"There really wasn't!" It wasn't that Qin Fen didn't want to pull one over on this guy. Such opportunities were rare, but this problem was indeed thorny. For one, Hongjun's aggressive move was unprecedented. He seemed utterly determined, and once they clashed, they had to be prepared for mutual destruction.
Second, the other party's reasoning made perfect sense. Joining the ranks of immortals wasn't like raising pigs, where you could scatter some feed and fatten them up. It wasn't that easy for mortals to become immortals. Though Zhang Fude, the righteous god of Merit, had once merely been an Earth God, only he knew the hardships involved. And he had not ascended directly either; his Merit had been assessed after his death. That made making an exception to promote mortals even less likely.
Qin Fen had been in contact with the Heavenly Dao for quite some time, and he often messed around himself. But every time, there was one prerequisite: it had to follow the greater trend, what he proposed had to bring benefits without harm, and the time for change had genuinely arrived.
This was completely different from the current situation. Whether mortals were promoted or not would not affect the broader trend of the lottery. For demons and mortals to win prizes and receive benefits, they had to do good deeds. As long as that income sustained their purchases, there was no need for them to become immortals.
As for the Demon Tribe, it was even harder. Unlike mortals, their path to immortality was especially arduous. Just look at White Lady. She had done so many good deeds, yet it still had not been enough. In the end, only after Xu Shilin placed first in the imperial examinations and brought the influence of the Mortal Realm's dynasty with