Teaming Up?

Gao Liang pulled out a small device that was unassuming at first glance. Then, with a small injection of Qi, the uninteresting object shifted, dividing itself over and over again. Rapidly the small device expanded and folded into itself, morphing itself into the form of a higher dimensional structure.

"Wonderful," the girl clapped her expression one of excitement and awe.

Members of the Mo Sect were quite easily distinguishable from the cultivators of most other sects. Due to their beliefs, Mo Sect members were not allowed to wear luxurious clothing and garments. The reasoning behind this particular rule was due to the rejection of opulent luxury.

It's not that the Mo Sect was against luxury itself; if the material conditions permitted it, the Mo Sect would have no problem with it at all.

The main issue was that far too many people still lived in abject poverty; death by starvation and lack of material necessity was an unfortunate reality that too many peasants faced.

Luxury goods and foods took an extreme amount of labor and talent to produce. These hard-working and talented people, their collective work would only serve to benefit the few elites in society.

Rather than providing food for the starving masses, they provide feasts for the gluttonous.

Rather than providing clothing for the cold and shivering masses, they provide silk embroideries for the vain.

Rather than providing shelter for the homeless masses, they provide mansions and palaces for the greedy.

The Mo Sect observed all of these to be a perverse state of affairs that only served to oppress the common man; it was only natural to reject wearing luxurious clothing.

Another reason was that Mo Sect members would often be required to go and visit poor communities and villages; with their knowledge, they would help the poor and needy build shelter, farms, and sometimes maybe even schools.

However, Mo Sect members were not there to lord over the people; they ate the commoner's food, dressed themselves in the commoner's clothes, and lived in the commoner's homes.

Only by living as the commons do can the Mo Sect member not become detached from the struggles that the ordinary man had to face every single day.

And thus, members of the Mo Sect were quite easily recognized by being a Sect of high-level cultivators who dressed in commoners' clothing.

Of course, out of all the numerous sects out there, the Mo Sect was not the only sect that had rejected luxury. Furthermore, due to the prestige of the Mo Sect name, especially in the State of Ming, there were reports of cultivators impersonating the Mo Sect for personal gain.

Hence the complex mechanical device that Gao Liang had brought out, as a sect renowned for its engineering prowess, this was a decent proof of membership.

"Ah, where are my manners? My name is Sun Lihua," the now identified Sun Lihua said, bowing slightly, "Are you three here to participate in the Great Hunt?"

"That's exactly what we are here for." Xiuying nodded in affirmation.

"You wouldn't mind if I joined your group?" Lihua inquired politely.

"This probably can not be decided by us." This time it was Zhongming that replied. "We will have to ask our two seniors."

"If you don't mind waiting for a bit, we will be meeting our seniors later tonight." Gao Liang added.

"Sure, I am perfectly content to wait for a few hours."

Zhongming, at this point, had started to zone out a little bit as Xiuying and Lihua, in particular, began chatting in earnest.

He was still a bit worried that he would end up dragging the team down, between Xue Jian's Dao of Possibility, Xu Hualing's Dao of Dimension, Jiang Xiuying's Dao of Information, and Gao Liang's Dao of Karma.

Due to their comprehension, the four of them had unique and very powerful abilities; they were powerful enough to allow them to contend even with cultivators of higher realms.

Unlike most other sects, members of the Mo Sect reach higher cultivation realms purely through comprehension, study, and experience.

The conventional cultivation techniques relied more on utilizing unique resources such as soul crystals, pills, and meditative Qi Gong training to almost artificially establish a link to the Dao.

Hence, for most sects, each member's Dao tended to be the same or very similar, the main differentiating factor being the level of comprehension.

For example, some users of the Dao of Reality could make events or people fictional; other users could impose their idealized reality as a universal, immutable truth.

However, due to their lesser understanding, they could still be countered even with a Dao as impressive as the Dao of Reality.

For example, with the Dao of Information, you could simply rewrite their idealized reality, or with the Dao of Karma, you could rewrite the relations between cultivators and their idealized reality.

For instance, let's say in a battle to the death, your idealized reality ends with your victory, and your opponent's idealized reality ends with their victory. In such a case, the user with the Dao of Karma can replace his opponent's idealized reality with his own, causing both opponent's idealized reality to be one and the same.

Surrounded by friends who all had such powerful abilities, it was not unreasonable for Zhongming to feel a sense of inferiority.

At the present time, all Zhongming had going for himself was a few of the arrays that he had co-developed with his master.

Maybe it was good enough, and he was just overthinking; however, mentally being thirty-six years old and still being unable to comprehend a Dao at a sufficient to ascend into the Nascent Soul realm was worrying.

Zhongming had hoped that he would make a breakthrough and finally be able to put all this anxiety behind him.