Get moving

The time ratio between the two universes had been set to 100 years per day. Given that I'd started that time-flow this morning and with them having to start cultivation without any previous knowledge or guides I didn't expect them to last for more than two days. It might be later in the 2nd day before they returned but that was most likely going to be the limit for the humans.

If they made enough advancements with cultivation, they would be able to extend their lifespan, but that lack of knowledge meant that they were unknowingly causing damage to themselves. Those errors would limit them from accessing the increased longevity that they would usually have.

I'd wanted to speed up the whole process, but I found out that when it came to advancing time as long as they were in there, my limit was 100 years per day. It wasn't a horrible rate of flow, but it could be better.

Hopefully with native souls that limit would be lesser. My only worry was that any children they had wouldn't be fully counted as native.

This made me rather reluctant to add more humans until I could start cultivating with a non-damaging method. Thankfully I wouldn't need to add more people soon. The bodies I created were designed so that some of the perfect human genetics would be passed down for generations.

This would stop any form of genetic deterioration in their descendants due to inbreeding.

In each generation that physiology would slowly deteriorate but by the time they returned to baseline human biology they wouldn't have to worry about a lack of genetic diversity.

It was a bit morbid having brothers and sisters be together, but they wouldn't know it was wrong since they weren't born on earth.

It was kind of funny actually.

With my creatures and their descendant even if they had souls, I could destroy them whenever I wished and if they were the only ones in the universe, I could do whatever I wanted with time.

The extra humans complicated that, but I wasn't too bothered by it. When it came to the founding of civilizations in the beginning things would take a long time to advance. It was only later on when major gathering sites like cities came into existence that more things would happen in smaller timeframes.

That along with me preventing any major extinction events meant that there wouldn't be any major restarts.... yet.

The humans still had a long way to go before they reached that point. They'd made progress but they'd also had some major setbacks. It was what I'd expected, with them lacking tools and having to make everything themselves they didn't have time to focus on much else.

Back on earth, I'd been struck with an idea. It wasn't a brand-new idea, but it was a good one regardless. I could interact with souls and I could drag them in the fulcrum, that was one of the benefits given to me by that being.

In the fulcrum, I could create anything I wanted but I couldn't bring them into the world. The idea was to use the souls as containers for those items or even just as a power source to become stronger.

I was slightly against the power source idea since I wasn't eager to kill people for power, but the container idea had some merit to it. All I would have to do was convince them and given that they would have to be in the fulcrum for me to make changes I don't think that would be too hard.

The only issue that stopped me from immediately trying this was that I didn't know where all the souls were. The vast majority of people that have existed are currently dead. The fact there weren't souls just floating everywhere was worrying to me.

The only reason I could think as to why they weren't all just floating around was either they were somewhere else, or they had been destroyed. Neither of the options filled me with any particular sense of joy.

This was a low universe and according to what I'd been told and what was in my mind, low universes had stricter laws and less flexibility when it came to the supernatural.

Then again souls existed in this universe so maybe they weren't considered supernatural.

This opened up some avenues for me power-wise. If my conjecture was true that meant that souls would be the least limited form of power I could attain. Their nature as natural could potentially conceal the unnatural energies or items. My plan seemed all the more likely the more I kept thinking about it.

It was a question that I wanted answers for but unfortunately, I couldn't get it until I figured out where the souls were going.

If they were going somewhere, where were they going to?

Was it accessible to me?

And if they were being destroyed, I wanted to know what was destroying them and for what purpose. Was it just a mechanism of the universe or was there a living force actively destroying them?

So, I'd spent my morning tracking down ghost trails and then following them in hopes that I would find a ghost and that I could observe whatever was happening to them.

I'd stopped at midday as my efforts weren't bearing fruit, not to say I'd stopped forever.

It was just that even when I followed the trails they would suddenly end as if the souls had been teleported away.

I was more worried that the souls were being destroyed. It would be such a waste if that much potential was just randomly being wiped out.

It seems like I'd had gotten lucky with those two. I'd managed to find two recently deceased souls still wandering around perfectly unharmed.

It was something I had to investigate more but first I had to get qi. I didn't want to confront whatever was happening as a regular schmuck. I might be powerful in my universe, but this was earth, here I had none of that power.

It had only been a day anyway so currently I wasn't rushing too much, but death was still knocking at my door.

After that whole series of events, I turned my attention back to the universe.

The planet consisted of four continents and surprisingly each of the beasts that I'd given titles lived far from each other.

That hadn't been intentional, but it was beneficial, nonetheless.

The monkeys lived on a luscious forest-covered continent while the lizards still lived in the desert. In the hundred years, they both had made advancements especially the monkeys.

They'd created many settlements in the massive forest that they inhabited. While it wasn't exactly a full-blown civilization it was rather impressive what they were being able to do.

The King hadn't been able to Unite all the monkeys within the forest they were too many of them and it had too many enemies.

It had however been able to Unite all the monkeys within its section of the forest. Given that the forest-covered an area the size of Russia this was impressive, nonetheless.

They were in the later stages of the stone age and had discovered the ability to make fire. Since the monkeys had evolved like all other beasts were already acclimated to qi, the unity of so many members allowed for the spread of knowledge.

Various different little tips and tricks that various monkeys had known were shared around and eventually, they all added up together to create the first-ever nonharmful cultivation guide.

It wasn't perfect by any standards and its lack of refinement meant that very few could properly use it fully. It also only allowed for the monkeys to cleanse their bodies of impurities, something that the furnace lobsters had been doing for a while.

Plus, with their biology biological immortality was not possible but it was a start.

The enhancements of their bodies allowed for them to live slightly longer lives than their usual 30 years.

The king had somehow made it to 120 years of age, but it was clear as day that it was approaching its limit.

The lizards were surprisingly also doing good, they went failing like usual, but I think that was more out of the leader's fear than anything else.

They hadn't made any advancements qi wise but technologically they were ahead of the monkeys. It was simple technologies like the wheel and shields but technology, nonetheless. Their single settlement was leap and bounds beyond the monkeys, however.

In those 100 years of growth, they had grown from 4000 members to a nice cozy little 20,000. They still weren't at the top of that food chain, but they were starting to become worthy opponents. Like the monkey, the lizard had made it past 100, but that was due to his longer lifespans and more advanced medicine. Similar to the monkey he was also reaching his limit.

The other two hadn't been slacking either, they'd also had made incredible changes. The thunderbird had founded its own clan in which it was the sole ruler.

It had managed to keep all of the eggs alive and had raised them to be greater than their forefathers.

This clan now dominated multiple mountain ranges and killed all the males that had opposed them and taken the women and children. This had continued for 50 years and they had managed to take over immense amounts of areas, trampling over all other life and wiping out all those who could oppose.

Thunderbirds also didn't actively cultivate so their lifespans were rather short. Yet the clan patriarch held to titles and looked as youthful as ever.

The Furnace lobster had also change things up a bit, its title as the undying one had as expected given it undead attributes.

Something that the lobster had figured out rather quickly.

Now you see there's a difference between titles given by me and titles given by the universe.

The universes titles are much weaker and at best they give you a little boost when it comes to things that fall under their purview. An advantage nonetheless but not insanely powerful.

If the universe gave the lobster the title of [The Undying One] it would simply be a bit harder to kill. Things elated to undeath would be slightly easier to learn.

The title given by me allowed it to directly resurrect the dead. The limitation of the ability wasn't clear to me, but I doubted that it would matter much.

It hadn't made huge waves with its ability, but it had sought out worthy foes. Each of them was killed of course but they would then be added to its little collection of powerful undead beasts.

This stop was an undead incursion in the making or at the least, it would be if it wasn't so laid back and relaxed.

My little check-up on the world made me realize that I hadn't made any progress when it came to actually becoming more powerful.

I couldn't directly give myself powers and I couldn't give myself a title. Yet there was something I could do. My powers were a cheat when it came to understanding and gaining concepts.

Acquiring a concept required a deep understanding of that concept and either continuous meditation or a profound revelation.

The temporal distortion would give me time to meditate and given that I had watched the evolutionary process of this world I decided to try and try to acquire a fragment of evolution. More specifically a fragment of adaptation.

When one finally gets a concept fragment, they had two options. They could either simply absorb the understanding of that fragment this would allow them to manipulate the concept and infuse it into various different techniques or objects. That was the general approach.

The other approach was focusing that fragment on one thing. Whether that be one singular object, technique, or even land. The things that could be done were slightly more limited but in exchange, the potency was greater.

I planned to use my fragment of adaptation on my body so I could get rid of this damned cancer.