Transcendents were the battle blades of human civilization.
The blood of the strong should flow for the weak.
Transcendents would forever protect ordinary people unconditionally.
Ordinary people would also forever stand firmly behind Transcendents.
Unfortunately, all four of the above were slogans—nothing more than slogans.
Or rather, only when a civilization faced a life-or-death crisis, such as during the Monster War, could they briefly hold true under the right conditions.
Most of the time, however, Transcendents could not possibly protect ordinary people unconditionally forever.
Nor would ordinary people necessarily support Transcendents forever as obediently as NPCs in a game.
That was human nature.
Human nature—intricate, tangled, and unable to withstand testing.
Fortunately, Meng Chao was not truly a Dragon-Slaying Youth who had gained heaven-piercing, earth-shaking power in his early twenties, then become willful and self-righteous, arrogant and conceited, with ambitions swollen to their limit.
With decades of agonizing memories from the Doomsday Nightmare, he had deeply grasped the truth: Never test human nature.
Therefore, he had no intention of forcing the impoverished Transcendents within the Nine Super Enterprises, along with their entire families, to make an "incomparably difficult choice."
The sight of him and Shen Yuanbao warmly shaking hands and embracing before tens of millions of eyes made nearly all Transcendents and their families breathe a long sigh of relief.
Since Meng Chao did not intend to swallow the enormous cake of Develop Turanze all by himself, nor did he plan to use the opportunity to crush the Nine Super Enterprises completely, things would be much easier.
What came next was merely a question of how to divide the cake.
If you took one more slice, I ate a few bites less—none of that was a matter of principle. Everything could be negotiated, slowly, while eating and talking.
Meanwhile, in