The major drawback to having too many dao marks, although there were also a few minor ones, was that dao marks of different paths would conflict. As such, immortals mainly specialized in one or two paths.
Having dao marks of different paths meant that they would interfere with moves used from another path. They could even weaken moves form another path - a Gu Master with lots of Light Path dao marks would find a Dark Path attack greatly weakened when they used it. Specializing in a single path was important, as was having dao marks mainly concentrated on that path.
As such, Fang Yuan had to carefully decide which path he wanted to go down when he became an immortal.
The most obvious choice was to become a Blood Path cultivator again, given that he had quite a bit of experience in Blood Path, being a Blood Path grandmaster in his past life.
However, he knew that this was a trap. Although it would be easier than going down other paths, it would certainly lead to his death.
Blood Path was heavily suppressed, even amongst the demonic path. The reason that it had exploded in its popularity 300 years in the future was because during that age, the walls that separated the five regions of the world had collapsed and war had broken out. During that age of chaos, no one had the time to hunt down every single Blood Path cultivator and the Blood Path which was normally taboo became more widespread.
Times were different now.
'If I intend to cultivate Blood Path, I may as well save the righteous path Gu Masters the trouble and slit my own throat,' Fang Yuan thought to himself.
He naturally was not averse to taking risks if the benefits were large enough, but there was a difference between taking calculated risks and willingly putting your head on the chopping block. If he became a Rank 7 Blood Path cultivator, his name would shoot to the top of the Demon Judgement Board and he would soon be done for.
Come to think of it, even in the chaotic times in the future, it had been using Blood Path methods that had ultimately led to him getting cornered before he had been forced to use the Spring Autumn Cicada.
Not to mention, the main advantage of cultivating Blood Path was that it was easy to advance without much resources. During that time, Fang Yuan had mainly been a destitute wanderer and sorely lacked resources.
Now that he had regressed this was no longer an issue. He knew the locations of many inheritances which could greatly help him.
So, if he wasn't going to cultivate Blood Path, what should he cultivate?
The next most obvious choice was Time Path. He already had a Rank 6 Time Path gu worm, the Spring Autumn Cicada. During immortal ascension, he would be able to glean information from Heaven and Earth, and might also be able to advance a gu worm.
He could possibly advance the Spring Autumn Cicada to Rank 7, and even if he couldn't do that, he could get the recipe to advance it to Rank 7.
This was an extremely alluring prospect. Most Rank 6 Gu Masters did not have a single Rank 6 gu worm, and he was no exception during his last life until he had refined the Spring Autumn Cicada. It was even harder for Rank 7 Gu Masters to get a Rank 7 gu worm.
Fang Yuan already had a very powerful Time Path gu worm with him.
However, Time Path had its own problems and drawbacks. The Spring Autumn Cicada was just a single gu worm, after all. And while its effect was powerful, it only had a single effect just like all gu. It could send him back through time, but was he going to do that every single time he got into a fight?
No, to cultivate Time Path he would need gu worms to cover all aspects of offense, defense, retreat, investigation, and stealth. The issue was that he his knowledge of Time Path was essentially negligible, and though he knew the locations of many inheritances he did not know one which was of the Time Path.
He did know a famous individual in the Northern Plains who would quickly become a Gu Immortal of the Time Path, though he was only a mortal right now, Tai Bai Yun Sheng. If Fang Yuan could find that person and kill him, taking his gu worms, it would help somewhat, but that was just a pipe dream right now.
Time Path did not seem to suit him that well either. The only other path which he had some attainment in was Refinement Path, but the issue with that was that it was not good for combat and he needed to be proficient in fighting to survive on his own.
On the one hand, there was Blood Path which he had a great deal of expertise in, yet no relevant gu worms, not even a mortal one. On the other hand there was Time Path, for which he had an Immortal Gu but no experience.
Human Path had begun to rise in the future, but right now was just a concept. Because of that, he had zero knowledge or experience of it. So there was no point in accumulating Human Path dao marks when he couldn't specialize in it during the future.
Of course, since Fang Yuan was a human, he naturally had Human Path dao marks on him. However, this would only be a fraction of a fraction of a dao mark. Even if one were to gather all the humans in Gu Yue village, they would likely not amount to more than ten Human Path dao marks in total.
The system would give him about 70 given how much time there was left in the year. That was not that much by Gu Immortal standards, but it was a significant amount given that he was basically getting it entirely for free.
If this interfered with him choosing a specialty in the future, he did not want to agree with it. Nor did he want to set his path in stone for the system to take advantage of him in the future. He wasn't even sure if the system could give him Immortal Gu or not, and if it couldn't, there was no use going down the Human Path of cultivation.
Note: Dao marks do not need to be used immediately, they can be saved in the inventory for the future.
The system read his thoughts and displayed that before him, as if trying to assuage him that it wouldn't cause him too many problems in the future.
Still, it was too much work and effort to become Class President and would limit his activities in the future.
New Main Mission!
Congratulations on Graduating, Mr. President!
Description: Graduate as class president.
Reward: Rank 3 Doctor Gu (x 1)
The system was giving him more incentives to become Class President.
Fang Yuan didn't know what Doctor Gu was or did, but it was a Rank 3 gu worm that likely was a healing gu worm based on its name. Useful to him, indeed.
Useful enough to justify the effort of becoming class president?
He would have to see.
The elders were done talking, and it was time for the students to leave.
All of them would get a weekly allowance of 3 primeval stones from the clan, with the president getting 10 stones a week. It was one of the perks of being president, though such numbers were peanuts to Fang Yuan at this point.
Before the students could leave, Fang Yuan rushed towards the gate, blocking the exit.
The daily quests had begun to no longer give him primeval stones, but rather, other things like gu worm food.
As it was, one could never have enough primeval stones.
And it was time for him to acquire some extra.
A group of four students were the first to approach him.
"Hey, is that Fang Yuan? What's he doing just standing there?"
"Who cares about him, let's go and get some grub from the inn!"
"Don't you think we should be more careful with our primeval stones?"
"C'mon man, it's only for this one time!"
'There is no need to worry about being careful with your primeval stones,' Fang Yuan thought grimly as he stepped forward, blocking their path. 'I will take that burden off of you.'
It was time to engage in some extortion!