"What does this have to do with us? Isn't this the business of those lords in the Upper City?"
Looking at his companions' baffled faces, Xu Qing suddenly felt the urge to sigh.
Sure enough, pure cultivation could not replace personal growth. Most of the companions he had gathered were youths born after the era of spiritual energy tides. Their talents had improved compared to those before them, and with cultivation methods available to them, their futures should have been broader still.
Yet reality was that cultivators born in the Lower District could scarcely avoid becoming a new generation of beasts of burden. At first, he had thought their strength and talent simply had not kept pace with the times. But now it seemed that, guarding a mountain of treasure yet refusing to enter it, they truly deserved this suffering.
"Don't treat the Upper City and Lower District as though they have been completely divided into two separate regions."
Xu Qing shot the youths before him a glare.
"Heyang City's overall prosperity was built upon the shared accumulation of both sides. If you relied solely on that batch of cultivators from the Upper City, do you think Heyang City could have achieved its present splendor?"
The youths stared at one another, clearly still unable to grasp the connection.
Xu Qing sighed.
"Think about it. What does the Alliance's newly established Human Resources Department oversee?"
Having said that, he did not wait for the youths to respond before answering his own question.
"The Human Resources Department is responsible for recruiting and training Heyang City Alliance's future reserves. Do you understand what future reserve members of the Alliance means?"
"In other words, future Alliance members."
"If they merely needed a batch of people to expand production and help develop the Alliance's two