Gu Yue privately cursed Lin Yan for being devious and overly cautious: "Is he already thinking about how to kill me?"

Gu Yue suppressed the chill churning in her heart, and her mind began turning again.

Since she had brought up this topic, she couldn't let the opportunity go to waste.

She would use it to secure more room to survive.

"But don't you think..."

She carefully weighed her words, then spoke with cautious deliberation.

"If you let them live, break through to higher realms, and grow stronger—wouldn't the feedback you received be greater?"

Lin Yan stopped what he was doing.

He turned to look at Gu Yue, a flicker of surprise in his eyes.

Gu Yue's heart lifted—he was listening.

As long as he was willing to hear her out, she had a chance.

"Think about it."

She pressed her advantage, her voice growing a little more animated.

"The total resources in a world are limited. If you just keep harvesting primitive civilizations, the feedback will get smaller and smaller."

"It's like planting the same crop in the same field over and over. The soil will eventually grow barren."

"But if you let them grow, push past their limits, and become stronger—how many times more feedback could each life provide you?"

The more she spoke, the more fired up she became. Her tail swished rapidly behind her, and her little paws gesticulated in the air.

"It's like raising pigs—you have to fatten them up before you slaughter them!"

Gu Yue summed up her argument with conviction.

Lin Yan's expression barely changed, but the corner of his mouth seemed to twitch.

"That's a strange comparison..."

He spoke slowly. "But the logic checks out. I'm just afraid they'll kill me."

Gu Yue froze.

She stared at Lin Yan. There was no sign of a joke on his gaunt face.

Yet his words carried a note of... timidity? That was completely at odds with his demeanor.

Lin Yan's gaze settled on her, cold and piercing.

"You're a case in point."

Gu Yue suddenly felt a chill creep up her neck.

She understood then—

When Lin Yan looked at her, he didn't see a silly dragon who could whine and act cute.

He saw a ticking time bomb, a living example of "creation turning on its creator."

Wasn't she the perfect example?

She had started as a microscopic life-form he had created on a whim, then devoured and evolved her way to the point of breaking through dimensions and reaching the real world.

She had become an existence who could stand on equal footing with him—or at least bargain with him for now.

If that projection at the end of time didn't make her wary...

If she hadn't yet figured out what cards he was holding, she would have turned on him long ago.

If a being like her emerged in every era, what kind of Creator God could he still claim to be?

Sooner or later, his own creations would create him to death.

Gu Yue looked at Lin Yan's utterly impassive face and cursed him under her breath.

This bastard wasn't just devious—he was absurdly cautious, too.

Wait—

Was he already thinking about how to kill her?

She instinctively drew her neck in, trying to make herself look smaller and more harmless.

Fortunately, she had deliberately kept her size in check these past few days. Her cultivation had grown, but she still looked like the same chubby little dragon.

That was exactly why—

She knew this beast all too well. If her body had grown along with her cultivation, she'd probably already be on the bastard's dinner table.

Lin Yan withdrew his gaze and let the subject drop.

He raised a hand and tapped lightly.

The air began to tremble.

The flow of time was being rewritten.

Gu Yue's eyes widened as she watched the scenes inside the World Membrane change at a visible speed.

The Sun and Moon spun around so quickly they looked like flickering lights, day and night blurring into a single band of light.

Clouds gathered and scattered across the sky at incredible speed, like a time-lapse sped up a thousandfold.

Inside the world, civilization evolved at a visible pace.

First came primitive tribes—

A group of humans clad in animal hides danced around a bonfire.

Then came agricultural civilization—

Forests were felled, farmland spread along the rivers, and fields were divided into neat squares.

Simple stone walls enclosed the beginnings of a primitive city.

People patrolled the ramparts, clutching long bronze spears.

Then came the city-state era—

A stone temple rose in the city center, incense curling into the air as countless tiny figures knelt in reverent worship.

Then humanity appeared.

Not primitive people who had just climbed down from the trees, but humans in the true sense of the word—civilized people.

They built houses, cultivated farmland, and domesticated livestock.

They created writing, established laws, and founded kingdoms.

Trade, wars, and alliances sprang up between the city-states.

In the blink of an eye, a fantastical world like an enchanted forest unfolded before them.

In just half a day, an entire human civilization had been recreated.

Gu Yue stared in stunned silence.

She knew Lin Yan wielded the Time Authority.

But seeing him compress the evolution of a civilization spanning tens of thousands of years into half a day—

Still filled her with an indescribable sense of awe, deep in her soul.

Was this the power of the God of Time?

With information from the real universe as a template, recreating a civilization was as simple for him as copying and pasting.

There was no need to design or intervene. He only had to press fast-forward, and civilization would develop on its own along a predetermined path.

But soon, her gaze fell on the dazed Soul Beasts in the Soul Beast Forest.

Her body stiffened slightly.

They were her kin from memory—

Beast God Di Tian, Bi Ji, Xiong Jun, Myriad Demon King, Scarlet King...

The top predators from the most glorious age of the Soul Beast Clan.

Gu Yue's eyes stung.

But she knew they were, in the end, merely flowers that looked alike.

Lin Yan didn't notice her feelings.

Or rather, he didn't care.

His gaze shifted to the two faintly visible balls of light deep within the Small World.

They were two sets of soul data he had deliberately preserved in the Ninth Era.

Qian Yuhan, Poseidon.

The Angel God and the Sea God.

He had deliberately kept them in the Ninth Era so he could cast them into the new era and keep harvesting them.

The feedback those two provided was far too potent. Destroying them after just one round would be a waste. They had to be recycled.

At a thought from him, the two balls of light were enveloped by the power of time and cast into the cycle of the new era.

Having finished, Lin Yan clapped his hands as if he had just wrapped up some trivial chore.

"All right. I'll leave the rest to you."

Gu Yue came back to her senses and blinked in confusion. "What do you mean, leave it to me?"

"You're the Heavenly Dao of this world."

Lin Yan spoke as if it were obvious, with a hint of impatience that seemed to say, "Do I really have to spell it out?"

"Managing the world is your job. Cleansing the evil energy, balancing the elements, guiding civilization—haven't you been doing all that this whole time?"

Gu Yue opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but realized she had no answer.

He did have a point.

She had done the same thing in that ultra-ancient era.

She had cleansed the corruption of evil energy, awakened the Soul Beasts it had tainted, and guided the development of civilization.

The only difference was that back then, she had chosen to do it herself. Now, someone else was assigning the work to her.

But why did he sound so much like a hands-off boss?

"What about you?" she couldn't help asking.