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Chapter 773: The Imperial Seal

Unlike during the Spirit River Autumn, when everything had to be fumbled for in the dark. Over a hundred years later, the Federation had long since accumulated multiple relatively stable cultivation paths.

As long as one followed these paths step by step, the risk of cultivation deviation or accidents was very low.

However, the price of stability was speed.

Currently, progressing from the first tier to the second tier, assuming decent aptitude and an ample supply of spirit energy, generally took about five to seven years.

This might seem decent, but such a pace was built upon an annual expenditure of three to five million Federation dollars.

Taking Spirit Stones as an example: before the advent of industrialized synthetic Spirit Stone technology, in the era when humanity relied entirely on mining to obtain Spirit Stones, their price was essentially on par with gold. Cultivation, then, was literally "eating" gold every day.

Even today, more than seventy years after standard synthetic Spirit Stones first appeared, the daily cost of standard synthetic Spirit Stones for cultivation remained considerable.

A newly initiated first-tier cultivator's saturated absorption limit for a day was approximately two hundred grams of standard synthetic Spirit Stones. In other words, they could consume a maximum of two hundred grams of standard synthetic Spirit Stones.

Industrial synthetic standard Spirit Stones cost about one percent of the price of gold.

And this was merely the appetite of a first-tier cultivator.

Of course, two hundred grams was the ideal scenario. The poor had their own methods of cultivation; without consuming Spirit Stones or using auxiliary spiritual materials, one could still cultivate purely by relying on cultivation techniques to absorb the spiritual qi of heaven and earth. It would just be a slower pace.

A hardship cultivator of normal aptitude, spending thirty to fifty years of painstaking effort, even without refining Spirit Stones at all, still had a chance to cross the threshold from the first to the second tier.

However, generally, no one would completely abstain from using Spirit Stones. At most, if they were poor, they would spend less; eating only a third of their fill was still eating.

Aside from Spirit Stones, elixirs, auxiliary spiritual materials, and enhancement potions — every single one cost money. Behind formidable combat power lay daily, enormous consumption.

If not for Spirit Stones and low-tier spiritual materials having already embarked on the path of industrialized mass production, relying purely on natural collection, the Federation would find it unrealistic to support even three billion cultivators, let alone thirty billion.

Unfortunately, mid- to high-tier spiritual materials technically remained unproducible in bulk. For instance, high-tier cultivators' specialized spiritual qi absorption medium — spirit marrow — could only be obtained in small quantities when excavating new Spirit Stone mines.

This directly led to the scarcity of high-tier cultivators. In the vast Federation, out of thirty billion cultivators, fewer than two hundred thousand could reach the fifth tier.

...

"Oh, right, here, take this back." A void suddenly opened on Bai Mo's chest. He reached his hand into the void and pulled out a square object.

"What is that?"

"An Imperial Seal?"

"The Imperial Seal of the Hua-Ya Federation?"

Some cultivators who had already been active since the Earth era recognized the object in Bai Mo's hand.

"How did you get that?"

"Back then, I remember this was used by that person to suppress qi luck when he established the first Fortune Dynasty?"

The Fortune Dynasty path still circulated within the Federation, though it wasn't mainstream. Many such small 'imperial courts' existed aboard certain noble-owned flagships.

"I think his name was Li Bida?" Someone squeezed their memories, finally recalling the name with great difficulty.

"Before he left Earth, he gave it to me as a memento," Bai Mo continued.

"..."

"Wouldn't a Fortune Dynasty collapse without its nation-suppressing divine artifact?" After some popular science explanation, everyone finally learned that such a person existed, and he had pioneered such a path.

"Before he left, he said that what he personally refined was the best, so he gave this one to me."

Over a hundred years ago, before Li Bida left Earth, to express his gratitude for Bai Mo casually crushing his mortal enemy Zhao Feiyan to death, he gave the Imperial Seal of the Hua-Ya Federation he had obtained to Bai Mo. After that, there was no further news of him.

"Found him. Li Bida, Federation noble, registered level: 58, granted flagship: Addis Ababa..."

"It seems he hit a bottleneck and has been stuck at the fifth tier."

"..."

"Another thousand years from now, how many people from our era will still be left?"

"There aren't many left even now," Yun Jie sighed, lamenting.

From the earliest Sea Race wars and human civil strife, to the later cosmic expansion, too many had sacrificed themselves, hit bottlenecks and gotten stuck, or died during breakthroughs. Too few were able to consistently advance and remain at the forefront.

Especially with those imperfect cultivation techniques of the early days, one misstep could lead to their path being completely obliterated, their life's cultivation ruined in an instant. The number of cultivators who died from cultivation deviation was thousands, even tens of thousands, of times greater than the lofty True Immortals.

But all of this was unseen by later generations, or rather, selectively ignored.

They would only believe that they hadn't been born in the best of eras.

The cultivation speed, slow as a tortoise compared to the preceding generations, and the myths of entering the fifth tier in less than ten years and acquiring trillions in wealth, constantly stimulated the later generations.

As for them, cultivating with the current step-by-step techniques, it would take at least two to three hundred years to even have a slight chance of reaching their first minor goal — the fifth tier.

Thus, a peculiar genre of novels became popular in the Federation: 'Reborn back to the Spirit River Autumn.' Their content invariably featured protagonists being reborn into that grand era and how they would get ahead step by step, seizing all sorts of opportunities.

However, such novels were truly prone to taboos. After all, those whose opportunities could be seized were, today, all formidable magnates. To "slap their faces" by writing about it would be met with a laugh by those with magnanimity, but those with less tolerance might just drop a casual hint, and then the author would cease to exist.

Of course, if the true 'Reincarnator,' Luo Yi, were to see these from the heavens, who knows what thoughts would cross his mind.

...

"I have already re-refined the Imperial Seal of the Hua-Ya Federation; it should now be considered a true Celestial Artifact," Bai Mo explained calmly.

"Celestial Artifact?" Upon hearing that term, they all thought of the Taibai Immortal Gold that had nearly completely shattered under the Law-Ending Domain just moments ago.

With the Federation's current accumulated resources, creating weapons truly suitable for Immortals and capable of making a difference in same-tier combat was still exceedingly difficult.

"Receive the Mandate, Issue the Edict!"

Bai Mo, gently gripping the Imperial Seal in his right hand, used his left index finger as a brush, with a surging torrent of spirit energy from his fingertip as ink. He wrote two grand characters, 'Manifest' and 'Suppress,' in the void. Then, with a press of the seal, a profound and abstruse fluctuation swept across the nearby starry sky at the speed of light.

"Eh?"

"Damn it, how did he find me?"

"Wasn't I perfectly hidden just now?"

The closest were less than a hundred kilometers away, while the farthest were a million kilometers from the central battlefield. Eight perfectly concealed True Immortal avatars were suddenly 'expelled' from the void.

In this great war of the Federation, few True Immortals participated directly, but almost all True Immortals sent avatars to observe the battlefield. After all, not being interested in the content of the conflict didn't mean they weren't interested in the battle itself.

However, before they could say more, the fluctuation unleashed by the character 'Suppress' arrived, intending to suppress these eight projected avatars one by one..