Zhurong left, and his conversation with Zhu Jiuyin was once again deliberately spread by Zhu Jiuyin throughout the Witch Race.
Clearly, what Zhu Jiuyin had said to Zhurong was meant not only for Zhurong, an Ancestral Witch, but also for the billions of members of the Witch Race.
That was Zhu Jiuyin's style of management.
Walk the righteous path, use open schemes, and treat the people of the tribe as people.
Facts had proven that open schemes were the hardest things to counter.
Zhu Jiuyin wasn't even afraid of the great powers outside—or even Hongjun—finding out about this.
I'm just lying low. What are you gonna do about it?
After all, with Pangu Hall, a Chaos Spiritual Treasure with its defense maxed out, the Witch Race would remain invincible as long as they didn't bring disaster upon themselves.
He remembered that downstream on the River of Time, a Human Race man named Confucius had once written a line in the Analects: "The passage of time is like the flow of water, never ceasing day or night."
Of course, that line wasn't important. What mattered was how he'd seen people from later eras—the white-skinned monkeys—interpret it. He thought it was rather interesting: as long as clever people stood on the riverbank and did nothing, they could watch their enemies' corpses float down the river day and night.
Lying low was another form of endurance, and more than that, a way of waiting.
To endure, one had to keep an open mind and hold on.
One day, all the beings of the Primordial World would learn what the consequences of losing the Witch Race truly were.
One day, he would make Hongjun of the Heavenly Dao personally come to the outskirts of the Ancestral Land of the Witch Race and respectfully invite them back to the Primordial World.
In truth, Zhu Jiuyin wouldn't have to wait long.
The first unlucky victim had already appeared, in fact, once the Ancestral Witches and the rest of the Witch Race stopped absorbing the Turbid Qi of the Primordial World.
The West!
"It's over, it's over! Why is our West so unlucky? We're finished!"
Feeling the Turbid Qi growing ever denser outside Mount Sumeru, Zhun Ti couldn't help throwing his head back and wailing.
Beside him, Jie Yin had already been wearing a deeply sorrowful expression. Now he looked even more miserable.
There was no helping it. It was like when a flood came, it always broke through the weakest points in the defenses first.
Now that the Witch Race had stopped absorbing Turbid Qi, it was beginning to spread ever more widely throughout the Primordial World.
Turbid Qi was plainly opposed to spiritual energy.
So places with abundant spiritual energy were naturally less affected by Turbid Qi at this stage.
But the reverse was true, too. Places with less spiritual energy were in for a world of pain.
Clearly, when it came to places in the entire Primordial World with the least spiritual energy, how could anywhere be worse off than the Western World? It had nearly been shattered when Luo Hou self-destructed during the Dao-Demon War.
So ever since Jie Yin and Zhun Ti had returned to the Western World after attending the Dao Discussion Assembly at the Demon Race Heavenly Court, they'd been utterly dumbfounded.
They'd only been gone for ten thousand years. How could they have left with everything fine, only to come back and find the Western World like a frail invalid who'd been beaten to a pulp and ended up paralyzed?
To put it this way, the Western World had once had little spiritual energy, but it had at least had some.
But after Jie Yin and Zhun Ti left and returned ten thousand years later, it was completely done for.
For one thing, apart from Mount Sumeru, where the two of them had protective arrays that kept the innate spiritual energy fairly abundant, all the innate spiritual energy outside Mount Sumeru in the Western World had vanished entirely.
That meant that from then on, no beings with roots reaching beyond the Innate Being level would ever be born in the Western World again.
After all, with the innate spiritual energy gone, the Innate Beings and even Innate Demon Gods still being nurtured would be like babies growing in the womb who suddenly ran out of oxygen. They'd become stillborn!
In that moment, Zhun Ti collapsed to the ground and burst into tears. Anyone from later generations who saw him would probably have said, He's even more heartbroken than if his parents had died.
Of course, in theory, Zhun Ti had no parents.
Zhun Ti was crying, but Jie Yin was different.
In that moment, it was as if every glimmer of light had vanished from Jie Yin's eyes. He just stood there, motionless, even as Yaoshi and Maitreya beside him knocked their heads bloody. He remained unmoved.
Of course, whether from sorrow or grief, Jie Yin and Zhun Ti were still great powers at the mid-stage Quasi-Sage realm. Even if their Dao Hearts truly shattered, they were unlikely to risk going berserk.
So in the end, they still pulled themselves together.
It had to be said that Jie Yin and Zhun Ti had become two of the Six Sages of the Heavenly Dao and would later even become the biggest winners for a time because they possessed tremendous perseverance and wisdom.
On one hand, they immediately strengthened the protective array around Mount Sumeru. Besides bolstering its defenses, they also increased the amount of innate spiritual energy it drew from the Primordial Starry Sky.
After all, if there wasn't enough innate spiritual energy on the ground, they could use the innate spiritual energy in the starry sky to make up the difference.
As for whether Di Jun and Tai Yi and the Demon Race had any objections, Jie Yin and Zhun Ti couldn't afford to care.
They knew that without an outside supply of innate spiritual energy, Mount Sumeru would become like a pond without flowing water. The innate spiritual energy within it would be like the water in that pond: less and less with every passing day, until it dried up completely.
Once they'd secured Mount Sumeru, Jie Yin and Zhun Ti hurriedly used their great supernatural powers to sweep across the entire Western World as quickly as possible. They rescued as many of the Innate Beings still clinging to life as they could, along with a few Innate Demon Gods, and moved them into Mount Sumeru.
It wasn't that Jie Yin and Zhun Ti were kindhearted. These Innate Beings and few Innate Demon Gods were the Western World's greatest assets and its last hope.
If these Innate Beings and Innate Demon Gods were gone, then from that day on, there would be no point in talking about the Western World's rise.
Most importantly, Jie Yin and Zhun Ti had become two of the Six Sages of the Heavenly Dao because they'd earned immense merit by repairing the Western World's earth veins and spiritual veins and dispelling its baleful and Turbid Qi, thereby gaining the Heavenly Dao status of Lord of the West.
So why could the Three Pure Ones become Sages? Because of their origins. Why could Nuwa become one? Because she created humanity. And what gave the Two Sages of the West the right to become Sages? The immense merit they'd gained and the Heavenly Dao status of Lord of the West.
So whether for practical gain or consideration of the future, Jie Yin and Zhun Ti had to minimize the damage to the Western World as much as possible.
Unfortunately, the more they struggled, the more despairing Jie Yin and Zhun Ti became.
In the past, with the Witch Race absorbing the Turbid Qi, they hadn't realized the truth. They'd thought they could resolve the baleful and Turbid Qi of the Western World on their own.
Now that the Witch Race had lain low, they finally realized that without the Witch Race—the absolute main force in absorbing Turbid Qi—the speed at which they absorbed Turbid Qi and baleful Qi was less than a tenth of the rate at which Turbid Qi arose in the Western World.
Seeing that there was no other way, Zhun Ti suddenly had an idea.
"Senior Brother, how about we go and beg the Ancestral Witches? Surely if we're willing to swallow our pride, they'll at least show a little respect to us, two future Sages?"
But Jie Yin shook his head. "Junior Brother, do you remember how you spoke ill of the Ancestral Witches and the Witch Race when you were at the Demon Race Heavenly Court? And how harshly you spoke?
"Do you think the Ancestral Witches might have heard what you said?"
Before you continue