Jiang Ding looked farther afield, toward the billions of living beings in the Netherbright Realm.
In customs and culture, these cultivators were rapidly growing closer to Immortal Sect Citizens. Yet one difference remained: the hierarchy they had known since ancient times. They regarded Immortal Sect Citizens as something like inner disciples of a superior sect.
The secondary Immortal Sect network they used reflected another increase in the Central Array-Spirit Computer's computing power. It could now extend the spiritual-sense network to native cultivators at Foundation Establishment and above, bringing them into the system for shaping public opinion and issuing orders.
The Central Array-Spirit Computer was their direct superior, not their commanding officer.
Many native cultivators had grown accustomed to receiving orders from the Central Array-Spirit Computer, taking assignments, and gaining rewards, promotions, and cultivation methods.
They had grown up within this system. They were used to it, and they trusted its fairness.
If a powerful cultivator ever incited a rebellion without first cutting off the Central Array-Spirit Computer's orders, the consequences were easy to imagine.
A single written order might be enough to strip the rebel of everyone else's loyalty.
Once the moment was right, an orderly and terrifying mutiny would erupt in an instant.
Such was the Immortal Sect's frightening degree of control over its vassal civilizations.
At the same time, there was no need to hide the fact that this secondary Immortal Sect network was entirely different from the network used by Immortal Sect Citizens.
On the secondary network, every word and deed was monitored. There was no privacy, and the Immortal Sect's administrative departments could initiate any reasonable investigation.
Public opinion among the native cultivators on the secondary network was tightly controlled.
Nor did the secondary network hold the almost limitless immortal-path knowledge available on the citizens' network—knowledge