Menglan Jun sat beside Yunxi with a grim expression and said:
"They have formed a world of their own here—a city of oasis amid the desert. The natives here are all highly hostile to outsiders. Long ago, cultivators like us would be sent here at intervals, but once they arrived, their strength was suppressed just like ours.
"The longer they remained, the faster their own power dissipated, until they became people like the natives. You are a human cultivator, so even if your strength vanishes, your lifespan will still be longer than that of the natives here. But Demon Cultivators will reveal their true forms, and eventually, my consciousness will dissipate and I will revert to my original body.
"To find a way out as quickly as possible, the cultivators who entered this place would slaughter one another and seize all the other party's resources for themselves.
"In the end, they really did uncover something useful. The royal palace of the Shatuo Kingdom has a way to leave this place, which is why those cultivators chose to join the royal family. Yet it seemed that none of them ultimately got what they wished for.
"The men became slaves of the Shatuo Kingdom, while the women were forced to become the king's women and bear his children. Because cultivators age so slowly, they were called the Ageless Race, and even became food in the mouths of the royal family, who wished to preserve their youth forever."
Menglan Jun paused there, clearly disgusted by the scenes he had witnessed.
Yunxi had not expected the Shatuo Kingdom to be so full of malice toward cultivators. The group they had encountered had clearly guessed their identities. Though they were courteous on the surface, they were wary in private, and had even mapped out their