To this day, whenever Bai Di leafed through that copy of Future Generations' Treatise on Opening Heaven, she felt heartbroken over Yang Lingqing's death at such a young age.
This also showed just how insidious and precise that Upper Realm Cultivator Descent had been. It had not targeted the peak figures of the current age, but had instead singled out her and Yang Lingqing.
If Zhang Minghe had arrived even a little later that day, if that Go-With-Nature Talisman had not descended to break the deadlock, then Bai Di's final fate would only have been death and the dispersal of her Dao.
One could imagine that if Yang Lingqing and Bai Di had both perished in this upheaval, then even if the peak cultivators of the two Daos had later reached a consensus, the entire Canglan Continent would have been hard-pressed to find another figure with the ability and daring to serve as the mastermind supporting the entire New Heaven Grand Plan.
Had that truly been the outcome, the final authority in deliberations could only have rested in the hands of Chen Yang, Dark Underworld Venerable, and Qin Changsheng.
Then everything would have required discussion, every matter would have needed sorting out. Only after reaching a consensus could they produce a result and issue orders. Their overall efficiency would have been nowhere near what it was now.
Seen this way, after Bai Di had clawed her life back all those years ago, the words she had spoken to Ye Chenfeng—"Leaving me alive was the foulest move they made this time"—had truly not been false.
With her around, in all the years following the Upper Realm Cultivator Descent, Chen Yang and the other peak cultivators had scarcely needed to rack their brains over the specific execution of the New Heaven Project.