Chapter 268 - 256: Gains and Losses

Chapter 268: Chapter 256: Gains and Losses

Upon entering the Marketplace, it was hard to find many familiar traces.

The once well-ordered houses of the Outer Marketplace were now in shambles. Some had been demolished, others rebuilt, and all sorts of structures were crammed together, resembling a slum.

Xu Yuan’s home was among them.

According to him, after the Vast Sea Chen Family’s betrayal, the Righteous Alliance’s forces had collapsed like a landslide, retreating all the way to the East Lake region before barely managing to regain their footing.

What followed, naturally, were successive, fierce attacks from the Longevity Sect, which seized the opportunity.

Water Heaven Workshop was naturally no exception.

Reportedly, two Golden Core True Masters from the Longevity Sect had led over a thousand of the sect’s Cultivators in the assault, which included nearly ten at the Foundation Establishment Realm.

The battle raged for several months, and the Righteous Alliance Cultivators stationed at Water Heaven Workshop just barely managed to hold on.

If reinforcements hadn’t arrived, the fall of Water Heaven Workshop would have been all but inevitable.

Even so, the attacking Longevity Sect forces were neither defeated nor annihilated. They simply made an unhurried retreat, relocating to the Jingmen battlefield.

This was now the primary site of the great standoff between the Longevity Sect and the Righteous Alliance.

Ever since the Vast Sea Chen Family’s betrayal caused the Righteous Alliance’s rout, the Jingmen battlefield had become one of the main fronts where the two sides were locked in a bloody stalemate.

In the Great Chu Cultivation Immortal World, the Longevity Sect and the Righteous Alliance, each controlling half the land, had unleashed wave after wave of bloodshed in the otherwise unremarkable region of Jingmen.

To this day, the conflict remains undecided.

"We’re here. This is it."

Pointing at a low wooden hut before them, Xu Yuan looked somewhat embarrassed.

The wooden hut was short and even more dilapidated than the shacks Chu Mu remembered seeing in Yuning Town.

He glanced around. Most of the residents, like those in Yuning Town, were Low Tier Cultivators.

’Right now, Xia Yu’s Magical Power is weak—she’s only at the Qi Cultivation Seventh Layer. But this kid, Xu Yuan, is at Qi Cultivation Perfection. Why is he still living in such a destitute place?’

As if sensing Chu Mu’s confusion, Xu Yuan quickly explained, "This place doesn’t draw attention, and it’s very close to the edge of the Marketplace. If anything happens, we’ll have time to react."

Then, Xu Yuan quickly added, "But we’ll probably be moving deeper inside in a few days."

"Why move inside?"

"I signed an employment contract with the Righteous Alliance a few days ago. I’m planning to take on some missions and earn some Contribution Points."

Xu Yuan took out a palm-sized Jade Slab and handed it to Chu Mu.

"This is a Contract Contact Order. You get one when you sign an employment contract."

"They say that as long as you’re within a two-hundred-li radius of any Righteous Alliance Marketplace, and as long as there’s no interference, this Contract Contact Order can receive all the employment missions and reward notifications from the Alliance’s central hub."

As he spoke, Xu Yuan manipulated the Jade Token, and one of its faces transformed into a screen. It was just like a smartphone from Chu Mu’s past life, and lines of information appeared on it.

There were densely packed lists of various employment missions, as well as the all-important Contribution Treasure Vault. A wide variety of treasures were clearly listed, each marked with the number of Contribution Points required for exchange.

The Contribution Treasure Vault was just like a shopping website from his past life, with every item clearly priced. The only difference was that the Righteous Alliance’s Contribution Treasure Vault required... contribution. It required you to sell your life for the Alliance.

Slightly astonished, Chu Mu took the Token and looked it over, unable to conceal his surprise.

With his insight, it wasn’t difficult to discern the inner workings of this Contract Contact Order.

The Token was made of jade, but it was just a very common Spirit Jade, a Tier One Lower Grade Spiritual Material. Besides being mined from Spirit Ores, it could often be refined from mundane, worldly materials, making it quite inexpensive.

The Spirit Jade was cheap, but... the system behind this piece of Spirit Jade was anything but.

There was nothing else on the Jade Token besides an ordinary display-type Array Prohibition Inscription and a rather special Array Prohibition.

In the Artifact Refining Skill, this special Array Prohibition had a technical term: the... Array of All Things Prohibition, so named because it encompasses all things.

Its main function was to act like a signal receiver from his past life, picking up information sent out from various hubs.

This was the very reason why, as Xu Yuan had mentioned, the device could receive information within a two-hundred-li radius of any Marketplace in the Righteous Alliance’s sphere of influence.

The principle behind it was basically the same as the internet from his past life, and this Contract Contact Order was the equivalent of a simple mobile phone.

With this kind of system, it would be entirely possible to create a network with global coverage, just like in his past life.

However, achieving such a scale would naturally be an extremely expensive endeavor.

Moreover, and most importantly, even in the Cultivation Immortal Realm, the distance information can travel is limited. And the Great Chu Cultivation Immortal World alone was already immense.

Limited transmission distances combined with a vast territory meant that achieving this would require countless information-relay artifacts placed all throughout Great Chu to keep the information flowing.

But given the nature of the Cultivation Immortal Realm, this was clearly difficult to achieve. After all, to Cultivators, the only things of value in the vast lands of Great Chu were Spirit Veins and various types of Spirit Ore resources.

The tentacles of control only extended to the areas surrounding Spirit Veins. No one cared about the vast mortal world, which was barren of Spiritual Qi and held no resources.

Under such a ruling structure, the world outside the Marketplaces was the mortal realm—a lawless land in the eyes of the Cultivation Immortal Realm.

In such an environment, establishing an information network that covered the entirety of Great Chu was clearly impossible.

Besides, the most common and popular methods of communication in the Cultivation Immortal Realm were things like Sound Transmission Talismans and Sound Transmission Orders—tools that were quite limited—not a centrally coordinated information-sharing system like this one.