No matter how poor the Mortal Realm is, when its population is vast enough, even with lower price points, it still forms a massive market. Is there really no one in the Cultivation Realm who wants to compete for this market?
Lin Xiao found that hard to believe.
He had been to the Cultivation Realm before. While the Cultivation Realm as a whole was far wealthier than the Mortal Realm, the wealth gap across the Cultivation Realm was actually quite stark. Where some cultivators would turn their noses up at the Mortal Realm, there would definitely be others who saw its value.
Even if the journey between the Cultivation Realm and the Mortal Realm was long, Golden Core and Nascent Soul level cultivators only needed a single year to cross the Desolate Spirit Lands.
A single year was no great stretch of time for cultivators. As long as they dispatched cultivators from clans or sects who had little hope of advancing further, there was no reason they would ever have to give up on this huge market.
All in all, the Cultivation Realm did not seem to completely dismiss the Mortal Realm's market, yet it was acting as if it did not care about the Mortal Realm's life or death, squeezing and suppressing it relentlessly. It was strange, very strange.
Lin Xiao had no leads on this issue for the time being, so he could only develop his sect step by step according to his plans.
Now that He Yi had brought this up, it was clear he knew quite a lot about the matter. Lin Xiao replied, "I only have a rough idea of the situation, not the full reasons behind it. You are asking like you have some information, don't you?"
He Yi responded promptly, "I do know a thing or two. The Mortal Realm is vast in territory, but its spiritual energy is thin. The prosperous spirit domains in the Cultivation Realm truly have no interest in the Mortal Realm at all. That is why the Mortal Realm has almost always been under the control of the nearby Southern Spirit Domain."
"Or rather, the Mortal Realm is controlled by the Myriad All Connections Trading Company of the Southern Spirit Domain."
He Yi paused for a moment, as if thinking of something, before continuing, "On the surface, the Talisman Sect has the most prominent reputation across the Northern and Southern Spirit Domains, but in reality, the most powerful force in the Southern Spirit Domain is that ubiquitous Myriad All Connections Trading Company. You could say they are the de facto hidden overlords of the Southern Spirit Domain. Myriad All Connections may present itself as a trading firm, but in truth, across the Northern and Southern Spirit Domains, they do not just run businesses. They secretly pull the strings of many affairs. If it were not for the Talisman Sect and several other sects standing together in a shared alliance... the situation is far too complicated to explain in a few words. In short, the current dormant, stagnant state of the Mortal Realm is to a large extent deliberately maintained by Myriad All Connections."
"Myriad All Connections?" Lin Xiao was quite taken aback.
That firm had a huge reputation. He had run into their shops the very first time he went to the Cultivation Realm. Even though he did not stay there long, he could feel how deeply Myriad All Connections had seeped into the daily lives of cultivators in the Cultivation Realm.
"Alright, I now know this situation. When you have time, record all the information you know about Myriad All Connections into a jade slip and give it to me. I will think things through," Lin Xiao said.
"Understood," He Yi agreed, "Sect Master, Myriad All Connections has quite a number of informants in the Mortal Realm. Our sect's recent large-scale actions will definitely be noticed by those informants and reported back. Also, there were nine other members of the investigation team who came to the Mortal Realm with me back then."
He thought for a moment and added another line, "Many sects across the Northern and Southern Spirit Domains have more or less dealings with Myriad All Connections, both openly and in private..."
Hearing this, even Lin Xiao found the situation a bit tricky.
The informants of Myriad All Connections were not the biggest problem.
After all, the Mortal Realm was a barren, low-spirit land. Even if Myriad All Connections dispatched high-level informants, there could not be that many of them. Moreover, Lin Xiao did not believe that the other sects and cultivators in the Mortal Realm were unaware of the presence of high-level cultivators acting as informants.
The Mortal Realm's cultivators might not have the power to do anything to Myriad All Connections' informants, and might even dare not lay a hand on them, but that did not mean they did not know these informants existed.
Lin Xiao planned to ask the several close sect leaders and the imperial clan's old ancestors about the informants later.
What he found far more concerning were the nine cultivators from the great sects of the Cultivation Realm who had come with He Yi.
Those cultivators had impressive cultivation levels. The strongest among them had reached the late Nascent Soul stage, and the weakest was at the Golden Core stage. Aside from He Yi, only two of them were at the late Golden Core stage, and the remaining seven were all Nascent Soul cultivators.
He Yi had told Lin Xiao all this after he joined the Ling Immortal Sect.
"Uh... does your side have any convenient long-distance communication tools similar to our Lock Rings?" Lin Xiao suddenly lowered his voice and asked He Yi.
He Yi did not immediately understand what he meant. "There are sound transmission artifacts as convenient as Lock Rings," he said, "but all of them are limited by transmission range, and none can send messages across the Desolate Spirit Lands. The only thing our sect keeps back at headquarters are soul lamps, which can roughly show our state. For example, if someone is on the verge of death, their corresponding soul lamp will flicker and dim."
Soul lamps were special artifacts marked with a sliver of a cultivator's soul, which could roughly reflect their life status, and nothing more. Senior Liao had mentioned this to everyone during casual chats in the sect on ordinary days.
After hearing He Yi's answer, Lin Xiao looked thoughtful. "I see... Good, I already have a plan for this matter. You can go and attend to your own duties now."
Seeing that Lin Xiao already seemed to have a countermeasure in mind, He Yi felt relieved.
After the two ended their conversation, He Yi continued to wander around Xiushui City.
To call it wandering was not exactly accurate. He was not strolling around aimlessly in the city, but was actually on a mission.
He Yi had witnessed this entire city rise out of nowhere, and his curiosity towards Lin Xiao grew stronger by the day. After Xiushui City was built, Lin Xiao once told him to go down the mountain and walk around the city whenever he had time, saying it would help with his cultivation. So he took up the post of daily city patrol and oversight, and left the sect for the city.
He had to admit, his experiences over the past few days in the city had been quite interesting.
While many cities in the Cultivation Realm were also built and managed by cultivators, Xiushui City was clearly nothing like any of the cities He Yi had ever visited in the Cultivation Realm.
Here, there was no obvious divide between mortals and cultivators.
If one did not deliberately sense for the presence of cultivation bases, he could hardly tell whether the people passing by on the street were mortals or cultivators just by their expressions and behavior.
In the Cultivation Realm, mortals would do everything they could to avoid appearing in front of cultivators. If they accidentally ran into one, they would immediately hunch over, bow their heads, and try to make themselves as small and unnoticeable as an ant.
But the mortals in Xiushui City had excellent spirit. They would greet passersby warmly. Street food vendors who had leftover snacks in the afternoon would even randomly pick passersby who looked friendly and give them the food for free.
He had even seen a mortal farmer hire a loose cultivator to help him farm his fields!
After looking into it, he learned that these farmers were all villagers who had lived in the area before Xiushui City was built, and their farmlands were all located within the city's boundaries.
After the city was constructed, all these farmlands were covered by a dedicated protective city barrier. No outsiders could enter at will, and only people who registered at the City Lord's Manor could access their own assigned farm plots.
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
e vast world of cultivation, where he becomes the master of the Heavenly Ruins Sacred Hall, a dying old man with barely a tenth of his former cultivation remaining. He is immediately confronted with a deadly crisis: his subordinates have rebelled, and his protectors are forcing him to abdicate. At the critical moment, the system descends from the heavens: [Ding! The host has been detected facing a life-or-death crisis. The system is now officially activated!] [As a gift, you have received the Supreme Beginner’s Pack and awakened the ultimate cheat: ten thousand years of pure cultivation essence every second!] Yin Tianjue: “Wait… ten thousand years of cultivation every second? That’s six hundred thousand years a minute, and in one day… I can’t even calculate it. Either way, I’m already invincible!” You’re a peerless prodigy rarely seen in ten thousand years? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re an undying ancestor who has guarded a sacred land for countless ages? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re the strongest chosen one, blessed with heaven-defying destiny? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. From this day forth, I have only one thing to say: “I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. Now, how exactly are you supposed to deal with that?”
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
saw a female celebrity tied up and stuffed in the trunk! Little did he know, countless cameras were aimed at him at this moment - this was a new type of reality show. The first randomly selected passerby was caught in less than an hour. But when Xu Moru was selected, things started to take an unexpected turn. "Damn, this isn't how the script goes. This Xu Moru is too bold, he's not following the rules at all." "Crap, is this guy taking it seriously?" "The female celebrity has been scared to tears!"
