After several seconds of silence, Wang Shouzhe slightly digested the rather enormous amount of information before finally recovering from his dumbfounded state.
Glancing over the crowd before him, he decided to deal with the new underlings Ancestor Longyan had taken in first.
"Ancestor, I have no objection to your taking in the Thousand-Armed Gods and Devils Sect." After weighing his words, he spoke solemnly to Ancestor Longyan. "However, this sect has over a hundred True Immortals and more than ten thousand members. Most of them are body cultivators with hearty appetites. Supporting them will not be easy."
Before Wang Longyan could speak, Tong Guanxiong behind her grew anxious.
"Patriarch, rest assured. Our Thousand-Armed Gods and Devils Sect has its own business. We can barely make ends meet." His tone was urgent as he tried his best to prove that they were not burdens. "And recently, trade in grain and minerals at the western suburbs market has increased. A group of our brothers has been helping load and unload goods, so our income has risen a little too."
If collecting protection fees and working as laborers counted as a business, then they indeed had a business.
Wang Shouzhe smiled faintly. "Barely making ends meet is not the same as living well. Since you are now members of the Wang Clan, if your lives are still stretched tight, would that not tarnish the Wang Clan's reputation?"
Body cultivators, especially, consumed vast resources. Body cultivators with abundant resources and impoverished body cultivators could not be mentioned in the same breath when it came to cultivation speed and combat strength.
There were, in fact, very few pure body-cultivator sects like the Thousand-Armed Gods and Devils Sect in the Immortal Realm, and this was precisely why.
Wang Shouzhe had already observed that although Tong Guanxiong