Chapter 1210: Accepting Bribes
When perspectives differed, so did attitudes and actions. It wasn’t a simple matter of good or evil. After all, good versus evil often played out even among members of the same species.
There was little need to mention hatred, fury, or ambivalence toward nonhumans. After all, their ancestors were gods. If the immortal revolution hadn’t occurred in the Fifth Star Ring, then they would be the ruling class. Humans would be slaves that they could take advantage of at will.
But the gods had been either slaughtered or rounded up and imprisoned. So the nonhumans were like fish on the chopping block. In some ways, it was like reincarnation.
It wasn’t possible to say who was wrong or right. It was only possible to say... that regardless of which species was in question, and regardless of whether it was immortals or gods, perspective determined everything. The weak were doomed to be devoured by the strong. Those who fell behind would lose the right to continue onward.
Cultivators did not live the way the gods had lived in the past. But that was a fundamental magical law of the higher star rings, or perhaps, of all living beings in general. Victims wouldn’t always be victims. And the victimizers wouldn’t always be victimizers. In the end, everything was cyclical.
It was a truth Xu Qing had come to understand back in the Revered Ancient mainland.
After everything he had experienced in the Fifth Star Ring, he understood more than ever how to deal with the gods here. It was all according to the laws that bound everything. It was just like the discarnate wills of obsession in the Heroic Immortal Tombs. That was how the Fifth Star Ring treated the gods, as well as the nonhumans.
In the end, it was the same with Xu Qing. And yet, based on his judgment, among all of those apathetic gods, there were some that were more human than most humans.
Unfortunately, these imprisoned gods were not among them. Xu Qing wasn’t some sort of loving philanthropist who would take time getting to know each and every god before deciding what to do with them. He had no qualms about draining the pond to get at the fish, and thus, it didn’t take long for him to reach the last minor world on the leaf.
The environment consisted of a viscous black sea. The sea was calm, but did not seem auspicious and peaceful. The water stank, and powerful mutagen roiled in all directions.
A head was buried in the seafloor. It looked like the head of a bird, covered with tentacles that constantly excreted a viscous fluid. Over time, that fluid had turned into a black sea.
When Xu Qing arrived, the mutagen kicked up into a frenzy. Huge waves rolled across the surface of the sea, and the head below looked up, eyes opening. Golden light shone up through the sea as the head looked up.