Chapter 253: Failure - 253
Instead of creating cities or kingdoms, Spirits had a much more primal way of grouping together.
To form a group, a spirit would have to be at least at the nascent soul realm. Since there was no such being in the spirit world due to the cultivation reset, every single spirit was busy wandering around aimlessly.
Once a spirit reached the nascent soul realm, it instinctually had two options. One, it could continue wandering around alone, or two, it could form a group of spirits.
Option one needed no explanation, a spirit would simply continue to become stronger until death or reaching a bottleneck.
Option two, however, was a little complicated. Due to the power of the nascent soul realm spirit, other, weaker spirits would be drawn to its vicinity.
At that point, the spirit would use its innate ability that Zhou Fan called subordination.
On a willing spirit one realm below the strong spirit, subordination would mark them and allow them to be commanded by the strong spirit. This would also allow the spirits to communicate through their minds.
On spirits two realms below or more, the subordination mark could be forced, unless there was already one on it.
This is the only hierarchy present on the spirit world. As for having children, spirits could only be born from the world unless two spirits reached the void traversing realm.
While the subordination mark sounded bad, it was not without benefits. For the spirits one realm below the main spirit, they would gain some Qi from the main spirit every now and then depending on the main spirit's strength and number of willing subordinates.
This Qi was only the natural excess, not causing the main spirit any loss unless they had a lot of willing subordinates and needed to personally offer Qi.
The innate ability of subordination was something that had been personally created by Zhou Fan. If not for it, spirits would very rarely group up unless very intelligent, causing them to develop slower as a whole.
There was not much to look at or pay attention to in the spirit world. Everything was the same everywhere. Spirits did not make buildings, so there was no history to check out.
If not for the fact that Zhou Fan knew the spirits had once had void traversing realm cultivators, he would have thought they were a newly created race.
With his overseeing of the planets done, Zhou Fan still had plenty of time for his break. He decided to simply wander around the worlds and possibly give opportunities to people he came across.
His first destination would be the heaven world. The heavenborn race had spread out, but the heaven world was still the main planet. Even Tian Ren spent most of his time on it.
In just a few seconds, Zhou Fan appeared on a path in the heaven world. He had disguised himself as an old man and pulled a small cart with him on the path.
He had a bamboo hat and long facial hair. Even his clothes seemed to be old and dirty. Not disgustingly dirty, but with a couple dirt stains.
He began his walk on the path, not using his divine sense to instantly tell where he was or where he was heading towards.
As he walked on the path, he came across many people. There were some young people, some middle aged people, and a few old people.
Zhou Fan seemed to always sigh as he walked past them. They were called old people, but he was their senior by millions of years.
It seemed as if everyone was in a world of their own, far away from his.
One day, after around a month of walking, Zhou Fan's path led into a forest. The forest was filled with cherry blossom trees, and the weather was perfect. It was clearly the peak of spring.
As he walked under the shade of one of the cherry blossom trees and a leaf landed on his nose, he sighed again.
He was feeling an unnatural amount of melancholy. Surprisingly, he was more at peace than he had been in a long long time. Even the river could not compare to the beauty of spring.
Suddenly, Zhou Fan stopped walking. It was as if all of his experiences were combing together and he was beginning to finally understand.
Heaven was a failure. He had thought it before, but he knew it now.
All things with emotions age. Even Zhou Fan felt the effect of age, despite not looking a day older in the last millions of years.
"If Heaven has emotions, it too will grow old. The universal consciousness must be emotionless and impartial." He said to himself.
He finally understood. He could present the rules, but he could not overly enforce them. Otherwise, the very aspect of cultivation was pointless.
In Zhou Fan's opinion, the reason to cultivate was power and freedom. The freedom to do whatever you want, whether it be kill, steal, oppress, help, give, or clean.
Power was necessary to protect yourself from the backlash of your actions. If you kill the son of an emperor, you just had to be stronger than the emperor or whoever was behind him and you would not be judged.
If you wanted to heal someone that a demonic overlord wanted to kill, you just had to be stronger than that demonic overlord or whoever was behind him.
In the cultivation world he had observed, there was always someone behind someone. Kill the son, the father would come, kill the father, the grandpa would come, kill the grandpa, the ancestor would come, kill the ancestor, a god would come.
In some instances, even killing a mortal could result in a space shattering realm cultivator being offended down a long chain.
Zhou Fan always found that funny. Luckily, he was the biggest fish in the biggest pond. As for the cosmic dao, it was the pond itself.
Zhou Fan understood that Heaven could not be the universal consciousness. Luckily, he had thought about that long ago. He had ways to make Heaven useful.
Chapter 254: Young Man - 254
Although Heaven could not fill the role of the universal consciousness, it could still oversee some area in the universe.
Depending on its power, Zhou Fan would adjust the size of that area when the time comes. Of course, he was still a long way away from creating a universal consciousness.
Zhou Fan had already developed a good idea. Once his mortal dao evolved, he would be similar in level to the cosmic dao, although he wasn't sure that is what he would call it.
At that point, mortal dao's would be able to exist within his dao's domain. Since heaven was at the 1st level of the inner world realm, he had a mortal dao, although it was sorely undeveloped.
Heaven would be able to create a domain of his mortal dao. It could be called the heaven domain or the heavenly dao or something similar.
That would be where heaven ruled. It would likely take up multiple galaxy clusters if everything went right.
Still, there would be much more room outside the heavens mortal dao than inside. That would be where Zhou Fans evolved mortal dao would be.
He would create the impartial and emotionless consciousness there, which would rule over the universe.
It was a very simple plan, similar to what he had done with heaven but on a bigger scale.
The area within heaven's mortal dao would be more lawful, but protected. Outside heavens mortal dao would be essentially lawless, allowing anyone to do anything, with more freedom and the ability to release a mortal dao.
There would be both benefits for being inside heavens mortal dao and being outside.
Zhou Fan gradually formed a plan in his mind of what the future of the universe would look like.
As he was deep in thought, he was awoken by a pat on the shoulder.
Opening his eyes, Zhou Fan saw a young man with blond hair looking at him worriedly.
"Are you ok sir? You've been standing still for a while." The young man asked.
Zhou Fan could practically see the goodness in his eyes flowing out.
"I am fine." Zhou Fan spoke with his old man voice. "It's just been hard on the path and I've become tired."
As Zhou Fan finished, he could see the young man look deep in thought and seem to be hesitating.
"Well…" He said after a while. "If you wouldn't mind, I can take you the rest of the way. If I go fast, we will reach the nearest city in 5 hours."
"Would you really do that?" Zhou Fan, the old man asked.
"Yes yes. Don't worry. Hop on the cart." The young man said as he helped Zhou Fan walk.
Before long, Zhou Fan was riding on top of his small cart as the young man strugglingly ran on the path. He was clearly in a hurry.
As Zhou Fan rode, he remembered one of the reasons why he had come to the heaven world.
"Young man. Your kindness is truly unmatched." He spoke in his old man voice.
"Don't sweat it." The young man responded. "I just try to help out whenever I can."
"Haha. You are a good young lad. Would you answer this old man's question?" Zhou Fan asked.
"Sure!" The young man said with a smile as he struggled to pull the cart.
"If you had the option, would you rather live a peaceful life of no worries as a mortal, or get the opportunity to become the strongest cultivator, although there would be a high risk to your life?" Zhou Fan asked.
The young man didn't answer for a moment, likely deeply thinking about the question.
"It would be a hard choice, but I think that I would choose to become the strongest cultivator." The young man responded.
"Could I ask why?" Zhou Fan asked.
"So that I can help more people." The young man stated simply.
Zhou Fan nodded at his answer. The young man seemed to have great resolve.
Sadly, the young man was still a mortal. His meridians were trash rank. If he spent all his life cultivating and chanced upon some great opportunities, he may become a foundation establishment cultivator at the end of his lifespan.
Clearly, the young man hadn't decided to do such a thing.
When Zhou Fan saw that the young man at least had some meridians, he sighed in relief. He was not very confident in creating meridians yet. Even if he could, they would not be very good.
Even just upgrading the rank would normally be difficult, but things had changed since the past.
The current cultivation used by the everyone was Zhou Fan's invention. He had full control over it.
Although meridians were something naturally created in humanoid life forms, Zhou Fan could easily change them with the help of the river of cultivation.
Zhou Fan pointed two fingers at the young man's head, and a golden beam of light hit the young man's head.
Instantly, the young man passed out. He fell face first on the ground and the cart came to a stop.
Zhou Fan hopped off of it and teleported himself and the cart elsewhere.
As the young man woke up, he felt changes within himself.
Zhou Fan had given him god rank meridians. Naturally, that would not be enough to let him reach the level of Tian Ren, so Zhou Fan gave him a little something else.
Although only Zhou Fan could see it, a golden aura was surrounding the young man. The light was given off by providence. Zhou Fan had become able to emulate the effects of providence.
He had specially made this one so that when the young man died, the providence would forever disappear.
While the providence was on him, his meridians would slowly be upgraded. After ten thousand years, he would have immortal rank meridians.
Those, along with providence, would allow the young man to at the very least become the strongest below Tian Ren in the world.
Zhou Fan had teleported to another area of the heaven world. It was essentially on the other side of the world from where he met the young man.
Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
121 Power
stone 
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