Chapter 830: The Price
"The Wizard Continent will not interfere."
"Jade Heaven is willing to remain neutral."
"The Pantheon is willing to provide limited support."
"So our enemies are only the Blood Alliance and the Moon God Star, the two great Electors."
"These two Elector factions together possess eight True Immortals."
"How ironic. As the Empress of Terra, I have to contend with two Electors as if I were staging a rebellion myself." Wei Ni Si remarked, a self-deprecating laugh escaping her lips.
"If one doesn't become a True Immortal, they ultimately... cannot enter this circle." Kemo had wanted to say that without becoming a True Immortal, everyone was ultimately just an ant, but he slightly rephrased his words before they left his mouth.
Although the Empress could not be killed by True Immortals, relying on her two great Immortal Artifacts, conversely, she was also unable to exert any restraint over other True Immortals.
For someone of merely Six Tiers, attempting to centralize power and curb regional autonomy was incredibly difficult.
...
"Senior, what are you looking at?" Still by Mo Tian Xie's tombstone outside the Seven Profound Gate, the solitary Mo Feng Wu, clad in a flowing gauze dress, carrying two strange large boxes, once again encountered Bai Mo, who was seated by the grave.
Nearly three years had passed since their last meeting.
Over two years ago, all she remembered was encountering several Golden Core seniors before her vision went black, and she lost all memory of what followed.
When she awoke again, both she and her two adoptive mothers were inexplicably outside Xuanwu Pass.
All her belongings were intact; the only thing missing was that segment of memory.
"The future of the world."
"..."
Such a grand and lofty phrase left her at a loss for how to respond.
She was merely a small Foundation Establishment cultivator, well aware of her own limitations.
"Both of my adoptive mothers have also died," Mo Feng Wu continued. "I've brought them here to reunite with my adoptive father."
"Have you seen the scenery inside the pass?" Bai Mo suddenly asked.
"Inside the pass, and outside the pass, there's no difference. It's a man-eat-man world everywhere." As she spoke of entering the pass, a tearful glint appeared in Mo Feng Wu's eyes.
Her two adoptive mothers had sacrificed themselves to cover her escape during a treasure-hunting expedition, when they encountered someone playing the pig to eat the tiger.
It had taken her a great deal of effort to escape from the clutches of that "pig-eating tiger" and then collect the remains of the other two women.
"Senior, I don't quite understand. Why is it that even though I'm now a late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator, I feel more exhausted than when I was in Taian? Every day, I either wake up to kill or to be chased."
"You are the eighteenth person I've met who has asked that question."
"..."
"So many people have met Senior?"
"If you return to Taian now, you can go back to your old life."
"They can go back to their old lives, returning to the docks, returning to the fields."
Bai Mo said indifferently.
"I can't go back. I can't accept living out my life in a daze like a mortal." Mo Feng Wu imagined her blood-stained hands attempting to dabble in qin, chess, calligraphy, and painting, and immediately rejected the option.
Once one has seen the vast ocean, all other waters pale in comparison.
"They said the same thing."
"Even though, with the strength of a late-stage Qi Refinement cultivator, giving up cultivation and returning to their desired lives—working as porters or farmers alongside mortals—would be incredibly easy, they simply don't want to go back."
"After seeing everything the cultivation world has to offer, who would be willing to go back and mingle with mortals?" Mo Feng Wu retorted.
Once their horizons broadened, for them to go back and associate with muddled mortals—what difference would that be from pretending to be imbeciles or fools?
"If the Spirit Stones in Nanyazhou were only enough to support ten million cultivators, allowing merely twenty to reach Soul Transformation, but the cultivators in this world numbered in the billions, and everyone wished to reach Soul Transformation..."
"Who wouldn't suffer?"
"Are we mortals, lacking spirit roots, truly unworthy of cultivating?!" Over the years, she had also encountered some "old cultivators" who had entered the cultivation world before the emergence of the Yin-Yang Sect. They generally harbored great animosity toward the "new" Yin-Yang cultivators.
Before the new cultivators appeared, even the poorest rogue cultivators wouldn't have been reduced to fighting to the death over a few dozen Spirit Stones, but now, it was a common occurrence.
After the explosion in the number of low-level cultivators, a Qi Refinement cultivator working in a market town earned only two Spirit Stones a month, less than a quarter of their previous income. A few dozen Spirit Stones were equivalent to several years of normal earnings, making murder and treasure-snatching worthwhile.
"..." Bai Mo did not reply.
Mo Feng Wu immediately realized her gaffe, uttered in a moment of agitation.
This person before her was clearly the founder of the Yin-Yang Five Elements Art, the very source of it all, so how could he possibly believe that mortals were unworthy of cultivation?
"Senior, Feng Wu misspoke." Carrying the two urns of bones, Mo Feng Wu set them down and bowed deeply to Bai Mo.
"Then what do you think is the solution to all of this?"
"Solve all of this..." The young woman fell into deep thought.
All this time, she had only felt that she lived an exhausting life, that those around her lived exhausting lives, and everyone complained about their exhaustion, yet she had never deeply considered what solution there might be.
"...If I could just advance to Golden Core, everything should get better, right?" After thinking for a long time, she could only offer this answer, tinged with a question mark.
"All of this, is it about making everyone's lives easy?"
"Then, let everyone advance to Golden Core?" Mo Feng Wu said subconsciously. "That doesn't seem right. If everyone advanced to Golden Core, Golden Core cultivators would need even more Spirit Stones. If Golden Cores were walking everywhere, Golden Core cultivators would suffer even more."
"Ahhh... why is it like this? It's clear that if everyone cultivated diligently and advanced their cultivation, things would get better for *them*, but if everyone's cultivation goes up, then *everyone* ends up worse off!!"
The young woman's little mind couldn't accept this contradictory truth for a moment; the spiritual energy throughout her body gradually became unstable, and she even seemed to be on the verge of losing her Dao heart.
This question touched upon the very core of why she cultivated.
She truly couldn't comprehend why an increase in cultivation was a good thing for each individual, yet it became a bad thing for the entire world.
"I'll just go into the pass and kill demon beasts." After spitting up a few mouthfuls of blood, she hastily buried the two urns of bones alongside Mo Tian Xie's remains, then decided to chop down a few more demon beasts instead of thinking.
Although she knew in her heart that even after entering the pass, this contradictory truth would not change.
...
After the 'entering the pass' craze had blown for several years, the millions of cultivators who had impulsively rushed to Xuanwu Pass had, for the most part, learned a crucial lesson through bloodshed.
Entering the pass changed nothing.
It was still a world of man eating man, man eating demons, demons eating man, and demons eating demons.
Humanity had paid an enormous price, pushing tens of thousands of miles beyond Xuanwu Pass.
But what was the result? Most of the newly opened territories were occupied by the Four Great Sects and their various subordinates, leaving only scraps for the low-level cultivators.
Most of them became that price.
The only difference was that the tide of beasts invading humanity had transformed into a tide of humans invading the demon race.
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