Reverend Insanity Isekai CYOA 4.0

You are an otherworldly demon, selected to rebirth on Gu world from Reverend Insanity. If you haven’t read the webnovel to chapter 2334, this won’t make much sense.

You start with 24 points by default and are encouraged to conquer the world, defeat the Venerables and deal with heaven’s will. They’d certainly come for you eventually, given the boons you’d have.

Ordinarily, you'll be born at the same time Fang Yuan is, 15 years before the start of the story. If you don't intervene, Fate War will happen in about 40 years. The venerables will revive shortly afterwards and wage war for dominance. There is only one timeline, inclusive of all time travel.

Perks are contained in five categories. Bonus perks are half price and malus perks provide double value within one category of your choice.

Points: 24

None

These options allow you to buy extra preparation time, you'll be born before Fang Yuan.

Paradise Earth has just died, the righteous path mourns while the demonic path rejoices. Most immortals have lost their fighting skills, only dealing with tribulations. War was all but abolished. The Three Great Demons will soon emerge and terrorise the five regions, robbing and killing. But until then, the world's guard is down.

Meanwhile, Shadow Sect has just been founded. They aren't the world-spanning leviathan of Fang Yuan's era, a hundred thousand years later. It might be possible for a gu master to defeat them and loot their vast reserves of knowledge.

Even though Spectral Soul just died, the demonic path still reigns. Soul path is the most popular path by an overwhelming margin. Billions of people are raised for slaughter, combat power is everything. Immortals compete to find Spectral Soul's demonic inheritances and claw their way to the top of this charnel house of a world. It is also nearly 300,000 years before fate war, so if you want to wait for it, you will probably need a revival method.
You have one nemesis, born at the same time as you, somewhere in the five regions. They have their own agenda but will inevitably become a deadly enemy with you. They'll do all in their power to sabotage your efforts and kill you. If you defeat them, you may be able to glean something from their special nemesis abilities.

Wealth

Your aperture does not produce primeval or immortal essence no matter what you do to it. You must use essence stones and gu worms to acquire essence. However, your aperture is very resilient and you may store immortal gu in a mortal aperture without any problems as if you had a special physique.
You cannot practically use primeval or immortal essence stones, they make you debilitatingly sick. As consolation, you are marginally more resilient against heaven's will.
You may not freely trade with anyone ever. No matter what you offer someone, they will reject the deal, either haggling indefinitely or suspecting you to be scamming them. You can only use force to take what you want: blackmailing, robbing or extorting.

Background

You aren't reborn but teleport instantly over to gu world as you are now, without any kind of affiliation or background. You are a full otherworldly demon, body and soul. You have an unopened aperture and emerge near a random human force. Everyone, including you, speaks Chinese. Mysterious, weirdly dressed mortals unaware of customs and culture may not be treated well.
You will not be given an opportunity to awaken your aperture by default. You will also have to do more labour as a child, your living standard will be low.
One parent has D-grade aptitude and is a rank 1 support or logistics gu master, looked down upon by the clan. They will still awaken your aperture but do not expect any political clout or financial support.
Both of your parents are middling rank 2s and have a decent financial base. They can support your cultivation somewhat and give you some decent combat training from their own experience.
Wealthier and more influential, they can arrange to buy rare gu worms and gu materials for you. You can also use their political influence.
You will be groomed as heir to a small-scale clan like Gu Yue village, or to a faction in a larger clan. This option also lets you be a blood descendent of any super force in gu world (think Forest Grotto Lightning Heaven or Wu clan). Cheaper backgrounds are stuck with a random generic clan in your chosen region.
You're the only child of a rank 6 Immortal couple, living in one of their immortal apertures. They each have 1 rank 6 immortal gu and grandmaster attainment. You may pick their paths, location and clan membership, if any. This option will give you 10x more time to prepare while you live in their aperture, more if they're time path.
You are groomed for the leadership of a second-rate super force since birth (one lacking a rank 8 immortal and reliant on a rank 7 gu house). Even if you lacked remarkable abilities, it would be hard to avoid reaching gu immortal status. By default, first supreme elder has over a hundred years of lifespan remaining so you will not inherit anything quickly without using special methods.

Inheritance

You find a hidden fortress with comprehensive mortal methods within one mainstream path of your choice, including a battlefield killer move. 1M primeval essence stones and a step by step manual that explains how to navigate mortal cultivation from opening one's aperture to peak rank 5.
Includes excellent mortal killer moves from a couple of paths (including aptitude enhancement and advice on immortal ascension). Comes with a poorly managed blessed land, the land spirit will accept you as owner. Within there is an immortal gu recipe, 5-20 immortal essence stones, methods to enter Treasure Yellow Heaven and some mortal gu houses.
Can be of unusual paths like theft, luck or qi (but is ultimately comparable to the average rank 7 blessed land). Includes two rank 6 immortal gu of that path, 1K immortal essence stones and a well managed blessed land with many resource points. Within lies an entire civilization of mortal cultivators numbering in the 100,000s. You may choose to be born inside this aperture. If so, your lucky find includes a way to gain the main inheritance and the obedience of the land spirit.
A huge grotto heaven with huge resource points and its own rank 6 and rank 7 gu immortals. Think Hei Fan Grotto heaven, these inheritances are new grotto heavens introduced to RI. The immortals are not guaranteed to like you should you show up from outside rather than from within. Even then diplomacy may be needed to ease your path. The core inheritance includes 1 rank 8 gu, 2 rank 7 and 2 rank 6. A few thousand years of lifespan gu are included, stored by the land spirit along with the core inheritance. The inheritance materials are what would be expected from a great expert in that path, powerful immortal killer moves and unfinished but extremely comprehensive research on a path.
Through an extremely convoluted series of events, you gain a full venerable Inheritance like Star Constellation Chessboard, Heaven and Earth Luck or Triple Qi Retraction. This will severely affect canon.

Premium Gu Worms

These are special Immortal Gu that have transcended the limit of gu world, it is as if they were the apex masterpiece of a venerable. Only venerables could make them from scratch, while great grandmaster attainment in their path is needed to advance them past rank 6. They appear in your aperture the moment you open it, potentially destroying it. They are fully fed and won’t need food for 30 years.

Its primary use-case is refining mortal materials into rank 6 immortal materials, higher ranks allow it to create higher ranked materials. Dao Forge's underlying ability is manipulating and concentrating dao marks. This makes it very helpful for gu refinement. With the right killer moves, it can make new materials, turn one material into another, add dao marks to people and create new breeds of beasts.
This gu worm relies on death – humans, variants or beasts. Whenever you kill anything it resonates in proportion to their strength and rewards you with a surge of power. This power provides a wide-ranging buff to your strength, toughness, healing, speed, mental energy (it effectively makes your dao marks and gu worms more potent) but wears off over time. Upgrading its rank increases the effect - at rank 8 (and with sufficient sacrifices) it could provide equivalent power to Heavenly Dragon's Last Stand. Spectral Soul really wants this gu worm and will trade almost anything for it.
This gu worm can produce a fine powder that supplies a percentage of any other gu's food, like dragonfish. In addition the gu worm's potency is 50% higher shortly after feeding. However, gu worms can get addicted to this powder, becoming dependant upon it, acting up if they don't get it. They need special food path methods to rehabilitate them. This can create a captive market and with killer moves opens up a whole new field of gu-enhancing stimulants.
When used, reveals a huge amount of information on one's surroundings including the location of wild immortal gu, beasts, materials, inheritances and immortals. Rank 6 Treasure Map can only find rank 6 entities or below within a local area like a sea area or an Earth Trench. Rank 7 works on rank 7 throughout a Region. Rank 8 does gu world, Rank 9 does gu world + all grotto-heavens and secluded domains.
Produces batches of fruit that expand immortal apertures spatially by around 1 km2 each. Mortal aptitude is instantly set to 99%. Suffers diminishing returns on bigger apertures, though upgrading its rank counters this and increases yields. Excellent for trade, instant captive market.
Sends a target bodily forward in time and improves its luck. This can be a handy escape tool, a utility gu worm or a panic-button to get rid of a foe for a time. Most effective on targets of the same rank or lower. It has immense, world-changing synergies with Spring Autumn Cicada, heaven's will would go to extreme lengths to prevent anyone wielding both gu worms.
Contains the complete narrative of Reverend Insanity, including all unwritten chapters. It contains many secrets relating to heaven path, human path, hope gu, eternal gu, space cave, venerable methods and rank 10. When read it carves human path dao marks on the user, scaling with its rank. It does not need immortal essence to use, only mental energy.
Contains every recipe for every non-premium mortal and immortal gu. If anyone living or dead knows a gu recipe, it will be inscribed on this gu worm. Updates automatically when used. Rank 6 Almanac can only provide recipes for rank 6 gu and below, rank 7 for rank 7...
Allows you to create optimal step-by-step plans to fulfil goals, accounting even for factors the user is unaware of. Rank 6 can only account for Rank 6 entities and below. Uses a lot of mental energy and thoughts rather than immortal essence, making it useable for mortals (albeit only for smaller, short-term plans). You can use this like the light of wisdom to brute-force immortal gu recipes but this is extremely thought-intensive.
Causes random, uncontrolled tribulations against a target, whether it's an immortal, object or beast. Rank 6 causes earthly tribulations with a 5% chance of heavenly tribulations. Rank 7 causes heavenly tribulations with a 5% chance of grand tribulations... Target gains dao marks if it survives the tribulation.
When used, anything enslaved burdens its own soul with the cost of enslavement instead of you. You maintain control, though enemy enslavement path methods are somewhat stronger against them.

Other

Whenever you do a good deed (as judged by Paradise Earth were he around), your karma is recorded and earns interest over time. You can draw on your karma to boost your luck for a brief time. At peak withdrawal rates, this can provide more luck than Giant Sun over a short timeframe but not nearly so much over a sustained period.
You gain the mercantile knowledge and skills of Earth's top businessmen, investors, scammers and salesmen. You can also access Treasure Yellow Heaven whenever you like, even at rank 1.
You gain 250 100 year lifespan gu for personal use or for trade.
Whenever you use primordial/immortal essence, your essence use is 100% more efficient, achieving normal results at half cost. This makes mortal cultivation quite easy and gives you huge opportunities in trade.
Choose a rank 6 gu or a rank 1 gu that automatically advances in rank with you, up to rank 8. Chosen gu must not be Sovereign Immortal Fetus, premium gu or Spring Autumn Cicada. A Rank 6 gu arrives fully fed and won't need food for 30 years. Rank 6 gu are too big for rank 1 apertures, unless they are of special physiques. If you choose a rank 6 gu that's already important for canon (like wisdom gu), you get a version that's functionally identical with a slightly different name and aesthetic.

Power

You suffer the downside of the sovereign immortal aperture, your dao marks do not conflict with enemy killer moves. You are much less tanky than your peers. May not be taken with Sovereign Immortal Physique.
All your tribulations are of the next highest tier – Heavenly instead of earthly, grand instead of heavenly… On the plus side you get vastly more dao marks than normal immortals. On the other hand you have to deal with mini-chaotic disasters at rank 8 (equivalent to what Fang Yuan dealt with in crazed demon cave). Should you reach for rank 9, your dao blockade will be a full chaotic disaster and future chaotic disasters are upgraded to apocalyptic chaotic disasters. It would be a courageous decision to take this and anger heaven's will.
You cannot kill humans or variant humans, violate Geneva conventions (slavery, killing prisoners, torture) or Gu world conventions (sneak-attacking, repaying kindness with enmity, targeting mortals as an immortal).
You become very proud of your strength and dismissive of others -- not inherently unreasonable given the nature of this CYOA. You seek higher status and respect from those around you and go out of your way to humiliate people who slight you. You cannot bear to lose. This isn't an incurable case of young master syndrome but a character trait that may be suppressed with great effort (or indulged if you're capable enough).
You become a major risk-taker, pursuing the rush of lethal combat. You aren't eager to die but your priorities are warped such that you choose violent and aggressive ways to achieve your goals (camping in your aperture is insufficiently thrilling). This is rather dangerous if combined with Fang Zheng Aspect.

Aptitude and Special Physiques

You gain 2x attainment growth in its path.
In addition to the usual boons of an extreme physique, your human path attainment gain is doubled and abilities are greatly enhanced. Along with normal tribulations you will also suffer human tribulations, these will give you human path dao marks. You may also talk with gu worms. Most are unhelpful.
You gain the rank 1 equivalent of the Sovereign Immortal Fetus. All your mortal moves are stronger due to 100 non-conflicting dao marks in all paths. If you become immortal Shadow Sect will immediately realize they can’t refine SIF and commit their full resources to hunting you down. However, heaven’s will is ambivalent to you. Despite being a profoundly unbalanced fate escapee, you are at least blocking Shadow Sect’s heaven-defying scheme. However, if you outpace Shadow Sect, you will become a major target.

You do not suffer tribulations, instead you periodically receive batches of heaven path dao marks. Without a method of refining these heaven path dao marks, you may briefly store them but must eventually release them as tribulations in the outside world. You can broadly control them but this control is more like the affinity a pet has for its master than real precision. You might specify whether you want them to come in the form of many weak beasts or one strong beast, energy, or other forms. However, you can't fully control your tribulation. Even so, this will be quite attention-grabbing and intimidating.

Your cultivation rank starts at rank 6, your aura is extremely strange and unknown to all but the most knowledgeable immortals. The rate at which you get heaven path dao marks increases slowly over time (about 3 earthly tribulations per year at the start) and may be further increased by bringing resources into the Overlord Aperture.

Your aperture resembles a constellation of small worlds floating in the void, growing and dying over the years. Their inconvenient impermanence is balanced by the rapid and bizarre evolution of new creatures, gu worms and even paths (as you develop your aperture). Once you have the methods and capabilities to refine heaven path dao marks, you may render some worlds permanent, control your tribulations precisely and manipulate dao mark conflict.

Heaven's will and fate cannot perceive you, in the same way that you cannot see your own eyeballs without a mirror. You also gain 2x heaven path attainment gain and your heaven path moves are stronger as this is the special physique of that path.

If taken with Predetermination, you may convert incoming heaven dao marks into conventional tribulations in your aperture rather than release them externally. With Predetermination and Reckless you can deal with your tribulations in the normal way and convert them to heaven path as refined dao marks. If taken with Tribulation King, you lose control over your tribulations until you reach rank 10. They may turn on you (and very likely will since you will be their closest potential target). Tribulation King makes it enormously harder to refine heaven path dao marks due to their number and ferocity. It would be a courageous decision.

If taken with Reckless Savage Aspect and Predetermination, you may take your tribulations internally in a chosen path, defeat them, get the dao marks and transform those dao marks into refined heaven path dao marks(albeit at a certain exchange rate - heaven path dao marks are powerful).

Same aptitude as your first aperture, may be dual Extreme Physique. This also means you may cultivate two paths without dao mark conflict.
Regardless of your foundation, you are guaranteed a peak super grade blessed land: 13000 km2 and 40:1 time flow. You have enough leftover heaven and earth qi to refine three Immortal Gu, provided you know the recipes.
Any time after awakening your aperture, you may make a clone of yourself. It gets all your other perks but must select a different vital gu. It can't duplicate premium gu or Giant Sun, though clones share the luck.
0
You may use two paths without dao mark conflict. You can select this multiple times for more paths.
You become an enlightened beast of your choice. While you gain a tough body, 3x dao mark amplification in a path, long lifespan and the special ability of your species, you may not use human path (nor may human path be used against you). If you want to become venerable you shall need another way to break the dao blockade.
You have the power to turn any killer move into an independent battle strength of equal rank, though you can't then use the killer move or its gu worms while you use this. The battle strengths use essence from heaven and earth rather than yours.
You gain 1000 years of instinctive combat experience fighting beasts, tribulations and immortals. This doesn't yield any factual information, just intuitive recognition of strengths, weaknesses and combat dynamics. Also includes Olympic-gold+++ martial arts and grandmaster flying attainment.
You may see as though your eyes were at any XYZ coordinate in gu world. For the purposes of looking inside closed blessed lands, you need to know EXACTLY where to look, down to the 10th decimal place since they're tiny pockets of space. Compared to World Map, this gives you unlimited view range but far less finding and scouting power, it needs other investigative methods to be most useful. After all, mortal eyes cannot see immortal treasures. But with the right gu worms eyes can do far more than just seeing.
You gain rank 8 Fortune Rivalling Heaven, choosing at any time between enjoying the luck or wielding the gu worm externally for killer moves/refinement.
Given an hour of undistracted concentration you can convert all your dao marks to one kind. This annuls information path agreements, some tracking methods and makes it much easier to heal wounds.
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Pick a path. You gain 5x dao marks in that path. You may pick this multiple times. Stacks with Reckless but only works once on each dao mark.

Safety

You are considered a high-priority target by heaven's will, as if you had the heaven-defying Sovereign Immortal Aperture and personally sabotaged Star Constellation's plans. It would be unwise to spend much time outside an aperture until you're prepared to deal with the consequences. Even within an aperture, tribulations will go out of their way to target you. This overrides Heavenly Overlord Physique's incognito element if you take it, for you become a parasitic rival to heaven itself.
Occasionally you reveal your honest intentions to others. This is most likely to happen when it's embarrassing.
You become a variant human of some kind. You may not sincerely ally with any other variant and must aim to have 50% of all immortals be of your race.
You may never ally with anyone longer than 24 hours, either in combat or in cultivation. You can still live with your parents or find lovers as long as you don't give or receive aid in the above.
Once a month, if you're near death, you can heal to your full strength and erase any hostile killer moves affecting you. You get a brief 50% power surge, spiky hair and your anime theme plays.
You gain an extra sense that detects danger. You can feel at any time how dangerous you are, how dangerous nearby beasts, killer moves and gu masters are. This can be used to infer intent as well, you can sense the direction the danger is focused in plus its area of effect. This sense stacks on top of any sensory gu worms. If you can detect someone, you can sense their danger. The same applies even if they're invisible to you but near or if they're about to attack you (within 30 seconds at most). TLDR; you'll never be taken by surprise.
Whenever anyone uses SAC, you get the same benefit, travelling back in time to your earlier self. If you wield SAC, there is no failure chance.
Anyone short of a venerable will be corrupted upon searching your soul, eventually turning to your cause (this takes much longer for people of higher ranks). You are highly resistant to mind-altering methods and will eventually break free of any mind control.
Once a month you may completely ignore a lethal attack, no matter how powerful it is. Good for bluffing.
Upon dying, you may revive at any place you've been to. You keep your cultivation rank and dao marks but lose everything in your aperture at the time. You can do this three times before dying for real.
You may change your appearance at will, however you like, so long as you look recognizably of your species. Physical strength and other functional stats are unchanged. For the purposes of defeating investigation, only your physical appearance changes, not your aura, region, human qi, blood or bone...
This includes all of Chameleon's abilities but you may now replicate aura, blood, bone, soul and any other checks save heaven or human path. You can freely change region and lark about in the regional walls. 99% of the time only strict password policies will detect you.

You may impersonate any other species for aesthetic AND functional purposes (the physical and special abilities of said beast), provided you've personally observed them for a few hours. Your transformation attainment rises slightly when you impersonate a new being. However your impersonations are limited to mortal-level or your rank, whichever is higher. You cannot impersonate a legendary immemorial desolate beast at rank 1.

Your Qi are automatically balanced and the Immortal Ascension tribulation is very tame, as though you are an Ally of Heaven.
Heaven's will favours you like you are a Dao Guardian, sending resources and techniques your way and greatly strengthening your luck. Your tribulations are strong but manageable with your methods. If you do anything seriously heaven-defying like attacking fate, you lose the benefits of this.
You never experience backlash from failed killer moves or refinement failures, even if you deliberately fail or your move is broken. Backlash from agreements remains.
You count as a rank higher for the purposes of deductions against you. Your gu worms and killer moves have no aura, only your cultivation rank can be observed.
You can choose what path any of your tribulations will be.

Comprehension

Become obsessed with a path of your choice. You are thrilled and delighted by your path, you love researching and using it. You find it very hard to research or take seriously any other path -- they are all vastly inferior. Your social skills greatly decline, you like lecturing people on the intricacies of the greatest path.
You lose all memory of your first life on Earth, including your RI knowledge. You are aware of the choices you've made in this CYOA.
After gaining great reputation or high cultivation, you will fall deeply in love with someone of the opposite ideological alignment to you. Righteous if you're demonic and vis versa. You'll switch to their alignment out of love. Your love is fully requitted, in a world of betrayal they'll never willingly turn on you. However, their friends will not like you. Your enemies will have a soft target.

When under pressure to perform, your effective attainments fall dramatically. While you can do fine work alone, you would never be capable of developing Reverse Flow Seal or Heaven Always Leaves A Way Out For People while under attack. Don't bother going to refinement competitions either, or refining rank 9 gu in battle.

Pre-prepared and trained killer moves work fine, you still know what you're doing. Just not when you need it most.

Attainments

You may purchase attainments here, special intuition about a chosen path that you immediately possess upon rebirth. If you select Great Grandmaster + it means you are one of the rare few with the talent to reach supreme grandmaster on your own without any special methods like Primordial Domain or True Meaning. However, learning things the hard way still uses up enormous amounts of time and resources.

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Other

You think at 2x normal speed. If you could alter a killer move in 10 weeks, you can do it in 5. Does not affect quality of thought.

You gain enormous skill and natural talent at taming and raising beasts, even without enslavement methods. With effort, you may coordinate and synchronize with them in battle as if they were trained sheepdogs. This scales with enslavement path attainment and doubles attainment growth. Beasts will also fight harder for you.

You suffer no soul corrosion from dream realms even if you fail them.
You become a master of demonic path social skills: intimidation, blackmail, manipulation and deception. You may always use natural dao marks as though you were GGM in every path (you must still develop killer moves to use them this way though).
You gain unlimited willpower to pursue your aspirations 24/7, ignore pain, come back from any defeat and fight on to victory.
You become a master of righteous path social skills: diplomacy, righteousness, dignity and filial piety. Your enemies will instinctively underestimate you unless they've actually seen you achieve great things.

You get 1000 years of instinctive experience for long-term strategy and operational manoeuvres. This doesn't directly enhance your personal combat power, it lets you lead armies and plan wars at near-optimal efficiency. Whatever combat power you have is used with great efficiency.

You can adjust for new information, minimize risk and model the reactions of others to achieve maximum gains at minimum cost. The more factors are in play, the stronger this ability becomes. However, strategy is dependant upon good information. While you'll automatically prefer robust plans and attempt to account for unknowns, you can still lose if sufficiently surprised.

This ability scales with your wisdom path attainment, becoming massively superhuman at supreme grandmaster.

You know the name, function and food needs of every living immortal gu in RI and are instantly aware of when they die.
Points: 24