Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

As Su Changfa spoke enticingly, the Grand Illusionary Land behind him was changing and displaying vivid pictures, too.

The last picture was one where countless people were worshipping and dancing deliriously in front of a black, angry Chiyou statue.

Compared with the Curly Dragon civilization and the Medicine Fork civilization, the Martial Meritocrats civilization had left much more detailed records. They were almost like the real-life experiences of some citizens of the Imperium.

Seeing that the number of the Sand Primitive people whose skin was blackened and whose body was tattooed was growing nonstop, Li Yao felt that his teeth were aching.

Jin Tuyi once told him blatantly the real Red Tide Plan, which was in fact the roadmap for the demon race to integrate into the federation. It was basically the same.

However, from Li Yao to Ding Lingdang, and even including Lu Zui and Zhou Hengdao who had died and Speaker Jiang Hailiu who was still alive, everybody more or less kept their vigilance. There was no way that the Red Tide Plan would be implemented exactly as Jin Tuyi had in his mind.

It was because human beings and demons used to be sworn enemies. The two parties were wary of each other by nature.

The people of the Martial Meritocrats Sector, however, took the people of the Sand Primitive Sector as their ‘siblings’. They embraced all of them without the slightest alarm.

Li Yao seemed to envision the beginning of a tragedy.

“At first, the integration of the Martial Meritocrats Sector and the Sand Primitive Sector seemed to be going well. ‘Model Integration Zones’ were established, in which the Martial Meritocrats natives and the Sand Primitive natives lived in peace, took part in different jobs, and communicated with each other closely. There were even a lot of married couples from different worlds. Quite a few hybrids were born.

“With the Sand Primitive natives engaged in the labor-intensive work, the natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector were able to focus all their attention on realizing their dream to explore the sea of stars. The national capabilities soared, and the territory quickly expanded!”

Su Changfa sighed. “However, the decision-makers of the Martial Meritocrats Sector did not foresee the fatal changes caused by two factors!

“Firstly, the Alliance of Martial Meritocrats adopted an election system where one citizen had one vote. Under such a system, a Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator locally born and raised had one vote, and an immigrant from the Sand Primitive Sector who was new to the place, who had just learned the dialect of the Martial Meritocrats Sector, and who couldn’t even repair a toilet, also boasted one sacred vote because he was a citizen of the nation!

“Although the Cultivators of the Martial Meritocrats Sector were people of honor and integrity, they would not concede or give up in the pursuit of the supreme power. They would also debate and argue with each other.

“They might not be fighting for their selfish interests, but only when they were high in power could they carry out their belief and the belief of their party!

“In order to enter parliament and even the highest decision-making circle, they had to fight for more votes!

“The Alliance of Martial Meritocrats had been founded for a thousand years. Most parties had their own ‘ticket bunker’, which was the range of their influence. The votes in every election wouldn’t change too much. It was very difficult for them to win votes from the ticket bunker of other sects, too.

“Although the system was a bit rigid, it ensured the stability of politics and the continuity of policies.

“But the arrival of the Sand Primitive immigrants changed everything.

“Many parties had been kept in balance for hundreds of years, with a similar number of hardcore supporters, but with the votes of the Sand Primitive people, it was very possible that the situation in the past would be changed!

“The more Sand Primitive people are in favor of us, the more likely we will win the election!

“How can we get more Sand Primitive people to support us? First of all, naturally, we will promise them more privileges and assure them that the policies will be in effect as soon as we are in power, thereby winning over the Sand Primitive people!

“Then, we can try our best to move their family, friends, and even the entire tribe to the Martial Meritocrats Sector and make the newcomers citizens of the nation. So, we will have more new votes!

“As a result, the votes on our side will definitely increase exponentially!

“Even if we don’t do it, our hostile parties will. If the hostile parties are supported by more Sand Primitive immigrants, we will never be able to carry out our beliefs in office!

“Such a train of thought was simple enough even for a Building Foundation Stage Cultivator or a Core Formation Stage, not to mention those in the Nascent Soul Stage. In fact, it was exactly what the smart and civilized Cultivators did!

“To win the support of the voters from the Sand Primitive Sectors, today, Party A proposed that the social position of the natives of the Sand Primitive Sector must be improved and that a certain ratio of employees in the government agencies must be from the Sand Primitive Sector.

“The next day, Party B proposed that the conditions required for the natives of the Sand Primitive Sector to join the Alliance of Martial Meritocrats should be loosened and that every Sand Primitive native would automatically be granted citizenship and the voting right the moment they entered the Martial Meritocrats Sector.

“The day after that, Party C proposed that, in order to maintain the basic rights of the citizens from the Sand Primitive Sector, they must be provided with additional allowances other than free food and housing!

“The Sand Primitive people, on the other hand, knew the importance of gratitude quite well. They indeed supported Party As, Party Bs and Party Cs, making those parties win the elections smoothly and crush many opponents that had troubled them for hundreds of years!

“The parties-in-elect, after savoring the fruit of success, wouldn’t abandon such effective approaches. To ensure the victories in the future elections, they spared no effort moving large batches of Sand Primitive natives to the Martial Meritocrats Sector and transforming them into citizens of the Alliance of Martial Meritocrats and even the disciples of the local sects!

“Day after day, year after year, the privileges and the position of the Sand Primitive natives became better and better; their number and voice grew larger and larger. Eventually, they became a force that nobody dared to mess around with.

“The Alliance of Martial Meritocrats only meant to hire a few workers in the beginning, but now, the workers had become the bosses. Despite the benefits that were even higher than regular natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector, they were greedy enough to demand higher wages, benefits, and better living environment, and a medication, education, and social security system that favored them biasedly!

“In many cases, the Sand Primitive natives were in fact too stupid to come up with all that.

“It was the parties and local sects of the Martial Meritocrats Sector that offered the conditions to them promptly time and time again, stimulating their greed and ambitions to expand!

“This was the first fatal mistake that the Martial Meritocrats civilization made.

“The second fatal mistake, in the meantime, was the population issue.”

Li Yao felt that his eyelids were jumping. “What’s the population issue?”

“The Martial Meritocrats civilization and the Sand Primitive civilizations were actually two civilizations of different eras and levels. Yet, the childish Cultivators melded them together by brute force,” Su Changfa sneered. “The Martial Meritocrats civilization had already entered a highly-developed phase. As the educational and economical level improved, the fertility rate naturally decreased.

“Traditionally speaking, natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector focused more on the self-perfection and self-actualization. Faced with the boundless sea of stars, too much work needed to be done, and too many mysteries were waiting to be explored! Everything would consume a lot of time and effort.

“Therefore, the natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector did not like having too many children, if they were married at all. Many of them believed in celibacy, claiming that they would devote their life to the sea of stars!

“For those who chose to have offspring, they often stopped when they had two children. They carefully educated every child and raised them with their all.

“Therefore, it was even less likely that they would be interested in more children.

“That was the practice of the society. The natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector who had a handful of kids were often mocked by their friends for their lack of ambition. They would be considered to be the antiques from ancient times.

“But the Sand Primitive natives were different.

“The harsh environment of the Sand Primitive Sector meant an appallingly high death rate. So, fertility meant everything! Only by giving birth to enough children and transforming them into the most frantic warriors in the most efficient way could the Sand Primitive civilization survive while being surrounded by the infinite enemies!

“Therefore, the females of the Sand Primitive Sector were all highly fertile. They usually started having children immediately after their menarche and wouldn’t stop until their menopause. It was not strange at all if they had twenty children!

“In the Sand Primitive Sector in the past, most of the twenty children would die of diseases or in the battles before they grew up. Such cruel eliminations ensured that the population wouldn’t excessively expand and that only the strongest could survive.

“However, the ‘kindhearted’ Cultivators, who were determined to protect every ordinary person, had arrived. How could they bear to watch the Sand Primitive natives being killed by the alien species while doing nothing?

“Therefore, they taught the Sand Primitive Sector tremendous techniques, aided them with countless flying swords and crystal cannons, and eventually helped annihilate all the enemies of the natives of the Sand Primitive Sector!

“The enemies were gone, new medication procedures were introduced, but the tradition of fertility was unchanged. Naturally, the population of the Sand Primitive Sector boomed!

“Cultivators of the Martial Meritocrats Sector simply waited and watched everything happen. Instead of stopping it, they even encouraged the practice and offered all kinds of birth benefits and education funds.

“It was because such a tradition was their ‘sacrosanct culture’. It was also because every newborn baby in the Sand Primitive Sector meant a new vote in the near future!

“Just like that, after only a hundred years, after a series of population booms and crazy immigration, the citizens from the Sand Primitive Sector almost took up half of the population of the Alliance of Marital Meritocrats now.

“Fellow Cultivator Li, take a guess. What would happen next?”

Taking a long breath, Li Yao narrowed his eyes and said, “The Sand Primitive natives were about to reveal their true face, weren’t they?”

“Wrong!” Su Changfa laughed maliciously. “After a hundred years of learning, the new-generation natives of the Sand Primitive Sector were much more cunning than their predecessors. They fully continued the nature of the nomadic people and lurked around the prey, setting up traps quietly!

“On the surface, nothing too dramatic happened. Although the demands from the Sand Primitive natives were more and more arrogant, and the Chiyou Cult was spreading inside the Alliance of Martial Meritocrats more and more actively, it was nothing different from what they had been doing in the past century. Like frogs in warm water, the natives of the Martial Meritocrats Sector were rather used to it. The situation did not seem to be out of control.

“However, in the darkness, a theory known as ‘original sin’ suddenly rose up and swept across the entire world!”