After understanding the situation, Nolan felt it was necessary to lend a hand to these humans who were living in dire straits.
However, it was impossible for him to go around eliminating those humans who possessed special bloodlines one by one.
Leaving aside the amount of time such a task would take, if the upper-level rulers were suddenly removed, chaos would very easily erupt among the remaining humans.
That might even lead to circumstances far more tragic than the present situation.
Nolan couldn't possibly kill off the oppressors and then still have to play nanny afterward. With seventy to eighty million people, it was simply impossible for him to manage them all.
The best outcome would be for the perceptive individuals among them to awaken of their own accord, step forward, and overthrow the rule of those humans with draconic bloodlines.
An orderly transfer of power from the oppressors would be far better than plunging everything into outright chaos.
As for whether those who took over would themselves become oppressors, that wasn't much of an issue either. Wherever there is oppression, there will be resistance.
Just as they overthrew others, they would eventually be overthrown in the same way.
What Nolan needed to do was to provide them with hope for resistance—and that hope naturally came in the form of supernatural power.
The reason these humans were enduring oppression was simply because they lacked the strength to fight back.
Once they had the possibility of grasping supernatural power, once they saw hope of escaping their suffering, there would inevitably be people who would stop at nothing to seize that lifeline.
Nolan only needed to summon the "Accursed Moon" and hang it in the sky of this world bubble, giving them a chance to obtain supernatural power. That would be enough.
There was no need for further interference.
As for the fact that there were only seventy to eighty million people here—a relatively small number—that wasn't a problem either. After all, he could summon more than two hundred Accursed Moons.
There weren't that many civilizations for him to hang them all up at once anyway, so placing one here first was perfectly fine.
If everyone here cultivated the Power of the Accursed Moon, the feedback in Adventure EXP alone would allow him to jump up two levels, which felt pretty great.
In the future, when he encountered planets with larger populations, he might not have enough Accursed Moons.
At that point, he could simply retrieve the Accursed Moons from places with smaller populations and move them to more populous planets.
That wouldn't affect anything.
Having figured out how to help, Nolan headed to the most densely populated region of this world bubble.
The Accursed Moon's initial irradiation range was only a little over two hundred kilometers, so to achieve results as quickly as possible, it naturally had to be placed where there were the most people.
This was a city. The buildings looked rather backward, but the population was quite large—at least several million.
The main reason was that this world bubble was extremely small yet housed seventy to eighty million people, so every city had a large population.
This one was the largest of them all.
Nolan summoned the Accursed Moon—a crimson moon smaller than the palm of his hand, floating above his palm.
Before officially hanging it in the sky, a few simple settings still needed to be configured.
First, every hour, the Accursed Moon would move from one city to another, cycling back and forth.
Only this way could everyone have the opportunity to cultivate the Power of the Accursed Moon.
By this calculation, each city in this world bubble would get roughly one hour of cultivation time per day.
It wasn't long, but it was sufficient.
After all, these people were subjected to severe oppression and barely had any time to rest. Apart from eating and sleeping, being able to squeeze out even one hour to cultivate was already very good.
Staying any longer would only be a waste.
The second thing to pay attention to was setting it so that only those with goodwill in their hearts could cultivate. Otherwise, if the oppressors—or their lackeys—were also able to cultivate…
Given that they already possessed supernatural power and vast resources, they would only become stronger. Even if ordinary humans gained supernatural power, it would be difficult for them to resist.
However, the light emitted by the Accursed Moon was an objective existence, just like sunlight—impartially shining upon everyone, regardless of good or evil.
Normally, Nolan had no way to make the Accursed Moon's light automatically distinguish between good and bad, selectively blocking those with malicious intent and preventing them from absorbing it.
This was because Arlecchino's affection skill did not allow him to customize which types of people could absorb it and which could not.
Of course, this wasn't a big problem.
Through affection skills, Nolan could share all the knowledge and abilities mastered by Ganyu. As an adeptus qilin, she was naturally gifted in distinguishing good from evil.
Moreover, among the adeptal arts she had mastered were spells and formations specifically designed to discern good and evil.
Similarly, Fox Lady Saiguu's affection skill allowed him to share her racial abilities. For her, distinguishing good from evil was nothing more than a basic instinct.
Thus, Nolan only needed to set up a formation on the Accursed Moon. This was equivalent to adding an extra "filter" to it, causing the light it emitted to carry additional effects.
That additional effect was very simple: when the light encountered someone whose heart harbored strong malicious intent, the power within the light would automatically weaken.
Naturally, it would then be impossible to absorb.
Since similar formations existed in Ganyu's and Saiguu's knowledge, Nolan made slight modifications and easily deployed one onto the Accursed Moon.
The visible change was that a golden formation now enveloped the crimson moon, with various talismans faintly appearing and disappearing across its surface.
This was the formation absorbing the energy of heaven and earth to sustain its existence. After all, without an energy supply, a formation couldn't be maintained indefinitely.
The Accursed Moon itself also required energy to emit its light, and it could likewise automatically absorb ambient energy from the world, sparing Nolan any effort.
Of course, if it were brought to a world without supernatural energy, it could still absorb other forms of energy to sustain itself.
For example, sunlight, lightning—any form of energy could be absorbed and converted into Accursed Moonlight.
As long as it was a normal world capable of sustaining life, such things would never be lacking.
Even in an extreme case where a world truly had no energy at all, Nolan could maintain the Accursed Moon through self-supply.
With the infinite energy of the Imaginary Space, there was no need to worry about energy consumption.
Once all preparations were complete, Nolan tossed the Accursed Moon upward from his palm. The palm-sized moon rapidly expanded, hanging in the sky like a real moon.
It was daytime. The crimson light blended into the sunlight, not particularly conspicuous as it shone down upon the city below.
In the streets and alleys, most of the passersby looked dazed and listless. After all, they couldn't eat their fill, nor could they resist—where was the hope to be found? And without hope, how could anyone have the spirit to carry on?!
Yet all of a sudden, they each froze for a brief moment. When the light of the Accursed Moon shone upon them, these people instinctively understood that they could absorb this light and, through it, grasp supernatural power.
Doubt, anxiety, disbelief, wild joy… all kinds of emotions surfaced among different people. In a situation where no hope could be seen—
Even if this were a demon's scheme, they would still jump into it without the slightest hesitation.
Then Nolan saw the Adventure EXP on his character panel surge by more than a hundred thousand in less than a minute—and it was still skyrocketing.
At this rate, Nolan felt that within two or three days, ninety percent of the population in this world bubble would choose to cultivate the Power of the Accursed Moon.
By then, he would gain at least eighty million points of Adventure EXP. Advancing two levels consecutively would pose no problem at all.
Nolan continued observing this world bubble for a while. After confirming that no major turmoil or unrest had occurred for the time being, he left.
Once the Accursed Moon had been set up, what came next could only depend on them—and that would definitely take time.
Nolan reappeared in the Sea of Quanta.
It was still early, so he decided to keep searching for a few more world bubbles to see if there were suitable places to deploy the Accursed Moon.
Relying on the specialty "Drifter of the Imaginary Sea," Nolan easily sensed the direction of the nearest world bubble to him.
At the same time, thanks to this specialty, he wouldn't get lost in the Sea of Quanta and could effortlessly reach wherever he wanted to go.
In practical terms, as long as Nolan kept the intention of going to a certain location in mind and moved in that direction, then amid the repeated random changes of coordinates, he and his destination would draw closer and closer.
Until Nolan finally arrived at his target.
How long this process took was also random, mainly depending on the distance between the two.
However, since each random coordinate change would only bring them closer, no matter how slow it was, it shouldn't be too slow.
This time, after only about five or six minutes, Nolan appeared before another world bubble.
Without hesitation, he used the Void Star Sea to anchor it, then concealed his presence and entered the new world bubble.
This new world bubble looked far larger than the previous one. If compared to Earth, it would probably be only slightly smaller than his homeworld.
At the very least, it spanned around eight million square kilometers.
Nolan spent some time investigating and discovered that intelligent civilization also existed here.
However, the situation wasn't much better than in the previous world bubble.
Here, rival powers carved up the land. More than a dozen countries occupied those eight million square kilometers, and conflicts between nations were constant.
The people of every country lived in dire suffering.
Moreover, the population here was at least two to three hundred million. Nolan didn't hesitate at all and prepared to place a Accursed Moon here as well.
He also set up a formation similar to the one used in the previous world bubble.
This allowed those with goodwill in their hearts to cultivate, so that no matter how things developed in the future, they would most likely head in a positive direction.
Soon, after the setup was completed, Nolan saw the rate at which his Adventure EXP surged increase once again!
This world bubble had no supernatural power to begin with. For the vast majority of people, being given a chance to obtain such power was something they certainly wouldn't refuse.
After taking care of this place as well, Nolan left. There was nothing else particularly worth exploring.
Back in the Sea of Quanta once more, just as he was preparing to continue searching for new world bubbles, he sensed the two world bubbles he had anchored through the Void Star Sea.
A strange thought suddenly came to mind—could two world bubbles be fused together?
If they could fuse, then the land and population within would keep growing larger and larger. At that point, forget seventy or eighty billion people—even hundreds of billions might not be impossible.
If that were the case, placing more than two hundred Accursed Moons all at once into such a massive world would be extremely worthwhile, and he wouldn't need to scour the galaxy everywhere looking for suitable planets to place them.
He had already anchored these two world bubbles through the Void Star Sea. Using it as a means of traction, it was indeed possible to gradually draw the two world bubbles closer together.
However, Nolan didn't yet know—
When two world bubbles approached each other, or even made contact, would they merge like two soap bubbles becoming one larger bubble, or would they go "pop" and burst apart?
Both of the anchored world bubbles currently housed vast numbers of humans. Nolan obviously couldn't use them as test subjects.
One careless mistake could easily turn him into a great demon who destroyed two worlds and wiped out two to three hundred million humans!
Naturally, Nolan had no desire for that.
So he needed to find two world bubbles without any life to conduct experiments first. The Sea of Quanta lacked nothing more than world bubbles.
It was just that, due to the random nature of coordinate changes, they were normally hard to anchor.
With Nolan's abilities, finding two lifeless world bubbles was hardly a difficult task.
As he took action, this time it took less than half a minute for him to anchor yet another world bubble.
This third world bubble also had life—though not humans, but a kind of silicon-based lifeform.
Their bodies were entirely composed of stone, and they communicated through vibrations.
For example, by clapping their hands, they could produce vibrations of different frequencies. Each frequency carried a different meaning, which could be understood by other stone beings.
Nolan definitely couldn't understand it. Even the translator, which integrated the synesthetic beacon function, was unable to recognize it.
Perhaps the communication method of these stone beings was simply too special.
But it didn't matter. In any case, he still had plenty of Accursed Moons he could summon, so he placed one more Accursed Moon in the sky of this world bubble as well.
This third world bubble was also quite large, with tens of millions of stone beings living there. Nolan wasn't about to miss such an opportunity to improve himself.
After leaving the third world bubble, Nolan continued his search.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth world bubbles were soon discovered. Among them, the fourth world bubble finally had no life at all—but the space inside was enormous.
It was a cosmic expanse containing a single uninhabited metallic planet.
As for the fifth and sixth world bubbles, both contained life. Nolan gave them a brief look and then hung Accursed Moons there as well.
The fifth world bubble was a vast grassland inhabited by some beastfolk—not many, just a few million—and they lived in relative harmony with one another.
In the sixth world bubble lived humans with three eyes—one on the left, one on the right, and another on the forehead—who possessed a special ability.
That ability was the power to see ghosts.
In this world bubble, when humans died, they would turn into ghosts and then harm the living, ordinary humans.
Only weapons forged from special ores could injure these ghosts. The situation was quite dire, and cultivating the Power of the Accursed Moon would be able to help them.
(End of Chapter)