Chapter 868 – The Evil Alignment

The Immortal Realm’s cultivators adhered to a rigid hierarchy, where cultivation realm and power level formed an insurmountable class system, with the law of the jungle carved into their very bones. Lower-ranked cultivators were expected to show absolute obedience to their superiors—the slightest transgression in word or deed could invite catastrophic retribution. Sects and immortal clans were deeply intertwined, monopolizing the finest cultivation techniques and resources. If a cultivator from humble origins lacked heaven-defying opportunities and refused to pledge allegiance to a sect or immortal clan, no matter how gifted they were, they would find it nearly impossible to go far.

The vast majority of cultivators were extremely selfish, caring nothing for others’ lives in their pursuit of resources—and they took pride in it. Killing others to seize their treasures was no taboo; rather, it was considered proof of one’s strength and audacity. The magical artifacts and pills circulating in the marketplace were stained with untold amounts of fellow cultivators’ blood. Exploring secret realms was no different from raising venomous insects in a jar—those who ultimately emerged with fortune in hand were invariably the most ruthless, the most hard-hearted.

“The struggle for the Dao—fight to the death” was not merely a slogan, but a code of conduct ingrained in the marrow of every seasoned cultivator.

Cultivators pursued immortality, and for this they could sever all mortal bonds and disregard the common people. Family love, friendship, romantic love—all could be cast aside before the great Dao of eternal life.

To achieve a breakthrough in realm, dao companions could be abandoned, master-disciple bonds could be betrayed, and one’s own sect could be forsaken. The camaraderie between fellow disciples was as thin as a cicada’s wing when faced with true opportunities of the great Dao. Interactions between cultivators were rife with scheming and wariness; every collaboration carried the risk of betrayal.

As for the subordinate Spirit Realms and cultivation worlds beneath them, those were regarded as nothing more than weeds.

In the eyes of Immortal Realm cultivators, the lower Spirit Realms and cultivation worlds were merely resource-producing territories and habitats for inferior beings.

When lower-realm cultivators ascended, it was viewed much like livestock being selected for a better pen—they still had to struggle from the very bottom.

That condescending contempt was part of the Immortal Realm’s social consensus. That arrogance born from the marrow of their bones, that predatory nature—it was practically etched into the soul of every Immortal Realm cultivator.

One must understand that world consciousness was, in essence, an aggregate of the collective consciousness of all intelligent beings within it. The consciousness and souls of intelligent beings were water droplets, and the world consciousness was the lake formed by their gathering. Whether the lake’s water was clear or murky, warm or frigid, depended entirely on every single drop that flowed into it.

When the intelligent beings within a world harbored more benevolence than malice overall, the world consciousness would manifest traits of tolerance, friendliness, and guardianship. Conversely, if malice and selfish desire became the mainstream, then the world consciousness that was nurtured would become cruel, cold, and deeply predatory.

It was precisely the greed, arrogance, coldness, and intense predatory desire accumulated by countless generations of Immortal Realm cultivators—flowing in like an endless stream of sewage—that ultimately shaped a world consciousness equally greedy, arrogant, cold, and masterful at predation. This was what they called the “Heavenly Dao”!

Cultivators, in their pursuit of the great Dao, not only plundered outsiders’ cultivation resources but also plundered their own people’s resources.

The world consciousness, too, in its quest for greater power, not only devised ways to plunder the source power of other worlds but also quietly severed the path for its own cultivators to continue growing stronger at the Well of the Sky, reducing them to its own laborers—and even the “wages” it dispensed were merely loans.

Once such a world had formed, it in turn used the source power under its control to continuously reinforce and encourage this value system. It bestowed blessings upon those cultivators most adept at plundering, most loyal to the Immortal Realm’s expansion, allowing them to survive their tribulations, advance in rank, and gain positions of authority. Meanwhile, those individuals who still harbored compassion and goodness—even if they were cautious enough to avoid dying at other cultivators’ hands, even if they didn’t lack the resources needed to advance—still faced a high probability of perishing under the heavenly tribulation.

And so, a vicious cycle took hold.

The evil of cultivators gave birth to an evil world consciousness. The evil world consciousness shaped and selected even more “evil” cultivators. And these even more evil cultivators further polluted and strengthened the evil world consciousness.

Mo Lan had previously only learned from books and records about how dangerous and terrifying worlds aligned with the evil faction could be. Now, seeing it with her own eyes, she found it even more heart-stopping than anything described in those texts.

A world like this was utterly beyond saving. Setting aside the fact that her current Sixth Rank power was no more than an ant before such an entity—even if she one day possessed the strength to threaten a fourteenth-level world, forceful intervention would be largely meaningless.

The prerequisite for salvation was that those being saved possessed the will to be saved, or at the very least, the possibility of being guided toward a good or neutral alignment.

But this Immortal Realm, from its world consciousness down to its lowest cultivators—the collective will of the entire civilization held that plunder and oppression were “correct” and “perfectly natural.” If she tried to stop their plundering, they would feel no gratitude. They would only see her as a mortal enemy obstructing the “great Dao” and destroying the “Immortal Realm’s prosperity.”

To fundamentally change this world’s alignment, conventional methods of guidance, education, and aid were all completely ineffective.

The only option—and the most cruel one—was probably total annihilation: extinguishing its world consciousness, purging all existing intelligent beings, returning everything to its origin, and waiting for the next civilization to sprout anew.

Yet even if one paid such an enormous price to achieve a “reset,” who could guarantee that the next civilization born wouldn’t nurture an equally predatory world consciousness and repeat the same tragedy?

One must understand that at the deepest core of the soul, the fundamental nature that tends toward extreme evil or extreme good was forged through the accumulation of countless cycles of reincarnation. Its resilience far exceeded imagination—it could not be easily worn away or reversed by a single death or a single rebirth.

Those individuals who treated predation as instinct and had arrogance carved into their souls would, in all likelihood, carry these traits into their next cycle of reincarnation even after experiencing destruction.

When a sufficient number of souls bearing such traits gathered once more beneath the same sky, when they began to interact, reproduce, and build a new civilization, the tragedy of collective consciousness that had played out in the old Immortal Realm would very likely repeat itself, inevitably.

Mo Lan did not know whether this Immortal Realm would ever have the chance to change its alignment, but she knew that she herself lacked the ability to change it.

Compared to the Immortal Realm, those Spirit Realms and cultivation worlds currently being drained of their source power were far more in need of rescue.

After reviewing the construction process of the ascension channels and the subsequent transformations of the subordinate Spirit Realms and cultivation worlds from Duan Yan’s memories, Mo Lan finally understood—the world consciousness of these worlds had not perished. They had merely been usurped through the ascension channels by the Immortal Realm, which had occupied their nests like a cuckoo in a magpie’s home, weakening and suppressing them.

As long as the ascension channels were severed, the world consciousness should recover quickly—though the source power that had already been drained could never be reclaimed.

For Mo Lan, simply severing the ascension channels was not technically difficult. If one Sixth Rank spatial blade wasn’t enough, then ten, or a hundred! With her vast reserves of mana, she could brute-force her way through and cut those dark-gold pillars of light.

The truly thorny problem lay in what came afterward—how to deal with the Dao Ancestor realm cultivators the Immortal Realm would inevitably send, and how to prevent the Immortal Realm from reopening the ascension channels to once again seize control of the various Spirit Realms and cultivation worlds.