Chapter 104
“Hall of Mortal Reason?”
Unlike a certain aloof Holy Maiden, the Seven Stars Sect’s Elders were familiar with this name.
Regardless whether they wanted it or not, a sect like the Seven Stars Sect would inevitably have to deal with the Hall of Mortal Reason, the department, which was filled with a group of cultivators who took advantage of the weak and fear the strong. They were greedy and insatiable, and only helped the Union of Ten Thousand Immortals. Previously, they turned a blind eye to the Shengjing Sect who supported a sect in the White Moon Country; behind closed door, they took profit and became lenient. Yet, regarding the ringworm and scabies type of sect like the Seven Stars Sect, from time to time, they showed their ability to suppress these loose cultivators who could only cry for their mom and dad.
The Seven Stars Sect was familiar with this truth, or pain. Several years ago, they had occupied a prefectural capital in the Great Ming Country. At that time, they wantonly live in pleasure and delight. However, it didn’t take long for the people of the Hall of Mortal Reason to pay them a visit. Faced with two Xudan Stage and ten Foundation Establishment cultivators, the Seven Stars Sect, who until then was very unyielding, was forced to kneel before them and had to give back six to seven out of ten of their profit before they let the Seven Stars Sect go.
After that bitter experience, they maintained a line of communication between them and the Hall of Mortal Reason, and also regularly send gifts to the people of that hall, which thoroughly defused the crisis and finally stabilized their foundation… However, unexpectedly, even after all of that, this Hall of Mortal Reason still came to pick on them! That hall bit the hand of the person that gave them food; it was like all of their previous spirit stones and spirit objects were given to dogs!
“Sect Leader, what exactly happened here!?”
The Sect Leader was also depressed because the low-level cultivator who was his informer in Hall of Mortal Reason was unwilling to tell him the specific reason of why they came at him again. These several years, he had bribed the several officers in that hall, yet the management level was still beyond his reach, and thus when this thing happened, that was the extent of the information that he could get. Since he had no idea why the Hall picked a bone at them, he convened the Elders to discuss the countermeasures.
However, if even the Sect Leader had no idea, how could the Elders have any? After discussing it till morning, the only thing that they could come up with was for the Sect Leader and several senior Elders to bring all kinds of treasures to personally visit the people in the Hall of Mortal Reason and hope that by spending the money, they could avoid calamities.
What about the matter regarding the Wang Family Village at the Dog Ear Mountain?
What about your ass! While disaster was looming upon the sect, who has f*cking time to care about the people on that Dog Ear Mountain!?
During the month, needless to say, they had spent money like water. After several senior members of Seven Stars Sect managed to treat the management of the Hall of Mortal Reason for drinks several times until they black out and their Jade Mansion swayed, finally, the matter began to settle down.
Fortunately, for several years, the Seven Stars Sect had maintained a good relationship with the Hall of Mortal Reason. That was why they managed to lay the matter down after just a month long of almost daily banquet. If it was another sect, even if they offered the spirit wine, they had no way to invite people out to drink. But even so, it took the Seven Stars Sect a whole month before the subordinate of the subdivision head to appear before they managed to deliver the spirit stones gift, finally settling the matter.
Apart from this, they also got a bonus, which was finally knowing the evil hand behind all this. Actually, it was far from an actual evil hand who manipulated things behind the scene. The culprit was actually a pain in the ass idler who sent a report letter to the Hall of Mortal Reason, reporting that there was an evil cult movement within the Great Ming Country of the Blue River Region… The Hall of Mortal Reason actually received this kind of report letter quite often; it was about eight hundred to one thousand letters per year. Usually, they would just discard these letters, however, this particular letter wasn’t a letter that they could just ignore because the letter was written by a Successor Disciple of one of the Five Uniques.
Even more terrifying was that, a few months ago, there was a scandal in the Blue River Region which greatly implicated the Union of Ten Thousand Immortals’ Hall of Mortal Reason. The Hall Leader and Deputy Hall Leader both were subjected to punishment. Henceforth, they became particularly sensitive about this kind of matter. Initially, the evil sect in the White Moon Country was single-handedly destroyed by a Spirit Sword Sect Elder. The evil manipulator behind the scene, Daoist Master Zhifeng, was defeated and routed. He was then punished by his own sect to live his life as an animal for ten years, depriving him of his human body… This was an inside story that was kept by the Union of Ten Thousand Immortals. However, since then, the Shengjing Sect’s attitude toward the Spirit Sword Sect had dramatically changed, especially within the Blue River Region. They might ignore the voice of other sects, but not from the Spirit Sword Sect.
Thus, with such a twist and turn, a single report letter from a Successor Disciple, even without a follow-up, was actually able to move this Hall of Mortal Reason… However, returning from the Hall of Mortal Reason, whether it was the Sect Leader or the several senior Elders, they all felt as if their skin was peeled off a layer.
When exhausted like that, naturally, it was easy for them to get angry. Being given a hard time by the Hall of Mortal Reason, the Seven Stars Sect naturally had no way to retaliate, however, wasn’t it the perfect time to clean up those shamelessly-seeking-gain group of people that was hiding in the Dog Ear Mountain for a month!?
However, just when the Sect Leader was ready to take a break, someone came to report; a new trouble came again.
“What? Mysterious Sky Mansion!? Are you kidding me!? When did we ever had a deal with them? Usually, we can’t even enter their gate! They say we are dealing with illegal materials, including poison of mass destruction? Is there no justice anymore! We are such a poor Sect, where could we get poison of mass destruction? Moreover, they, themselves, openly auction the high-grade insect poison!? It is said that that poison can even exterminate a small country, and they want to investigate us!?”
The Sect Leader continued to complain loudly, however, the Mysterious Sky Mansion’s power was several times more than that of the Hall of Mortal Reason. Thus, although the one who looked for trouble now was just a subordinate of a small branch of the Mysterious Sky Mansion, that person’s strength was enough to exterminate the Seven Stars Sect a hundred times over.
For such an unexpected misfortune, the Sect Leader had no alternative but to once again convene the Sect Elders. After another round of consultation, they again carried the spirit wine and went on another “public relation” tour.
This went for a half a month. When they came back, they felt another layer of their skin was peeled off. However, the most unlucky one was one of the Elders, who because of excessive consumption of liquor, suffered a cultivation degradation; his cultivation actually dropped a level, which was such an appalling scene of devastation.
At this time, the Seven Stars Sect could not even muster the strength to get angry. However, unavoidably, they subconsciously thought of the scourge in the Dog Ear Mountain.
When they were ready to open the discussion about this issue, the Sect Leader’s heart was moved, and an ominous foreboding came to his mind.
“Damn! Are you kidding me…”
After shaking his head, the Sect Leader decided not to believe in that ominous foreboding; he said, “About the Dog Ear Mountain…”
Before he could continue, however, one of the Elder rushed in. “Report, Sect Leader, someone from the Union of The Thousand Immortals has come again!”
“F*ck! What is it this time!?”
“That person said our Seven Stars Sect was involved in a rough exploitation, which seriously harmed the natural environment of the Blue River Region…”
“I’ll be damned! What kind of bullsh*t is that! All of the Union of Ten Thousand Immortals occupy the spiritual energy veins, and when they developed those areas, all of the resulting landslides were ignored by them; now they want to give us a hard time for this reason!?”
The Sect Leader was so mad that he wished he could pull out his hair and beard to show his indignation. Unfortunately, the Seven Stars Sect was not a popular sect, and their indignation wasn’t worth a few money. After throwing his temper in the hall for a moment, the Sect Leader could only sigh and then go out to cope with the problem…
And so it went, time quickly slipped away.
When the Seven Stars Sect finally straightened all their problems, the entire higher-ups were already exhausted. After recuperating for several days, they inevitably remembered that there was still a big problem at the Dog Ear Mountain that needed to be solved!
“Damn! I wonder what kind of trouble those two traitors, He Yun and Xie Chi, are doing at that Dog Ear Mountain!?”
——
Actually, in the last three months, what happened at the Dog Ear Mountain could only be called as earth-shaking.
Wang Lu did not hesitate to be the embodiment of a snitch party in order to give the Wisdom Sect three months of development time. At the Dog Ear Mountain… and around Great Ming Country, their biggest obstacle was this Seven Stars Sect. As long as the Seven Stars Sect remained still, no other external influence could hold the Wisdom Sect back. In fact, the last three months, without any harassment from another party, Wisdom Sect’s development was indeed exceptionally swift, like the forest fire that went out of control.
Firstly, the sect’s frantic expansion. With Wang Lu’s successful performance in the Wang Family Village, Xie Chi, dirty old man, and Wu Feihua, these three people emulated his performance—using the model at the Wang Family Village—at the several villages in the vicinity of the Dog Ear Mountain, opening up the sect’s branches there and quickly accumulating a large number of followers. With word of mouth from these followers, the Wisdom Sect’s influence continued to snowball. Their influence even began to creep into the surrounding counties.
In the Seven Stars Sect time, there wasn’t too much of development value in the remote villages and counties. However, for the Wisdom Sect who had another way to levy the tax, no place, and no one had no development value. Even if the believers had no money, at least they have their bodies, their labor, their kidneys!
However, only by the Wisdom Sect’s teaching that this development value could be excavated. In the last three months, the Wisdom Sect had made followers out of over ten thousand people. However, the majority of them didn’t happen because of Wang Lu’s million forerunners theory, nor did it rely on the Primal Chaos Altar’s frequent spouting of expensive spirit objects.
The Wisdom Sect’s true superiority lied in their ability to unearth the common people’s potential. During these three months of rapid expansion, from over ten thousand believers, more than five hundred of them were able to cultivate.
The proportion might seem small, but they were scattered in dozens of villages. Each village had at least several successful examples. This fact alone was more convincing than any slogan or theory, causing people to even more dead set in their belief.
Initially, when the Seven Stars Sect played an assortment of tricks to these folks, it didn’t have the same effect as this. Thus, it was impossible for them to have such a swift development momentum. Moreover, once the scam was laid bare, they naturally lost their followers.
As for how the Wisdom Sect was able to achieve such a miraculous development, it was nothing more than two points.
First, they imported large batches of Six Harmonies Pill, and then widely spread them out so that everyone could have the opportunity to cultivate. This step wasn’t as difficult as it seemed because they have the Primal Chaos Altar, which was stable enough to generate sufficient income to pay for the cost. Ultimately, Six Harmonies powder wasn’t expensive medicine. As long as they managed to establish the supply chain, the rest was only a matter of negotiating the price, and as it turned out, Xie Chi had several resources at hands that could be utilized.
Second, to let the opportunity to cultivate turn into a tangible result, which was also the hardest step. For the average person, Six Harmonies Pill could only be regarded as opening up a gap of the door of Immortal Cultivation. Even if they cultivate for more than ten years, they might not still be able to draw spiritual energy into their body; the effect was basically next to nothing. In their years of swindling, the Seven Stars Sect had yet to have a breakthrough regarding this matter; even when they occasionally caught a wealthy customer who exchanged his hard-earned capital for a high-grade man-made spirit root, they often couldn’t turn him into a cultivator… However, in Wang Lu’s hand, even if it was just the Six Harmonies Pill, it shone with unparalleled vigor, making this group of perception-less and chance-less mountain villagers, one after the other, achieved a breakthrough.
The trick for this was actually simple.
Heaven Burning Blood Technique.