The orderly streets, the efficient offices, the dazzling array of items available for exchange, and the light in the eyes of cultivators from different races who worked together toward a common goal.
All of it stood in stark contrast to the lifeless atmosphere within their own races, where seniority ruled and a handful of people kept a tight grip on resources.
The first visitors cautiously traded resources they had brought or completed simple tasks for tangible rewards. Some received pills they desperately needed; others obtained the crucial portion of a cultivation technique that had held them back for years, while still others gained temporary access to an area richer in spiritual qi.
When they returned to their people with their gains and their scarcely believable stories, the news spread like wildfire among the lower and middle ranks of the Five Clans.
Doubt gradually became curiosity, curiosity became longing, and longing became action.
Though the Five Clans' leaders tightened border controls and even threatened harsh punishment, they still could not stop the growing number of cultivators. Like trickling streams gathering into a river, they quietly flowed toward the New Alliance.
Those who joined the New Alliance received relatively fair treatment.
As long as they obeyed its rules and registered, they qualified to earn Contribution Points—and had a chance to change their fates.
Their success stories drew still more people.
The leaders of the Five Clans were furious and afraid.
They realized their greatest enemy was no longer the armies of the Human Race and Demon Race massed at their borders. It was the hearts they were losing from within, drawn toward a new world with a deadly allure.
The hard-liners clamored for war to destroy the New Alliance.
But the cooler heads stopped them at once. Their finest troops were gone,