Some things seemed like earth-shattering secrets, but once they were laid bare, they turned out to be neighborhood gossip that everyone knew but no one talked about.
"Uh, they didn't just approach us?"
"No, others approached them. Including a sage, an Ancient Hero, an envoy of a Heavenly World deity, and a confidant of an Underground World lord. Tsk, we had our eyes on them, and they had their eyes on us too."
Perhaps they had been watching this powerful and unique outsider ever since humanity first arrived in this world.
It was just that Sakura Kingdom's early Explorers clearly had not been worth spending resources to win over. But the God's Arks and demigods sent over by the Eastern Kingdom were another matter entirely.
"Let's speed things up. Have our shops been set up?"
Lu PingAn did not refuse. He simply needed more time and intelligence.
The shops spreading across various lands were also his way of expressing goodwill—though whether certain beings viewed it as goodwill was another matter.
Lu PingAn suspected that the stability of these three worlds could be maintained, especially the Surface World. For all he knew, it had been deliberately kept at a medieval level or above.
Advanced medicine allowed people to live longer. Though it went against common sense, statistics showed that the more educated an era was, the lower its birth rate tended to be. Especially in the New Era after the technological explosion, people had far too many choices of their own beyond simply supporting a family.
These things might have been progress for civilization, but they were not good news for "herders."
"Can we use locals as shop assistants? Can we re-educate them to a certain extent?"
"Of course. Otherwise, how would we get them to work? Are we lacking a