Gu Yue Secretly Cursed Lin Yan for Being Both Cunning and Overly Cautious: "Could He Be Thinking About How to Kill Me Right Now?"

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

Since this topic had been raised, she could not let it go to waste.

She had to use it to secure more room for survival.

"But don't you think..."

She carefully chose her words before speaking with caution.

"If you let them live, break through to higher realms, and grow stronger—wouldn't you receive more feedback?"

Lin Yan stopped moving.

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

Gu Yue was secretly delighted—he had listened.

As long as he was willing to listen, she had a chance.

"Think about it."

She pressed on while the iron was hot, her voice becoming a little lighter.

"The total amount in a world is limited. If you just keep harvesting low-level civilizations, the feedback will only diminish."

"It's like repeatedly growing the same crop in the same plot of land. The soil will eventually become barren."

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

The more she spoke, the more animated she became. Her tail swished rapidly behind her, while her little claws gestured wildly through the air.

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

Gu Yue concluded with conviction.

Lin Yan's expression did not change much, though the corner of his mouth seemed to twitch.

"Though that analogy is strange..."

He spoke slowly. "The logic is sound, but I'm afraid they'll kill me."

Gu Yue froze.

She looked at Lin Yan. There was no trace of a joke on that gaunt face.

Yet what he had said carried a kind of... cowardice utterly at odds with his temperament.

Lin Yan's gaze fell upon her, cold and sharp.

"You are an example."

Gu Yue suddenly felt a chill around her neck.

She suddenly understood—

When Lin Yan looked at her, he did not see a foolish dragon who could act cute and complain.

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

Wasn't she the best example?

From a microscopic lifeform he had created on a whim, she had devoured and evolved all the way until she broke through the dimensional barrier and came to the real world.

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

If not for that projection at the end of time making her wary,

If not for the fact that she had yet to figure out all his trump cards, she would have turned against him long ago.

If beings like this were born in every era, why would he still be a Creator God?

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

Gu Yue looked at Lin Yan's utterly impassive face and cursed inwardly.

This bastard was not only cunning, but excessively cautious too.

Wait—

Could he be thinking about how to kill her right now?

She subconsciously shrank her neck, trying her best to make herself look smaller and more harmless.

Fortunately, she had deliberately kept her size under control these past few days. Although her cultivation had risen, she still looked like a chubby little baby dragon.

That was precisely why—

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

Lin Yan withdrew his gaze and did not continue the topic.

He raised a hand and lightly tapped.

The air began to tremble.

The flow of time was being rewritten.

Gu Yue widened her eyes as she watched the scenes within the world membrane begin changing at a visible pace.

The sun and moon cycled as quickly as flickering lights, day and night blending into a blurred band of radiance.

Clouds rapidly gathered and dispersed in the sky, like time-lapse footage sped up thousands of times.

Within the world, civilization evolved at a visible pace.

At first, there were primitive tribes—

A group of humans draped in animal skins danced around a bonfire.

Then came agricultural civilization—

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

Simple stone walls enclosed the rudimentary outline of a primitive city.

Figures patrolled atop the walls, holding bronze spears.

Then came the age of city-states—

A stone temple rose in the center of the city, incense smoke curling through the air as countless little people knelt in fearful worship.

Then, humans appeared.

Not the sort of primitive people who had just climbed down from trees, but humans in the true sense of civilization.

They built houses, cultivated farmland, and domesticated livestock.

They created writing, established laws, and founded kingdoms.

Trade, war, and alliances began to emerge between city-states.

In the blink of an eye, a dreamlike world resembling a fairy-tale forest appeared before them.

In merely half a day, an entire human civilization had been replicated.

Gu Yue stared in stunned disbelief.

She knew Lin Yan possessed authority over time.

But seeing him compress tens of thousands of years of civilization into a mere half-day with her own eyes.

Still filled her with an indescribable shock from the depths of her soul.

Was this the authority of the God of Time?

With the data of the real universe as a template, replicating civilization was as simple for him as copying and pasting.

There was no need for design and no need for intervention. He only had to press fast-forward, and civilization would grow on its own along its predetermined path.

But soon, her gaze fell upon the bewildered soul beasts within the Soul Beast Forest.

Her body stiffened slightly.

They were members of her race from her memories—

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

They were all apex predators from the most glorious era of the soul beast race.

Gu Yue's eyes stung slightly.

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

Lin Yan did not notice her emotions.

Or rather, he simply did not care.

His gaze shifted to the two faint, flickering masses of light deep within the small world.

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

Qian Yuhan and Poseidon.

The Angel God and the Sea God.

He had deliberately preserved them in the Ninth Era precisely so he could place them into the new era and continue harvesting them.

The feedback those two gave was far too immense. Destroying them in one go would be too wasteful; they had to be recycled.

With a thought from him, the two masses of light were wrapped in the power of time and cast into the reincarnation cycle of the new era.

After finishing everything, Lin Yan clapped his hands, as if he had merely completed some trivial task.

"Alright. You handle the rest."

Gu Yue came back to her senses and blinked blankly. "What do you mean, I handle it?"

"You are the Heavenly Dao of this world."

Lin Yan's tone was matter-of-fact, even carrying a hint of impatient annoyance, as though saying, Do I really need to spell this out?

"Managing the world is your responsibility. Clearing evil energy, balancing the elements, guiding civilization—haven't you always been doing all that?"

Gu Yue opened her mouth, wanting to say something, only to find herself speechless.

It did seem to be true.

In that ultra-ancient time and space, that was what she had done as well.

She cleansed evil energy pollution, awakened corrupted soul beasts, and guided the development of civilization.

Only, back then she had done it because she wanted to. Now, someone else was assigning it to her.

But why did his tone sound so much like he was dumping the work on her?

"And what about you?" she could not help asking.