Houtu slowly withdrew her gaze from the Crimson Blood World. Ignoring Zhurong, she turned back to Yellow Dragon.
She pondered for a moment. Instead of answering at once, she asked a question that caught Yellow Dragon off guard:
"Yellow Dragon, the laws of your world, its abundant vitality, and its many living creatures do make it suitable for the Witch Race. I won't deny that."
"But while your Sea-Calming Pearl cuts off the Heavenly Dao's perception, it also cuts off the cycle of reincarnation."
Houtu raised a slender hand toward the Crimson Blood World suspended in the void, her voice grave. "I established the Six Paths of Reincarnation within the world. Since then, all creatures of the Primordial World have had to pass through them to be reborn."
"Your Sea-Calming Pearl is cut off from the Six Paths of Reincarnation. That means its inhabitants cannot pass through them to be reborn, nor can any souls be reborn into the Witch Race through them."
"If so, the only difference between the Witch Race living here and living in your world is their surroundings. Nothing else changes."
"They would be waiting to die here or waiting to die there. They would merely have a more comfortable place to live until then."
Houtu's words brought Yellow Dragon to a sudden realization.
He had oversimplified matters.
He had previously established the Six Paths of Reincarnation in both the Mysterious Yellow World and the Chaos Yin-Yang Pearl.
But he had hastily created the world inside this Sea-Calming Pearl to test the transformation of an acquired spiritual root into an Innate Spiritual Root. Its framework of laws contained no system of reincarnation.
If the Witch Race entered the Crimson Blood World without an independent passage to reincarnation, the souls of those who died there would have