Three days later.
Once the Contribution Value System was implemented, the elders of Jade Dragon City's Fallen Sects indeed became much more obedient.
Men died for wealth as birds died for food; that saying held just as true in the Cultivation World.
Given enough sweet rewards, these old foxes who had lived for centuries would even dig the scrap metal out of their sects' foundations and deliver it to the City Lord's Mansion.
Cartloads of Scrap arrived at Jade Dragon City's underground warehouses every day, piling up like little mountains.
Yet Zhou Xuan sat in the seat of honor in the Stone Chamber without the slightest ease on his face.
A pale blue screen projected by Apocalypse hovered before him. It displayed no complicated code, only a crimson formation-pattern graph tracking the two regions' resource consumption.
That red line shot straight upward at a terrifyingly steep angle, like a vine growing out of control.
Thirty-six Kindling Academies operated simultaneously, while three million mortals waited with mouths open to be fed and to cultivate.
The daily consumption of supplementary materials for the Resonance Steles, Low-tier Protective Gear, Training Short Staffs, and even the most basic Bigu Pills and Cold-weather Clothing was simply astronomical.
Yesterday, Zhou Xuan had sat in the warehouse and spent over a hundred thousand points of Metal value, forcibly using Enlightenment to turn several mountains of Scrap into finished goods.
But when Yang Zhen came to report the accounts that morning, those freshly produced supplies had barely warmed the warehouse threshold before transport convoys from across the regions hauled every last one away.
Zhou Xuan stared at the glaring red line and tapped the stone table twice, his expression gradually stiffening.
This was no shortfall.
It was a bottomless pit that could never be filled.
Even if he