286: A celestial being from the upper realm? No, he's a butcher here to harvest the韭菜 (a metaphor for exploited people)!

Divine Son Peak, outside the underground secret chamber.

Qiu Yue sat cross-legged on a piece of bluestone.

Her expression was solemn, like a silent guardian deity, her aura merging with the entire grand formation.

In the Void Realm before her, a massive Water Mirror composed of spiritual energy floated.

On the Water Mirror, the scene of Heavenly Pillar Mountain in the Central Province was clearly reflected.

That golden warship that blotted out the sky, and the dense crowds of experts from all directions below, like a swarm of ants on a pilgrimage.

Every streak of light piercing the sky represented a powerhouse capable of suppressing a region in the outside world, whose stomp could cause mountains and rivers to tremble.

At this moment, these big shots who usually stood high above and viewed Mortals as mere grass were kneeling humbly beneath that Immortal ship.

Their faces were a mix of fanaticism, excitement, and humility, as if they were possessed.

"High Immortal, have mercy! We beg the High Immortal to take us with you in Ascension!"

"This Disciple is willing to serve as a beast of burden for the High Immortal, to be a slave and servant for all lifetimes, only seeking a chance for longevity!"

"Wuwuwu... This old man has been stuck at the Great Sage Peak for eight thousand years! Eight thousand years! Finally... I've finally seen hope!"

Watching the absurd and frantic scene in the Water Mirror, a look of heavy confusion appeared on Qiu Yue's cold face.

Ascension?

Was it really that simple?

Although she was a powerhouse of the True Immortal realm, having had most of her cultivation base forcibly sealed by the Mistress to be projected into this realm, her vision and knowledge were far beyond what the natives of the Xuanyuan Continent could compare to.

She knew better than anyone what kind of terrifying Heavenly Dao tribulation one had to experience to cross planes, and how profound the accumulation of Laws needed to be.

Driving a ship like this, pulling people up to the Upper Realm boatload by boatload, just like a ferry in the Mortal world?

This was not Ascension at all.

This was hauling piglets.

There must be a massive, eerie secret hidden within!

"Could it be... that His Highness sensed this, which is why he chose to go into seclusion?"

Qiu Yue's heart stirred; the more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed.

Although His Highness the Divine Son usually seemed unreliable, every "abnormal" action of his inevitably had a far-reaching plan behind it.

She did not dare to be negligent and immediately split off a wisp of Divine Thought, carefully probing into the underground secret chamber. She condensed everything happening at Heavenly Pillar Mountain into a stream of information and transmitted it to Su Chen, who was in seclusion... inside the secret chamber.

Su Chen was crazily tearing and devouring the Spiritual Qi around him, which was so dense it had materialized, enjoying the pleasure of his cultivation base skyrocketing wildly.

Just then, the information stream sent by Qiu Yue unfolded silently in his Sea of Consciousness.

When he "saw" that flashy golden warship on Heavenly Pillar Mountain and heard that "Ascension reception" rhetoric that reeked of a pyramid scheme, there wasn't a hint of surprise on his face.

Instead, a cold and mocking sneer curled at the corner of his mouth.

[They're here.]

[Xuantian Immortal Sect... these interstellar butchers, their timing is truly punctual.]

[I almost forgot about this harvesting team; it seems I was too immersed in my seclusion.]

A plot from the original novel "Dominating the Immortal Path," which he had deliberately buried in a corner of his memory, surfaced clearly in his mind.

In the original work, after Qin Feng ascended to the Upper Realm, he had accidentally entered the sphere of influence of a force called the "Xuantian Immortal Sect."

That plot was also one of the few dark chapters in the entire novel that made readers' scalps tingle and their spines chill.

What "Immortal Sect that receives those who ascend"?

Bullshit.

This was clearly a group of animal husbandry giants wearing the guise of Immortals, performing a one-stop service of cross-plane "breeding, slaughtering, and deep processing"!

Xuantian Immortal Sect was a peripheral force that couldn't even be considered third-rate in the vast Tiannan Immortal Domain.

This Sect itself didn't have any heaven-defying Legacies; its only "specialty" was being like locusts, attaching themselves to truly great Immortal Dao Sects and specializing in dark, dirty, and exhausting work.

In the Tiannan Immortal Domain, Lower Realm worlds like the Xuanyuan Continent, where Spiritual Qi was depleted and Laws were incomplete, were as numerous as the hairs on an ox, totaling hundreds of billions.

The Xuantian Continent was precisely one of the millions of Lower Realm worlds controlled by the Xuantian Immortal Sect.

In their eyes, these worlds were not wastelands.

They were fertile "leek fields" waiting to be sown.

Every tens of thousands of years, when the "leeks" in the field had multiplied through generations and finally grew fat enough, a few of the top "old leeks"—namely, Quasi-Emperors and Cultivators of the Great Saint Realm—would sprout.

They would send out a "harvesting team," piloting a "Ascension Immortal ship" that was beautiful on the outside but rotten within, and descend upon this realm under the guise of "mercy" and "receiving those who ascend."

The purpose?

The purpose was to uproot the top, most elite batch of high-level Cultivators who had finally emerged after tens of thousands of years in these Lower Realm worlds, and trick them all onto the pirate ship.

Then they would be pulled back to the Sect, and like dumping trash, these Old Ancestors and Quasi-Emperors who had called the shots in the Lower Realm would be thrown all at once into a giant Pill Furnace called the "Myriad Spirits Blood Refining Furnace"!

Using the most vicious blood-fire, they would be refined alive into a type of Medicinal Pill called the "myriad spirits blood pill."

This Medicinal Pill was a "snack" used by the newly initiated Inner Sect Disciples of the Xuantian Immortal Sect to solidify their Dao foundations.

They ate them like jellybeans, relying on chewing the flesh and blood and hearing the wails of countless Lower Realm powerhouses to pave their own path to longevity!

After harvesting one batch, they would leave and wait for the next cycle, waiting for the "leeks" to grow back before returning to harvest again.

Round and round it went, an endless cycle.

This was the so-called "Ascension."

This was the so-called "Great Dao of Longevity"!

[A bunch of idiots whose brains have been fried by the desire for longevity.]

[Did they really think a meat pie would fall from the sky?]

[What's falling is a guillotine and a meat grinder!]

Su Chen sneered in his heart.

He could even clearly foresee the wonderful expressions of despair, regret, and disbelief on those old monsters who were currently kneeling at the foot of Heavenly Pillar Mountain, kowtowing until the earth split, and crying out to get on the ship, when they were thrown into the Pill Furnace.

He abruptly opened his eyes.

He flipped open the simple and unadorned diary before him.