Hahaha...
At that moment, peals of laughter suddenly erupted from Pangu Hall.
Their laughter was partly a response to Shebishi's joke, partly delight that Shebishi had actually learned to joke around, and more than anything, joy that the Ancestral Witches had finally escaped the predicament they had always been in.
What living being in their right mind would want others to think they were a brute and a fool?
Besides, whether they were Ancestral Witches or ordinary members of the Witch Race, they weren't fools at all.
The reason outsiders got the impression that the Ancestral Witches and the Witch Race were all a bunch of brutes was, above all, the effect Turbid Qi had on them.
And that was only because they were Ancestral Witches and members of the Witch Race. If any other beings in the Primordial World absorbed Turbid Qi the way they did, the consequences wouldn't be limited to an inability to form a primordial spirit and a tendency to act rashly and aggressively.
A primordial spirit? What primordial spirit? They wouldn't even have their wits about them.
Rash and aggressive? What a joke. Were you underestimating Turbid Qi? They'd become killing machines, attacking and killing at the slightest suspicion, no matter where or when—and once they started, they'd wipe out every living thing across an entire region.
"Hey, what's all the excitement? What are you laughing about?"
As luck would have it, Zhu Jiuyin had just emerged from his thoughts.
He focused his attention, then saw his brothers and sisters laughing together.
Houtu cheerfully told him everything that had happened. Hearing it, Zhu Jiuyin couldn't help laughing too.
"Exactly. And now I'm eighty percent certain that within one Yuanhui at most, the first Ancestral Witch with a primordial spirit will appear among the Witch Race!"
As he spoke, Zhu Jiuyin looked at Houtu.
Houtu was taken aback. The other Ancestral Witches present were, too.
Then, in unison, they all turned to look at Houtu.
"Congratulations, little sister Houtu! I should have thought of it sooner. You've always been the Ancestral Witch least affected by Turbid Qi. So once the Turbid Qi inside you disappears, you'll surely be the first to form a primordial spirit!"
Dijiang looked at Houtu with a trace of envy.
In truth, the inability to form a primordial spirit had become a sore point for everyone in the Witch Race, Ancestral Witches included.
As a member of the Witch Race himself, Zhu Jiuyin naturally understood how that felt.
"Big brother, brothers and sisters, there's no need to envy little sister Houtu too much. If my calculations are right, within three Yuanhui at most, the Turbid Qi inside every one of us Ancestral Witches will be completely dispelled.
"Once the Turbid Qi inside us is gone, with our Ancestral Witch bloodlines, we'll form primordial spirits within ten thousand years at most.
"It's only about three Yuanhui. Surely big brother and the rest of you can wait that long?"
Hearing this, Dijiang and the other Ancestral Witches burst into hearty laughter.
Three Yuanhui was nothing at all to beings like the Ancestral Witches—barely worth a thought.
After sharing the great news, Dijiang remembered another increasingly serious problem within the Witch Race.
"Second brother, all the billions upon billions of our people are crowded into this tiny Ancestral Land. There's simply not enough room!"
In fact, one of the reasons the Witch Race had left the Ancestral Land in the first place was precisely this.
True, the Ancestral Land of the Witch Race wasn't small. The area covered by Pangu Hall stretched for tens of thousands of trillion li—equivalent to thousands of light-years in the modern world.
But just as modern tigers and lions had territories of their own, the Witch Race, a supreme power in the Primordial World, had a natural sense of territory too. Every member of the Witch Race had a bloodline at least on the level of an Innate Demon God.
Conversely, once a being reached a certain level of strength, no matter how much they restrained themselves, their awareness of and influence on their surroundings would become terrifying.
Under such circumstances, everyday interactions were fine, but anything private would be no different from a live broadcast. Any living being with even a shred of dignity would refuse to do that.
And beyond privacy, cultivation was an even bigger concern.
Once a being reached the Golden Immortal level, even a minor breakthrough could have a huge impact across hundreds of millions of li.
For a Great Witch, the affected area and distance would be even more terrifying.
At the level of an Ancestral Witch, even a small breakthrough could have an enormous impact on the entire Ancestral Land of the Witch Race.
In short, for the Witch Race as it was now, the Ancestral Land was far too small.
It was like a super-landlord who had once owned millions of acres of farmland in the countryside, only to move to the city and find himself crammed into a tiny apartment of just a few square meters.
In the past, even a Golden Immortal-level member of the Witch Race had a territory stretching tens of thousands of billions of li.
And a Great Witch could command a territory no smaller than the Ancestral Land of the Witch Race as it stood today.
After all, though the Ancestral Land was enormous by the standards of the modern world, it occupied only a few hundred-millionths of Mount Buzhou.
That was simply because this was the Primordial World, an Immeasurable World opened by Pangu, who had been just half a step from the Great Dao Realm. This world was truly, immensely vast.
Zhu Jiuyin couldn't help frowning.
In truth, he hadn't paid any attention to this problem. For the past thirty thousand years, he had been in seclusion, comprehending the Law of Time. He wasn't really familiar with the specific affairs of the Witch Race.
After all, what Zhu Jiuyin had wanted from the beginning was the highest decision-making authority over the Witch Race, not the highest administrative authority.
In other words, Zhu Jiuyin needed the power to make the final decision with a single word, but he had no intention of involving himself in the day-to-day management of the Witch Race.
This division of responsibilities undoubtedly clarified the respective roles of him and Dijiang even further. In a sense, it was also Zhu Jiuyin's way of making it up to Dijiang for his magnanimity.
After all, if Dijiang had firmly refused to give up the highest decision-making authority, the Ancestral Witches and the Witch Race would inevitably have descended into infighting, perhaps even splitting apart.
In truth, Zhu Jiuyin wasn't the sort who liked handling affairs in the first place. If the Witch Race were to keep developing as it had in the myths of the Primordial World, it would inevitably face extinction. Otherwise, he would rather devote more of his energy to continuing to comprehend and master the Law of Time.
Only after entering the Primordial Origin Golden Immortal realm and comprehending at least ninety percent of the Law of Time could one understand why it ranked among the Ten Supreme Laws.
"Time is supreme; space is king." Those words had never been empty talk.
That was why Dijiang's question had caught Zhu Jiuyin somewhat off guard.
But before long, Zhu Jiuyin began to think it through carefully.
In the end, he was the one who had brought the billions of members of the Witch Race back to the Ancestral Land. So the difficulties and problems that arose after their return were also his responsibility to handle and resolve.
That was both the duty of an Ancestral Witch and the karmic burden he had to bear for obtaining the highest decision-making authority over the Witch Race.
Before you continue