The Great (?) Li Yuwen Returns!

Is society meritocratic?

This is a question often posed to university students in sociology 101 and other people with way too much time on their hands. Some hopeful millionaires might be inclined to agree with the prompt. After all, even before the advent of capitalism, it was possible to go from rags to riches provided you took advantage of the right opportunities at the right time. A more anti-establishment person might argue that your family background was the most important, and that the lower classes were powerless to rise up outside of a few exceptions. Some social Darwinists could say that "talent," whether in the form of intelligence or sociability was the determining factor.

If I wanted to find the truth, I could simply look into the life of every person on earth, come up with a few metrics to determine "success," and judge whether inborn or self-nurtured factors were the most important-- if society really allocated more resources to the talented and cunning rather than the rich and wealthy. But if you really thought about it, this type of question is impossible to answer, not to mention the impossibility of meritocracy itself.

Meritocracy is unfair and cruel. The patriarch of a great sect would naturally say to his followers that disciples would be judged fairly and given cultivation resources according to their aptitude, but even the most upstanding Daoist sects show favoritism to the founding clans. Even if the sect was fair, it naturally followed that the talented disciples groomed into elders would have more resources to give to their children.

It doesn't matter what sort of doctrine you preach. Unless you rob people of their instinctual greed or solve scarcity, there would be no fairness in the world. Eventually, the veil of civility is peeled away to reveal a world where strength determines everything. Every cultivator, from the lowest outer disciple washing dishes to the regional hegemon is merely a player in a game for more resources and to eliminate others before they could get their hands on said resources. To say nothing of backstabbing friends to advance your position, it isn't uncommon in these dog-eat-dog cultivation worlds to kill your own family just to improve by a small realm.

I suppose I should rephrase my initial question. Do you wish your world was a cultivation world? Do you desire a world where people trample on each other for a pittance of spirit stones, where a young master could annihilate your bloodline for looking at him the wrong way, where there's no loyalty or lofty ideals except the pursuit of a higher cultivation realm, and even with the pathetically low chances of a breakthrough, would only end with you groveling at the feet of an ancient expert who wants to make you their slave?

Even if you were granted heaven-defying talent in exchange for this transformation, there would naturally be plenty of people who reject that kind of world. This kratocracy, the rule of the strong that is innate to cultivation. But there are plenty more who would accept it.

"So, what do you think about my deal, mortal?"

I recline further into the cushions of my velvet-red sofa, propped up on my side by my elbow as a proper cosmic god should. I even swirled a wine glass just to complete the asshole look. Don't worry, even though this is an R-rated novel, I'm only drinking artificial grape juice that they sell for a dollar at grocery stores. I really miss this stuff after being gone from earth for a few million years.

Speaking of earth, get a load of this guy I found. He's real protagonist material.

"What do I have to do in exchange? You're not giving me this… talent for no reason, are you? Do I have to give up my soul or make a religion in your name or something?" Jack Wang asked cautiously.

I summoned a handkerchief and wiped my lips. "Nope. No strings attached. I'm just giving someone enough providence to reach the emperor stage. What comes next is up to you. There's not much I could gain by converting a tiny planet like this. I'm only interested in what you will do."

Jack furrows his brows in deep frustration. What an amusing expression. You don't even need to read his mind to know what he's thinking.

"I reject your offer. It's a tempting deal, but what if my enemies become stronger? If this new world of yours depends on strength, couldn't they just hire more people to kill me? I'd be making the world a worse place and hardly improving my situation."

Hah, look at this kid. No older than 15 but already talking about enemies and taking revenge. When I was 15, I was discovering "material" on the internet…

I shake my head and smile condescendingly. "Do you really think you can take revenge on the people who killed your parents the way you're progressing? You've come up with many ways to get rid of them, but I'll tell you in advance that all your plans have a pitifully low chance of succeeding."

"They aren't-" He starts.

I project the image of a man in a blue uniform, slumped over in an office chair and tied by the arms. Though the uniform covered most of his skin, parts of ripped fabric around his body revealed heavy bruising.

"If you become a police officer or lawyer, your investigation into the case is constantly hampered by the police chief who covered up your parents' death. If you manage to somehow get the story to the media, it doesn't go anywhere before you're dead with two bullets in the back of your head by suicide. The case goes cold after that."

"So the police were in on it after all?" Jack wants to argue more, but I confirmed the suspicion that had been brewing in his mind for years. Greater than the rage of having his family taken from him was the sinking feeling that the institution that was supposed to deliver justice for him had utterly betrayed him.

I hover to his side and whisper in his ear. "With my gift, you can be a king among kings. In a few years, you won't even remember these insects."

In fact, I guarantee your money back 100% if you don't become the planet's hegemon within 500 years.

Jack pushes me away with a glare, as if I couldn't annihilate every molecule of his body and erase his karmic threads so thoroughly that not a single person on this planet would remember him. But that's what makes him a protagonist.

"But if you can change the entire world without anyone noticing, can't you just revive my family? I'm willing to give up my soul for that."

I laugh, borrowing a sound clip from young master #52983 that I curb stomped a million years ago. I'm not very good with voice acting, so I need to utilize the special effects from other people.

"Do you think your soul is worth that much? It isn't even refined. Your mind is decent, but at this stage a man looking for revenge is as common as sand," Jack frowns again, realizing that perhaps his body and soul weren't worth as much as stories about demons proclaimed.

"Even if I wanted to, I can't revive your parents. Once a soul goes into reincarnation, nothing can bring it back. There are things even gods can't do," I lied.

Although Jack Wang has the beginnings of a tyrannical Dao heart in him unwilling to submit to contracts, he will ultimately be swayed by my offer. This is inevitable across all simulations. Between ruling a ruined world and continuing in a world where he has no future, the instinctual greed written deeply into his genes wins.

"I'll do it. Give me this talent and I'll succeed beyond what you can imagine."

"Not going to read the fine print? I thought you were smarter than that," I smirk.

"I don't have the power to enforce any kind of contract with you. All I need is a chance," Jack declares with a snort. "Do your thing."

"If you say so…"

If he had asked before heading in so impulsively, I would have told him that his younger brother was still alive and was being groomed by the gangsters into an assassin, and was deceived into thinking Jack was responsible for his family's death. When they inevitably meet, a series of coincidences results in Jack not learning about the assassin's true identity. They develop a blood rivalry that ends with one of the brothers dying tragically. I'm not joking about this, it's really possible for a person to have this kind of dramatic life.

But people like him are the ones I need to populate this remade planet.

I wave my hands and Jack Wang falls into a deep slumber, falling back to his orphanage thousands of miles below. Rising from my sofa, I begin reversing the flow of time in the neighboring star clusters. There were barely any interplanetary civilizations in this part of the milky way, which made reversing the karmic threads a simple matter. I just needed to adjust the memories of some alien astronomers. One by one the celestial bodies began orbiting in reverse, their inhabitants shedding decades of memories. I hold the karmic threads attached to me and the threads attached to those threads, preserving them as time distorts. 2020… 2010… 2000… 1990… 1980… 1960…1910… There.

Battle of the Somme, October 1916. An injured Frenchman attempts to advance with this unit, but the vicious German defense unleashes fields of mustard gas in hopes of stopping the combined allied offensive. As he lays catatonically in a ditch, all the filth and poison and death of the world accumulates in his body. His comatose body is recovered after the encounter, but he makes a miraculous recovery in the hospital, bearing a strength impossible for his body and the vigor of a man ten years his junior. He had stepped on the first stage of bone tempering, achieving something that the fraudulent Chinese martial arts schools had failed to do for centuries.

This discovery is covered up by a wealthy aristocrat working as a doctor, who invites the man to study the secrets of body cultivation. There are whispers in the elite circles of the western world that men should no longer fear blades or bullets.

Warlord era, 1918, China. The subordinate of a Manchurian warlord discovers an ancient cultivation manual and a recipe for qi condensation pills. Although the recipe is incorrect, his usage of a 500 year old ginseng causes considerable spiritual energy to consolidate in the pill and reawakens his decayed divine sense. By merit of being the first to achieve the great dao in this world, he is blessed with frightening cultivation speed and reaches the great circle of qi condensation within the year. Though a cultivator without any spells is weak when compared to body refiners, it is nonetheless enough to suppress mortals. He kills his superior and terrorizes the region before falling to the crossfire between the nationalists and communists.

Parties around China seize his research and begin experimenting on their citizenry to augment their military, which was decades behind the western powers. Later in the Sino-Japanese war, squadrons of Daoists with illusion magic inflict great casualties on the imperial army, sparking a mini arms race between the two sides to create the deadliest spells. When the American forces intervene and end the war, they bring home the secrets of cultivation.

MKULTRA, 1953. Emboldened by the discovery of magic and alchemy in China, the CIA selects dozens of citizens in the US, Canada, and Denmark and forces them to undergo medical trials, using the dao of alchemy to weaken the mind and render it open to external influence. One particular woman with an unusual degree of spiritual sensitivity comes into contact with a potent cocktail of LSD and a dozen other drugs. By dissociating her mind, soul, and body, she gains control over all three and becomes free. She experiences an astral projection event, her soul escaping the bounds of earth and meeting… me.

I piece back together the tattered remains of her mind and send her home.

With the three Great Daos of the xian race established, the road to immortality is open for earth.

As any storyteller should, I next arrange our neighbors.

Since there were no other species within our solar system, I decided to populate each planet with some friendly wildlife. Scientists were going to have a huge headache trying to figure out how these guys got here. For Mercury, I already had a bunch of light elemental souls from the time I may or may not have performed a genocide, so I spread them across the surface and let them accumulate energy by themselves to reform their bodies. There would also be a few sunflame dragon eggs nesting at a comfortable 167 degrees celsius, which the elementals could worship. Mercury wasn't the hottest planet despite being the closest to the sun since it had no atmosphere, but this made it ideal for light element creatures.

For Venus, since it was often made into a jungle in sci-fi, I cleared up the atmosphere and switched it around for some more breathable air, although it was still quite dense and wouldn't be habitable for weaker humans. It shames me a bit to say this, but I wasn't creative enough to build a jungle from scratch, so I copy-pasted some designs from a few secret realms I visited in the past. As for the fauna, I created a few hundred thousand species from scratch and let them run free. The biodiversity was still way too low compared to a real ecosystem, so I sped up its flow of time by a few million times and let things evolve naturally. Oh, I also put some poison elementals there from the time I killed a ton of those guys.

As for Mars, I didn't really feel like making this place completely habitable, so I just carved out a few cave systems in the glaciers, filling them with a hundred million ice elemental souls. Look, I really had nothing to do with the destruction of the elemental kingdom 200 years ago. There would also be a small ecosystem of predators and scavengers in the cave systems I created in the great mountains of Mars, but this would just be filler detail.

There really wasn't much I could do with Jupiter given that it was just a ball of gas and its moons were completely barren, but then I had the idea of making floating islands. These islands would be formed around a core that emitted a powerful anti-gravity field which would keep it afloat. The science behind this was completely bullshit because anti-gravity stones couldn't form in these conditions, so I just wrote this new law into the local physics and hoped no one would notice. I populated Jupiter with wind attribute flying creatures, who would rest and compete for resources and nesting grounds on these floating islands. There would also be many wind elementals. I should remind judgemental readers that the elemental kingdom provoked me first.

And you know the giant storm on the surface of Jupiter that's the size of an entire planet? That will now be a comically large dragon. Because I can. Let's hope the humans don't piss it off.

Uranus and Neptune would both be ocean worlds with no islands. To be honest, if you were strong enough to reach here, you could make your own island. I filtered their oceans of ammonia and methane, recycling them to form a breathable atmosphere. I couldn't figure out how to get their temperature and atmospheres right without dragging these planets way closer to the sun, and I didn't want to change physics again, so I threw a few demons into the planetary core and called it a day.

In terms of wildlife, Uranus had the better treatment, and I filled it with a variety of water-attribute beasts and a few leviathans the size of small moons as the apex predators. Neptune, on the other hand, had its entire ocean floor infested with tentacle monsters and your standard fare of eldritch horrors. If your soul wasn't tempered above the nascent soul stage, you would not be returning as the same person who went in.

I was a bit groggy at this point, but I wasn't even done with renovating the… 60 star systems closest to us. I guess I'll leave it to my clone.

"Come forth, slave!" I beckoned.

A stunningly handsome man suddenly appeared.

"Seed the star systems around us with life and spiritual energy equivalent to earth. Fill the planets without civilization with beasts. Oh, and also find an alien princess who is trying to escape from an arranged marriage so she can leave for earth and fall in love with a useless man here."

The clone could be more effective if I had let it have its own consciousness, but I had gotten tired of being near someone with my own personality. I just have that effect on people.

As my clone teleported to Alpha Centauri to begin its great work, I stretched out my arms and yawned. From the moment I returned to this universe, I'd been looking forward to laying in my dorm and reading webnovels.

I didn't really tamper with my karmic connections that much, so even though a century of history had been changed, my relationships and social status should mostly be the same. I just had to prepare an appropriate body. The build of a Greek god with waist length hair didn't quite match the image of a chubby university student.

To solve this, I use the second stage of the Human Genesis Technique combined with a transcendent cultivation base to customize the innate talent of a body. Oh, you thought spiritual roots were the providence of heaven and couldn't be changed? Peasant. I bet you took a thousand years to reach nascent soul.

Let's see… What matches the level of a lazy 19-year-old cultivator with slightly above average aptitude? Assuming I have 6 hours of free time, and spend 80% of it doing nothing productive, that leaves about an hour of cultivation on average each day. I started later than recommended at age 13, so that would make me roughly a 4th stage qi-condensation disciple, with $58,000 invested in pills. This was quite terrible, considering I went from nothing to foundation establishment in 3 years when I first traveled to the cultivation universe.

Since the 5th stage of qi condensation was a common bottleneck, we can just say that I became unmotivated to cultivate further upon reaching the 4th stage. Why cultivate for real when you can read about it on the internet? Actually, I wouldn't be reading cultivation novels in this new world, since that would be too close to reality for comfort. If this version of me read about an untalented protagonist going from nothing to an expert within a decade, he would be spitting blood with envy.

With this, the preparations in place. My clone was populating other star systems with life and fortuitous opportunities. Jack Wang and the children of heaven I arranged were blessed with talent and destiny. My mortal body was prepared with an adequate cultivation base. Now was not the time to delay. I finally had the power to achieve my dreams… To be a mob character in an urban fantasy novel.