Kao Dao Ji stood above horizons, glancing at the sight beyond him.
Grey clouds upon clouds stacked together like a pile, moving slowly and steadily in a circular pattern.
Those clouds were unlike the clouds from earth, no, they were heavy.
Dense, like stone.
While he did not do so, he had the feeling that if he wanted to, he could easily step over them and climb amidst the myriad of clouds, and not because he was a Land Spirit, no it was its sheer density and weight.
Those dense-stone like clouds were flowing harmoniously across his aperture endlessly.
However, that was only on the first layer.
As he raised his gaze, he saw layers upon layers of clouds, the more he raised his gaze, the more disperse and weightless they became.
If the ones beneath all, were dark grey clouds with such intensity one could perceive electricity flowing through them, then the ones above all, seemed to be completely white and ethereal almost invisible to the naked eye.
However, one could see something peculiar across the aperture.
The upper layers were cold, very much so.
So much so, that the clouds rained snow and ice clusters, which descended like pearls, hitting the following layer.
Similarly, the following layers each produced its own 'rain', however the more one descended, the heavier and hotter they became.
Reaching at the last layer, an unbelievably hot boiling water that descended upon the surface.
Which was a desolate desert, with only small oasis, and small cracks and water aqueducts, product of the raining and thunder.
However, the water on the surface did not last long, until it evaporated, raising towards the uppermost layer, repeating the process all anew.
Only a few oasis remained, as well as underground water.
However, it was simply too scarce and rare, those lands were truly desolate.
Witnessing such sight, Kao Dao Ji shook his head repeatedly.
"This won't do, the ground beneath is completely infertile, whilst the clouds above can only sustain the smallest of fauna, with little to no chance of flora." While saying those words, he glanced at the clouds above again.
While not very visible to the naked eye, there was indeed life.
Countless of little insects were swarming across the clouds.
Such as fairyfly-like wasps, which sat on clouds, and were seemingly 'drinking' from them.
Their stomachs expanded like those of flies sucking on blood, their stomach shining with intense golden aurora.
Besides them, there were countless of dragon flies which had strange tails, akin to small cloud-trails.
Which moved their tails from left to right, seemingly swimming across the clouds searching those fairyflies for food.
And yet, on top of that there were several spiders lurking around, creating their spider web, everywhere.
Kao Dao Ji observed them, curiously.
"While I already knew that an 'habitat' would automatically form once I ascended, this is still a bit too weird to suddenly have an entire biome form within me from seemingly nowhere.
I mean, from where does exactly those insects come from? Did my aperture generate them somehow? Or were they simply already living creatures which were summoned to here by Heaven's Will?"
He wondered out aloud.
But after some considerations, he shook his head.
"Knowing won't help me much, besides I still have a lot of work to do." He stared at the horizon again.
"While there are plenty of animals and even more bacteria which can live among clouds, there are very few plants which can.
And plants are far more important for a healthy ecosystem than animals, thus my focus right now should be creating life beneath." He frowned.
"To achieve this, I first need to do a few things, for starters, the heavy clouds beneath are simply too dense, and breathing there is almost poisonous.
Due to the density of those clouds the heat is too well-preserved, so is scorching hot.
Which also leads to a drought, finally lighting continues to befall from those clouds which destroys any possibility of life for most creatures."
"All those problems stem from a single cause.
The clouds which are at the very bottom."
Once he reached this thought, the following conclusion was obvious.
"To solve this, I know one way." Immediately, he thought of one Gu.
He closed his eyes and summoned it.
'Raining Gu.'
The Gu looked like a turtle, with its body hidden in its shell, shell which was white and spongy, akin to an small white cloud.
This cloud was even soft to the touch, and very pleasant to the eye.
However, what mattered now was its effect.
The Gu forced any cloud to 'rain' irrespectively of whether they had water stored in them or not.
Or in other words.
The Gu transformed the Dao Marks of Cloud Path into Dao Marks of Water, which would then descend in the form of raining.
Understanding this effect, the decision to take was obvious.
Kao Dao Ji however hesitated briefly.
He bit his lips while thinking.
"But how much Immortal Essence will producing such an effect cost?" He wondered.
Moving one of the ten layers of clouds of his aperture, the heaviest by far.
Just what would the expenditure be?
Perhaps, if he were a living being with a thriving aperture he could afford the cost, but as a Land Spirit?
He was not so sure.
"I will make an attempt and see how far it goes." He thought to himself.
Inwardly, he closed his eyes.
His wings began to swing rapidly.
There was a flow of soft, celeste light surging from his fingertips.
He concentrated his mind, activating not only the Immortal Gu but even his own Heavenly Power.
With both added together, he shouted.
"Let there be raining." Over three hundred fifty surrounding grey clouds were affected by his move, and from them, one could perceive clusters of ice condensing.
Like a billion of arrows being shoot by a massive army, those ice clusters fell hitting the ground, leading to thunderous sounds.
Kao Dao Ji did not really get bothered by this, after all, there was nothing living at the surface.
So, no matter how damaged the surface became, it was not really a big issue.
However, as he kept pouring greater and greater amounts of water, another thing happened.
The trapped electricity was finally freed from the clouds; thus, its powerful current was scattered everywhere.
Lighting erupted at all directions, producing thunderous sounds.
Most of the lighting hit the scant, dying ground, however a small percentage went up, destroying everything on its way.
And in the process, harming countless of the tiny insects that lived in his aperture.
Kao Dao Ji observed the scene with widened eyes.
"Shit!" He said.
Rapidly, he retracted his Immortal Essence, and slowly diminished the intensity of his Heavenly Energy.
Two minutes later, it completely receded.
Observing that the damages in his aperture were still in a manageable rate, he sighed in relief.
"How stupid of me…I forgot entirely that the ecosystem would be affected if I do such a thing all at once." Then, he added.
"Of course, if I still had that Lighting Current Gu in my possession, I would have been able to redirect it safely…" He thought somewhat regretfully, but not much.
After all, while Lighting Current Gu was a very powerful Gu in combat, its usability in managing an aperture was drastically limited.
In comparison, Cloud Field Gu and Raining Gu had a far greater utility for such purposes.
Furthermore, unlike the former two keeping Lighting Current Gu feed would be pretty difficult for his current self, thus he had no other choice but to discard it.
Only when his aperture grew prosperous enough, so he could sustain himself, by selling its riches to Treasure Yellow Heaven would gaining an offensive Gu take preference.
Kao Dao Ji used his powers as a Land Spirit to scan his Aperture, and deal with the minor troubles residing within it.
Once the situation had calmed down, he analyzed.
"During this process a little more than 0.7% of the lowermost layer was consumed, at the cost of 8 Immortal Essence Beads.
Which means that if I want to sustain my pace, and get rid of this layer I would require more than a thousand Immortal Essence Beads."
That of course was not possible, for an ordinary Immortal it would take over 3 decades to produce such essence let alone him, who needed to be mindful of his expenses.
Having said this, his goal was not getting rid of the layer, but merely decreasing its size until it no longer stopped the development of his aperture, thus on actual numbers he would likely require around half of that energy.
Even then, he still could not afford such a sum, so nothing changed.
Understanding this point, he said.
"Alright, so brute force will not work. I guess I will have to use softer methods.
Maybe I could move those insects which devour Cloud Dao Marks towards the lower layers, and breed them enough so they slowly eat away it.
But that is going to take a while, plus, I will also need to ensure they do not die due to electric charge."
He kept himself to his thoughts, however at the next moment.
He felt his ears ringing, he moved his head towards the left and said.
"Huh? So, Kao Yu Hun is back. Hopefully he brought some Gu's with him. After my ascension I desperately need a few."
Whilst he could buy the Gu's he wanted in Treasure Yellow Heaven; he did not want to stretch his finances further.
He sighed.
"And if he does, hopefully he will bring me some food to feed them…"