Sha Rulai said, "You have already left Shangqing Sect. Why do you still care so much about Shangqing Sect?"
Niu Youdao said, "It is not Shangqing Sect that I care about. Dongguo Haoran showed me the grace of recognizing my worth. I want to know who struck against him. If possible, it would naturally be best to give the dead an explanation. Of course, what I want to know even more is what happened back then."
Sha Rulai pondered briefly. "I did take notice of this matter, but I did not pay it much attention. To the Sacred Realm, even Shangqing Sect, the foremost sect in Yan Kingdom back then, was not worth a second glance. Much less the Shangqing Sect that had been brought down and become a fallen household..."
"Brought down?" Niu Youdao abruptly interrupted. "You mean Shangqing Sect declined because the Sacred Realm brought it down?"
Sha Rulai nodded. "What is so strange about that? Shangqing Sect was far from the only one brought down. In the early years, cultivation sects within the various kingdoms all revered strength. When the Wu Dynasty splintered into hundreds of kingdoms, it was nothing unusual for the cultivation sects within each kingdom to revere strength as well. But as the kingdoms gradually swallowed one another and formed the present situation, the resources acquired by powerful sects capable of commanding an entire kingdom became no trifling matter."
"The Sacred Realm gradually realized that a sect having too great a rallying power and too vast an influence was not a good thing. There had to be checks and balances before the situation spiraled out of control. Thus, it reshaped the power structure of sects within the various kingdoms, resulting in the current model of three major sects in each kingdom. Under this model,