The Earth Immortal Dao of Fortune Dynasties.
It was a path both powerful and fragile.
Its strength lay in its speed. In a few short centuries, it could produce a cultivator at the Dao Integration level. With dragon qi that sealed all arts, such a cultivator was extraordinarily formidable and could counter most cultivators under heaven. This was surely a great path created by some supreme being; few in the world were qualified to look down on it.
Its fragility lay in the fact that the heart of a fortune dynasty was the hearts of its people.
Its power was the will of the people made manifest through a profound inheritance. The ruler, the dynasty's generals, and its ministers were merely the outward form of that power, not its essence.
If someone could strike at the heart of a fortune dynasty and make its people cease to respect, fear, obey, and pay taxes to it, the dynasty's collapse would be a simple matter.
Of course, this flaw truly existed in a path created by a supreme being, but that did not mean anyone could puncture a fortune dynasty with a casual prod.
It was like human sword cultivators, who were famously as fragile as paper when defending against others of the same level. Yet no one could casually crush a sword cultivator.
The grave weakness was real, but fortune dynasties had also developed all manner of defenses against it.
They spread propaganda to shape the people's view of the world, shifted blame, offered up scapegoats to dispel resentment, blocked the people's access to information, and deliberately set different classes against one another... Then they entrenched these measures with powerful dynastic arts. Their methods were endlessly varied, one emerging after another.
Generations of prodigies and exceptional figures from fortune dynasties across