I more or less understood what Lu Youxun meant.
He did not believe the God Seal truly existed, but he did believe that power capable of changing everything was real. Although he did not know whether its source was a person, an object, or a pure phenomenon, one thing was very clear: the source of that power was decidedly partial toward ordinary people.
Even Luoshan, even Da Wu Chang, were wary of the unknown. Before they fully uncovered the truth of that power, they dared not act rashly.
If I were the ruler of Luoshan, where would I think the source of that power lay?
The first to be suspected must be those who benefited most from the existence of that power: the class that actually ruled secular society.
“We once suspected that the ‘God Seal’ might be in the hands of the official forces.” Lu Youxun was still using the term “God Seal” to refer to the source of that power.
And as far as I knew, the God Seal Master was that giant stationed in the Mist Dreamscape, whom Number One called “Number Zero.”
Could the giant be a member of the official forces?
Was it he who, in the distant past, made a wish to the God Seal for ordinary people to rule the human world? And was his wish directly connected to what Number Four Xuanming said about “driving the world to the brink of destruction”?
I was very curious about this topic.
If he only wanted to talk to me about choosing sides, I would just want to end the topic quickly; but if he wanted to talk about things involving doomsday and the strange history, I would be all ears.
“You said ‘once suspected’, which means you have now ruled out the official forces as suspects?” I asked.
“At least we have ruled out ninety percent of the suspicion,” Lu Youxun said. “In fact, the ‘God Seal’ in the past affected not only us cultivators, but also those mortals.
“Calm down and think about it and you can understand: we cultivators and they mortals live under the same sky. To ignore each other would not only require cultivators to stay away from the secular world, but also require mortals to leave cultivators strictly alone. And since ancient times, those seeking immortality have been as numerous as carp crossing a river; emperors and nobles longing for eternal life are beyond counting. If they had not also been restrained by that power, how could there really have been mutual non-interference?
“When the influence of that power disappeared, the official forces also fell into great confusion. Although they made many efforts to cover it up, they still could not deceive our eyes. As the saying goes, ‘the great hermit hides at court’; we also considered that the ‘God Seal Master’ might have concealed themself among court and commoners alike, to the point that even the official forces themselves were unaware. That is why they did not act rashly.”
“You must have run many tests,” I said.
“Yes. And the result is that the ‘God Seal’ very likely is not with the official forces, and it is even very likely that the ‘God Seal’ itself has long since ceased to exist.” He nodded. “This is easy to deduce. No matter how great an impact the ‘God Seal’ once had on our world, its influence eventually vanished.
“Why did it vanish? If the ‘God Seal Master’ did not change their mind, then the ‘God Seal’ itself must have malfunctioned. There are other possibilities, of course, but we believe malfunction holds more potential for deeper investigation.
“If we suppose the ‘God Seal’ really was an artifact, we can even boldly suspect that this artifact might have shattered due to some accident.”
That bold suspicion was actually correct.
Moreover, considering that Number Four Xuanming, as a Da Wu Chang, had already obtained a God Seal Fragment, I somewhat suspected that ‘the existence of the God Seal’ and ‘the God Seal having shattered’ were perhaps not secrets among the Da Wu Chang.
“Since we have talked this far, you can surely foresee that the conflict between Luoshan and the official forces will officially break out in the near future.” Lu Youxun pushed the topic into its next phase. “Zhuang Cheng, I hope you can join our camp.”
So it finally came to this.
“But there are still internal disagreements among you, right? Superpower is not the absolute mainstream in Luoshan,” I said.
“Correct. There are also voices within Luoshan saying that cultivators should integrate into secular society. But you may have misunderstood something: their so-called integration does not mean they hope cultivators will become cogs in the machine of secular society,” he said. “They also aim to become a brand-new ruling class. The only difference is that our Superpower goal is to become ‘gods’, while their goal is to become ‘monarchs’.”
“Is Zhu Shi thinking that way too?” I asked.
He smiled helplessly. “She might prefer things to stay unchanged. But even she cannot deny that it is historically inevitable for the cultivator group to replace the obsolete ruling class; what erred was past history.”
“The official forces will never sit and wait for death. Once war breaks out, many ordinary people will die. Zhu Shi cannot possibly take part in that,” I said.
“It will not develop into a war. Luoshan has overwhelming power; the conflict will end in a very short time.”
“Because Luoshan has the Da Wu Chang?”
“Even without the Da Wu Chang making a move, Luoshan is enough to rule this country.” The calmness in his voice carried rock-solid confidence. “Zhuang Cheng, what do you think of the level of the Monster who fought you tonight? If Luoshan did not intervene, and only the official forces fought against him, how do you think things would play out?”
I first pondered, then realized a terrifying possibility.
And he answered his own question: “Perhaps to you that Monster was just roadside trash, nothing more. But let me make it clear: that Monster actually possessed physical enhancement so outstanding that it stood out even among cultivators at the dwelling realm.
“Within Monsters his level is about middle tier. He can move at speeds above two hundred kilometers per hour. With a body reinforced by Magic, he can easily tear through steel armor. He has dynamic vision sharp enough to track bullets in flight and reflexes to defend in time, and he can directly endure barrages of modern firearms. Individual-soldier-level weapons basically cannot threaten him.
“Just combining these conditions, as long as he uses assassination and guerrilla tactics flexibly and fully exploits his cross-country mobility, killing or capturing him already becomes an almost impossible mission. And this still does not factor in his supernatural abilities.
“A Monster like him can use shadows to transfer over ultra-long distances at any time and can Summon powerful clones. And the Monster who fought you tonight even had the power to revive immediately after being killed, which means tactics relying on surprise bombardment with heavy modern firepower while he is unprepared are useless. Yet he can slip into the shadows at will and appear anywhere, kill whoever he wants, and then vanish back into the shadows. The more people he kills, the stronger he becomes, and the harder he is to resist.
“A Monster like this, using just a bit of brains, would be enough on his own to dismantle the political system of a small country. Yet among us cultivators he is only at the dwelling realm. Against a great power, if we replaced him with a Chengjing, I dare say we would not even need ten such people to bring the target to defeat without the slightest chance to fight back. And in Luoshan we have nearly ten Da Wu Chang alone, and Chengjing are powerful and numerous. With such a vast power gap, how can the official forces hope to contend with us?”
Although I was not an expert in modern military affairs, I had to admit that what he said made sense.
In the past, I had imagined modern armies as hypothetical enemies; I had even imagined what would happen if I were bombed by missiles or nuclear weapons, and I had seriously looked up information online.
The reason I researched so seriously was not that I really planned to fight modern armies, but that it was a kind of curiosity-driven thought experiment. Many people may never encounter a tiger in their entire lives, yet they still imagine fighting one, even seriously asking online how a human could kill a tiger barehanded. It is the same logic.
After careful investigation, I realized my enormous advantage as a Superpower User against modern armies. It was not that I could ignore physical attacks, nor simply that I could roam the battlefield freely via Flame Transfer. It was that modern military technology had lacked means to counter a “super individual” from the very beginning.
Whether nuclear weapons, which I saw as emblematic of modern destructive power, or aircraft carriers that prowl the seas like steel behemoths, these strategic creations were never designed to target “super individuals” with powerful offensive, defensive, and mobile capabilities, but to target immobile strongholds and concentrated groups. Their threat to “super individuals” is far weaker than I initially imagined.
What is more, the Hunters of Luoshan do not only possess the raw violence of “super individuals.” Lu Youxun and the Monster had also shown me mysterious methods: the former could temporarily revive the dead and force them to divulge information; the latter had an item that could seal opponents into a “space that does not belong to reality.” I fear that among the Hunters there are also experts in Spirit manipulation and curses, powers that would be devastating to modern society.
Whether worldly power changes hands, and when it does, has never depended on the efforts of the current ruling class, but on the will of Luoshan.
Luoshan’s fear of the “God Seal Master” is already a thing of the past. The reason they still have not acted may well be simply that they have not yet agreed on how to divide the spoils.
“Also, when Zhu Shi was talking with that Monster earlier, she seemed to have misunderstood something.” Lu Youxun pointed at the Electronic Telescope he had used before, now lying on the table. “She believes that the current technological civilization is solely the result of mortals’ efforts; that in itself I do not deny. But strictly speaking, technology is not ‘the power of mortals’; it is ‘the power of intelligence.’
“The power of technology never favors any particular side. Mortals can wield this power, cultivators can too, and will only wield it better than mortals. Taking it as proof that mortals are superior to cultivators in certain respects has been wrong from the very beginning.
“What cultivators can use, mortals may not be able to. That alone is enough to prove that we cultivators are beings who completely surpass mortals on the basis of including all their strengths, the true ‘supernaturals’.
“We now stand at a turning point in history. It is historically inevitable that cultivators replace mortals as rulers of the human world.
“So, Zhuang Cheng, I hereby extend an invitation to you.
“Join us.”
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