Layer upon layer of pressure descended like raging winds and colossal waves, crashing fiercely onto Li Qiulan.
Countless sect elders and Aristocratic Clan stewards sent message after message to pressure her, threatening her with words and binding her with reason and sentiment, all forcing her to reform the Tracebright Society, lock down the privileges of outside cultivators, and monopolize core Gu Dao materials.
Throughout court and countryside, within and beyond the sects, criticism surged for a time. Countless people waited for Li Qiulan to compromise and retreat.
Yet after several rounds of deliberation and weighing her options, the answer in Li Qiulan's heart only grew firmer: she would never yield.
She saw through it more clearly than anyone.
If she followed these factions' demands and forcibly tightened reviews, raised the threshold, divided insiders from outsiders, and locked down the sharing of materials, it might seem as though she were protecting the monopolistic interests of Nine Void Mountain's local powers. In truth, she would be personally crippling the foundation of the Tracebright Society.
The core vitality of the Tracebright Society had never been any one person or any one batch of resources, but a system of openness, sharing, trial and error by a hundred schools, and collective iteration.
Once circulation was sealed off, sharing cut apart, and opportunities monopolized, countless grassroots cultivators and outside cultivators would lose their drive to experiment. They would no longer actively contribute new ideas, new experience, and new improvement plans.
The endless stream of Gu Refining experience would be cut off completely, and the vitality of the entire organization would wither in an instant.
Before long, the Tracebright Society would decline step by step, and the immense influence it now wielded across Nine Void Mountain would slowly vanish without a trace.
This was not reform. This