If everyone strictly followed Dragon City's Strategic Resource Management Measures—consuming only what they purchased—then the dividends of the Monster War could at least support all Transcendents' cultivation for three to five years, helping Earthlings through the most difficult period before outward expansion.
But humanity knew nothing about the situation beyond the Monster Mountain Range.
They only knew that Hell Beasts and Doomsday Beasts were both on the brink of extinction.
Before technologies were developed that could enable flesh-and-blood cells to absorb the Spiritual Energy within raw crystal ore without using monster materials, or that could artificially breed Hell Beasts and Doomsday Beasts.
These scarce resources diminished with every portion used.
And for many Transcendents.
They had tasted the thrill of power like high-voltage currents racing back and forth through their blood vessels and nerves.
They had enjoyed the exhilaration of galloping freely across the land, laughing proudly over the eight wildernesses.
They could even, like immortals from legend, break free of Earth's gravity and stand alone above the clouds.
Having experienced such things, they could never accept falling from heaven to earth due to a lack of cultivation resources, being beaten back to their original forms and reduced to ordinary, pitiful worms.
Thus, all Transcendents began to cross the sea like the Eight Immortals, each displaying their own divine powers.
When the Monster War was won, Dragon City had clearly harvested enormous quantities of hearts, livers, spleens, lungs, and kidneys from Hell Beasts and Doomsday Beasts, filling more than a hundred hastily constructed warehouses to the brim.
Yet it was as though more than a hundred black holes had appeared inside those warehouses at once, devouring nonrenewable strategic resources at an astonishing speed.
No one could say where exactly the precious strategic resources had gone.
Such hoarding and profiteering further