"Daoist Friend Gu Nan, please come with me," Li Ci smiled plainly and said to Gu Nan.
The two of them had arrived in the Inner World at this time, with Li Ci walking in front and guiding Gu Nan in a certain direction.
Li Ci was a handsome young man with sword-shaped eyebrows and starry eyes, but his actual age was much older than Lu Wen. He could be regarded as a powerhouse from the mid-antiquity era.
One of the most famous feats about Li Ci was naturally how he used his endless combination of techniques to escape from another Unified Dao existence before he even entered Unified Dao.
From that day on, no one dared to provoke Li Ci casually. He was practically treated as a future Unified Dao cultivator.
Li Ci also did not disappoint the world. Over a thousand years later, he successfully broke through to Unified Dao and became a powerhouse.
The current Li Ci was considered a Tier 13 cultivator, surpassing even Song Fei, who ascended earlier than him. It was only a matter of time before he surpassed others.
Of course, the primary issue he faced right now was not being caught up too quickly by Gu Nan.
Gu Nan followed Li Ci and slowly stepped through the Inner World's gates, then saw the familiar and unfamiliar Inner World.
This wasn't his first time coming to the Inner World. Back when he was only at Tier 3, he accidentally entered this place because of the personal dungeon.
It was during that experience that he met Zuo Zuo and the others, which led to the series of subsequent events.
Later, in order to earn Evil Value and points, Gu Nan also used the Inner World as a dungeon center and came here to find new dungeons.
After formally finishing the First Round and entering the Divine Kingdom phase, the Inner World that briefly appeared in Gu Nan's vision finally completely withdrew from the stage of history.
But now that Gu Nan returned, his perception of the Inner World was completely different from before.
There were still countless bright dots floating around balls of light. They were the Star Rulers constantly searching for suitable astral worlds.
The existence of such a strange scene was something that had never happened in the game in Gu Nan's past life. Even this world's World of Gods did not have it; only the Myriad Heavens had this.
When Gu Nan saw the Inner World in the past, everything merely felt strange, but now that he knew it was an artificial creation, it looked more simple and crude.
It's as if it had been forcibly pieced together, existing solely for functionality without any adornments.
"Do you think it's too simple?" Li Ci seemed to understand what Gu Nan was thinking and said with a smile, "I felt the same way when I first came here."
Li Ci also had the experience of "coming here for the first time", which meant he wasn't one of the Inner World's creators. This place should have been created by Unified Dao figures from earlier years.
Before Gu Nan could speak again, Li Ci continued, "After the collapse of the ancient three realms, the Saints discovered that the fragments of those realms were constantly drifting outward, getting further and further away from the center of the Myriad Heavens."
"As these fragments drifted to the edge of the Myriad Heavens, some started to crumble on their own while others vanished completely without a trace. No one could find them anymore."
"If this continues, then sooner or later, all the fragments will disappear completely, and there will only be a few large astral worlds left in the Myriad Heavens, and the name of 'Myriad Heavens' will no longer be accurate…"
Through Li Ci's explanation, Gu Nan gradually gained a new understanding of the Myriad Heavens' history and worldview.
In reality, he already knew most of these things long ago but never connected the dots to look at them from a much higher perspective.
To describe it with a simple metaphor, the entire Myriad Heavens was like a sphere that was constantly rotating, and the planes—or astral worlds—were the particles making up the sphere.
Heaven Level planes were at the very center of the sphere, accounting for a huge proportion of its volume and had completely fixed coordinates.
Realm Level planes accounted for a slightly smaller proportion and were on the outer edges of the central area, but they also had their own stable coordinates and wouldn't be thrown out of the center.
But the World Level planes below them didn't receive such good treatment. Almost all of them were outside the central area. They were affected by the sphere's rotation and were constantly being thrown out to the edge.
It was precisely because of this that time in Heaven and Realm Level planes was completely unified, while other planes always had their own time flow differences.
Using Gu Nan's limited knowledge of physics to speculate, it was roughly because the planes in different orbits had extremely different relative speeds, which led to the difference in time flow.
"In ancient times, there was no such thing as a Star Ruler." Li Ci explained, "In order to prevent the fragments of planes from getting away, the Saints called on the cultivators to leave the main planes and continue to expand outwards. They also passed down the cultivation method of linking a cultivator to a specific plane."
Hearing this, Gu Nan couldn't help laughing. "So that's how Star Rulers and astral worlds came about."
Although they were similarly linking a plane to themselves, the gods next door actually built their Divine Kingdoms from scratch, which was completely different from the Myriad Heavens. Although the two reached the same goal from different paths, they were drastically different during the Divine Kingdom phase.
"The Star Rulers control their astral worlds. As they continuously strengthen themselves, their astral worlds will also continue to grow. When they ascend to Realm Level, this plane fragment will be completely saved."
Li Ci went on, "However, there are too many world fragments. It would be too inefficient if we relied on the Star Rulers to find them all. Therefore, the second generation Unified Dao cultivators decided to summarize all the fragments first, and this summary mechanism is the Inner World."
After saying this, Li Ci led Gu Nan forward. They had already entered the core of the Inner World, the control center in the truest sense.
Then he took back his laws, which were controlling the command center, and motioned for Gu Nan to take over the position while saying with a smile, "I don't need to explain what happens next. Someone else will tell you."
Gu Nan looked at him strangely. When he injected his laws into the control center, he suddenly felt an inexplicable throbbing, as if something was beating inside the center.
"It's alive?" Gu Nan looked at Li Ci, who just nodded slightly, indicating that he should wait a moment.
Sure enough, just a minute later, Gu Nan heard a soft female voice echoing in his ears, "It's nice to meet you, new King."
A woman's projection slowly appeared in front of Gu Nan. This woman had a slender figure, but her body was made entirely of blue light beams, and her face had no appearance.
"We usually call her 'Zero'." Li Ci finally spoke again, "She is the origin of the Inner World and the living creature that coexists with it."
"So she's the housekeeper, right?" Gu Nan wasn't affected by Li Ci at all, immediately seeing through Zero's true nature.
To put it bluntly, these Unified Dao figures were all quite busy themselves and had no time to deal with world fragments all the time, so they found a full-time housekeeper to do the job.
"You're correct, King." Zero's voice sounded again, "I was first created as a manager."
Gu Nan looked at Li Ci. "What does 'King' mean?"
Li Ci chuckled. "Here, you can control the entire world and manipulate anything you want. In a sense, you are the King of the World."