Now that he was Immortal, there were a thousand and one things that needed Fang Yuan's attention.
He was like a starving person who had just had a massive buffet piled up before him. Deciding where to start was the hard part.
And he was well aware that he was on a time limit - not just because of his upcoming Earthly Calamity, but also as the events predicted by the Embodiment of Humanity's Collective Will drew closer and closer.
The end of the world would wait for no one!
His first order of business, and as to why he had come here to Bei Gu Mountain instead of going to Shang Clan City or a thousand other places, was to see if he could obtain the Dollhouse's true inheritance.
"Senior Brother, you're back!" the House Spirit said, bounding up to Fang Yuan as he approached.
Fang Yuan unleashed an investigative killer move, trying to analyze what the secret behind the Dollhouse was.
"This is..." he muttered to himself. "...quite a difficult situation."
The Immortal Puppet Master had not been a weak Rank 8 Gu Master - this was quite a complex and detailed method of concealing whatever the Dollhouse's secret was.
It had also managed to connect itself with Bai Ning Bing somehow - meaning that Fang Yuan would still end up needing her for the time being if he wanted to uncover the mystery that lay within.
For the time being though, he kept the Dollhouse within his aperture. "For safekeeping," he explained to the House Spirit.
It may have been useful to him if he was dealing with ordinary calamities and tribulations, however, as had been demonstrated already, the severity of his own calamities and tribulations would far exceed his estimations.
Even if he did manage to keep Beauty Gu within the Dollhouse, it would not be of that much help to him.
Fang Yuan then turned his attention to his aperture.
There had been a reason why his tribulation had been so severe.
His aperture was unlike any he had ever seen or heard of for a Rank 6 Gu Immortal to have.
One's Immortal Aperture was the embodiment of their own life experiences and ideals. No two Immortal Apertures were the same even if they were of the same path and had similar numbers of Dao Marks.
However, this Immortal Aperture was not made entirely only from Fang Yuan's own experiences.
The Embodiment of Humanity's Collective Will had been influencing it. As such the memories and experiences of countless people had been involved in its creation.
First of all, it was far bigger than any ordinary Blessed Land - it was almost on the level of a Grotto-Haven in terms of area. For that matter, there were two heavens that orbited the sky in his aperture - a Black and White Heaven, meaning that there was a proper day and night cycle.
However, it was not necessarily as big as a Grotto-Haven, it could be said to be about 90% the size of one. The reason for this was to limit the intensity of his upcoming tribulations and calamities.
Still, Fang Yuan had to fight off quite an ordeal already just to form this aperture.
The land below the two Heavens consisted of three continents.
One of these continents was filled with verdant plant life and abundant soil. Humans here lived in relative peace and abundance with very little fighting going on between them. Most of the fragmented villages that had developed stayed near the coast where there was a large amount of fish they could easily procure with very little risk. The humans here lived simply in small hamlets and lived relatively laidback lives. Above, in the sky, the Integration Formation set up by Paradise Earth Immortal Venerable continued to function.
It was drawing in the various human experiences within Fang Yuan's aperture and doing one of three things with them - converting them into blocks of Truthful Floating Ice that Fang Yuan could use to increase his attainment in the Human Path, adding Human Path dao marks to his body, or driving the refinement of the Rank 9 gu worm currently going on within his right orbit.
Currently the split was 1:1:3 between these three aspects, with a good portion of everything being dedicated to driving the refinement of the Rank 9 gu worm in question. Once that was done however, Fang Yuan could start paying attention to other aspects.
Fang Yuan called this continent 'Paradise Earth Continent' because it was clearly based off of the design of that Immortal Venerable.
The other continent that was located some distance away was filled with abundant verdant forests and was more rocky than the first continent. Here, although resources were plentiful, they were not enough for humanity to become complacent. The remnants of humanity here stayed within pockets, hunted beasts, and leaved somewhat precarious but also overall peacefu lives.
This continent was notable for the huge number of paintings around it. Not all of them were in frame, most of them were rough cave paintings, but the humans of this continent seemed to have a deep appreciation for painting and the arts in general. Unlike with the Paradise Earth Continent, they formed slightly larger groups compared to the tiny villages seen on the Paradise Earth Continent. None of them could be said to be on par with a proper city, but this place had far more towns and organized structure as compared to the Paradise Earth Continent.
Fang Yuan called this continent 'Genesis Lotus Continent.' Although Genesis Lotus had not constructed a formation like Paradise Earth did, Fang Yuan was not fooled.
For that matter, one of Genesis Lotus's paintings was still lying around. Fang Yuan had used up three of them - one of them had the Dollhouse, one of them lead him to Thieving Heaven Demonic Venerable and how to refine Rank 0 gu worms, and the third one had been the one he had filled within Shang Clan City.
The fourth one which consisted of a swirl of rainbow colors was still stored in his aperture - the time to use it had not yet arrived.
These two land masses were the largest within his aperture, but they were not all that existed. To what Fang Yuan decided to designate the 'north' of his aperture was a third continent - about a fourth of the size of the two main ones, but still considerably large. Large enough that it could've functioned as Fang Yuan's own Blessed Land had he ascended on his own.
To the south were a number of islands which were rather miniscule, probably made as a result of various other people from within the Embodiment of Humanity's Collective Will who were less significant. There was not much of interest on these islands, though Fang Yuan supposed that he could move the Gu Yue Villagers there if needed. What Fang Yuan was most interested in was this smaller northern continent. Fang Yuan's will hovered above it.
The continent in question was not as abundant in either plants or resources as either the Paradise Earth or Genesis Lotus Continent, but it was not barren either. Humans began developing within this continent. A rarity in an ordinary Immortal's Aperture that one would usually only start seeing around Rank 7, however, Fang Yuan had a Human Path Immortal Aperture. Humans were the most abundant of species here, and resources which could aide in the cultivation of the Human Path - this included Puppet Path gu worms as well.Fang Yuan called this the 'Fang Yuan Continent' in his head, because it represented the true embodiment of who he was as a person.
Initially, tribes of scattered humans appeared in this continent. They did not form groups larger than fifty or a hundred, living in isolated pockets away from each other much like those living on the Paradise Earth Continent.