Who am I?

I woke up drifting in the void. How long has it been? Millions, perhaps billions of years. Or maybe just a minute. How would one measure time in the void? Wait. How do I know these words? Where did I learn them?

Earth. That was where I was born. But I cannot remember anything. Where did the memories go?

I'm bored. So very bored. There is nothing to do in the void. No one to talk to, nothing to do at all. Not even anything to reflect on. Desperate, I try to search for something. Anything. Anyone. Finally, I get a response. A fellow soul.

It's so small. What happened to it? I reach out, trying to touch it. Just as I touch it, the soul shatters. So fragile. There's another one. This time, I attempt to speak with them. Nothing. No response whatsoever.

Well, if I can't touch or speak with the souls, then I can only watch them. After observing them, I notice a bright dot inside of the souls. Where does it go when the soul shatters? I touch another soul, this time making sure to observe the dot. When the soul shatters, the dot turns dark.

The true spirit. So that's what it's called. It is the consciousness of the soul, containing its personality and emotions. The true spirit requires energy from the soul to function, and when the soul is destroyed, it will go into hibernation.

Right now, I have an idea. I destroy a few souls, and grab their fragments. Making sure their true spirit of these souls are gone, I try fusing them together. Finally, I create a soul about as big as mine.

Now comes the hard part. Looking inside myself, I grab my true spirit, and in one go, rip it in half. Strangely, it doesn't hurt at all. I only feel sleepy. So very sleepy. I don't know what will happen if I fall asleep right now, but it can't be good. Before I fall asleep, I push half of my true spirit inside the newly prepared soul. Then, I fall asleep.

After I wake up, I look around. I see another soul just as big as me, someone who I might be able to talk to, when I realize that it's my clone. When I move, my clone moves too. Controlling both at once will take a while to get used to.

I feel a surge of power, almost more than my soul can handle. Taking advantage of this power, I rip open a space in the void. The space is small, only as big as a person, but it will do for now. I want to create a world, where there are other souls to interact with.

First, the laws of that world must be different from the void. The laws of time must change first. Time in the void is too chaotic, making it difficult to understand how much time has passed.

Time is a river, flowing from up to down, past to future. The present is a boat, being swept along the current. That will be how time will work in my world.

I watch as the river of time is created, and the boat drops into the river.

After the river is created, the world starts expanding. I watch happily as it slowly grows larger, expanding to a few miles in length.

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Suddenly, the world starts shrinking again. Horrified, I watch as the void begins to corrode it. Desperate, I try to make the space larger, but it only serves to make the void devour it faster.

An idea hits me. I try to compress the space, making it as dense as possible. From a few miles long, to the size of a house, a car, a person, a cup, then a soybean.

Now, the void corrodes it much slower, so slow that I can't even see it.

[Beep! System activated. Congratulations on creating your own world!

You are the 623 soul to create a world. Reward: None

Occupation: World deity

Strength: 0

Spirit: 1.7

Domains: Space, Time]

What's this? I have a system? How ... disturbing. To think that a foreign entity can enter my mind without me noticing.

However, it seems useful for now. 

A world deity is someone like me, who has created a world, and is able to draw upon the powers of the world to increase their own strength.

The average stat of a newborn world deity is 1. Strength refers to physical strength, while spirit refers to the strength of my soul. My strength should be 0 because I don't have a physical body. As for spirit, my main body should be 1, and the clone should be 0.7, meaning that it only has around 70 percent of my strength. 

A domain is something which a deity specializes in. I have the domain of time because I created the river of time, while I have the domain of space because I compressed my world to the limit. However, to fully utilize these two domains, I must comprehend them completely. Who knows how long that will take?

More importantly, my world is currently empty. Walking into the world with my true body, leaving the clone outside, I seal off the entrance to my world, preventing the void from entering. Though the world is only the size of a soybean outside, the interior is massive, the size of a small universe. 

Right now, the most important task is to create a physical body. The body protects and nurtures the soul, just like how the soul protects the true spirit. 

After careful deliberation, I decided to temporarily take the form of an orb. It resembles the form of my soul, making it the simplest to control. Later, after observing the culture of the inhabitants, I will adjust my form. 

I decide to split my universe into three parts: The mortal realm, the immortal realm, and the divine realm. The mortal realm shall be the largest, filled with countless mortals. If the mortals become strong enough, they can ascend to the immortal realm, becoming immortal. If the immortals become strong enough, they can ascend to the divine realm, becoming gods. The difference between gods and immortals is that gods can absorb faith energy, greatly increasing their powers. 

There are three paths of cultivation: body, energy, and soul. 

The primary path of cultivation is the path of energy. This path is the fastest, and with each breakthrough in energy cultivation, both the body and soul become stronger, making it the most common path. 

The path of enhancing the physical body is painful, slow, and expensive, making it an unconventional path. However, having a strong physical body brings great benefits, and this path will often be taken along with energy cultivation. 

The last path of cultivation is cultivating the soul. Injuries to the soul are the hardest to heal, and too much energy in the soul will cause it to explode, making this the riskiest path of cultivation. 

Energy cultivation is likely to become the most common, followed by body cultivation, with soul cultivation coming in last. 

Now that the laws of the universe are established, I can finally start thinking about the inhabitants.