Setting the Stage

"So your plan is to return to the East Sea, trigger a financial crisis through a scam, cause spiritual energy to fall out of balance, and thereby ignite a war across the Cultivation World?!"

"That's right." Lin Chen's expression was unreadable as he said, "Spiritual energy is the foundation of the entire Cultivation World. It serves as operational energy, produces goods, and is the key for living beings to reach the highest heights. Thus, whether it is spirit stones or the panel values generated beneath the Heaven-Covering Heaven and Earth Great Formation, their essence is equivalent to currency."

"And so long as currency and exploitation exist within this vast market centered on the Nine Great Immortal Sects, encompassing countless sects, cultivation families, individual powers, and innumerable lower-level cultivators, an economic crisis will be inevitable sooner or later."

"It does not matter which universe, which world, whether it is an interstellar civilization or another realm of cultivation. It is bound to happen in any world. For as long as there are those who reap without sowing while exploiting others to the bone—or, rather, as long as classes exist—this will happen sooner or later!"

"The reason the Immortal Alliance had no related records for over a million years was because of the Heaven and Earth Bloody Battle three hundred thousand years ago, the Ancient Demon Calamity more than a million years ago, the unceasing foreign wars, the influx of resources from the Outer Domain Return to Ruins, and, most crucially, the absolute suppression of power. Resources were thoroughly monopolized, and people could not even advance across realms. Only then could stability endure until now..."

"But how long can such a situation last?"

Lin Chen's gaze was deep and distant as he said:

"Contradictions do not disappear; they merely shift elsewhere. Within at