Fire-path resources could not be placed too close to water-path resources. Too close, and they would interfere with one another—not merely reducing output, but potentially destroying each other entirely.
Yet gathering all fire-path and all water-path resources into concentrated clusters would be equally disastrous.
After all, fire-path resource nodes also affected one another. It was not a simple case of peaceful coexistence.
Moreover, many immortal materials possessed two or more Dao traces. The Juhuo Burning Wood, for instance, carried both fire-path and fortune-path traces.
Many cultivation resources bore two or more types of Dao marks.
Certain resource nodes that produced immortal materials required vast surrounding areas of ordinary Gu materials in order to gestate.
Some resources could only be nourished by specific winds and water.
Still other resources operated on the principle of extremes reversing. The Frost Flame, for example, had to emerge from lands saturated with ice and frost Dao marks—places where the cold was so dense it gave birth to a fire-path immortal material.
For all these reasons, Fang Yuan had shown foresight long ago. When annexing immortal apertures in the past, he had deliberately shattered them piece by piece, distributing the fragments throughout his Supreme Immortal Aperture.
On the whole, Fang Yuan had modeled his layout on the structure of the Five Regions and Nine Heavens.
For instance, since the miniature Southern Border was mountainous, he had selectively placed earth-path resources there.
Since the miniature Scarlet Heaven was fire-attuned, he had arranged the majority of fire-path resources within it.
Now Fang Yuan fully appreciated the brilliance of the Five Regions and Nine Heavens layout. By categorizing resources across broad regions according to this framework, he could effectively reduce the computational burden of managing them, making it far easier to control the adverse interactions between resource nodes.
But it was still far from enough.
Every time Fang Yuan annexed a blessed aperture, the Dao marks of a particular path would surge dramatically.
A surge in Dao marks would produce long-lasting effects that permeated the entire Supreme Immortal Aperture.
The previous annexation of Qixiang's Qihai Blessed Aperture had caused the air-path Dao marks throughout the Supreme Immortal Aperture to explode in number. Air currents had sprung up from every corner of the aperture. The heavens-and-earth qi had become so abundant that the Supreme Immortal Aperture had temporarily needed no gateway to absorb external qi.
Following that came Profound Yin energy, fortune energy, blood energy, earth energy, astral energy, domineering energy, vitality energy, death energy, and even the energy of Haoran Righteousness, Orchid Life Energy, Hengqiu Old Energy, and other immortal materials.
Dao marks influenced every corner of the Supreme Immortal Aperture. The barren, undeveloped regions would gradually generate resources. First came mortal-grade Gu materials, then as concentration thickened, a quantitative change triggered a qualitative transformation, producing immortal-grade materials.
These resources took shape naturally because of the Dao marks.
The Supreme Immortal Aperture was filled this way, bit by bit, until it reached its current eighty-percent development level.
Beyond generating resources, a surge in Dao marks also struck at existing resources.
This time, when Fang Yuan had devoured the Fire Origin Blessed Aperture and others, the fire-path Dao marks had surged enormously. The temperature throughout the entire immortal aperture would slowly rise. Many water-path and wood-path resource nodes would take severe hits as a result.
If the metal-path Dao marks surged, they would rapidly produce massive amounts of minerals in the soil, corrupting the earth and devastating the forests above.
A water-path surge would mean more rain, relentless downpours, potentially even catastrophic floods.
A poison-path increase meant that certain plagues once confined to a single locality could now erupt with terrifying ferocity—spreading rapidly across vast areas.
A transformation-path increase meant that many creatures would mutate as they grew, their forms shifting drastically, their temperaments changing beyond recognition, dooming entire species.
For these reasons, the Supreme Immortal Aperture had been anything but peaceful recently.
Abnormal incidents cropped up constantly.
Not long ago, for instance, a Phantom Abyss Wind had appeared in the miniature Eastern Sea—completely inexplicable.
The Phantom Abyss Wind had blown dust into the air, piling it up on the ocean surface to form small islands.
The problem was that within the Phantom Abyss Wind's range, these sea regions had no need for islands. The earth-path Dao marks on the islands would obstruct and suppress the waves, while the soul-path Dao marks on the islands would kill the weak creatures in the sea, gradually transforming them into soul beasts and disrupting the entire ecosystem.
Fang Yuan's initial suspicion had fallen on two adjacent sea regions located at the heart of the Phantom Abyss Wind's origin—prime suspects for generating the phenomenon.
But after repeated experimentation and deduction, Fang Yuan discovered the true cause was two sea regions far apart. Their respective Dao marks interacted with each other like two poles of an electromagnet, resonating faintly across the distance and generating the Phantom Abyss Wind between them.
As for beasts mutating, herds suffering devastating losses, plagues spreading wildly, mineral veins surging into Stone People territory, forests catching fire without cause, and massive chunks of ice plummeting from the sky—the list went on and on, with incidents following one after another.
The Gu Immortals stationed across their respective domains were all stretched to the breaking point, rushing here and there to patch things up.
Fang Yuan's main body also frequently intervened, deploying immortal formations across the land—particularly between major resource nodes—like stitching patches onto fabric.
"The instability brought by the Dao mark surge can only be digested slowly over time, allowing the Supreme Immortal Aperture's environment to constantly shift and gradually adapt."
"The Supreme Immortal Aperture had originally been vast, with resources sparse and distant enough that they could hardly influence or interact with one another. But now, with eighty percent development, there were too many resource nodes, spaced too closely, their interactions no longer simple two-way effects but a tangled web of mutual influence, all blending together."
"Even worse, I had previously used the temporal differential from the Time Difference Blessed Aperture to build Year Bloom Pools, forming a Time-path partition. The different flow rates of time across regions made my calculations even more complex."
"If I were to add more immortal materials in the future, the computational difficulty would skyrocket by a hundredfold or more—far beyond my calculation capacity." The difficulty grew at a geometric exponential rate, and even Fang Yuan could do nothing about it.
"And even if I computed the optimal arrangement, I would inevitably need to reposition the existing resource nodes. Each adjustment was like performing major surgery—consuming enormous resources, personal time, and energy."
"Perhaps eighty percent is already my absolute limit!"
Having come to this realization, Fang Yuan looked once more at the Five Regions and Nine Heavens and could not help but feel a profound sense of admiration.