" The woman raised a brow and cocked her head to the side.

"....." Xiao Shen.

The woman continued "You are one of the extremely small amount of people to awaken their innate talent, and you awakened one related to time and space. Your luck was really good. However, dying is dying whether time was rewinded or not, so none of those deaths can be considered fake."

"Hmm? The regression is an innate talent??" Xiao Shen blinked in confusion.

"Yes." The woman nodded her head as she said. "All living beings are blessed with an innate talent from their birth. But these innate talents need a specific trigger to unlock it. Yours was regression, and it’s trigger is dying in a specific manner. If you had died a natural death of old age or died due to some terminal illness, then the chances of awakening your regression innate talent would have been infinitesimally small."

So that is how it is ..

Xiao Shen thought to himself. If the regression was an innate skill that came from him, then that would mean that his fear of running out of regressions was basically inexistent!

This meant that he could die as many times we was possible, and still be able to regress!

Haha, I am Xiao infinitely regressing Shen!

Want to kill me?

Naive!

I’ll just regress and beat you using the knowledge and experience I’ve gained!

Xiao Shen was elated.

Death was the grand limitation of a human being and, without it, there was nothing stopping him from embarking on all kinds of adventures and trying all sorts of things!

For example, he could put a lightbulb in his mouth and try to figure out the best way to bring it out without having to resort to surgery.

Or see what it was like to wrestle a shark.

Or maybe spank a tiger.

Or even bite a crocodile.

Maybe he might even be able to use it to cheat in lotteries and the like by picking tickets and offing himself if he did not win, regressing back to before he picked said ticket and take the winning one instead.

Xiao Shen’s eyes suddenly lit up in excitement!

"....." The woman looked at him and shook her head. "Innate skills also have a cost, so you can put a halt to all those strange death seeking thoughts going through your head."

"Oh? There’s a cost?" Xiao Shen raised a brow.

He had regressed several times, no, several dozens of times in the past few days, and, yet, o

nothing had happened to him so far. He asked. "What is the cost?"

"Lifespan." The woman lazily shrugged her shoulders. "You would need to borrow extra time from somewhere else before being able to give it back, no?"

".... I guess?" Xiao Shen had a confused look on his face.

"Well, that’s how your innate regression ability works." The woman said. "The timeline of Heaven and Earth is fixed and cannot he extended or decreased by a single second. This timeline continues to flow, just like a river." The woman then frowned and shook her head. "No, let’s use the rungs of a ladder as an example instead."

She waved her hand and the image of a ladder suddenly appeared.

"Whoa!" Xiao Shen was visibly impressed.

The woman continued. "Now, the timeline of Heaven and Earth is like a man climbing this ladder one rung at a time. The ladder is near infinite, but has a definite end and a definite begining. Each rung he passes are the past, and the rungs before him are the future."

As she spoke, the figure of a man appeared on the ladder and he began climbing upwards. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

She continued. "To regress means to go back by a few rungs, but this cannot be done as the climbing man is programmed to only go upward. So, to go back, the man would now have to forcibly put more rungs at the very bottom of the ladder so that the ladder goes up while he remains in place. This would make it so that the rungs he had already passed would move up and become the rungs he currently stands upon, while the rungs he was standing on earlier would move further up and become rungs that he is yet to reach."

At the same time, the figure of the climbing man suddenly froze and detached itself, while several rungs were added to the ladder. This made it so that his figure remained at the same location, while the ladder elongated and placed the rungs that he had already passed back at his current location.

She nodded her head and dismissed the projection. "That is regression."

"I see..." Xiao Shen nodded his head with a serious expression on his face. "But how did the man manage to add more rungs to the ladder when he was climbing on it?"

"...." The woman twitched the corners of her lips.

That’s beside the point, okay?!

She sighed and shook her head. "The ladder is the timeline of Heaven and Earth while the figure represents you. Since there are only two parties present, where do you think the extra rungs come from?"

"Hmm, I think I get it." Xiao Shen nodded his head again and said. "So, in essence, I lose lifespan worth the amount of time I regress with each regression? Like, if I were to regress by an hour, I would also lose an hour of lifespan."

"Mm-hm. That sums it up pretty well." The woman nodded her head in approval. "Though, whether you would instantly shrivel up into a dying grandpa after losing so much lifespan or suddenly drop dead when the time comes is still up to speculation."

"Hmm." Xiao Shen frowned in thought. It seemed like he would have to try not to spam regressions, lest he suddenly became a dying grandpa overnight one day...

"Right, who exactly are you?" Xiao Shen suddenly asked.

If this was supposed to be heaven, then this lazy looking woman couldn’t be god, right?

"I am The Master of Heaven, the One Who Wields Heaven’s Will, the Eternal and Everlasting Lord of Infinite Myriad Realms, and blah blah blah." The woman said with a shrug. "Just understand that I am literally at the pinnacle of power and am at the highest level any being can reach."

"....." Xiao Shen was speechless.

Cultivators chased the dao in order to eventually suppress the myriad realms and take on the role of Welding the Will of the Heavens.

However, if this woman’s words were true, then the spot was already taken! What would happen if someone else rose to the position too?

Would there be a battle between Heavenly Dao Welders?

No, the main point was being completely ignored!

"You are the f*cking Welder of Heavens Will? Like the Dao Personified?" Xiao Shen had his jaws drop.

In cultivation novels, figures like this were the absolute pinnacle of existence and did not appear until the end of the story.

Why the heck was he now meeting the Wielder of Heavens Will all of a sudden!

"Yes, I am." The Master of Heaven smiled softly and said. "And I brought you here because your innate talent of regression is quite interesting. Not to mention that it is a perfect fit for a project I’m planning on embarking on."

The salted fish vibes on her body instantly vanished as a bright light shone in her eyes as soon as she thought of the project.

"An project??" Xiao Shen suddenly had a bad premonition.

What would the Wielder of Heavens Will want a lowly him for?!

He shook his head and bowed politely. "I am afraid that I cannot be able to help out. I really liked your explanations, by the way. My apologies, but I would really like to leave now."

"....." Lady Master of Heaven.

She was completely speechless by this sudden change of development!

At least hear me out, okay?!