"Everyone here is among the cleverest people in The Present World. In just over two years, you turned a suspicion with no evidence whatsoever into the notoriously vile Meng Tianhai. You found my name and recalled my power. You acted the whole play from beginning to end, laying such a ruthless trap—using me to develop the Blood Lotus Sacred Realm, then forcibly seize it..."
Meng Tianhai praised, "What a pack of fine chess players, cracking bones and sucking out the marrow! An ancient man who lived fifty-five thousand years has been manipulated as you please, squeezed for oil."
"But the one thing you failed to account for—was that I had already been squeezed dry."
Meng Tianhai smiled without quite smiling. "You are wise, but you still think the sages far too simply. Just as I did back then! You always say the present must surpass the past, but in my view, this current age has still not escaped the design of the Era of All Sages."
"Why do I say that?"
He pointed at the blood lotus covered in the words of the Sea of Learning. "Would you believe it? The vision of the Lotus Flower Sacred Realm never stopped!"
"You think I restarted this plan? You think you preserved the fruits of the sages? Hahahaha... We are equally ridiculous!"
"The Era of All Sages came to its close, and all the sages transformed into fate. Yet the Lotus Flower Sacred Realm, which they had yearned for day and night, merely continued onward in a more concealed fashion."
"Calamity Water has always surged, and the lotus fruits have never withered. Every activity within the Lotus Seed Worlds—including the natural evolution of the beings within those worlds, Calamity Water's invasion of them, and cultivators' explorations within them—has propelled the evolution of