202 Idea's - 202

Zhou Fan's idea was to somehow combine a large number of souls into a greater soul. He wasn't quite sure how to do it, or if it was even possible, but it was the only idea he had.

He didn't want to do such a thing since he would need to kill living things in order to collect the souls needed, but he had no other ideas.

If he hadn't thought so deeply about the idea of a universal consciousness, then he wouldn't have too much of a problem with simply giving up and not doing it.

However, as he thought about it more and more, he realized that such a thing would change everything. It could help manipulate the universe itself under Zhou Fans command. He would also be able to completely ignore everything for an immense amount of time and still have the worlds be intact.

Zhou Fan thought of the problem for a very long time, but he still couldn't think of any other way. 

Eventually, he simply accepted that he may need to use the soul combining method in order to create the universal consciousness. However, that problem was not without its own issues.

The souls that would be merged could not be weak, mortal souls. Even the souls of void traversing cultivators wouldn't be enough. If he truly wanted to create a universal consciousness, something with the power to watch over the entire universe and simultaneously do millions of things at once, he would at least need billions of god realm souls.

Also, he would need to completely wipe each and every one of those souls to a blank slate. In other words, it was simply impossible with his current strength.

Before completely giving up, Zhou Fan continued to think of other possibilities.

After a while, he felt that it was possible that the cosmic dao could give him some sort of understanding towards a different possibility. After all, it was essentially doing what he wanted to achieve with less interference.

Sadly, he didn't know how long it would take for him to understand something from the cosmic dao. The only thing left was reaching 100% comprehension, but he wasn't confident in facing whatever he had faced the last time.

Another possible option was getting much stronger and using or cutting off a part of his soul in order to control everything. It seemed much less evil than killing a bunch of people, but, once again, he didn't know how long that would take.

There was also the possibility that his mortal dao would naturally gain a consciousness, or he may be able to influence it in that direction. So far, that seemed to be the most preferable option, but that may also be impossible.

Regardless of the method, it would have to wait until he was stronger. The only thing he could do to start making a universal consciousness is lay out a sketch.

After thinking about the things he could do, he decided to first expand the range of his mortal dao on the planets. So far, the mortal dao was only taking up the space that the planet and the sun was within and the immediate area around them. The Zhou solar system was a bit of an outlier since it had an entire space containing multiple planets and a sun.

The mortal dao there had the biggest size out of any mortal dao area in three galaxy clusters.

Since his mortal dao would have to fully cover the entire universe at some point, he decided that he might as well start expanding them now. The mortal dao's size would grow to cover the entire galaxy they were in.

Even if the galaxy had two planets connected to the mortal dao, it would still only reach the edges of the galaxy. That would also cause the chaos Qi in almost every galaxy in the three galaxy clusters to be turned into the various Qi's.

The only reason Zhou Fan didn't expand the mortal dao's area past the galaxies was because he feared that the cosmic dao would not sit by and allow it to happen. He felt that he was already taking a big risk by pushing it this far. Any more and the chance of danger shot up.

He would have to wait until he grew stronger to expand anymore. Although he still may not be strong enough to contest with the full power of the cosmic dao, he was gambling that the cosmic dao would sense his increased power and feel that giving up such a small amount of territory was fine. After all, it had an entire universe under its command. What's three galaxy clusters compared to everything else in existence?

Of course, he was simply speculating that the cosmic dao was in control of the entire universe and not just a certain section. He had never had any way to prove whether it did or not, but he assumed that it did.

Otherwise, he felt that it wouldn't be so unmoved when someone like Zhou Fan began to exist.

Thinking about it, Zhou Fan had also been assuming that it had some sort of consciousness. In reality, the likelihood of it being similar to a non sentient being was also fairly high. After all, it had never really provoked him. The only time he had ever sensed danger was when he was pushing himself too far.

For example, messing with the bit of the cosmic dao in the center of earth before he was strong enough, or nearing the center of a galaxy cluster.

When he wasn't doing anything crazy, the cosmic dao seemed to think of him as nothing more than a rowdy ant.

That was also one of the reasons Zhou Fan felt he could get away with expanding the size of his mortal dao to the edges of the galaxies.

Based on his personal opinion and experience, Zhou Fan believed that the cosmic dao had some sort of consciousness, but was in a constant state of hibernation or something else.

After all, it had most likely been existing since the beginning of the universe. He felt that was likely because it was a part of the universe like his mortal dao was a part of him.