I Don't Agree to the Terms

"This octopus is excessively clever," Gu Shanhai remarked as he watched the retreating Hunter of Sea Sharks, having conducted extensive tests on it.

He discovered that the Hunter of Sea Sharks was influenced by the chaos and also plotted against Gu Shanhai, but it possessed multiple auxiliary brains. These brains were controlled by a vast array of logic, which would forcibly take over the body during threats to its safety and make certain adjustments.

Thus, it wasn't inherently the Hunter of Sea Sharks that was smart, but the results calculated by its auxiliary brains' logic.

That not being the worst thing, there was little difference between its auxiliary and main brains.

As the Hunter of Sea Sharks departed, Gu Shanhai also warned it, telling it to behave and do its job, or else he would send it on its way.

After releasing three Divine Spirits, Gu Shanhai found his danger was hanging by a thread, obviously because the world and ocean's attention were all drawn by the three escaped Divine Spirits, making his situation seem trivial.

Everyone's a rebel leader here, but Gu Shanhai was merely a beggar raising a banner at the village entrance, while those Divine Spirits were the real potentates of rebellion.

As for Gu Shanhai being dangerously influential, that was indeed true, but the world's judgment system couldn't confirm that far, clearly not very perceptive.

If it had been more effective, it would have traced the source immediately, as one escape might be an accident, but three was clearly intentional.

"I think I could further expand the relevance of this world," Gu Shanhai narrowed his eyes.

He wanted to release all the Divine Spirits and then transform them into manifest aspects of heaven and earth, such as Investiture of the Gods, True Spirit Position and Industry Map, and the like.

If you're going to use it, use it thoroughly.

The advantage of doing so is that the world would not despise him for taking it; after all, he'd be eliminating a menace.

The downside, though, was that it would require an enormous amount of work.

"We still need to consider the refining issues afterwards."

In the Divine Phase, incorporating the manifest aspects into one's true self phase, the Cultivators of the Xuanzhen Realm had already acquired an initial trait of immortality. Unless their souls were entirely destroyed, they usually wouldn't die, even if they turned into fragments; at most, they would lose their memories or go mad.

Moreover, one could enhance their combat capabilities by aligning their true self phase with external scenes; fighting was always mainstream.

Immortality might seem strong, but really, it was just so-so, primarily achieved by plundering the world, which was utterly useless to Gu Shanhai.

Because Gu Shanhai's Divine Phase and the Xuanzhen Realm's Divine Phase had little in common except for the name and breakthrough materials.

If he were to break through now, he wouldn't even get divine skills because he had created an entirely new realm on his own.

Therefore, he needed to modify his breakthrough divine skills first; his breakthrough divine skills were a set and also one of his core abilities. His original plan involved nine, and he couldn't afford to abandon it.

Lacking those would vastly impact the power of his abilities.

"If I rely on myself to refine, it would take at least three thousand years," Gu Shanhai estimated that if he really made something like the Investiture of the Gods, the prolonged assimilation time would erode the effect from a meteoric rise to worthlessness.

Gu Shanhai's estimate of three thousand years was actually quite fast; normally, Xuanzhen Realm Cultivators who wanted to incorporate the manifest aspects into their true self phase would need at least ten thousand to twenty thousand years.

Unfortunately, Gu Shanhai was thoroughly dissatisfied with this.

"So I have to either find a way to use others or deceive the world," Gu Shanhai knew that to hasten the process wasn't impossible but required some tricks.

For instance, if he could convince the manifest aspects to voluntarily become his true self phase, the process could significantly reduce from the standard three thousand years to possibly just thirty years or even three years.

Such a thing was not impossible; Gu Shanhai had refined the miraculous scenes of heaven and earth and the soul of the world in the same way.

Not all worlds were malicious towards their Transcendents.

Thus, the method to employ was simple, employing the old cliché of the hero saving the heroine.

Release all the Divine Spirits to torment the world; Gu Shanhai would then appear and handle all the Divine Spirits, converting them into manifest aspects of heaven and earth to incorporate within himself.

During this time, the opinions of the Divine Spirits didn't matter—their essence was chaos, not the order that enveloped them from outside; this order came from the world itself.

The world, seeing someone willing to do the dirty and tiring work to resolve its problem, would most likely allow the incorporation of the manifest aspects, ultimately making them Gu Shanhai's true self phase.

It was akin to a win-win method; Gu Shanhai would obtain the manifest aspects through his own labor while the world would solve a stubborn issue with a fixed investment.

The plan was indeed great and simple, but there was one serious issue beforehand—that the nuisance was a crisis that Gu Shanhai himself had ignited.

Now that Gu Shanhai had released three Divine Spirits, the world indeed hadn't noticed him, but if he released more, who knows if the world might suddenly realize the real perpetrator was Gu Shanhai.

"Need to find a way to recruit a fall guy to help me, so I can push them forward as a scapegoat if things go south."