Five Swords Lord's strength had grown ever more unfathomable, and disciples like Chen Shujun could feel it directly.
"Master, I came here to report on the Merman Kingdom." Chen Shujun knelt on the ground and reported every detail. "We have already purchased the Azure Cloud Pearls Master asked us to gather last time. However, the mermen's prices keep climbing, and the quantity of Azure Cloud Pearls available on this trip has been squeezed lower and lower. If this continues, the amount we can acquire will inevitably fall short, whether for setting up the grand formation or for us disciples' cultivation..."
The Azure Cloud Pearls Chen Shujun spoke of were a resource commonly used by the Five Swords Sect for cultivation, sword refinement, and the setting of formations.
Azure Cloud Pearls could only be found in the sea. That was precisely why Five Swords Lord had moved his sect overseas: these precious pearls mostly had to be harvested from the deep sea, and only the mermen possessed the ability to mine such resources from the ocean.
The mermen were a powerful sea-dwelling race with an enormous sphere of influence. They counted as an aquatic race, multiplying and thriving in the sea, with long lifespans and abundant lives. For that very reason, they lacked the heart to seek the Dao, yet their innate ability to command water allowed them to move through the sea like fish in water.
Golden Core cultivators could, of course, venture deep into the sea and descend to the ocean floor to gather Azure Cloud Pearls. But for one thing, the places that produced Azure Cloud Pearls were mostly mermen territory; for another, Golden Core True Persons could hardly ignore everything else and spend every day cooped up on the seafloor collecting Azure Cloud Pearls.
Cultivators at the