"Interests."
Those were the first words that surfaced in his mind.
There was nothing wrong with that explanation. Indeed, shared interests had brought the Golden Core cultivators here together.
Yet he still felt something was missing.
Simple promises of benefits could not sway so many Golden Core cultivators.
"Freedom?"
"Conviction?"
"A righteous cause?"
"Or all of them?"
Countless thoughts flashed through Liu Yu's mind in an instant.
Sensing the fluctuations of magic power constantly emanating from the cabins without formations to isolate them, he believed all those factors were at play.
Of course, the Zhang Household's influence was indispensable as well.
Without that gilded signboard, winning the trust of most of these cultivators would have been difficult, and gathering them together would have been impossible.
How many people could the words and promises of an unknown nobody move, even if he possessed considerable cultivation and strength?
The Zhang Household had ruled the Annam Six Provinces for over a hundred thousand years. Those two simple words naturally carried a certain "legitimacy" and "power to rally people."
That was how they had brought so many complicated cultivators together.
Liu Yu even secretly wondered how many of the forty or fifty Golden Core cultivators before him, apart from those who had advanced naturally from slavery or been captured, had been deliberately "sent" here by the Zhang Household.
After all, once someone became an enslaved cultivator, cooperating with the Zhang Household was the best choice. Had someone been fanning the flames along the way?
If so, what role had the Zhang Household played?
"Heh."
"I really am still accustomed to viewing this world through the lens of interests."
At that thought, Liu Yu smiled faintly and reined in his malicious conjectures.
He then closed his eyes and sat cross-legged, slowly circulating his cultivation technique