“The Thunder master has exposed himself as well,” said Li Hao. “Senior Dao Chess should accelerate your refinement of the dao universe and the queen should take everyone away with her. Panth, absorb the remnants of the world strength and refine the entire world. We’ll leave after that.”

Those that Li Hao called out sprang into motion. The dao chess was rather embarrassed that all of their recent gains had gone to it. But after giving it some thought, the treasure didn’t say anything. It did indeed stand a chance of fully recovering to its previous peak if it fully absorbed Gemini’s dao universe.

Eighth rank!

The dao chess hesitated no longer.

Number Two, Void, and Fog Mountain had no opinions otherwise. Everyone had recently ascended and undergone a large battle in short order. That was their harvest. Fighting powerhouses, seventh, and eighth ranks was far more important than devouring some energy.

Li Hao looked off to the side again, at the incredibly timid Kang Han. The young man smiled and randomly extracted a certain sum of world and dao strength. Li Hao balled them together and refined them into one, then tossed it at the lost Kang Han.

“Fellow Daoist Kang Han, this is as far as we need you for a guide. Be careful on your own. No one should’ve paid attention to you earlier, so you can go now.”

Kang Han’s jaw dropped. You guys are letting me go?

“Senior... this...”

“Go on back, take advantage of the fact that we’re still here. Most people won’t dare venture forth in this area for a bit. Powerhouses will be on the scene as soon as we’re gone.”

A complicated look entered Kang Han’s eyes. These cultivators of the four regions were terrifying. They lost themselves in bloodlust as soon as they entered the four regions. But at the same time, these people didn’t seem all that terrifying either.

They listened to reason.

It was a very complex read of the situation, but he also knew that staying any longer would be the real danger. And so, Kang Han inclined his body without saying much else.

“Then this junior takes my leave!” He wanted to say a few words, but elected to leave quietly instead.

Li Hao quietly took stock of the various great daos within Gemini’s dao universe. It trembled, as did the world. General fear rose in the people and countless numbers of them entered the divine nation. A great portion entered the hell beneath the divine nation as well.

There were so many people in the queen’s divine nation these days that they could not be counted.

Li Hao looked on silently. They’d silenced too many worlds as of late. There were many major worlds and even more mid, minor worlds. Most of their people had been thrown into the divine nation...

How many were there? Tens of billions?

Or hundreds of billions?

The believers of the divine nation almost all drew on chaos force. The nonbelievers in the queen’s hell were worse off. They could only make use of a bit of chaos strength to ensure that they survived.

As opposed to saying that the divine nation was a world, it was more like a warehouse to store humans. It wasn’t viable in the long run. Li Hao was silencing too many worlds these days, creating a combined population of humans, monster spirits, and other races within the divine nation.

The young man couldn’t move them elsewhere, so was he supposed to just leave them in the divine nation? Would they just become numb tools of faith then?

Li Hao watched as the queen added to her population again. In the previous fight that involved the Human King and Dragon master, he’d discovered that his strength was far beneath theirs.

Of that, there was no doubt.

There was also one key difference. These people had something he didn’t have, and lacked other things that he possessed. What they had might be called responsibility. The Human King was in charge of New Martial’s rise and the Dragon master had to look out for the chaos race.

They belabored under certain restrictions.

The Dragon master was also limited to the four regions, whereas the Human King was hobbled by the New Martial. He’d found some freedom only recently. The man also might not be able to be this carefree for that much longer.

It was Li Hao who didn’t suffer from any of this. While he’d traveled with Silver Moon all this time, he simply brought the world along in his wake. It didn’t bring any trouble or cause issues for him. He could go wherever he wished.

Multiple trains of thought ran through Li Hao’s mind. It wasn’t that he felt that the Human King and Dragon master were worse off... but that he’d conquered so many worlds, and in the process realized that he had one thing more than the other two.

Perhaps it could be defined as hypocrisy, if one was cynical. Or it could be viewed as pity, if one was generous.

He pitied outsiders, so when he conquered their worlds, he tended to take an interest in their welfare. He wouldn’t leave them be and let so many living beings just die.

The Human King and Dragon master didn’t care about the general populations of the worlds they came across. They only cared about their own.

Perhaps that was hypocrisy, because once someone took a vested interest in the people, they should take it one step further. They shouldn’t do as he did and just throw them all into the queen’s divine nation. There was no society, civilization, agriculture, or anything else there.

There was only the supply of faith!

If they were to live like that, then they might as well go down with their world.

Li Hao hadn’t harbored such thoughts before. He did now because he lacked a Great Li king to accept those who did not wish to put their faith in the queen. Seeing countless people sink into hell and drift aimlessly through it... Li Hao suddenly felt that... the status quo was inappropriate.

He hadn’t felt this way before.

Perhaps the destruction of Gemini drove the point home. There weren’t nearly that many people who believed in the queen, it was just the minority. Most of the tens of billions of people in the worlds didn’t put their faith in her!

Destroying Gemini was not an act of liberation. Humans lived well enough in Gemini. It wasn’t like in Dragon Region, in which the people cried out for salvation. There, Li Hao could tell himself that he was saving people. Here... he could not.

The young man sank into deep contemplation upon seeing countless people plummet into hell. They’d collected a large sum of people after breaking down Gemini and Cloud Dust major worlds. More than half of them ended up in hell, filling the empty hell to the rafters.

It was a shocking change!

Meanwhile, the number of believers in the divine nation was even more astonishing. There were more than one hundred billion of them!

All of these beings had lost their future. They had no future to speak of. Despite those in the divine nation seeming to live an idyllic life, it was all on the surface. When it came down to things, they were the same as those living in hell. Their lives just appeared better from a cursory glance.

Those in the divine nation were lost in illusions of the mind. It was only a matter of time before they starved to death as they were pure mental forms.

“What is it?” Void glanced at Li Hao, seeing that he was staring at the queen. He transmitted, “Aren’t you engaged? Do you want a second wife?”

Li Hao didn’t roll his eyes as one might have expected. He simply sighed softly and transmitted back, “Brother Void, we killed a lot of chaos beast exalted emperors back in Dragon Region. We said that we were freeing the humans. You called me a hypocrite then, and it rather seems like that is the truth now.”

Void blinked.

“We’ve silenced so many worlds and caused a large number of humans and monster spirits to become homeless. They are puppets of the divine nation. They have no future, civilization, or lives. They just have... faith and lack of faith.”

Void fell silent. This was inevitable. Those who lost their worlds generally died with the demise of their homes. It was rare enough that these beings could be retained as well.

Who cared about the original population when worlds devoured each other?

It was very hard to look out for the people. Plus, there was no place to keep them. The people were too many!

But with the divine nation present, it was another matter entirely. Void found it incredible that they could save so many.

“Everyone yearns for freedom. They were free enough when they were at home,” Li Hao continued. “Now that they’ve entered the divine nation, believers and non-believers have only a tiny portion of territory to operate in. They’re crowded shoulder to shoulder and have no place for leisure, learning, or joy. There are only more and more people. Are we saving them or ruining them?”

“Brother Hao Moon, this is a very difficult problem to resolve...

“I know, so I’m considering something!” Li Hao nodded. He stared at the broken sword in his hand. “I’m thinking if I should attempt to develop a portion of the chaos and isolate it from the universe. I will suppress time and everything within it to create millions of worlds.

“I’ll move those people to those worlds, letting them develop their own civilization, time, and homes. But the greatest issue with that idea is a lack of life origin. If I don’t find any, I’ll just be creating another prison for them!”

He could create life himself if he grasped an origin of life. He would be able to perpetuate civilization, thus creating a real world. Without those, nothing would happen to the transplanted population in the short run, but they would all die once time dragged on!

Void looked thoughtful and mulled over Li Hao’s words. Creating a false chaos? Where would his friend do such a thing? There were worlds everywhere in the universe. They needed to find an optimal spot for this experiment.

That was one point, the other was that Li Hao was yet to determine even now what the origin of life was. How were they supposed to create one?

But moving the hundreds of billions of humans into this area for them to live on their own?

That was a good idea.

They would be the first generation pioneers. Was this idea feasible? It would require unlimited energy and resources...

“I don’t have that many clues when it comes to the origin of life,” said Li Hao. “Even tracing time to figure it out brings about too much trouble. It might even cause the star of time to collapse. But the day I create such an expanse is the day I recreate time! So I’m not afraid of this...

“There is one way to solve the issue of not having an origin of life, however. I can use time to trace it and recreate the chaos. However, where is a good location for this...?”

This project was suddenly Li Hao’s top priority. Establishing a mini chaos would make him lose certain things, but he would gain many more things in the process. There would be comprehension, experience, reflections, and an understanding of dao. He would be leaving behind the thousand worlds he’d already created and other external concepts.

The four regions were a fantastic place, but that was the Dragon master’s territory. The Skyward master had laid claim to it as well...

Possible locations sprang into Li Hao’s mind, which he summarily discarded.

He’d thought of this idea before, but only in terms of his own dao. He was now thinking that he couldn’t continue to collect all of these living beings without end. If he simply tossed them into the divine nation, then he might as well let them die alongside their world.

The Gemini dao universe in front of him quickly began to collapse. Panther had devoured much of the world, prompting its presence to build. The dao universe was being devoured by the dao chess. The queen had taken in countless living beings, as well as the general population of another seventh rank world. Her presence advanced toward fifth rank.

There were too many people! It made for fast cultivation improvement, but also caused the queen to not have enough time to focus on governing her nation. As of now, her believers were of shallow faith. Followers such as these were not worth as much as fanatics. Ten thousand shallow believers might not provide as much faith as one fanatic. This would only weaken her divine nation instead.

The queen didn’t say anything. She was still immersed in the joy of taking in countless living beings and didn’t think about this at present.