Freedom - 130

After seeing the demon race, Zhou Fan went around to the other planets. There were many different species and some of them looked like species from earth. There were also species that weren't even humanoid like the bees.

Zhou Fan didn't bother with them for long as he had already seen most of the species. There would be no more evolutions or species that weren't already on the planet for a while since Zhou Fan had canceled the life Qi barrier.

After taking another look around the solar system and seeing that nothing had changed, Zhou Fan went to the grand hall. He arrived quickly and walked through the entrance, but there was nobody there.

With a single glance, Zhou Fan was able to tell that it had been explored, but not really used. The book was gone from its place on the throne and some of the couches had clearly been sat on. Whoever had visited had clearly been in humanoid form, or a celestial since the only couches that had been sat on were the small ones and not the huge ones.

Despite the size of the grand hall, it was designed for existences in humanoid form or existences simply small enough to walk around normally. Even the biggest furniture would only hold someone the size of a house. One issue was that the throne was too small for existences like the titanosaur that had huge humanoid forms.

It probably wouldn't matter since the only person with enough talent to maybe take the throne from Anna would be the mermaid boy, who was far too young. Overall, the grand hall was a comfortable and luxurious place, and Zhou Fan decided to rest there until enough time had passed for things to become interesting.

As of now, all the interesting people were either in seclusion or wandering around the solar system and talking to the new sentient species. To Zhou Fan, all of that was boring enough for him to want to enter seclusion himself, but all the interesting things would pass before he came out.

Anna would have broken through, the mermaid boy would have probably reached the 3rd level of void traversing, and the other rulers would have probably finished everything with the new species.

Therefore, Zhou Fan planned on relaxing in the grand hall for a year or two. Once that time passed, the mermaid boy would have started exploring the upper world and he could watch that.

Zhou Fan spent the next three years living in the grand hall. He would often look at the Zhou World and watch people go through their life journeys. Sometimes, he wished he hadn't been the first cultivator. If he hadn't, he may be able to work up from the bottom and eventually reach the peak instead of starting from the top and staying there.

Of course, Zhou Fan wouldn't actually prefer that. It was just a thought that crossed his mind every now and then.

At some point in the third year, Zhou Fan saw Jack at the entrance of the mermaid cave. He looked much more mature than before and only carried his trident with him as he left the mermaid cave for the first time. Not a single person followed him.

By now, Jack had reached the 9th level of soul formation. Despite Finley's persuasion, he decided that it was time for him to leave the cave and explore the world, and he wanted to do it alone. Zhou Fan teleported above Jack and started watching him on his journey.

As Jack left the cave, he started swimming around the bottom of the ocean. It was much darker than the mermaid cave that was lit up by many glowing stones and other light producing things. Luckily, Jack was at the soul formation realm and even if he didn't use his divine sense, he would be able to see just fine.

Jack spent a couple of days swimming around the bottom section of the ocean, seeing many species he had never even heard of and also many types of ores and rocks.

Despite the fact that he was a mermaid, Jack preferred to use legs. Therefore, instead of swimming up, he transformed his fins into legs and flew up. He broke through the bottom layer very quickly and arrived at the middle, then the top, and finally, Jack broke through the water and arrived in the air.

At first, he was completely unprepared and started to struggle to breathe. However, he soon got used to it and put his arms out, enjoying the air. Since he had been born, he had never once been out of water. To him, the air felt so free and peaceful. After relishing in the air for a bit, Jack started to actually look around. For thousands of miles, there was no land whatsoever, so Jack started flying in a random direction. He started off slow, but sped up faster and faster until he was going thousands of miles per hour.

Since he had never even left the cave before, he had never been able to move fast without running into a wall. Flying in the endless air gave him a feeling of freedom that was hard to describe. His initial homesickness was quickly replaced by happiness. With his speed, it didn't take long before Jack saw land.

What he saw was untouched land that was only occupied by roaming beasts, not to be confused with the beasts from the beast lands since most of the beasts at the place Jack arrived didn't have any real sentience, and those that did had very little of it.

Even so, Jack, who knew nothing of the world outside the cave, excitedly landed on the ground. He walked around the terrain, which was a forest, and looked at all the new things. The first thing he interacted with was the ground. The dirt was so dry and hard, unlike the little bit of dirt in the mermaid cave.

The next thing he was interested in was the trees.