Sand Desert

The news took a while to spread; after all, anyone witnessing it died by the tribulation.

Initially, everyone was confused about what happened; the only observable change was the area near the west capital, which turned from fertile and populated land to a sand desert. As a few days passed and no news came from anyone who had been there, it became clear that there was little chance anyone had survived whatever had happened there.

It shocked the entire eastern continent, the empire, and the east Gabe Branch. The eastern Gabe branch lost hundreds of cultivators and was mournful about the losses; the empire likewise was mournful of losing its cultivators and the majority of its combat power. Nobody knew what happened; the only fact was that a radius of 100 kilometers around the west capital was just gone.

The eastern Gabe branch elders knew that Mike, who was supposed to fend off the empire's offensive there, had returned a while ago; still, Mike again went into closed-door cultivation, so they couldn't ask him. As for Mike, he had already sent a letter to Jack; there was no need to explain to anyone else. If he had been a responsible leader, he might have at least said a few words to ease their fears; it's too bad that talking was the hardest thing for Mike, so he just ignored them.

...

Jack read Mike's latest letter and sighed. The world is ready to upgrade to rank 11; it is basically half a step into rank 11.

There used to be only four realms: energy gathering, core formation, nascent soul, and divine soul. Although realms didn't change, the power of the heavens is definitely stronger than the peak of the divine soul realm; in the future, spells involving the heavens should be used with great care. One should not casually mess with the heavens now that it is much stronger than it used to be.

What is the heavens? It is the world's will, the instinct every world develops, a kind of immune system to prevent harm to the world. In most worlds, the coders would strictly regulate and restrain the heaven's will, but in this world, Jack left the heaven's will mostly unrestrained. The sect's cultivation technique, heaven's way, is extremely suitable for using heaven's will.

Relying on Heaven's Way's mana, using and manipulating Heaven's will would be much easier for them than for other cultivators. This would allow them to sometimes even cross big realms and fight much stronger cultivators.

For now, though, they must be careful; Heaven's Way is dumb, but it may still detect that it is being manipulated. After all, the Heaven's Way technique is only at the core formation level, which is far from enough.

Mike's success in drawing heaven's power at the level he did without being detected was very good fortune; he might have been detected and killed instead.

Jack wrote an order and sent it to all branches, warning them not to use any spells relating to the heavens.

...

The Far West branch used to be under Faith, but now it's under Amber.

Amber didn't look like the barbarians and certainly not like how they imagined ancient goddesses to look. But now, it doesn't matter anymore; the power is firmly in the hands of the sect branch.

A low-level immortal society, in essence, is not too different from a mortal society. When the sect was just establishing its foothold among the barbarians, they needed to use propaganda, rumors about ancient gods, etc., to persuade them to cooperate.

But now, they already have full control, with agents and sub-branches everywhere and in all major cities; they are already established and do not need to continue deceiving everyone about their origin. Of course, they won't admit that they aren't ancient gods, but they won't continue propagandizing it any longer.

There have been many changes. Khan Charles successfully became a cultivator and broke through the core formation using pills. He is now an elder of the branch and the leader of the Half Moon sub-branch. Aside from him, many other natives have been recruited as cultivators; in fact, the overwhelming majority of cultivators here have red eyes and hair.

When Faith left, many people, including Charles, expected the next branch leader to be picked from among them; they were supremely disappointed and even slightly angry that headquarters sent someone from outside to rule them. Still, Amber was at the 10th stage of core formation, so nobody dared to show any dissatisfaction on their face.

The government of the barbarians is now split into two parts: the mortal government and the immortal government.

The mortal government is now much more integrated and streamlined than before; the cities are now connected and no longer restricted only to certain tribes. The far west can be said to have turned into a unified, massive country.

The people have absolutely no role in electing any government leaders. The immortal branch chooses the mortal king, and the mortal king chooses city mayors and regional governors; mayors and governors, in turn, pick lower officials.

The immortal government sets certain goals, such as population growth, farm production, land preservation goals, etc.; if the mortal government fails to meet those, it is removed and replaced. The mortal government has no army and is just a puppet in the hands of the immortals; it is not important at all.

Recently, the immortal government lowered its targets and chose a less ruthless king as the mortal leader. The mortals' lives started to improve; today, they have more money and food than before. The changes are solely because of Amber, who decided to show mercy toward mortals and take care of them.

As the leader of the Far West branch of Heaven's Way sect, her responsibilities and powers are cast; she picks leaders of sub-branches, the elders, and sets the branch's long-term policies, etc. She is basically the absolute ruler of the Far West, both the immortal and mortal worlds.

Most of the positions are given to native elders. For example, Khan Charles was given the position of half-moon city sub-branch leader and the elder of the mining industry. As the elder of mining, Charles could influence many things, but his power goes only as long as Amber wills; he doesn't hold any true power.

The system of government in the Far West is very different from the system of the republic in the East.

After the village chief died a few years ago, Amber, the headquarters leader at that time, did a comprehensive reform of the mortal governance system in the republic. She rewrote the constitution and started holding legitimate elections.

She didn't dare touch Jack's position; she left him as the eternal president with absolute and unrestrained power. Besides Jack, however, she tried setting up a system that affords as much power to the people as possible.

She made everything more local, giving mayors a lot of autonomy in decision-making while only giving the prime minister limited powers. At the same time, she created many observatory bodies to ensure elections were legitimate, set up short two-year terms for elected officials so that people could vote out the bad apples, set up courts, etc.

Of course, the mortal system remained below the immortal system, which could overrule all of the mortal government's decisions, but from her perspective, the system she set up was much better than before.

Jack didn't care about anything related to mortals, so he said nothing.

After becoming leader of the far west branch, Amber started drawing and designing plans for democratizing the mortal system for here as she did for the republic, but those plans could not be implemented now.

The barbarian lands and the republic are different. The republic was used to holding elections; the election system was a return to normal for them. But, the barbarians never held elections on anything; they have always been ruled by their khan. Implementing an election system in the barbarian lands must be done gradually and carefully. She would eventually do it, but only after observing for a long time.

In the Far East, mortals are still ruled by their local nobles; the only difference is that those local rulers and nobles now work under the eastern Gabe branch instead of the empire. By now, the eastern Gabe branch has created many branches in most big cities in its territory, but the mortal rule is still in the hands of the noble families.

Mike has absolutely no intention of changing anything; he doesn't care about the well-being of mortals. As long as the nobles fulfill the sect's demands and satisfy him, Mike would not allow the sect to interfere too much in mortal affairs. If it isn't broken, don't fix it; if the mortal government system does its intended purpose of providing talented people to the sect, there is no need to change anything.

From many immortals' perspectives, the reason for the existence of the mortal government is to provide immortal cultivator seeds; that's it. As for how they live, who cares; as long as they produce talented children, that's enough.

The empire's mortal and immortal governments are intertwined; the emperor is the leader of both, and the same is true for ministers. Still, even in the empire, cities are commonly ruled by nobles and not by direct appointments.

...

The empire, who expected far more than the humiliating defeat they received, was devastated; they again started talks of surrender.

In a humiliating turn, they again requested to be accepted as a protectorate, and were again rejected. Seeing the empire offering to surrender with few reservations yet being rejected was strange; the Heaven's Way sect refused them without stating any reasons. It was as if the sect had a grudge and wanted to play with their prey.

The empire expected a retaliatory assault by the Heaven's Way sect, but it never arrived; it was as if the sect didn't care enough to take revenge over one of the cities under its rule.

Over 100 million people lived in the western capital and its surroundings, all of whom turned to sand after the empire's attack.

They didn't know that the sect already considered the empire part of itself; they were only waiting for Jack to reach the nascent soul. Jack, for his part, remained stuck at the peak of core formation without being able to crack the nascent soul chapter of Heaven's Way.