He named this new realm the Star Immortal realm. This was due to a plan he had thought of long ago. As he broke through, he condensed his Rules. They spiraled until they formed two spheres. The spheres floated in space. Zhou Fan would be able to choose where he wanted them to go.
He thought for only a moment before they moved to his forehead, evenly spaced apart. He had called this realm the Star Immortal realm because he was condensing his Rules into dots, and they looked like stars on his forehead.
Of course, he had not seen anything like this on those from the future. From what he had learned, they were walking down an inferior path of Cultivation. They may not master a Rule until they reached the Celestial Emperor realm, which was quite frankly pathetic.
After the initial breakthrough was over, Zhou Fan began to comprehend his next Rule. The name of this Rule was Origin. All things had an origin. Time, space, and the Universe had an origin. All the Qi's had an origin. Life had an origin. Death had an origin.
Zhou Fan was the origin of most things that existed, as they would not exist without him being born. In addition, he was strictly the Origin of Cultivation. Even beings from the future had called him as such.
A dim, third star appeared on his forehead.
These new forms for the Rules were naturally not for show. They increased his connection and power with the Rules, increasing their strength and how well he could use them.
He was far beyond his previous self.
Zhou Fan didn't care too much about his breakthrough. Everything was natural, and he really didn't have to put in extreme levels of work. It was to the point that he had ignored shortcuts. He had long understood that he could theoretically increase his cultivation, by absorbing the efforts of cultivators, but had not.
It would be easy for him to take 50% of the cultivation produced by everyone and grow much quicker, but he had never done so. He had already openly declared his intentions to allow all beings in the Universe a fair chance to grow to power. If he took the efforts of others for his own use, was he not a liar?
Besides, with the clouds of time gone, there was once again nothing that could threaten him.
Zhou Fan disappeared, creating a time bubble around himself, and began to cultivate. Despite the fact that far more time passed within the bubble than outside, the Universe underwent changes while he was in the time bubble.
Most notably, a new Path Creator with supreme potential had appeared. Or hadn't appeared. Nobody actually knew if it existed or not. Ye Li had investigated, but he had failed to get a sure answer.
The theory was that this was a being that grew off of remaining unknown. The less known it was, the faster it grew. Naturally, its hiding abilities must be incredible. Despite not being an Immortal, as that would have been a noticeable occurrence, Ye Li could not confirm its location.
He was an Earth Immortal that specialized in finding things out! The fact that this new being was able to deceive even him proved that it was unique throughout the Universe, assuming it actually existed.
It was such a large event that even Zhou Fan temporarily left seclusion to get a look. He struggled to find it, but eventually spotted it. The being was humanoid, yet it was hard to get much farther from being human than it.
It had a fully pitch black body, and its arms did not end with hands, but with thin spikes. It had eyes and a mouth, but its face looked like an expertly carved pumpkin, without a single ounce of emotion behind it.
In fact, it was hardly intelligent at all. Leaf was more intelligent than it, which was saying something. Even now, Leaf barely had the intelligence of a human child.
The being thrived off of not being known at all. The fact that there were rumors of it among the Path Creators had already weakened it and slowed its growth. Unless everyone forgot about it, it would grow much slower from now on, especially now that Zhou Fan had spotted it.
Seemingly able to sense Zhou Fan's gaze, the figure turned its head towards Zhou Fan before exploding into gas.
Zhou Fan struggled to sense it as it changed form, but was able to follow it with his eyes to another location. Despite only reaching the Peak, he had struggled to view it. What an incredible being.
If it was possible to do so, Zhou Fan would love to capture it and take a look, but since that would stunt its growth to a snail's pace, he avoided it.
It was better that nobody knew of its existence. It would surely be considered a nightmare story.
One of its habits was devouring people, but nobody knew that. It was very skilled and silent. It was like a new natural disaster had descended upon the Universe, the first of its kind.
Death, Ye Li, and a few other beings that were evil aligned were much more restrained and had intelligence. They were like ticking time bombs, while the new being was like a constant disease to the life of the Universe.
Zhou Fan didn't pay attention to it for too long. He went back into seclusion and cultivated. Though it was not every day that such a being was born, he had more important things to get to.
Many years passed. Even with the insane time difference inside the barrier, a Sage Year still managed to pass for the rest of the Universe. Zhou Fan had come out a few times to deal with a few small matters, but most of that time had been spent inside of the time bubble.
His long cultivation time could be attributed to simply taking his time with it. He was in no rush. He wanted to make sure he didn't miss anything important as he cultivated.