On that, I read another theory somewhere that suggested that Cultivation (they assumed the same thing) gave Taravangian the possibility to save the world but gave false information to him in order for the real plan to come about. So instead of Taravangian's smart self setting up failures, it was actually Cultivation. That same person argued the reason was because even when he was smart, he would have wrote it down in code which Odium would see but if Taravangian didn't know, then he couldn't write it down and Odium wouldn't know. I wish I remember whose theory this was