Where our Hero Brainstorms in the Nude

Lin Feng's form materialized in the desert.

Due to his being a rookie in the teleportation business, he had no control of his destination, just a vague idea of the distance and direction.

Thus, as soon as he appeared, he fused with the world vitality and scanned his surroundings for signs of ninja presence.

Finding none, he let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding.

The memories he had just gleaned from assimilating the tailed beast's soul had left him jittery.

What had he just seen? Grand Dao fragments!

Not just any fragment, mind you. An upper-mortal tier one with six whole constituent principles!

That was two whole realms above his current realm.

When he had severed his Karma, the consciousness of his home world had rewarded him with some knowledge about further realms of cultivation.

A graduating present if you will.

Those who didn't sever Karma, in order to safeguard themselves better in the Void by retaining their nascent Void Force during Ascension, lacked a future direction.

Also, their Karma shackles would identify them as ingrates to the consciousness of any plane they tried to gain entry into, triggering an intense revolt if they tried to force themselves in.

He mentally patted himself in the back once again for being so wise.

According to the data, the realms were Shattered Void, followed by Grasping Principles and then Dao Seeking realm.

Grasping Principles involved using Void Force to sense the principles that underlie the fabric of reality and then weaving said principles into one's very being, gaining a small measure of control over it.

Dao Seeking involved arranging a minimum of three principles within a framework of one's understanding of the World and creating a personalized version of the fundamental laws that support the normal revolution of the cosmos.

For example, the principle of thermal equilibrium, the principle of energy conservation, the principle of entropy, and the principle of calibration could be arranged into the lower-mortal tier Grand Dao of Thermodynamics.

The more principles involved, the stronger was the Grand Dao.

Daos with three principles were Earth tier, while those with four, five and six were lower, middle and upper Mortal tier respectively.

Finally, seven, eight and nine principle Daos were lower, middle and upper Divine tier respectively.

Thus, imagine his surprise when an old dude with funky eyes containing fragments of the Grand Dao of Samsara had appeared in the memories of the one-tails, Shukaku.

The old dude had sealed the energy of something known as the ten-tails inside him while the body of the beast was stuck on the moon.

Predicting his imminent death, the man had split the energy nine ways. Shukaku being the weakest of the nine parts.

After the man's death, Shukaku had roamed the desert, eventually running upon shinobi who had sealed it into themselves to create a slaughtering machine.

Jinchuuriki, they called it. 'The power of human sacrifice', how poetic.

Lin Feng shook his head. Humans loved sacrifice as long as they weren't the ones doing the sacrificing.

He speculated that the ten-tails was an agglomeration of the world's vitality while the nine tailed beasts were aspects of it.

Based on how expansive these aspects were, the power of the beasts varied.

For example, the three-tails which represented fresh water and the eight-tails representing sea water had power in the same proportion as the amount their aspects constituted of the world.

Thus, it was logical for the nine-tails, representing the entirety of the spiritual portion of the world, to be the strongest of them all.

Then the question arose. What was the body of the ten-tails?

He had felt signs of terra forming when he had initially entered the world. At that time, he had thought that the one who had done it was a Shattered Void visitor from a mid-level plane like him.

Now, knowing what he did, he felt that the matter wasn't simple.

Lin Feng relaxed his mind and began to commune with the world will.

The night gave way to day, the harsh sun heating the sand to unendurable temperatures.

When it reached the zenith causing the harsh sunlight to glint off his golden hair, his eyes snapped open.

The Will of the World was extremely immature, barely a millennium old.

Comparing the time of Shukaku's birth, he gained confidence in his theory that the world vitality as well as the former version of the Will had been converted into the ten-tails using some artefact.

The old dude, who had the pretentious moniker of Sage of the Six Paths was obviously not the one who had come from a higher plane.

His shoddy workmanship in the creation of the tailed-beasts was enough to show that the Grand Dao fragments within his eyes were not cultivated by him personally.

This meant that whoever the Grand Dao belonged to was either missing or dead. Both outcomes were favourable for him.

The pressure on him immediately reduced and he laughed out loud, the sand coming alive with his mirth.

Without the threat of a Dao Seeking expert breathing down his neck, he could go about things with a free hand.

It was time to take over a hidden village, cultivator style.

He vanished and the tendrils of sand that had been orbiting him collapsed lifelessly.