Chapter 820: Sweeping Through
For twenty years, the Yin-Yang Five Elements Art training classes, offered without any screening or secrecy, spread like a virus throughout most of Nanyazhou.
Even Dongjizhou and Beixuanzhou, so remote from Nanyazhou that they were almost cut off from communication, also saw traces of the Yin-Yang Five Elements Art.
Benefiting from the grand Dao Lecture assembly that once shook the world and toyed with the cultivation of all living beings, and also from its reputation as a legacy from a mighty being of the Upper Realm, the Yin-Yang Five Elements Art enjoyed exceptionally high renown among cultivators.
Although almost no one truly chose to cultivate both paths, most cultivators in the cultivation world had, at some point, studied its contents.
After all, no one knew if this Dao Lineage, passed down from a mighty being beyond the Nascent Soul stage, concealed any crucial secrets.
If it could allow mortals to gain a pseudo-spirit root through blood sacrifice, perhaps it could also allow cultivators to blood sacrifice to enhance their own spirit roots?
...
In this world, there were truly too many mortals whose lives were as cheap as grass.
The proliferation of the Yin-Yang Five Elements Art gave mortals, living in a chaotic era, an additional choice.
Knowing three to five minor spells was, at the very least, a foundation for a stable life.
A single Fireball spell, if used skillfully, could take a life.
By now, no one could count how many people in the world were cultivating the Yin-Yang Five Elements Art.
...
However, cultivation, without exception, required the consumption of resources.
Spirit stones, spirit pills, spirit herbs, spirit fruits.
Especially pseudo-spirit root cultivators who had emerged through the Yin-Yang Five Elements Art's blood sacrifice method, their low aptitude meant that each step up the cultivation ladder required greater consumption than cultivators with good spirit roots.
However, the cultivation world simply didn't possess enough resources to supply this rapidly increasing number of cultivators.
Moreover, no one ever had too many spirit stones, and the existing spirit ore veins had long since been divided among the major sects, families, and factions. For thousands of years, rogue cultivators had only been able to barely survive in the cracks.
Originally, the density of rogue cultivators wasn't high, and scattered across the vast cultivation world, they could just about get by.
As a result, with the proliferation of the Yin-Yang Five Elements Art, millions upon millions of low-level cultivators were violently thrust into the Nanyazhou cultivation world.
...
Everything changed.
Leveraging their immense numbers, they swarmed like locusts, using every means possible to plunder all available cultivation resources.
Especially since the Yin-Yang Sect, at its inception, adopted a policy of teaching all without discrimination, utterly disregarding matters of character or moral standing. This led to all manner of scoundrels—river and lake bandits, marauders, and petty thieves—infiltrating their ranks.
Many low-level immortal cultivation families consequently suffered bloody calamities.
Groups of dozens, even hundreds, of impoverished, bandit-born Yin-Yang Five Elements Art Qi Refinement cultivators organized themselves to resume their old ways. They raided small families everywhere, families that could only muster ten or so Qi Refinement cultivators.
As for lone Qi Refinement cultivators, it went without saying: they'd be robbed first, with discussions to follow—no matter which big shot or sect's descendant they might be.
These were still minor matters; after all, killing for treasure was commonplace in the cultivation world, and the law of the jungle was the daily reality of this land.
Every day, people were killed; every day, sects were destroyed.
While the Yin-Yang bandits killed for treasure, even more of them were killed themselves, for they were always significantly weaker than cultivators of the same cultivation level.
...
What truly incited public outrage, however, was something else.
The rapidly swelling ranks of pseudo-cultivators each had a demand for cultivation resources, for spirit stones, and for spirit lands.
They weren't all paupers; some even had Foundation Establishment or Golden Core parents.
Previously, without a spirit root, this group—despite having cultivator parents—would at most live a life of wealth in the mortal world, only to turn into a handful of yellow earth a century later.
But now, through the Yin-Yang Five Elements Art's blood sacrifice, they at least gained a pseudo-spirit root, allowing them to barely embark on the path of cultivation.
No matter how poor their aptitude, having a Golden Core father now held entirely different significance.
With the financial resources of a Golden Core cultivator, supporting a few Qi Refinement children was simply not an issue.
However, the spirit stone output in the cultivation world couldn't immediately surge to match; the rapid increase in cultivator numbers ultimately led to a soaring of prices for all cultivation-related items—except for cultivators themselves.
Spirit stones, for instance, were a cultivator's essential need.
In the market towns, a shop assistant's monthly wage, originally ten spirit crystals, quickly plummeted to eight, and even six spirit crystals found people willing to work.
Anyway, ordinary shop assistants didn't need to fight, so their poor combat ability didn't prevent Yin-Yang cultivators from applying for jobs.
Those who knew their combat ability was weak and couldn't engage in killing for treasure flocked to the market towns to work, driving down wages.
Other Qi Refinement cultivators, who had always been at the bottom of the cultivation world, found their lives becoming even harder under this impact.
A monthly wage of ten spirit crystals was already barely enough, but now that Yin-Yang cultivators had arrived, to keep their jobs, they had to accept even lower treatment of eight, seven, or even six spirit crystals per month.
Thus, they directed their resentment toward the Yin-Yang Sect, which had been ceaselessly spreading the Yin-Yang Five Elements Art and creating these instant "pseudo-cultivators."
...
The mere resentment from Qi Refinement ants was not enough to shake the confidence of Mu Zi Qing, a Golden Core cultivator.
What ultimately made her decide to voluntarily disband the Yin-Yang Sect was the birth of the first cultivator to advance to Foundation Establishment using the Yin-Yang Five Elements Art, three years prior.
She began to feel a bit afraid.
Mu Zi Qing had always kept a close eye on everything concerning the Yin-Yang Five Elements Art.
She was well aware that after the widespread dissemination of the cultivation art, the lives of Qi Refinement cultivators had become much harder, and this downward trend showed no signs of stopping.
Now, this wave had finally, with the birth of the first Yin-Yang Foundation Establishment cultivator, swept up to the Foundation Establishment level.
A Foundation Establishment cultivation base was considered a core stratum in many sects.
Realizing something was wrong, she now only wanted to extricate herself as quickly as possible, before the vast number of Foundation Establishment cultivators were engulfed and destroyed by this Yin-Yang tide.
She could ignore the scorn of a thousand Qi Refinement cultivators, but the scorn of a thousand Foundation Establishment cultivators—even as a Golden Core cultivator herself—still made her a little apprehensive.
Of course, her lack of confidence also stemmed from Bai Mo not having appeared for twenty years.
Otherwise, backed by a big tree, she wouldn't have been afraid at all.
...
"Why do I feel like we're living even harder after becoming cultivators?" Dali, working in Yuan Chen Market Town, grumbled to his companion, A'Qiang.
Back then, they had left their hometown and gone to Dali's uncle's town to become immortal masters.
The first few months were good; a local landlord treated them as honored guests, providing them with delicious food and drinks.
But it wasn't long before a group of Yin-Yang marauders arrived in the town and, using their numerical advantage, plundered the entire settlement.
The Qi Refinement fifth-level leader, seeing that they both practiced the Yin-Yang Five Elements Art, not only spared their lives but also brought them into his group.
After that, they robbed dozens of lone cultivators and several small families, and their lives were reasonably comfortable.
Until they ran into a brick wall.
It was a Qi Refinement Sword Cultivator from the Yang Fire Palace.
Everyone thought that with over a hundred people besieging one, they had a significant advantage.
They never expected that nearly a hundred people would die before they finally exhausted the opponent's spiritual power and cut off his head.
Moreover, the death of the Qi Refinement Sword Cultivator provoked the pursuit of his Foundation Establishment master.
Of the entire bandit group of over a thousand, ultimately only about a dozen managed to escape with their lives.
After that wave, the two went into hiding, working incognito in Yuan Chen Market Town. They did so for over a decade, witnessing the history of the market town where wages plummeted year after year, yet the workload only increased..
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