Chapter 142: The Long View

Half a month passed. On this particular day, after finishing his cultivation, Fan Bei went outside to relax and take a stroll, believing in the occasional need to balance work with leisure.

Floating in mid-air, he saw the members of the Stubborn Rock Chamber of Commerce resting and chatting in a withered yellow forest below. Everyone was dressed in thick fur coats, bundled up tightly against the cold.

It was currently March. The spring wind was biting and the weather remained quite chilly. These people, unlike him, lacked the protection of mist armor to keep them warm against the cold.

"Have you heard? The people from the Holy Land were actually uprooted and wiped out by our President's sister!" a well-informed man said mysteriously.

"Ah, that person is truly indescribable. It almost feels like a dream. A few months ago, we could only hear of such people in rumors. Who would have thought that now they are being slaughtered like pigs and dogs?"

"Hmph, this is the apocalypse now. No matter how high and mighty someone is, tomorrow they might fall to a state even worse than ours."

"When will life ever get better? It always feels like living one more day is a day gained."

The two men sighed heavily. Unable to know that the gloomy haze was receding, they simply felt that the world was growing increasingly chaotic.

"Hey, you two, stop sighing there. Haven't you noticed that the vicinity has become much safer? Even many robberies have stopped happening, business has become much easier to conduct, and many ordinary people even dare to venture out to pick wild fruits to supplement their household supplies." Lin Xiaolü suddenly walked over, holding Whitey by a leash—she had apparently come out to walk the dog.

Fan Bei was speechless at the sight. No wonder he never caught a glimpse of this fellow's dog anymore; it turned out she had found a new favorite.

"Hello, Sister Xiaolü. Aren't you following the President today?" Two of the team members stood up to strike up a conversation.

"No. Brother Stone doesn't even know what he's been busy with lately, nowhere to be seen all day long. Good thing Whitey is keeping me company," Lin Xiaolü sighed to herself as well.

"The President must have other important duties. I heard he was arranged by the Star Chamber of Commerce to cooperate with a large chamber of commerce in the south, seemingly to establish something like the Divine Land United Chamber of Commerce," the well-informed man spoke up.

"Oh, I didn't even know. How do you know about this?" Lin Xiaolü suddenly became curious.

"Well... if I tell you that I heard it from a tree the other day, will you hit me?" the man asked timidly.

"That's completely normal. Even Whitey can talk, let alone trees," Lin Xiaolü said as if it were only natural.

Whitey was looking around casually, completely indifferent, as if it hadn't caught the underlying meaning of the other's words. The few men cast sympathetic glances at it.

Upon hearing this news, Fan Bei felt a stir in his heart. Instead of returning to rest, he simply drifted along with the clouds in mid-air, using the sound of the wind to eavesdrop on the conversations below.

From north to south, from east to west, for several days in a row, he wandered across the land of the Divine Land.

This led him to discover a fact: evil spirits had almost entirely ceased to appear. Evidently, the departure of that manor owner had not triggered the emergence of any more evil spirits.

It seemed that the reconstruction of civilization was about to truly begin.

And a new round of struggles was also about to commence.

As for the sordid power struggles, he couldn't be bothered to pay attention to them.

What he cared about was how Lin Zhongqing and the others could acquire more spiritual cores, which, to him, was the most fundamental accumulation of power.

After touring around, he discovered that all the evil spirit mines had vanished. Clearly, this was a technique mastered only by high-tier evil spirits.

*That boss was killed a bit too early,* he thought with a trace of regret.

Now that the opponent had fled, whether they would ever return remained an unknown.

Yet, in his view, since the opponent had fled so cleanly, there was a high probability they would never return. After all, when all was said and done, the adversary was merely a banished criminal stripped of power, with no one to champion his cause.

…………

Copper Fortress, Lin Zhongqing's office.

"Brother Dongfang, are you really going to make public the methods for extracting and manufacturing spiritual cores?" Lin Zhongqing asked with a hint of reluctance.

She understood the significance of this item very well; its commercial value far exceeded the gold reserves of pre-apocalyptic humanity.

After all, gold was ultimately just a matter of confidence. While it did possess intrinsic utility, its applications were quite limited.

"Yes. Now that we possess military might, our next step is moral standing and prestige. Only by combining both can we better establish order. Using this item as a stepping stone is precisely the right timing," Dongfang Yitong said calmly.

"But, as long as we make public the fact that we defeated the Holy Land and that mysterious manor, who would ever dare disobey our rule? At that time, we could simply establish a global trust chamber of commerce, control everything, and make them pay tribute to us in spiritual cores. Wouldn't that be much simpler?" Lin Zhongqing asked, perplexed.

"If you do that, how would it differ from the methods of those evil spirits? As the stewards of heaven and earth, we must genuinely care for this world so that it will ultimately accept and recognize you," Dongfang Yitong lectured.

"I... I was just being impatient for a moment," Lin Zhongqing said, feeling somewhat wronged. Everything she suggested wasn't it meant to help him grow powerful rapidly?

She still remembered how strenuous it had been when they initially fought against the tauren fiend.

It was only later, by borrowing the power of heaven and earth, that they managed to narrowly defeat it. Fortunately, that single defeat seemed to have shattered the enemy's courage.

Even now, she felt a lingering sense of astonishment. Although their preparations later became much more thorough, the enemy still possessed at least three major generals. Had they all swarmed them together in an encirclement, she might not have been a match for them.

Perhaps it was because the enemy had witnessed the tauren being killed, and none of them wanted to be the next one to die.

After all, unlike humans, these fiends lived extremely long lives, and the longer they lived, the more afraid of death they became—that was a universal law.

"I am not reprimanding you; rather, I want to establish a loose order for the world, not a high-pressure one. We must make others genuinely accept our rule, rather than accepting it out of fear. Fear and high pressure only yield something like the unchanging slave system of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which does nothing to elevate heaven and earth," Dongfang Yitong said earnestly.

"I see, I understand now," Lin Zhongqing said, experiencing a sudden enlightenment. Then, she added with concern, "What if others rise to power taking advantage of this lenient environment and surpass us in military might?"

In the past, she would never have been able to utter such words; had Lin Zhongshi heard them, he would have been utterly astonished.

Only in front of her lover would this proud queen reveal the true, feminine side of her nature.

"Rest assured, the cultivation techniques I exchange with you allow access to the strongest arts in this world. The moment anyone's cultivation surpasses ours, we can immediately study it. With your and my aptitude and capability, do we really need to worry about such a thing?" Dongfang Yitong smiled faintly.

"I forgot about that," Lin Zhongqing only now realized that her partner's wisdom had unknowingly reached such heights!

That's right. By giving others a lenient and free environment to develop, any progressive achievements they made could be accessed and utilized by themselves at any time. This was equivalent to having the power of the entire world helping to elevate oneself.

Indeed, her husband always took the long-term view.