Hearing where public opinion among the citizens was leaning, Jiang Ding felt little joy. His brow furrowed slightly.
"Several tens of billions of people..."
"That's far too few. We need at least a hundred billion."
Jiang Ding thought for a moment, then said, "Whichever path we take, the Immortal Sect is our foundation."
"But for an interstellar civilization, several tens of billions of people are nowhere near enough to sustain it. We can certainly welcome talented outsiders, but only with a sufficiently large citizen population as our base. We cannot let the guests take over the house."
To him, Immortal Sect Citizens would always be the foundation.
"Really?"
An Siyan glanced at him in surprise. "I thought you'd be delighted."
"Personally, though, I don't want to see the number of Immortal Sect Citizens grow too much either. We fought bloody battles for so long and sacrificed so much without complaint, all for the collective interests of our citizens."
"Now that we've won, can't we indulge ourselves a little?"
"Do we have to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good again?"
She sounded indignant.
"Mm. You have a point too," Jiang Ding agreed.
They left the subject behind and turned to their views on advancing to Spirit Transformation, the matter cultivators at the peak of Nascent Soul valued most.
An unknown amount of time passed.
Hum!
Countless spatial runes bloomed at the edge of the sky, and hazy figures with single horns appeared once more among the stars.
These were the last group of Horned Demon Imperial Clan cultivators.
Including those wiped out in the Nine Great Immortal Sects' earlier surprise attack, they were nearly the last members of the Horned Demon Imperial Clan.
Once again, an entire clan was about to be exterminated in this region of worlds—utterly, physically wiped out.