Su Ming pointed at the gruesome street outside the window, his voice trembling slightly from the immense effort of holding himself back.

"Master, there's something this disciple doesn't understand."

He lifted his head, meeting Elder Qingquan's eyes, which were as calm and unreadable as an ancient well. A stubbornness and indignation unique to youth seemed ready to burst forth from his clear gaze.

"Since both Great Xing and Northern Barbarian are vassal states of the Cloud Hidden Sect, why does the sect allow them to slaughter each other like this? With the sect's foundation, they only need to send a Golden Core expert like you, or even just a Foundation Establishment steward, to pay a visit to the palaces of both nations. This war… shouldn't it come to an immediate halt?"

He paused, the confusion in his voice growing even heavier. "Wouldn't forcing a ceasefire be better than letting so many people die?"

The room in the inn fell into a brief silence.

Outside the window, the soldiers' harsh shouts, the desperate wailing of women, and the helpless sobbing of young boys mingled together, like a bunch of blunt knives repeatedly cutting through the stagnant air.

Elder Qingquan did not look at Su Ming. His gaze remained fixed on the chaotic street scene outside, as if he were looking at an ancient painting that had nothing to do with him. His face, always carrying a hint of drunkenness, was now cold and stern, like a block of ten-thousand-year-old ice.

He did not directly answer Su Ming's question. Instead, he asked a flat counter-question:

"Su Ming, do you know why the sect strictly forbids all cultivators from privately passing down teachings to the mortal world?"

Su Ming was suddenly taken aback.

He had never deeply considered this question. In the Cloud Hidden Sect, it seemed like an inherent iron law, as natural and unquestionable as breathing or the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

He hesitated for a moment, then tried to answer from the perspective of the sect's rules. "Disciple… does not know. Perhaps it is to… maintain order in the mortal world, to prevent an imbalance of power?"

"Order?" A faint, almost mocking curl appeared at the corner of Elder Qingquan's lips. He finally turned around, facing Su Ming directly. "You think it's about maintaining order? No. It's about atonement."

"Atonement?" Su Ming's brow furrowed even deeper.

Elder Qingquan slowly walked to the table, picked up the cold teapot, and poured himself a cup of tea that had long gone cold.

"In ancient times, the immortal and mortal realms were not separated."

His voice was not loud, but it carried a vicissitude and weight that seemed to come from a distant time. Every word struck heavily against Su Ming's heart.

"It was an era… where mortal lives were as worthless as grass, but not because of war and famine."

Elder Qingquan picked up the teacup, but did not drink. He simply stared at his own weather-beaten face reflected in the tea.

"Can you imagine the scene of two Golden Core cultivators, battling with all their might over a magical artifact or a cave dwelling, right above a mortal city?"

Without waiting for Su Ming to answer, he continued on his own, his voice devoid of any emotional fluctuation.

"Flying swords would sweep across a hundred miles, and the residual energy from their sword aura could level half the city walls. Techniques would clash, with flames engulfing the city and ice sealing off ten miles. In a single thought, tens of thousands of living beings would be turned into charcoal or ice sculptures. When they grew tired, they might casually grab a city's worth of a hundred thousand living souls to replenish their magic power. That city would then become a dead city, with not even a single rat left behind."

Su Ming's face instantly turned deathly pale. He had only seen similar descriptions in the sect's books of strange tales, but he had never imagined they could be real, bloody history.

"And what about a Nascent Soul battle?" Elder Qingquan's tone grew even colder. "When a Nascent Soul cultivator becomes enraged, mountains and rivers change, and great rivers flow backward. The Longhuai River, the mother river of the Great Xing nation, originally flowed from west to east, traversing the entire country in ancient times. Seven thousand years ago, two Nascent Soul Lords fought for seven days and seven nights over an underground spirit vein here. In the end, one of them slammed down his palm, forcefully cutting off the middle reaches of the Longhuai River, diverting its course to the north. That is the root cause of the current northern floods and southern droughts."

"Do you think the demonic cultivators' harvesting of living souls is just a legend? The ancient demonic sect, the 'Dark Underworld Palace,' its foundational cultivation method was refining living souls. Every sixty years, they would send their disciples into the mortal world to massacre cities and annihilate nations, using millions of living souls to refine magical artifacts and break through bottlenecks. The places they visited would become barren lands for a thousand miles, not a single trace of life left behind."

Elder Qingquan put down the teacup. The sound of the cup's bottom hitting the table was a dull thud, like a heavy hammer striking deep within Su Ming's Sea of Consciousness.

"Do you think the sect is cold-blooded? Go ask the wronged souls of those mortals who died silently in the residual waves of cultivator battles during ancient times. Would they be willing to let cultivators remain in the mortal world?"

He stepped closer to Su Ming, his intangible pressure making it difficult for Su Ming to breathe.

"Now, in the war between the three kingdoms, the soldiers who die and the men who are conscripted can at least have their whole bodies left behind, giving their families something to remember them by. In ancient times, when mortals encountered cultivators, they didn't even know how they died. A whole city of people wouldn't even have a handful of ashes left!"

"The chasm between immortals and mortals was not drawn by the sect. It was built from the blood and tears of countless mortals! It was bought by the mortal emperors who survived, who knelt at the mountain gates of the various great sects for nine hundred and ninety-nine days, paying the price of eternal tribute and severing all paths to immortality from the mortal world!" 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Su Ming stood rooted to the spot, his hands and feet feeling like ice. A chill surged from the soles of his feet straight to the crown of his head.

He opened his mouth to refute, but found his throat so dry he couldn't utter a single word.

He had always thought that immortal cultivation was about transcendence, freedom, and the power to look down on all living beings.

But only today did he realize, for the first time with such clarity, what a bone-chillingly bloody past was buried behind this "separation of immortals and mortals."

The so-called "prohibition on passing down teachings" was not for keeping the people ignorant, but… a bloody Great Wall built from the bones of billions of mortals, protecting the fragile civilization of the mortal world.

A cacophony roared in Su Ming's mind.

Elder Qingquan's words were like thunderbolts, shattering the slightly idealistic understanding of the cultivation world that Su Ming had built up.

He subconsciously took half a step back, his back hitting the cold wall with a heavy thud, barely steadying himself.

He thought of his parents, elder brother, and sister-in-law in Qingshi Town. He thought of the simple, slightly greedy villagers of Su Family Village. If what the elder said was true, and such an ancient era were to reappear, they wouldn't even count as dust. In the eyes of cultivators, they would just be "resources" to be taken and used to replenish magic power at will.

"So…" Su Ming's voice was rough. He forced himself to digest this cruel reality. "So, the sect completely abandons direct jurisdiction over the mortal world, leaving them to fend for themselves?"

This seemed like the only reasonable conclusion. If cultivators were such a huge threat to mortals, then complete isolation would be the best form of protection.

"Do you think the sect wanted this?"

Elder Qingquan's voice suddenly became extremely weary, losing its previous hardness and replaced by a helplessness.

He slowly walked to the window, pushed open the old, broken wooden window, and a cold wind rushed in, mingled with the faint sounds of crying from afar.

"Do you know why the sect built those seventy-nine border-guarding grand formations in the northern frontier? Do you know why those elders would rather die at Iron Wall Pass than retreat even half a step?"

Su Ming was stunned. He knew this, of course. It was to resist the Demon and Ghost Tribes, to protect the last territories of the human race.

"You think it's about atonement?" Elder Qingquan shook his head. "No. It's about protection. From ancient times to the present, the bloody battles between the human, demon, and ghost races have never ceased. The Cloud Hidden Sect was established for twenty thousand years. It built those seventy-nine border-guarding grand formations to block those alien races that wanted to treat humans as livestock and slaves. Mo Heng died in battle because behind him were tens of millions of mortals, just like your family, who needed this barrier."

"But precisely because of this, the sect is even more afraid to let cultivators set foot in the mortal world."

His voice dropped low.

"Think about it. If the sect were to let things go, allowing cultivators to wander and pass down teachings in the mortal world at will, what would happen?"

"What would those wandering cultivators with ulterior motives, those evil cultivators practicing demonic arts, and those traitors expelled from the sect… what would they treat this mortal world as?"

"A hunting ground."

"They would flood into this defenseless land like a plague of locusts, plundering resources, harvesting living souls, and treating mortal cities like herb gardens they could pick at will. When that time comes, who would stop them? The sect? The sect has to guard the northern frontier, defend against demons and ghosts, and suppress evil cultivators. How could they spare the energy to check every remote mountain village for a demonic cultivator killing people to forge artifacts?"

Elder Qingquan turned around and looked into Su Ming's eyes.

"So, the sect established a rule: cultivators must not interfere in mortal affairs. It's not about managing from a lofty position, but about firmly closing the door that could invite disaster."

"As for the war…" Elder Qingquan sighed. "The conflicts between the three kingdoms were not created by the sect. They formed naturally over a thousand years. What the sect needs to do is to give a gentle push when they are about to lose balance, and to quietly pull them back when they are on the verge of destruction. Make this triangle keep spinning forever, instead of turning into a straight line."

"This is not about deliberately creating war. It's about… gently and tentatively pressing on an existing wound, to make the bleeding slow down, to prevent the wound from festering to the bone."

His voice grew even lower.

"The ox that is Great Xing was running too fast in recent years, almost to the point of breaking its reins. Withholding the annual tribute? That was their mortal emperor testing the sect's bottom line. If they were allowed to swell like this, within a hundred years, Great Xing would surely annex Northern Barbarian and attack Western Flame."

"When that time comes, do you think that mortal emperor, with hundreds of millions of subjects and millions of troops under his command, would still be content to be a wagging dog for the Cloud Hidden Sect for generations to come?"

"He would think that he is the true master of this heaven and earth! He would begin to secretly seek the path of immortality. He would try to cultivate his own royal cultivators. He would use every means to shake off the sect's control. This is the inevitable result of mortal ambition swelling."

Elder Qingquan lifted his head, and for the first time, those murky old eyes revealed an indescribable weariness.

"But once he truly breaks free, what awaits him is not freedom, but destruction. The demons and ghosts suppressed by the sect in the northern frontier, those alien races eyeing this fertile land covetously, would instantly flood into this mortal world without cultivator protection. When that happens, it won't be just these few thousand soldiers who die, but hundreds of thousands, millions, or even… everyone."

"War is cruel, but sometimes, it is the scab that grows on this land itself. What the sect needs to do is not to tear it off, nor to forcefully suffocate it, but… to keep it from spreading to the whole body."

"Only in the beacon fires of the border will those emperors understand where the boundaries of imperial power lie. Only in the tears of the refugees will the common people learn how precious a peaceful life is. This is very cruel, but compared to the horror of 'a cultivator's anger, ten cities annihilated' from ancient times, this is a price… that mortals themselves can bear."

Elder Qingquan stood up, walked in front of Su Ming, and gently patted his stiff shoulder.

"We, the 'gatekeepers' standing on this side of the heavenly chasm, must sometimes learn… to be hard-hearted. It's not that we don't care, but that we can't afford to. If you care about the withering of every single blade of grass, you can't help but reach out to support it. If you do that too much, the isolating heavenly chasm becomes meaningless. The tragedies of ancient times would repeat themselves."

"The sect can protect the existence of the three kingdoms. It can block the iron hooves of the demon and ghost races. But it cannot… it cannot save every child crying in the flames of war. This is very cruel, but it is… the rule."

This speech was cold, heavy, yet so logically sound that it was impossible to refute.

There was no right or wrong, no good or evil, only absolute rationality and a heavy helplessness.

Su Ming stood there, feeling an unprecedented chill spreading from the depths of his heart to every limb. But at the same time, a strange sense of calm quietly began to grow within him.

He thought of Elder Mo, Zhao Tiji, Wu Miao… those sect members who died defending the northern frontier at Iron Wall Pass. They gave their lives to protect this fragile "balance."

In the eyes of the sect's high-level leaders, their sacrifice might have also been a "necessary cost" to maintain that balance. But that didn't mean their sacrifice was meaningless.

Because what they protected were the "people behind the formation."

Su Ming's lips moved, as if he wanted to say something to argue, but in the end, only an almost inaudible sigh escaped him.

Argue against what?

Use mortal morality to accuse the sect of being cold-blooded? Use the empty talk of "equality for all beings" to fight against the iron rule of "interest first"?

In the face of Elder Qingquan's cold and realistic analysis, any emotion or logic rooted in the mortal world seemed so pale, weak, and even… laughable.

He suddenly thought of himself. The version of him that had climbed the ranks in the Repair Hall using "standardization" and "cost-effectiveness." When he used lower costs and higher efficiency to repair formation plates, snatching the Vessel Hall's business away, wasn't he applying the same logic?

The only difference was that he was calculating spirit stones and contribution points, while the sect's high-level leaders were calculating national fortunes and the lives of millions.

At its core, what was the difference?