From the moment he woke up on the edge of the forest to a few moments ago the only thing that got him going was trying to get back to the old world. But now that he put a little thought into it he couldn't find a reason to do so.
He had no family, no friends, no possessions, no job, and generally no responsibilities. Not even the people that he thought were taking care of him genuinely cared that he was stranded here, in fact they were the cause.
Maybe he could argue that he was too weak in the beginning so he had to find his way back to preserve his life, but every moment he is alive he is constantly getting a little bit stronger. Even if his life is in danger and he is on the verge of death, as long as he doesn't die in one hit he can retreat to his soul sea and heal up extremely quickly. Not only that but he would be all that more powerful after the fact.
So now he was genuinely racking his brain to figure out why he would want to go back. If he did he would have to face poverty, discrimination and constant abuse all to live in a shit hole of an environment.
He wasn't even free from racism. While almost extinct nowadays, all it would take is that one ignorant old bastard that lived from before the calamity, sitting in a higher position, which was a very low bar, to make his life a living hell.
As people get stronger their genes stop decaying as quickly and as their soul power grows, they can keep their relative youth. There were more than just a handful of 'youths' that are more than a few years older than 500.
People that powerful have next to no reason to change their mind on any matter as long as they continue living in the old world.
The more he thought about it the more he felt repulsion at the idea of returning, especially since he had no method of doing so. The only way he could return is by finding a human settlement and hope that there was a resident supremacy.
But again, why would they do that? He is an unregistered, untrained and unqualified F rank in their eyes. Yet he was stranded in the new world with no way back. If that isn't suspicious then nothing is.
"As a matter of fact I should be avoiding humans in general, not going towards them. The new world is for every race including humans, yet they treat it like it's their backyard because their parents and grandparents were a bit more powerful."
"If they catch me then there's no telling what they would do to set an example. The Lotus family really poisoned my mind, had me thinking like everyone would act the same way as they did."
The more he talked to himself the more he realized how foolish his original plan was. Go back? For what purpose. There was nothing there for him and he was here dying to sell his soul to them.
"At the end of the day the only reason that I have so much issue is because of how weak I am. So what if I am an F rank, well B rank now, if I can kill them all with a single glance."
Power truly was everything. Why would he care about discrimination from those weaker than him, if ants looked down on you, you wouldn't even notice nor would you care if you did. It's just that he was the ant in this situation and couldn't do anything when others looked down on him.
He continued to collect the plants in the inner ring as he pulled out a few things. There were the 2 books he found before as well as the strange red crystal. If he wanted to get more powerful then he was going to use everything to his advantage. Others would have their guilds, families, clans and sects behind them to aid in their growth but he only had himself.
Since he was now familiar with the runic language he quickly read through the two books and absorbed all they had to offer. They truly were a lucky find, the two of them were the cultivation methods of major sects that were already extinct.
The red book was called the Heart Flame Divine cultivation method and the purple one was the Thunder God Divine cultivation method. Both of them depend on the existence of a mana pool and if he cultivated either one of them then he would have no issues reaching the supremacy tier, a measly cultivation method was nowhere near enough to push someone into the deity tier, not to mention those after that.
While he wasn't aware of it, the deity tier is nowhere near the limit of individual power, but anything above that was too powerful for the new world. So those that reached this height were forced by the will of the world into another, higher and equally as large plane known as the divine plane. It was just that humans hadn't gotten anywhere near such power and most didn't have any knowledge of it.
The strongest human that Ray knew of was Supremacy Alexander, the first supremacy, who was now at the deity tier. The titles of those above supremacy rank didn't change, not because of a lack of respect or symbolizing that becoming a deity was easy, it was just that in all of human history there was only one such powerhouse. If it was anyone else they might have demanded that they call him something more respectful, but Supremacy Alexander didn't care about such trivial matters so no one bothered finding an appropriate title.
But Supremacy Alexander had to have known about the divine plane, when one reached the deity tier, while not powerful enough to catch the ire of the will of the world, there would still be some apprehension. This was a warning to them that signified that any going any further would lead to them being forced out or die.
Then why didn't he make such a matter public? Well to keep up appearances of course, what would the billions of human cultivators that struggle to even reach the grandmaster stage, not to mention the saint stage, feel if they suddenly learned that not even the strongest human cultivator couldn't compare to the unintelligent animals in an entirely new, infinite plan.
The despair would be immeasurable and the damage to the strength and moral of humans immense. This was another reason why they are so strict about who can enter the new world and who can't. In the beginning they lost too many talented individuals to the existing established sects, academies and clans so they had no choice but to properly limit the amount of human talent leaving.
So until a few more human deities popped up and showed that he wasn't just a once in a millennia miracle, Supremacy Alexander would keep the existence of such a place under wraps to keep morale high.
He wasn't just wasting his time though, when one reached the saint stage their genes would stop decaying entirely and any damage that was already done properly healed. Meaning once they kept their soul power above 100, which wasn't difficult for them to achieve, they wouldn't die.
He had all the time in the world to build up his strength for his inevitable ascension into the divine plane.
Either way this wouldn't affect him any time soon. To others it would be a hard decision to decide which one of them to cultivate, but as the spiritual successor of Itroth he had no worries. The hundred flowers cultivation method allowed him to cultivate as many cultivation methods as he wanted with almost no limit.
He decided to start with the Heart Flame Divine cultivation method, of the two he was more familiar with fire so it should be more useful to him sooner.
He was about to start practicing but he realized that he was almost done with the inner ring so he quickly collected whatever was left and teleported back to his soul-sea.