In the continent of Da Qian, there were countless countries and little organizations all around, but the absolute was the Great Zhou Empire. All these others were just vassal states and were fully aware of the one true ruler. However, one single person governing over the entire place and enforcing order everywhere was virtually impossible, so for over a thousand years since the Great Zhou was founded, there was an unspoken rule amongst all living on this little patch of wet earth. That is, the law of the jungle; the strong eat the weak. Of course, where order could be enforced, it would, but other times where it couldn't, well...
This was why everyone sought strength, through one method or another, they all sought to make themselves more powerful. And because of this, a ranking was also invented. No cultivator living in the world could say they were unaware of this, or they would be looked at like someone who just crawled out from under a rock. However, there were too many unknown methods of cultivation, so the cultivation realms were ranked according to the two most powerful and most popular: the magic cultivation and the body cultivation.
The ranking was well-known amongst all cultivators, even newbies would learn it as one of the first things because it would be extremely dangerous for them to offend someone stronger than them. The body cultivators were a lot more common than magic cultivators, because only those with the ability to sense the mana could cultivate magic, even rarer were those who could cultivate both. Though rare, it was not that they did not exist.
The men in the inn were at the level of rank 2 body cultivators, able to cleave a whole boulder in half with a single move. However, when the first one made a move at Neif, he did not panic. Instead, he struck back with even more force. He put his hands together and slowly separated them. "Crack, crack." There were crackling sounds coming from the white line in between his hands. Neif had conjured lightning with his hands, moreover it was the lowest level of lightning, white lightning, and this caused his face to scrunch up in disappointment.
Among all the powers of the world, lightning was seen as supreme. It was termed "the power of gods" and could only be conjured in a storm, or by extremely strong people. However, they had to have access to the sky and conjure it from above. The attacker immediately noticed this anomaly and stopped his momentum, planning to retreat.
"Ha, did I give you permission to leave?" The other inhabitants, having also noticed this weird phenomenon immediately chose to escape. Neif released the lightning with one hand outstretched and surprisingly, the lightning formed a chain after hitting the first person, moving on to hit every single one of them. Lightning was not something a normal human would take and remain alive. However, these were rank 2 warriors, so they did not die. They all fell to the floor after having gone no more than 3 meters from their former positions, their bodies twitching uncontrollably.
"Reveal your true forms, you cannot deceive me. I smelled daemon mana from over a mile away, and from your actual strengths, this much won't hurt your foundations, right?" Neif said, slowly approaching them. They were all shocked, "how did this little brat figure out what we are? Could he be someone in power we don't know?" Who knew that as soon as Neif got close to one of the escapees, that the owner of the inn would suddenly get up and flee out of the inn.
"Tch, a small mistake. I thought for sure he was dead." Neif said, under his breath. He turned back to look at the group of people on the floor, who were unable to move a muscle. "Now, if you wish to keep your lives, you will have to do exactly what I say."
Neif had a good night sleep that night and he began to collect his thoughts as he lay on a straw bed on the morning. Currently, the population of this inn was one. He had obtained all the information he needed from the daemons before proceeding to kill them afterwards. Now, he knew the most basic information about this world.
It was a little over seven thousand years since he had disappeared from this world. He didn't remember much, just that he had lived among humans a few hundred years after he created them, inculcating faith in the gods into their daily lives. But then, he immediately saw himself in a new body, this body. How this came to happen, he did not know, but he thought there must be some powerful enemy lurking behind the scenes.
Kronos was naturally a smart man, but this time he had no leads whatsoever, so he decided to play it by ear and see what he could find out. An existence that could alter his memories was not to be trifled with. Moreover, he was now in this weak body that could not even unleash 1% of his actual battle prowess. His strength was currently extremely limited. Thus, he had to stay lowkey and continue being Neif for as long as he needed to, probably until he regained his godly powers.
However, that didn't mean he would let anyone boss him around. He had created humans from scratch, honed them and taught them, in a way he could be called their father. Because of this, he knew everything about the human body, how much strength it could take, as well as the limits it could get to before it stopped growing. Moreso, he knew a lot of things he hadn't taught humans, like the fact that the mana humans used to cultivate magic was far inferior to actual mana, which the gods used. The human body was wired in a way that it could not achieve the effect of absorbing divine mana without imploding, unless certain conditions were met.
Neif, being Kronos, knew all about these conditions and also the best way to get them completed. But there was a huge problem: he was currently broke. Most of the things he needed required money. "Ah, such a headache."