Chapter 201: Universal Consciousness? - 201
Zhou Fan's plan was to make some sort of consciousness that would rule over the entire universe.
It would not only keep order, but it would also make sure that nobody destroyed everything. Zhou Fan had only developed a rough idea of his plan.
His first thought was arrays and formations. Theoretically, he could create a bunch of arrays or formations that would be able to accomplish his goal.
After thinking for a while, however, he realized that the success of such a thing was very unlikely. Even if he did succeed, it would have to be very poorly made.
After he continued thinking, he suddenly had an idea. He could use his mortal dao as the foundation of the universal consciousness. Once he became strong enough, it would completely overthrow the cosmic dao and control the universe.
As for how to manipulate his mortal dao to begin such a process, Zhou Fan had no idea. He would have to try a couple things, but he was sure that he could do it.
Zhou Fan continued sitting in the middle of the three galaxy clusters and began to sense the mortal dao within him. Like always, it was a mix of gray and orange. Zhou Fan assumed that the orange was based off of the center of the world, while the gray was obviously due to his Chaos Qi.
Zhou Fan had manipulated his mortal dao so many times before that he was actually quite used to it. Unfortunately, he was trying something completely different today.
First, Zhou Fan dragged his mortal dao out of his body and held it in his palm. It sat on his hand similar to a sun.
For the first time, Zhou Fan tried to send his divine sense into it. As soon as they connected, Zhou Fan felt as if a bunch of options were laid out in front of him.
The options held a sense of familiarity, but Zhou Fan didn't know why. There were hundreds of thousands, if not millions of them, so he randomly picked one.
As soon as he did, he felt as if he had grown a third eye. Although he could see the nearly empty space of the void between the three galaxy clusters, he could also see a new area.
It seemed like a stony and barren planet. He could view it from any point within a thousand mile radius of the planet's edge.
As he looked closer, he noticed that his mortal dao had taken over the random planet. Instantly, he understood why the options were so familiar. Each of them were different planets that he had connected to his mortal dao.
Zhou Fan felt stupid that he hadn't previously guessed what they were at first, but he then realized that he was looking at a planet so far away that it would take him at least a thousand years to reach it. Well, a thousand years before he broke through, but regardless, it was a very far away planet.
For a second, Zhou Fan was thrilled by this discovery. Then he realized that it had little use to him as of now and it wouldn't help him complete his idea.
'However, it may have some sort of use in the future.' Zhou Fan thought to himself.
As he was thinking of possible future uses, he remembered that he had used his divine sense to use his mortal dao and look at the planet.
Based off of that, it was possible that he could manipulate the planet, despite being an uncountable number of miles away from it.
It felt ridiculous to even try, but Zhou Fan attempted to use his divine sense to affect something on the planet.
He tried, but he didn't get the sensation of anything moving. For a second, he was disappointed, until he realized that his mortal dao covering every inch of space throughout the planet suddenly moved.
Zhou Fan was confused for a second, but he once again tried to manipulate his divine sense, this time paying more attention to the mortal dao.
As he moved his divine sense, he noticed that a bit of his mortal dao seemed to extend a tendril in the direction he was trying to use his divine sense.
He then realized that he was trying wrong. The next time he used his divine sense, Zhou Fan used it to reach the mortal dao on the planet. Once he did, he felt a new connection.
From that point, he was able to use his mortal dao covering the planet as if it was his divine sense.
Zhou Fan was shocked by the discovery. This meant that not only would he have full vision of whatever was going on in the planets, but he would also be able to silently manipulate anything in the planet.
Now this was useful!
Zhou Fan immediately made his mortal dao hit a mountain with force. The mountain immediately tumbled down without resistance.
He tried to use it to produce some sort of elemental attack, but it wasn't working well. Still, he felt that it was possible, just not now with his current strength.
With his new discovery, Zhou Fan felt the idea of making a consciousness to control every planet under his control, and eventually the universe was possible.
However, there was one big problem. He could not always control his mortal dao, and using it at the same time on millions of planets was far beyond his current power.
In order to do that much, he would need something else. A central controller that completely followed his commands and had very little will of its own. Something like a robot, but a robot would not fulfill his needs without direct order.
He needed something that could adapt to an unknown situation without any sort of command. In other words, he needed some sort of living thing completely under his control.
Zhou Fan only had one idea. No living thing that he could create now, and possibly for a long long time would have the ability to control so many planets simultaneously.
The idea he had theoretically worked, but it fell under the category of pure evil.
Chapter 202: Idea's - 202
Zhou Fan's idea was to somehow combine a large number of souls into a greater soul. He wasn't quite sure how to do it, or if it was even possible, but it was the only idea he had.
He didn't want to do such a thing since he would need to kill living things in order to collect the souls needed, but he had no other ideas.
If he hadn't thought so deeply about the idea of a universal consciousness, then he wouldn't have too much of a problem with simply giving up and not doing it.
However, as he thought about it more and more, he realized that such a thing would change everything. It could help manipulate the universe itself under Zhou Fans command. He would also be able to completely ignore everything for an immense amount of time and still have the worlds be intact.
Zhou Fan thought of the problem for a very long time, but he still couldn't think of any other way.
Eventually, he simply accepted that he may need to use the soul combining method in order to create the universal consciousness. However, that problem was not without its own issues.
The souls that would be merged could not be weak, mortal souls. Even the souls of void traversing cultivators wouldn't be enough. If he truly wanted to create a universal consciousness, something with the power to watch over the entire universe and simultaneously do millions of things at once, he would at least need billions of god realm souls.
Also, he would need to completely wipe each and every one of those souls to a blank slate. In other words, it was simply impossible with his current strength.
Before completely giving up, Zhou Fan continued to think of other possibilities.
After a while, he felt that it was possible that the cosmic dao could give him some sort of understanding towards a different possibility. After all, it was essentially doing what he wanted to achieve with less interference.
Sadly, he didn't know how long it would take for him to understand something from the cosmic dao. The only thing left was reaching 100% comprehension, but he wasn't confident in facing whatever he had faced the last time.
Another possible option was getting much stronger and using or cutting off a part of his soul in order to control everything. It seemed much less evil than killing a bunch of people, but, once again, he didn't know how long that would take.
There was also the possibility that his mortal dao would naturally gain a consciousness, or he may be able to influence it in that direction. So far, that seemed to be the most preferable option, but that may also be impossible.
Regardless of the method, it would have to wait until he was stronger. The only thing he could do to start making a universal consciousness is lay out a sketch.
After thinking about the things he could do, he decided to first expand the range of his mortal dao on the planets. So far, the mortal dao was only taking up the space that the planet and the sun was within and the immediate area around them. The Zhou solar system was a bit of an outlier since it had an entire space containing multiple planets and a sun.
The mortal dao there had the biggest size out of any mortal dao area in three galaxy clusters.
Since his mortal dao would have to fully cover the entire universe at some point, he decided that he might as well start expanding them now. The mortal dao's size would grow to cover the entire galaxy they were in.
Even if the galaxy had two planets connected to the mortal dao, it would still only reach the edges of the galaxy. That would also cause the chaos Qi in almost every galaxy in the three galaxy clusters to be turned into the various Qi's.
The only reason Zhou Fan didn't expand the mortal dao's area past the galaxies was because he feared that the cosmic dao would not sit by and allow it to happen. He felt that he was already taking a big risk by pushing it this far. Any more and the chance of danger shot up.
He would have to wait until he grew stronger to expand anymore. Although he still may not be strong enough to contest with the full power of the cosmic dao, he was gambling that the cosmic dao would sense his increased power and feel that giving up such a small amount of territory was fine. After all, it had an entire universe under its command. What's three galaxy clusters compared to everything else in existence?
Of course, he was simply speculating that the cosmic dao was in control of the entire universe and not just a certain section. He had never had any way to prove whether it did or not, but he assumed that it did.
Otherwise, he felt that it wouldn't be so unmoved when someone like Zhou Fan began to exist.
Thinking about it, Zhou Fan had also been assuming that it had some sort of consciousness. In reality, the likelihood of it being similar to a non sentient being was also fairly high. After all, it had never really provoked him. The only time he had ever sensed danger was when he was pushing himself too far.
For example, messing with the bit of the cosmic dao in the center of earth before he was strong enough, or nearing the center of a galaxy cluster.
When he wasn't doing anything crazy, the cosmic dao seemed to think of him as nothing more than a rowdy ant.
That was also one of the reasons Zhou Fan felt he could get away with expanding the size of his mortal dao to the edges of the galaxies.
Based on his personal opinion and experience, Zhou Fan believed that the cosmic dao had some sort of consciousness, but was in a constant state of hibernation or something else.
After all, it had most likely been existing since the beginning of the universe. He felt that was likely because it was a part of the universe like his mortal dao was a part of him.
Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
121 Power
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