Huaxia, the southern sea area, Spirit Snake Island.
“Another accidental death case occurred?”
Yu Lan took the statistical report handed over by her subordinate, her expression grave.
Over the past two months, the number of death cases at home and abroad triggered by fighting over Ascension Tokens had been soaring rapidly.
Human nature was complicated.
When colossal benefits capable of shaking human hearts appeared before their eyes, parents, spouses, sisters, brothers, close friends, teachers and students...
Countless people attacked one another and struck lethally for the Ascension Tokens.
Even the most intimate lovers of the past tore off their masks for this tiny jade plaque, revealing their ruthless sides.
Yet the authorities oversaw the overall situation, seeing and understanding far more clearly than the general public.
—Once a jade plaque found its owner, anyone who attempted to persecute the token holder through coercive means, violence, threats, or other methods met an unfortunate end.
At best, their limbs were severed, turning them into a limbless human stump.
At worst, their heads exploded into scattered debris across the ground.
The Three Great Sects acted even more ruthlessly and decisively than the Demon Suppression Division.
Worldwide, whether they were gang leaders, top financial oligarchs, or foreign government organizations, as long as they displayed any intent to seize a token by force, the mastermind would explode into a bloody pulp without warning in the very next second, their entire body detonating from within.
Everyone understood that this was a warning from the Three Great Sects, as well as an open declaration of war to the world:
Stop killing with killing; quell violence with violence.
We are right here.
We welcome any retaliation.
“Should we be glad their moral standards are terrifyingly high?”
Yu Lan shook her head and set down the file in her hands.
Although Huaxia had strict gun control regulations, coupled with the authorities deliberately guiding the public and disclosing the potential dangers behind this, whenever the Ascension Token was involved, bloodshed seemed inevitable.
There was a wanted criminal trafficking women and children who bought an Ascension Token from a child in a mountain village for five thousand yuan. But the moment he received the jade plaque, his internal organs burst open like a punctured water balloon.
There was a college student who, after obtaining an Ascension Token, smugly believed he was bound to become an “immortal” in the future. He began using the jade plaque to extort and blackmail others, even escalating to publicly harassing a female celebrity, claiming he could “secure benefits” for her in the future, and repeatedly remarking that “when one person achieves the Dao, even their pets ascend to heaven.”
The very next day, the guy became mute, blind, and deaf. Even the Ascension Token in his possession vanished without a trace.
—To better protect the populace, the Special Investigation Bureau had to deploy personnel to gather these “Chosen Ones” under centralized protection.
It was hard to tell whether this action was meant to protect the Chosen Ones or to protect those malicious fools.
No one knew how the Three Great Sects accomplished this.
Death arrived without warning, cold and ruthless.
It was as if across the entire world, a colossal, nameless specter was leaning down from the clouds to look below, holding countless threads that puppeted humanity.
This was the power of hidden immortal sects.
At the very least, they did not want heinous villains.
“The law is the minimum baseline of morality, yet the selection criteria of the Three Great Sects are even higher than the basic moral values of society. It’s almost like they have some sort of moral obsession.”
A colleague nearby clicked their tongue in wonder. “Looking on the bright side, this might urge humanity toward goodness and discourage breaking the law, perhaps even building a harmonious new society... But looking at the bigger picture, they’re trampling on the law and engaging in overreaching enforcement.”
Yu Lan did not speak.
In the rules of the game revised by the Three Great Sects, the power, status, and monetary transactions of the mortal world were completely meaningless.
Whether it was a desperate speculator crushed by debt, a massive tycoon sitting on endless wealth, a pitiable person with physical disabilities unable to move freely, a conscientious ordinary person living an unassuming life, a gray-haired farmer who had toiled his whole life in the fields, or a scholar of top intellect who had published countless scientific papers...
Before the Three Great Sects, everyone’s social attributes were stripped away, returning them to the most primitive state of being “human.”
Everyone had a chance to receive an Ascension Token, and everyone had a chance to head to the Three Great Sects.
In the truest sense: all are equal before the Great Dao.
Thinking of Qin Yue, Yu Lan suddenly had a feeling. Just as she was about to speak, the warning light overhead suddenly flashed, the red light signaling an emergency roaring and blaring:
“Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep—”
The urgent screech cut off all conversation. As the air-raid siren wailed, everyone’s face changed.
This was the signal indicating an enemy attack!
...
“Latitude **°, Longitude **°, radar detects an unidentified organism approaching!”
“Yaksha 1 is in the water! Awaiting orders!”
“Yaksha 2 is approaching the target! Arrived in the waters below the target!”
“Kunpeng 1 is approaching the target! Arrived in the target airspace!”
“Target spotted, target spotted!”
“Not demon beasts, not demon beasts! I repeat, not demon beasts! It’s... it’s two humans! I repeat, it’s two humans!”
Live footage was transmitted back to the main screen. The military district leader in the operations center stared intently at the screen, gravity flashing in their eyes.
It was a young man and woman with striking appearances, looking only twenty-four or twenty-five years old.
The man wore sheer pink gauze robes, his eyes curved in a gentle smile, with a flourishing Hehuan flower at his waist.
The woman had a ginkgo forehead ornament between her brows, dressed in a moon-white gown, expressionless.
The existence of these two had long been classified as “Top Secret” by the Special Investigation Bureau.
Qiu Jiusi and Feng Guiyuan.
The two walked lightly across the sea surface as if strolling leisurely. Though they appeared slow, in merely a few blinks of an eye, they had already bypassed layers of blockades and entered the territory of Spirit Snake Island.
There seemed to be no hostility.
Facing the aim of countless heavy weapons, they showed no aggressive tendencies whatsoever.
The pair simply stood on the sea surface ten li from the island, gazing toward the base from afar.
Feng Guiyuan even cast a soul-stealing, coquettish wink directly at the surveillance camera.
In just ten minutes, the officer-in-charge answered countless calls.
Twenty minutes later, on Spirit Snake Island, the Biological Spiritual Energy Magnetic Field Device enveloping the base was opened. Diplomatic specialists stepped forward to welcome the two.
—Of course, the base alert remained unlifted, and everyone stayed strictly at their posts, maintaining radio silence.
...
The Special Investigation Bureau had conducted experiments.
Heavy firepower could suppress cultivators, but a cultivator’s movement speed, reaction time, and danger-sensing abilities could not be quantified or observed through data.
A soldier at Qi Refinement level 1, assisted by drones, explosives, radar, and firearms, could barely surpass the combat efficiency of a cultivator at Qi Refinement level 3.
One person was equivalent to a modernized army squad.
Although the exact cultivation of Qiu Jiusi and Feng Guiyuan had yet to be confirmed, according to the bureau’s deductions, their cultivation was likely above the Golden Core stage.
Bureau experts had specifically conducted similar experiments, estimating a great deal of data:
Qi Refinement cultivators drew qi into the body through Qi Condensation.
At this stage, the physical body was tempered, with physical fitness far exceeding ordinary humans and surpassing world champions who trained daily. Hearing and vision were greatly enhanced, and they could cast some basic spells.
Foundation Establishment cultivators marked the beginning of entering the Dao.
Upon reaching this stage, the energy density within the body was higher, lifespan increased, constitution rose drastically without the burden of underlying illnesses, and they could control artifacts with Telekinesis, utilize divine sense, and cast slightly more advanced spells.
At this realm, a cultivator’s physical toughness could withstand bullets—or rather, they could compress the energy of the Five Elements to form an invisible barrier covering their entire body.
—Although unable to survive a direct nuclear blast, they were already transcendent beings.
Further up were Golden Core cultivators.
Although concepts of cultivation such as the “spirit platform” and “dantian” could not be observed with modern instruments, experts deduced that the Golden Core was likely the result of compressing and solidifying the spiritual energy accumulated during the Foundation Establishment stage, transforming gaseous spiritual energy into liquid, and then into a solid form.
Simply put, it was the purification and compression of energy.
Rate on N.U.
