Evolution - Chapter 157
Chapter 157
Since the plan was for the entire peak to escape poverty and get rich together, they naturally had to assemble the poverty alleviation team! But He Yi was still a world away!
Chu Ci didn’t say they had to find a way to bring He Yi over immediately. She only asked why they had suddenly appeared on the brink of death, only to be picked up by Yunbao.
Ji Changqing briefly explained what had happened.
Chu Ci was noncommittal about Ji Changqing’s inference that she had implicated Yu Zhiyao. However, she grew interested when she heard that Yu Zhiyao and He Yi were now colleagues. In her mind, Yu Zhiyao leading He Yi was, by a rough estimate, equivalent to her and Luo Mingsheng—junior sisters from the same peak!
If He Yi could achieve a happy ending with Ji Changqing, there was no reason the combination of Yu Zhiyao and Ji Changqing couldn’t do the same, right?!
After all, Yu Zhiyao’s scientific research abilities were leagues ahead of He Yi’s, not to mention her aptitude for cultivation. With a Glazed Immaculate Spirit Body, her cultivation speed, regardless of her spiritual root, was something a hundred He Yis combined couldn’t hope to match.
The only question was what Yu Zhiyao herself thought.
Yu Zhiyao’s little secrets couldn’t be hidden from Chu Ci, so she must have been aware of her own constitution. If she had been interested in cultivating, would she have let twenty years go by in vain?
After listening intently to Ji Changqing’s account, Chu Ci pondered for a moment. She felt that her junior sister had grown up and needed to experience more of the world’s hardships. It was time for some dark education!
“Don’t get bogged down in personal love and hate. When you think about things, you need a bigger perspective!” Chu Ci instructed her nominal junior sister with an air of authority, launching a merciless strike while Ji Changqing looked on in confusion. “If someone really had a grudge against you, they’d just put a bounty on your head and have you killed. That would solve everything. All this ‘torturing you to make you suffer’ stuff—you’re really overthinking it.”
What was with all the angst and physical abuse? Who had the patience to play these games with an enemy? Anyone who went to that much trouble was either crazy or so bored their brain had rusted over. A clean kill would settle any score, and they wouldn’t have to worry about karmic backlash.
“Think about it. To get, hmm, Yu Zhiyao, was it? To get a core member like her out of a top-secret project under complete and strict protection, how many moles, planted with countless painstaking efforts, would have to be activated? And that’s not all. Along the way, how many people helped cover their tracks, how many hands did she pass through, and how many personnel were used just to get her onto that starship and set everything up?”
Chu Ci broke it down piece by piece for Ji Changqing. “But what about you? They just sent a few emails and hired some experts to wipe the online traces. Don’t you think they’ve got their priorities backward?”
Ji Changqing nodded hesitantly. Put that way, it did seem true. “So they were after Yu Zhiyao?” But why send her so many threatening emails? Didn’t they know that the more they did, the more flaws they would reveal?
Chu Ci glanced at her. Had everything she just said been for nothing? She encouraged, “Think bigger!”
“The Academy of Sciences’ project?”
“The Academy of Sciences?”
“Surely they weren’t targeting the special forces?”
Chu Ci silently suppressed the throbbing vein that was threatening to erupt on her forehead.
Luo Mingsheng, ever so considerate, prompted her fake little friend to save her from their Big Sister’s impending wrath. “You and Yu Zhiyao have one thing in common.”
“We’re both women?” Ji Changqing blurted out, as if possessed.
Luo Mingsheng’s face was a mask of utter despair.
Unable to bear it any longer, Luo Gengjiu stepped forward. “You’re both from Blue Star!”
Ji Changqing looked hesitant. “Discrimination based on origin?”
Gu Jiawen and Shen Guiqing moved in perfect sync, one pressing down on Big Sister’s shoulder, the other grabbing her arm. “Big Sister, Big Sister, don’t draw your sword, don’t draw your sword! Her cultivation is barely at Foundation Establishment!”
“Right, right, Big Sister, calm down. We can teach her slowly, slowly. Or, or, Yu Zhiyao will wake up in a month at most. We can let her worry about it then!”
“Don’t forget, escaping poverty and getting rich!”
In the end, whether it was the appeal of escaping poverty or the promise of someone else taking over the education of this dense junior sister in a month, Chu Ci finally released her hand from her sword’s hilt. She gracefully sat back down as if nothing had happened and cheerfully beckoned her nominal junior siblings to sit, even forcing Yunbao down by his head.
She took a sip of tea and silently recited a calming mantra to herself several times. “You probably don’t know much about the Star Alliance. Let me explain.”
Whether they were cultivation planets or magic planets, they joined the Alliance for two reasons: need and desire. For instance, resources could be shared. Some things were useless to cultivators but priceless to mortals, while certain products from other planets were of little use to mortals but were rare treasures for cultivators.
But for these different power systems that relied on talent, the greatest beneficiaries of joining the Alliance were the ordinary people on those planets who couldn’t attain great power. For example, on a cultivation planet, the power system was cultivation-oriented, but those with spiritual roots who could walk the path of cultivation were a minority. The vast majority were still mortals without spiritual roots.
In the past, these mortals were like ants in the eyes of cultivators. After joining the Alliance, they could at least live like human beings.
When the vast population of mortals lived better lives, they, in turn, could provide the cultivation world with better, more worthy prospects to nurture. This established a virtuous cycle of mutual benefit.
But regardless of the power system, the struggle for resources and power among the higher-ups always existed. The difference was that before joining the Alliance, it was a savage, might-makes-right world where the weak had no room to resist. After joining the Alliance, there were rules, and everyone acted more subtly.
The incident with Ji Changqing and Yu Zhiyao, on the surface, looked plausible. It was packaged as a revenge plot by certain factions whose interests Ji Changqing had harmed, with Yu Zhiyao getting caught in the crossfire. But to someone like Chu Ci, who had witnessed far more high-level conflicts, this was clearly an attack targeting Blue Star.
The person behind the scenes wanted to get their hands on Blue Star.
For a primary civilization that had only been in the Alliance for twenty years, the most effective method was, of course, to suppress it, cut off its channels for advancement, and leave it with no choice but to submit to the mastermind if it wanted to develop.
In that case, Yu Zhiyao and Ji Changqing, the two most successful individuals from Blue Star to date, became glaring eyesores in this plan.
When a primary civilization joins the Alliance, it gets a ten-year protection period for development. After ten years, resource allocation is adjusted and tilted based on the contributions and merits of individuals from that planet.
Yu Zhiyao and Ji Changqing had risen too quickly in these twenty years. Well, mainly Yu Zhiyao. First, she was favored by Academician Sith and taken on as a student, and later she handled many of the administrative affairs for the Dean of the Academy of Sciences, her influence there growing by the day. Ji Changqing was also rising fast in the military, making a name for herself among the top brass.
With the two of them around, both the Academy of Sciences and the military would naturally have a slight fondness for Blue Star and wouldn’t hesitate to offer a little help within their authority.
Under this virtuous cycle, once Blue Star found its footing, it could develop just fine on its own and thrive. And when you’re doing perfectly well on your own, who would want to be a lackey?
That was why the mastermind had meticulously designed this scheme. Of all the effort, ninety-five percent was directed at Yu Zhiyao, and the remaining five percent at Ji Changqing.
Once Yu Zhiyao was dead, her influence in the Academy of Sciences would not yet have accumulated to the point where it could still benefit Blue Star posthumously. The beauty of this plot was that, after being packaged, her death would deal a massive blow to Ji Changqing. At the same time, Ji Changqing would incur the wrath of those who valued Yu Zhiyao, effectively ruining her as well.
If they were even more ruthless, having some people from Blue Star actively participate in the plot to harm Yu Zhiyao would be even better.
From then on, Yu Zhiyao would be gone, Ji Changqing would be ruined, and Blue Star would, in all likelihood, be despised by the leaders of the Academy of Sciences and the military.
After them, for at least a hundred years, it would be difficult for anyone from Blue Star to achieve what they had.
For the mastermind, controlling Blue Star wouldn’t be effortless, but it would be seventy to eighty percent easier.
The stumbling blocks would be removed, the blame conveniently shifted, and Blue Star would be in their grasp. Perfect!
After respectfully listening to Big Sister’s dark educational sermon, everyone felt as if they had been enlightened, just one breath away from ascending to the heavens.
Only Yunbao’s eyes were spinning in confusion, but he still tried his best to flatter Chu Ci. “Humans are so evil!”
The others looked down at him, speechless.
The Chu Ci you’re trying to praise is also human. That compliment is truly toxic.
Big Sister was broad-minded and didn’t care about such trivialities. She enthusiastically gestured at the star chart. “Is there something special about Blue Star?”
If someone went to such lengths to scheme and snatch something, it had to be good!
This was Big Sister’s simple yet effective life philosophy, honed over thousands of years.
Unfortunately, her nominal junior siblings were still reeling from the shock and couldn’t give her a single shred of useful feedback.
For the time being, no one could fathom what made Blue Star so irresistible that it was targeted for a hostile takeover so soon after its debut.
But their poverty was something they could feel at every moment.
And so, the newly awakened Ji Changqing, besides being supervised by Big Sister to pick up her cultivation techniques again, joined her fellow poor-for-millennia companions in a brainstorming session to put the poverty alleviation battle on the agenda!
In the game instance, Ji Changqing and He Yi had figured out many things together. Ji Changqing knew the results of combining arrays and how to draw them to conserve spiritual energy, even if she didn't understand the underlying principles. But she knew the general considerations and how adjustments were made.
Her companions, who had grown into powerful figures yet remained poor, had skills that were expensive but also lucrative. They could easily earn resources from low-level disciples, but for a whole peak to develop, it couldn’t rely on a top-down approach for everything. It needed a self-sustaining ecosystem that could generate wealth from the ground up.
Given Ji Changqing’s current weak cultivation, only Luo Mingsheng could be of use.
She was a talisman cultivator with deep knowledge of arrays. When Ji Changqing pointed out the key aspects, she immediately understood how to proceed.
Furthermore, because Ji Changqing had always practiced the cultivation method Big Sister had tailor-made for her, her current cultivation level was roughly equivalent to just having reached Foundation Establishment in the game instance.
With a little time to reacquaint herself, she quickly regained her artifact refining skills.
The two of them first created a low-level version of the cultivation farming array combination, which would liberate labor and let them wait for the fields to mature on their own. Everyone else became manual laborers, tilling the land and clearing new fields.
By the time they had cultivated all the arable land on the main peak and planted various spirit grains, spirit trees, and spirit herbs, Yu Zhiyao finally woke up.
Unlike Ji Changqing, who was immediately roped into schemes by her Big Sister and peak-mates the moment she left her cave residence, Yu Zhiyao awoke to superstar-level service!
Big Sister was the first to sense she was awake and told the junior siblings busy with farming to come in from the fields, thoughtfully allowing Ji Changqing to see Yu Zhiyao. But in the end, the whole group swarmed over in a chaotic mess, each with their own justification!
Gu Jiawen: “I need to check on her recovery to determine her future medication.”
Shen Guiqing: “Me too. I need to see how to create the most cost-effective medicinal cuisine pairings.”
Luo Mingsheng and Luo Gengjiu: “We want to see our future junior sister!”
Yes, the entire group had tacitly agreed that Yu Zhiyao would eventually become their junior sister. They were just that confident!
Yunbao was even more righteous. “I saved her! I saved her!”
Big Sister looked helpless. “I have to watch you all to make sure you don’t cause any trouble!”
Ji Changqing’s dream of a private reunion was instantly shattered by this shameless bunch. If she weren’t the weakest among them, she would have fought them all!
However, they still had some sense of propriety. After greeting Yu Zhiyao one by one and ensuring they had left a wonderful and profound impression on their future junior sister, they departed with beautiful dreams of being carried to riches overnight, leaving space for Ji Changqing and Yu Zhiyao.
Ji Changqing was, of course, overjoyed!
The two were affectionate for a while before Yu Zhiyao asked curiously, “Is this Lingyun Peak?”
Although the planet had been annihilated, since Big Sister and the others were here, it meant they had escaped. Rebuilding Lingyun Peak would be the natural thing to do, right?
At the mention of this, Ji Changqing had a bellyful of grievances to air. She said with a complicated expression, “This is Ten Thousand Swords Peak. It’s even poorer than Lingyun Peak was back then.”
Did Big Sister always appear with just herself and a sword because she was self-reliant and fearless, scorning external aid?
No, it was just because she was too poor! She couldn’t afford any other offensive or defensive artifacts! Highlight: can’t afford!
Had Big Sister never thought of restoring her silver hair to its natural color? Was it for aesthetics or some special meaning?
No, it was just because she was too poor! She had to use every bit of spiritual energy on the most critical things. Trivial matters like hair color weren’t worth a second glance!
…
The list went on and on, a long, sad story.
Yu Zhiyao couldn’t help but smile as she listened.
This… everyone on Lingyun Peak—oh, no, Ten Thousand Swords Peak now.
Their poverty was just so incredibly genuine.
But the fact that they were this poor and still extended a helping hand to them, sparing no effort, selling everything they had, and even making a divine dragon work for them, made their kindness all the more precious.
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