In fact, when the Elders learned that over ninety percent of Hua Country’s citizens could cultivate, and with the Spiritual Energy Revival underway and the concentration of spiritual energy rising, it was inevitable that Star Sector forces would eventually invade. They gathered the top government officials and leading figures from all walks of life for a discussion and unanimously decided to launch the “Cultivation for All” initiative.
From the proposal to implementing the “Cultivation for All” plan, there was a period of preparation.
During this time, all the high-ranking officials with player accounts personally experienced multiple life-and-death moments. It had to be said that facing death truly brought new insights, and even those with mediocre perception returned a level or two stronger.
As for the Elders who advanced to the third or fifth layer of Qi Refining, although they didn’t exactly feel reborn, they had at least returned to the state of someone in their forties or fifties. With the aid of Liqi Pills, staying up late for imperial meetings became routine.
When the “Cultivation for All” plan officially rolled out and expanded in earnest, more than twenty thousand players had gathered around Qin Jingzhou, with at least half already progressing to the Foundation Establishment Stage.
Incidentally, the vast majority of these players were formally employed as teachers by the government. A small portion returned to their sects to teach. Thus, all staff in charge of talent assessment and distributing the two official manuals had at least succeeded in Qi gathering. With the four basic talismans, a standard weapon, and an experienced person in charge, they could easily handle any trouble that came their way.
In reality, while there were no major incidents, three to five minor ones were reported every day.
There were not only subordinates of Su Huaizhen deliberately stirring up trouble, but also foreign forces sending people to harass the Hua Country authorities. With the Spiritual Energy Revival, the Western mystical side was gradually “waking up” as well.
To be fair, this world’s Western mystical tradition was no weaker than the xuanhuan tradition led by the East.
If the East had their own Fate’s Son Su Huaizhen, the Western side’s top expert had also reached the mid-Foundation Establishment Stage. And this was not one of those crippled experts who had only the boundary but no fighting strength.
Su Huaizhen’s subordinates and the Western agents sent for infiltration had made contact at headquarters. Su Huaizhen decisively moved his entire base of operations abroad, leaving only three projection souls stationed within the country.
Knowing full well how imbalanced the projection soul technique was, the two newly-appointed heads of the Special Affairs Bureau, Xun Qiushui and Yan Tongwei, had never contacted Su Huaizhen directly. By the time they discovered Su Huaizhen’s people had vanished without a trace, three days had already passed.
Xun Qiushui and Yan Tongwei remained calm: whether there were foreign enemies or not, and regardless of their strength, humans would unite, but internal strife was ever present.
The Western mystical side didn’t realize a powerful enemy would invade in the future. They were happy to put in effort as long as it meant dragging Hua Country down. After stepping into the Foundation Establishment Stage, Su Huaizhen gathered up a crowd of fiend cultivators and heretic cultivators, ambitious as ever, looking to start anew.
The fact that these two factions hit it off and decided to join forces didn’t surprise anyone.
After all, since everyone knew how dangerous the projection soul technique was, neither the government nor sect and noble families dared make contact without authorization, and the hunt for fiend and heretic cultivators who sought refuge with Su Huaizhen never stopped. If Su Huaizhen wanted to expand his power, the only way seemed to be fleeing far away.
With such a hidden danger gone, the officials joined forces with sects and noble families, and the roll-out of “Cultivation for All” went much more smoothly. Even knowing Su Huaizhen left at least two projection souls in Hua Country… after dying more than fifty times each at the hands of the Zerg, the players were experienced enough that even the projection soul couldn’t pose much threat.
But as “Cultivation for All” spread further, more and more ordinary people succeeded in Qi gathering, and more realized that relying solely on drawing spiritual energy from the environment for realm advancement was remarkably slow. At this point, the Xiao Group officially launched Liqi Pills.
Liqi Pills came in three grades: basic, mid-level, and high-level, corresponding to Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, and Golden Core stages.
The basic Liqi Pill sold for 100 Hua coins, while the mid-level pill sold for 1,000. Unless your innate talent was outrageous or you were insanely motivated, the average monthly consumption was only three to five pills. When the Xiao Group, which had a monopoly on Liqi Pills, announced pricing and recommended monthly usage, internet users everywhere declared: The Xiao Group doesn’t even want to make money, they just want to make friends!
The cultivation manuals were distributed, Liqi Pills went into mass production, and whether you called them students or players, everyone received proper guidance. Qin Jingzhou felt he had done about all he could.
Xuan Qing was very supportive of his dad stepping back. “Hua Country’s leadership already negotiated several rounds of technology cooperation with the biggest interstellar factions, mainly the Empire. If you micromanaged any more, you’d be spoon-feeding them.”
Qin Jingzhou ruffled his son’s hair. “That’s what I think too.” After pausing, he asked, “How are your thoughts on teaching lately?” Passing on the fishing rod, after all, came down to sharing cultivation techniques and basic knowledge. Xuan Qing finished learning from his dad, then turned to teach those interstellar experts, embodying “teaching benefits both sides.”
Xuan Qing smiled. “It’s not bad, really honed my patience.”
“True cultivation and the artificial half-demon system are worlds apart,” Qin Jingzhou ruffled his son’s hair again. “Being patient is good for you.”
Xuan Qing simply laid his head down on his father’s lap, smiling with his whole face. “Being a teacher to the world is the best way to earn merit, and merit can turn into fortune… If I want to reincarnate and leave this universe, I have to accumulate more fortune first.” He looked up and nuzzled in his father’s arms, “Thanks, Dad.”
While father and son enjoyed their moment of closeness, Ling Jing, who had just finished inspecting the spiritual fields, floated back in high spirits. She came over and rubbed Xuan Qing’s paw. “The crops are doing well. Once again, I’ve earned the base points just for farming. Even if I’m not the one who completed the quest, as long as I contributed, it’s all gain.”
There were now over ten thousand players. Five thousand went to take on the Zerg, while the rest stayed on the estate to study spiritual plant cultivation and extracting key compounds. Of course, all players staying on the estate were under Ling Jing’s management.
Ling Jing paused, then sighed, “I’m good at logistics, but I really need to make up for my weakness in combat… Can’t rely on you always being there for every hard quest.”
Qin Jingzhou took hold of his son’s little paw with one hand and grabbed Ling Jing’s with the other. “You’re absolutely right. I can promise that you and Xiao Qing can always count on me, but since you’re so self-reliant, if I tried to handle everything myself, it would only hurt you.”
“Cultivation can use help, but you can’t rely solely on it…” Suddenly, Ling Jing understood his hint. “The key is to keep your heart clear and follow your own will, right?”
Xuan Qing pondered as well. In his last life, he advanced to Divine Transformation Stage because he sacrificed himself for that world. The World Will compensated him, making advancement easy… meaning his true power was only at the Nascent Soul stage.
Both Ling Jing and Xuan Qing radiated an aura of enlightenment, as if they’d instantly comprehended something.
Qin Jingzhou felt quite gratified. Looking toward the bustling scene in the distance, where players in the estate harvested spiritual plants, sorted and processed them on the spot, and laughed and worked in the heat of the moment, he asked the System, “Is the boss satisfied?”
The System actually went to ask, came back, and was quite pleased. “The bosses said if things keep going like this, they’ll increase your budget.”
No wonder both bosses were satisfied. After all, once the players finished their deadly grind, Qin Jingzhou determined their spirits were now resilient enough to withstand successive strikes from the projection soul technique. At this point, the Zerg nest queen who had always moonlighted as their free instructor seized her chance. She tore open a passage to a secondary dimension, grabbed her bucket, and fled—taking only her own guards and mates, leaving all other races behind.
Players and all the interstellar powers who had been watching this high-level hive fell silent.
Ling Jing chuckled, “So she ran off, big bosses aren’t exactly demons… Shall we welcome our next ‘victimized’ bug?”
Qin Jingzhou looked at the State-Guardian Expert stationed here. “Where is the nearest high-level hive?”
The major interstellar powers grew immensely excited, all praying inwardly: Please, brothers from the other world, progress a little slower! As long as you keep coming to fight the Zerg and hone your souls, we can negotiate any technology exchange!
After two rounds of soul training for twenty thousand players, Xuan Qing was deeply moved. “This is burning through queen hives too quickly! After twenty thousand rounds, four queens have already run off! How is that okay!” He knew his dad’s target was to train about a hundred thousand players, and only twelve high-level hives were known, including the four that had already fled.
Once the queens fled, the interstellar powers immediately pounced to clear out the abandoned Zerg. They dared not touch the spirit veins, but Zerg corpses of every cultivation level were high-quality materials.
Qin Jingzhou flicked his son’s smart ear fluff. “You’re underestimating the Zerg. Just entering this universe, there are at least a hundred high-level queens. As the power of the star sector’s human race grows and their territory expands, they’re bound to encounter each other.” He paused and added, “I won’t spoon-feed you, so why would I let them off so easy?”
Xuan Qing wagged his tail happily. “Glad to hear it.”
The next ten years passed without much worth mentioning. Both sides developed steadily, and as expected, the soul-strengthened players teamed up for several special operations against Su Huaizhen, but every attempt failed.
By the way, in the past two or three years, Qin Jingzhou summoned a batch of foreign players—all standard, upstanding non-believers.
This group quickly integrated with their teammates and soon established impressive organizations back home. Without their help and precise targets, the players wouldn’t have gotten so many chances to cross paths with Su Huaizhen.
Though every attempt came up short, Su Huaizhen personally experienced what it means to be on the brink of death.
Just as the players met to plot more trouble for Su Huaizhen, twenty rather scruffy-looking spaceships and spirit vessels suddenly appeared outside Blue Star’s orbit.
Qin Jingzhou gazed at the vessels parked in the starry sky, checked the current world’s spiritual energy level, and had to admit, “What a nose for opportunity.”
Ling Jing laughed. “Isn’t that the truth? My half-baked Nascent Soul stage self had only just started feeling comfortable, and the interstellar pirates smelled the boost in spiritual energy and showed up. As far as I know, Su Huaizhen has already pulled out his trump cards—hurting himself just to harm others, desperately using projection souls to slip away and ‘start over’… and now the space pirates just happen to arrive.”
Qin Jingzhou was blunt. “It’s him. But it’s not as if just because Su Huaizhen says he has value that the pirates will come all the way here.”
“No matter what, he’s led the way… That’s exactly the kind of thing he’d do.”