Sītú Wēi frowned.

But how could such immense deterrent power truly be maintained by the title of “Junior Martial Brother”?

Judging by his overbearing demeanor, he didn’t resemble a junior martial brother at all; he was more like the “Senior Martial Brother” of the Four Sects and Eight Gates.

When did the Four Sects and Eight Gates of the Qiánxué State Realm merge into one large sect?

How was it possible for these outstanding talents from various sects, these chosen ones of their generation, to gather together and follow one person’s command?

With his mere few hundred years of cultivation experience, Sītú Wēi racked his brains but simply couldn’t comprehend any of what he was witnessing.

Even after the banquet ended and the various prodigies dispersed, Sītú Wēi remained lost in thought.

He realized that all his previous predictions were wrong.

This young man named Mò Huà didn’t seem like a mere Jiao-snake passing through water, but rather a mighty dragon descending upon them, a divine dragon that had forcibly flown over the head of his Sītú family.

But…

“A roaming dragon with mid-to-low-grade spiritual roots?”

Sītú Wēi’s brow furrowed, his confusion deepening.

The dinner party was over.

It was Mò Huà’s first time hosting a meal.

The assembled prodigies, still somewhat lingering, dispersed to their respective accommodations.

However, because Mò Huà mentioned he had matters to attend to the next day, they didn’t leave but settled down at the Sītú family’s residence to rest.

With so many prodigies from major aristocratic families staying overnight, the Sītú family truly felt an unprecedented sense of “honor.”

Under the instructions of the Grand Elder Sītú Wēi, all arrangements for their reception were carried out with utmost care and perfection.

After nightfall, everyone rested, but the words Mò Huà had spoken still echoed in their hearts, leaving them restless for a long time.

Fēng Zǐchén, Shí Tiāngāng, along with Áo Zhēng, Xiāo Ruòhán, and Sòng Jiàn, these prodigies, gathered together to secretly discuss Mò Huà.

Fēng Zǐchén said, “Do you think Mò Huà is really that kind-hearted? To save the barbarian slaves of Dàhuāng for no reason?”

Sòng Jiàn replied, “Anyway, I still don’t quite believe it. That’s Mò Huà; he’s treacherous, despicable, shameless, malicious, and unscrupulous…”

“Although I don’t like Mò Huà either, Mò Huà doesn’t seem to be *that* bad, actually…”

“To be honest, he’s just a bit malicious and shameless towards us; he’s actually quite good to others—especially to his fellow disciples from Tàixū Sect, spoiling them rotten… Haven’t you seen his junior martial brothers treating him like a young ancestor? Whatever he says, goes…”

“There’s no helping it; Mò Huà is just too good to his junior martial brothers…”

A disciple of the Eight Great Gates blurted out, “Why didn’t I join Tàixū Sect back then…”

Everyone looked at him.

The disciple’s heart tightened, realizing he had carelessly blurted out his true feelings. He then slowly and gravely said:

“I mean, if I had joined Tàixū Sect before, I could have infiltrated the enemy’s ranks and found a way to harm this Mò Huà…”

This excuse was clumsy, and the others didn’t bother to respond.

Shí Tiāngāng also sighed, “Speaking of which, back in the Qiánxué State Realm, in the evil path’s grand array, we were all saved by Mò Huà.”

Shěn Cángfēng scoffed, “He didn’t save us; he was using us. He wanted to leave the array and needed our strength, and we needed his array to escape danger. We both got what we wanted; it can’t be called a favor…”

The others nodded in agreement, but their expressions were somber.

Fēng Zǐchén said, “So, you’re saying it’s really possible that Mò Huà merely acted out of kindness, meddling to save those barbarian slaves? He truly isn’t trying to trick us into our deaths?”

Someone gave him a look of contempt, “Are you that afraid of Mò Huà tricking you?”

Fēng Zǐchén nodded frankly, “To be honest, even now I don’t know how Mò Huà’s mind works; how can someone’s mind be so cunning and devious?”

Shí Tiāngāng asked, “Then if he really does trick you, what can you do?”

Fēng Zǐchén frowned, “I… I don’t think I can do anything. Even if he deceives me, I probably wouldn’t see through it.”

“There you have it then…” Shí Tiāngāng shook his head, “Since you can’t even detect it when he deceives you, why think so much?”

Fēng Zǐchén shook his head, “I don’t want to be like you and be called a ‘big fool’.”

Shí Tiāngāng’s face darkened.

He had gone from being the Senior Martial Brother of Jīngāng Sect to the “Big Fool” of Jīngāng Sect, all because of that one sword discussion with Mò Huà.

In the Alliance to Slay Mò Huà, he initially called himself “Big Fool” merely to spur himself on, not to forget his revenge against Mò Huà.

It backfired, and these prodigies from the Four Sects and Eight Gates now privately called him that too.

If his movement technique wasn’t inferior to Fēng Zǐchén’s, he would have definitely held Fēng Zǐchén down and given him a beating.

“Alright,” Xiāo Ruòhán said, “no infighting.”

Fēng Zǐchén said, “I still feel that this matter isn’t that simple.”

He replayed Mò Huà’s words in his mind, sentence by sentence, and then finally asked the question that he had been wanting to ask but found inconvenient:

“You guys, do you think what Mò Huà said is true or false?”

“What’s true or false?”

“I mean…” Fēng Zǐchén lowered his voice, “the Dao, the Immortals, and all that…”

Everyone frowned.

Shěn Cángfēng shook his head, “Do you really believe it? Mò Huà’s mouth is a deceiving ghost; there’s not a single truthful word from that kid.”

Fēng Zǐchén said, “But, it doesn’t seem to be completely without reason…”

“What reason?”

“I heard my grandfather mention it…” Fēng Zǐchén said:

“The cultivation world is peaceful now, developing through iterations and very prosperous. Especially among aristocratic families, the number of people who can cultivate to Foundation Establishment and Golden Core stages is much greater than one or two tens of thousands of years ago. But what’s strange is that the higher realms seem to be getting scarcer and scarcer.”

“From the Ascension stage onwards, the difficulty sharply increases, and the number of people is extremely rare.”

“As for the Void Refinement stage, it’s an even more precipitous drop.”

“Beyond Void Refinement, it’s almost equivalent to people in heaven, and we haven’t even heard of such individuals for a long time…”

“The current situation is very unusual.”

As Fēng Zǐchén said this, everyone became thoughtful.

Xiāo Ruòhán also frowned, “Indeed… The Dao Court has been unified for over twenty thousand years, and the population has surged into the hundreds of millions. All those without spiritual roots have been eliminated. Across the land, everyone is a cultivator, which means that the lowest realm of people in the world is Qi Refinement.”

“Logically, with such a large base, there should be more cultivators in higher realms…”

“Currently, there are many in Qi Refinement, many in Foundation Establishment, and Golden Core cultivators are not few either.”

“However, while the number of Ascension and Void Refinement cultivators is higher than in ancient times, if calculated by proportion of the population, it has actually sharply decreased.”

“In ancient times, when the population was sparse, there were still many who could reach Ascension, become true immortals, attain the peak of Void Refinement, and seek the Immortal Dao.”

“Now, all aspects of the cultivation world have developed, yet the number of people who can comprehend higher realms has become increasingly rare.”

Fēng Zǐchén said, “Is it… because of the spiritual energy? The spiritual energy of heaven and earth is declining, and we can only cultivate with spirit stones. But spirit stones are ultimately inanimate objects and are very different from the naturally flowing spiritual energy between heaven and earth.”

“If one day the spiritual energy of heaven and earth could recover, and the doors to the higher realms open, wouldn’t things be different?”

Shí Tiāngāng shook his head, “Heaven and earth spiritual energy recovery, how could it be easy?”

Xiāo Ruòhán also frowned, “Moreover, this may not necessarily be a matter of spiritual energy recovery…”

“A large-scale recovery of heaven and earth spiritual energy throughout the cultivation world is almost impossible. However, creating small-scale grotto-heavens and blessed lands, simulating natural spiritual energy environments with human effort, is not difficult. Which major aristocratic family doesn’t have a few small grotto-heavens, filled with spiritual energy, used for seclusion?”

“If we really want to absorb spiritual energy, all of us can. Even so, the number of prodigies entering Ascension and Void Refinement stages is still very few.”

Everyone frowned, falling silent for a moment.

Fēng Zǐchén then said, “So, what Mò Huà said actually makes some sense… People from our aristocratic families are too selfish; we only know how to pursue our own interests, which goes against the Heavenly Dao. That’s why cultivating to Foundation Establishment is very simple for us, and cultivating to Golden Core isn’t difficult either. Because these realms can all be forcibly ‘piled up’ with ‘resources’…”

Shí Tiāngāng shook his head, correcting him, “Golden Core isn’t like that. Golden Core depends on luck and fate.”

“It’s the same,” Fēng Zǐchén also shook his head, explaining, “If you have enough resources, forming a core is just a matter of trying a few more times. If once isn’t enough, then five, ten times…”

“As long as cultivation resources are abundant enough, luck is not an issue at all. Can a person be unlucky for an entire lifetime? It’s just a matter of when the core forms, and the quality of the core.”

“In fact, for prodigies like us, the quality of the core is a more serious issue than forming the core itself. If it weren’t for the risk of an unstable core quality or a flawed core dropping in grade, we would have formed our cores long ago.”

“After all, forming a core happens only once in a lifetime. Once a core is formed and its grade is set, it cannot be changed for life. So, if the grade drops, the consequences are extremely severe.”

“This is completely different from the difficulty of core formation for ordinary people…”

“What we prodigies fear is not failing to form a core, but falling behind others, or forming an imperfect core.”

Fēng Zǐchén continued, “But above the Golden Core, reaching Ascension is completely different. This might not be a simple matter of accumulating resources; it’s probably related to the Heavenly Dao and one’s temperament…”

“It just so happens that people from aristocratic families are mostly like this, accustomed to selfishness.”

“If this approach is wrong, and goes against the Heavenly Dao, then even entering Ascension might be difficult for us, Void Refinement would be out of reach, not to mention becoming an immortal…”

“So, what Mò Huà said is very likely, actually… reasonable… After all, aristocratic families seem to be grand and powerful, but after absorbing so many resources, not a single person has managed to become an immortal. This shows that our approach, at least to a large extent, does not conform to the path of ‘becoming an immortal’…”

The more Fēng Zǐchén spoke, the more reasonable he found it, and the more he felt he was right.

Shěn Cángfēng glanced at him, “You’re so ‘understanding’; why were you so stubborn in front of Mò Huà?”

Fēng Zǐchén sneered, “How can that be the same? How could I possibly give Mò Huà a good face?”

The others ignored him.

However, after a moment, Xiāo Ruòhán, Áo Zhēng, Shí Tiāngāng, Sòng Jiàn, and the other prodigies also had to seriously consider these words in their hearts.

They were aristocratic prodigies, but also cultivators, people of the Dao.

The word “immortal” held an almost instinctive, powerful attraction for them.

No cultivator could not yearn for that word.

If it were truly as Mò Huà said, that they had taken the wrong path from the very beginning in their pursuit of immortality, that would be an extremely terrifying realization.

It was impossible not to be vigilant.

Although outwardly everyone still questioned and scorned, thinking how could a mere Mò Huà, a mere Foundation Establishment cultivator, speak of the Dao and immortals, their hearts, however, were like a dike gnawed by ants, developing more or less tiny cracks.

The next day, Mò Huà woke the prodigies early and gathered them together, saying, “Today, I’ll take you for a stroll nearby.”

“A stroll?”

Everyone looked puzzled, and Xiāo Ruòhán frowned, “Mò Huà, we’re not that idle. What exactly do you want to do?”

Mò Huà merely smiled faintly, saying nothing more.

The prodigies, though bewildered, habitually and silently followed behind Mò Huà.

Mò Huà didn’t do anything special; he simply led these pampered children of prominent families and sects from Qiánxué, who were accustomed to being above everyone, on a tour through the poorest, most backward, and most ravaged tribes on the outskirts of the King’s Domain, where people lived in inhumane conditions due to war.

He showed them what the true “bottom” looked like.

He showed them what the poorest, most humble “people” were truly like.

Skeletal infants, children with bellies distended by parasitic worms, dismembered barbarian slaves, deformed people under miasma, women subjected to brutal abuse, slaves with severed limbs crawling like insects on the ground—the countless miseries were endless…

Many people, at first glance, couldn’t even be recognized as “human.”

It was as if a path had suddenly opened in the human world, leading directly to a cruel purgatory.

All the prodigies from Qiánxué fell silent, and for a long time, they were deeply shaken, unable to utter a single word.

Human growth requires “seeing the world.”

People who haven’t seen the world fall into two categories: one is the poor, who have never witnessed the worldly splendor and thus cannot imagine true extravagance.

The other is the exact opposite: those from privileged backgrounds, accustomed to prosperity, yet who have never witnessed the true suffering of the world, and thus cannot imagine what “misery” truly looks like.

The prodigies of Qiánxué were mostly like this.

They grew up in aristocratic families, studied in major sects; what they considered “poverty” was, at most, the servants in their families who had no spirit stones for cultivation and could only toil with miscellaneous chores.

But Mò Huà truly opened their eyes and showed them the world today.

And these “sights” had a profound impact on their bodies and minds.

These prodigy disciples had come to Dàhuāng and had not been unfamiliar with blood and severed limbs.

They had even killed barbarian soldiers in the wars of Dàhuāng.

But that was on the battlefield, where their positions were different, and it was a life-and-death struggle with no room for mercy. Moreover, those barbarian soldiers were all tall, strong, and fierce-looking.

Yet the scene before them was starkly different; this was the fate of the ordinary barbarian citizens in various tribes, ravaged and scarred by the warfare in Dàhuāng.

The old had no one to rely on, the young had no one to nurture them.

All adult barbarian cultivators were abducted as “barbarian slaves,” bought, sold, killed, and put to certain unknown uses.

Those who remained, the old, weak, disabled, and young who had no use, could only be in this state.

These people were also “human,” but it was difficult for anyone to associate their entire being with the word “human.”

No one cared if they lived or died.

The Dao Court, in its efforts to suppress the rebellion, wouldn’t care about them.

Dàhuāng, in its rebellion, wouldn’t care either.

Aristocratic families sought profit, tribes engaged in conflicts; everyone pursued their own interests, and no one paid these people any mind.

What shocked these prodigies even more was that these low-level barbarian cultivators, who had encountered such calamities, were actually not far from them.

They all existed within the same mountain realm, treading on the same earth.

But it was as if they were isolated; they had never encountered or seen them before.

If Mò Huà hadn’t led the way, they would never have seen them, or even realized that such people existed in the world.

They would never have experienced that the “suffering” in this world was actually like this…

Mò Huà thus led these prodigies on a tour of the lowest levels of Dàhuāng, witnessing the myriad forms of suffering beings.

Although these low-level barbarian cultivators lived in “hell,” they had no cultivation, no spiritual power, and their bodies were mutilated, so they couldn’t harm these prodigies in the slightest.

However, their very existence, these images of suffering, still inflicted severe trauma upon the prodigies’ minds, completely overturning their understanding and causing intense disturbance in their sea of consciousness.

Upon returning to the Sītú family, all these prodigies fell silent, frowned, their faces etched with pain, unable to utter a single word.

The cracks in their hearts deepened.

Their understanding of the Dao also began to twist.

Mò Huà saw this and nodded gently.

People cannot understand what they haven’t experienced.

Many things, once seen with one’s own eyes, become clear, making it unnecessary for him to say much.

These sectarian prodigies were mostly still young, with not much cultivation experience, and not yet worldly-wise. Witnessing the suffering of the common people might enlighten them a little.

But if they were to truly spend a few more decades immersed in aristocratic families, becoming numb and their temperaments set, then their Dao would also become fixed.