Are You Really Not Going

At these words, those with keen ears in the surrounding crowd immediately brightened.

Wouldn’t this mean that as long as they went to work, they wouldn’t have to worry about shortening their lifespans simply because they couldn’t use spiritual energy?

Yuan Jinsheng had made himself perfectly clear: so long as they remained confined within the Cage Court, they would be in a state devoid of spiritual energy.

These informant cultivators had already gained a deep understanding of just how sturdy the Cage Court was.

Even more than ten thousand cultivators, led by a Nascent Soul cultivator, had been unable to break through it. Aside from the city barriers of the Northern and Southern Spirit Domains, they had hardly ever seen anything so formidable. What was more, this place even possessed the ability to shut off the concentration of spiritual energy at any time…

Spiritual energy, after all, was naturally generated by heaven and earth. Even if a high-level cultivator used their power to drain all the spiritual energy from an area, it would only be temporary. As time passed, spiritual energy would continue to form and spread in from every direction.

Aside from places like the Land of Absolute Spirit, which seemed to have been naturally formed by the world itself, it was extremely difficult to maintain such a vast space without spiritual energy for any length of time through human means. The energy expenditure would inevitably be enormous.

Therefore, quite a few of them had already given up on the hope that some minor mishap would occur before headquarters arrived to rescue them, allowing them to escape with ease.

They had already prepared themselves to endure six arduous years here.

Now, someone was telling them that they could avoid some of that hardship and spend time in an environment rich in spiritual energy. How could these cultivators not be tempted?

It was only land reclamation. For cultivators like them, it was practically effortless.

Before they had come to the mortal realm, they had done all sorts of filthy and exhausting work in the cultivation world while gathering intelligence and searching for ancient ruins. What kind of dirty work hadn’t they done for the sake of a job?

Although they had been less cautious after arriving in the mortal realm than they had been in the cultivation world, and they no longer needed to treat the cultivators here with the same courtesy, allowing them to enjoy a fairly comfortable period of time, their circumstances were different now.

Knowing how to assess the situation was one of their foremost strengths.

Thus, before long, Yuan Jinsheng received applications from a large number of cultivators, many of whom hoped to begin work as soon as possible.

Quite a few Golden Core cultivators had even come after hearing the news to sign up.

Yuan Jinsheng looked at the increasingly thick stack of applications with great satisfaction.

With this, their sect would soon be able to reclaim another large stretch of fertile farmland. With so many cultivators lending a hand, they would no longer lack manpower for farming afterward either.

It seemed that recruiting a large number of disciples might also work, but the current Lingxian Sect was not yet capable of doing so.

After all, cultivating disciples was fundamentally different from hiring workers.

The latter was merely an employment relationship: the Lingxian Sect paid wages, while the applicants provided their labor.

But raising disciples was not so simple.

A disciple’s food, clothing, housing, transportation, education, daily life, and even most of their future interpersonal relationships would all be tied to the sect. They needed to study, cultivate, receive resources and guidance, and have order maintained around them.

If they recruited too many disciples all at once, then whether in terms of resources or manpower, the sect would inevitably have to make a massive investment before those disciples were capable of contributing anything. The current Lingxian Sect could not shoulder such a burden, nor was it willing to lower its standards for sect training.

If they merely trained disciples to roughly the same level as the sects of the mortal realm, then the mortal realm already had far too many cultivators raised in that manner. It did not need one more sect like theirs.

The recruitment drive in the square of the Cage Court was proceeding in full swing. In a nearby tower, Venerable Gui Jia and an old man at the late Golden Core stage sat indoors, gazing out at the square while conversing.

“I never thought even Gui Thirteen and the others would sign up… Venerable, are you truly not going?” the Golden Core old man asked.

Seated in the place of honor, Venerable Gui Jia watched his subordinates scrambling to register below. His hand rested on the armrest, his index finger tapping it again and again, betraying the irritation in his heart. He said impatiently, “Go for what? Go reclaim land and plant crops for these ants from the mortal realm?”

“Ants? Have you even considered what kind of power it took to trap us in this place? Do you possess such ability?” The Golden Core old man had connections at headquarters and did not care much about Venerable Gui Jia’s expression. Seeing that the other man had answered him so rudely despite his speaking politely, he immediately shot back.

Venerable Gui Jia’s face twisted for an instant at the old man’s lack of courtesy. Fortunately, he remembered that the man had someone backing him at headquarters and was not without connections, so he reined in his tone somewhat.

“I just can’t stand these people. They dragged us here, ignored us completely, and now they suddenly want us to reclaim land for them for no apparent reason.”

The Golden Core old man let out a cold snort. He glanced at the bustling square below before saying coolly, “This group may have a truly formidable background. With this ability to sever spiritual energy alone… Could it be that people from the Ascendant Immortal Domain have intervened?”

“What? The Ascendant Immortal Domain? That can’t be possible.” Venerable Gui Jia was shocked.

Although he too felt that the Cage Court’s methods were astonishing, he had never once considered the Ascendant Immortal Domain.

The Golden Core old man shot him a glance. “In any case, forgive my ignorance, but throughout the Northern and Southern Spirit Domains and all the surrounding Spirit Domains, I have never seen—or even heard of—such a method.”

“Is it really that formidable?” Venerable Gui Jia was astonished.

But he knew that the Golden Core old man’s claim of ignorance was merely modesty. The man had once been the disciple of a Spirit Venerable at headquarters. It was said that back then, the Spirit Venerable had been impressed by the old man’s exceptional aptitude when he was still young and had taken him as a disciple, personally nurturing him with great care.

Unfortunately, the old man had been severely wounded during a mission later on, and his cultivation had remained stuck at the late Golden Core stage ever since. He had subsequently been assigned to the mortal realm to enjoy his retirement. With his identity, he also served as a check on and a monitor for Venerable Gui Jia.

Although Venerable Gui Jia was a member of the intelligence organization Myriad Connections and was well-informed, most of the information he had encountered or understood concerned the Northern and Southern Spirit Domains, with at most some news from the surrounding Spirit Domains.

As for the Ascendant Immortal Domain, he could say that he knew absolutely nothing.

Venerable Gui Jia only knew that the Ascendant Immortal Domain was the most powerful existence in the entire cultivation world.

Its power lay not only in the cultivators there, but also in its environment, its creatures, and every other aspect of that place—all of which were unknown and terrifying.

Beyond that, he knew nothing. To many cultivators in the cultivation world, everything related to the Ascendant Immortal Domain was like an unreachable legend. From time to time, rumors would circulate, but people generally treated them as myths and fairy tales.

The Ascendant Immortal Domain was the mythical land of the cultivation world.

The Spirit Venerable’s disciple before him had naturally seen and learned far more than he had. Thus, after hearing the old man’s words, Venerable Gui Jia believed them to be true by seventy or eighty percent.

“This old man is merely ignorant and making a few guesses. As for what these people truly are and what their strength may be, they are not opponents that any of us could withstand.” The Golden Core old man’s expression was rather inscrutable.