Chapter 237: Cultivation Also Requires Playing Monopolies

"He's out, another one is out."

"Yes! I won the bet!"

Outside Dao Proving Mountain, Xuanci appeared with a dazed expression. The qi destiny on his person had plummeted sharply, making it painfully obvious that he had just been defeated and cast out.

Seeing his wretched state, the three inner sect disciples whom he had previously defeated and kicked out of Dao Proving Mountain immediately shot him gloating looks. But they were also curious; after all, it was undeniable that Xuanci's strength was truly formidable among Divine Powers cultivators. They began sending him telepathic messages:

"What happened?"

"Who eliminated you, Fellow Daoist Xuanci? Could it be that true transmission disciple, Dousheng?" one of them asked, probing carefully.

Xuanci turned a deaf ear to them.

Even now, he was still replaying that recent battle in his mind... No, back-and-forth exchanges made a battle. Just now, he hadn't even been able to manage a single counterattack.

It had been a completely one-sided thrashing.

'A Major Divine Ability cultivator. He's definitely a Major Divine Ability cultivator... No, it's more than that. It felt exactly like encountering my natural predator.'

At this thought, Xuanci only grew more bewildered. As far as he knew, Senior Brother Dousheng's magical power cultivated Earth Yin Water, and his Divine Powers cultivated Heaven Yang Earth. Neither of those had anything to do with Xuanci's own Earth Yin Earth, so how could there be a counter? Just what kind of Divine Power was that massive hammer that had completely crushed him?

However, he quickly adjusted his mindset.

Because no matter what, one thing was beyond doubt: 'That Dousheng has clearly been a Major Divine Ability cultivator for a long time, yet he deliberately held back from undergoing the lightning tribulation!'

Otherwise, he wouldn't have fought his way up the mountain from the very beginning; he would have been sent straight to the 999th floor.

Purposely downranking himself just to harvest the qi destiny of ordinary Divine Power cultivators?

So utterly shameless!

Even as Xuanci cursed the man in his heart, his eyes began to brighten... Right, that was a valid tactic. He could absolutely learn from this advanced strategy of a true transmission disciple.

'My current best record is the Seven-Nine Lightning Tribulation. Once I accumulate a few more Divine Powers and gather a few magical treasures, whenever I reach the capabilities of a Major Divine Ability, I won't undergo the lightning tribulation either. I'll come to Dao Proving Mountain first to harvest a wave of qi destiny... Hiss! Now that I think about it, it seems like a lot of senior brothers have done this!'

Xuanci looked back on the past.

Up until now, it seemed that nearly all Major Divine Ability cultivators would make a run at Dao Proving Mountain right before undergoing their lightning tribulation, ruthlessly padding their battle records.

Then they would go back and immediately break through.

Before this, everyone had assumed these cultivators successfully broke through to the Major Divine Ability tier because they had earned so much qi destiny by slaughtering their way through Dao Proving Mountain.

Looking at it now—

'These Biyang's bastards probably all gained the power of a Major Divine Ability first, and only then came to Dao Proving Mountain to stomp on weaker opponents. They're just here to harvest the lower-level cultivators!'

Xuanci felt a sudden supreme enlightenment.

...........

The 998th floor of Dao Proving Mountain.

Wang Ping strolled leisurely, glancing around. He had already put away the Heavenly Craft Creation Hammer. While the item was incredibly useful, it drained far too much of his Dao attainment.

Only when he encountered a path he fully understood—such as Xuanci's Mid-Heaven Orthodox Origin Blended Harmony Qi—could he use the treasured hammer's unique properties to instantly kill his opponent in a single strike.

When facing paths he was unfamiliar with, without the augmentation of his Dao attainment, the treasured hammer's power wouldn't even match up to a Middle Divine Ability. Earlier on, he could still barely get by using pure brute strength, but as the floors climbed higher, his opponents grew stronger. Among them, there was no shortage of people who, just like him, avoided the lightning tribulation and ran here to stomp on weaker prey.

Naturally, Wang Ping struck out heavily against such behavior.

After all, the people he hated the most were those who lowered their cultivation to bully novices, ruined the dueling environment, forcefully raised the difficulty of low-tier matches, and completely lacked immortal morals.

If everyone did that, how was he supposed to stomp on the weak?

"Rumble!"

Stepping onto the 999th floor, Wang Ping's vision was instantly blanketed by a dense sea of figures. Sweeping his gaze out, it was an unfathomably vast ocean of people.

Every drop in that ocean was a silhouette pulsating with magical power and perfected Divine Powers, every single one clearly at the Major Divine Ability level. The vast majority of them were true transmission disciples of the Immortal Gate, with a tiny fraction being inner sect disciples. Standing together, their intertwined auras encompassed the Cosmos, manifesting the brilliant, multicolored lights of the Twenty-Four Qi.

"A few thousand? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?"

Wang Ping's eyes went wide, immediately realizing the true weight of the 999th floor—this sea of humanity was likely the accumulated collection of the Immortal Gate across all its past generations.

After all, the Immortal Gate produced true transmission disciples every single year.

And nearly every generation of true transmission disciples would eventually cultivate into Major Divine Ability experts, or even reach the Tribulation Transcending Third Layer... and virtually all of these people had made attempts at Dao Proving Mountain.

In the beginning, the 999th floor might have only held two or three imprinted avatars, but as time flowed on, those avatars naturally piled up more and more.

'Incredible.'

The longer Wang Ping looked, the more astounded he became, because he suddenly realized something else: with so many true transmission disciples, the Dao paths they cultivated were incredibly varied and diverse.

Yet this Dao Proving Mountain effortlessly branded their avatars and perfectly simulated them, displaying the cultivation bases they possessed at their absolute peaks.

That wasn't right, was it?

"Numbers on this scale have definitely encompassed all of the Twenty-Four Qi. Branding their avatars would demand an unbelievably high level of Dao attainment. Let alone mastering the Dao attainment of all Twenty-Four Qi, one would at least need to dabble in every single one of them. Is this truly something a Qi Refining practitioner could achieve?"

Beyond that, there was another glaring inconsistency.

Although true transmission disciples were passed down from generation to generation, there wasn't one born every single year; they usually appeared over spans of hundreds of years—yet Dao Proving Mountain had cataloged so many.

Exactly how long had this Grotto-Heaven existed?

'Probably over 10,000 years! But isn't the immortal lifespan of a Qi Refining practitioner only around 10,000 years? Looking at it this way, could the person behind this Grotto-Heaven actually be a True Person?'

Wang Ping was startled by his own deduction. However, this theory perfectly explained Dao Proving Mountain's miraculous method of scrambling for qi destiny. Allowing the qi destiny of the world's Twenty-Four Qi to convert seamlessly between one another—if not a higher-realm True Person, who could possibly accomplish such a feat?

'This is probably an open secret.'

'Perhaps in the very beginning, the creator of Dao Proving Mountain truly was a Qi Refining practitioner, but over the flow of time, this practitioner broke through to a higher Realm?'

Wang Ping pondered this in his heart as he strolled casually through the sea of figures.

Securing a foothold on the 999th floor wasn't difficult for him; he only needed to defeat one of the figures, and he was even allowed to pick his opponent.

Of course, there was a time limit.

Once the time limit passed, Dao Proving Mountain would automatically match him with an opponent.

But right now, Wang Ping was far more interested in the secrets hidden within this Grotto-Heaven than the meager amount of qi destiny offered on the 999th floor. He hardly even cared about the qi destiny anymore.

"Hm?"

Suddenly, Wang Ping paused. He had spotted a familiar figure within the crowd—standing tall with his chest out, hands clasped behind his back, lightning violently coursing through his eyes.

"Kunyun...?"

It was indeed him. The figure was none other than the deceased Kunyun!

Wang Ping was slightly surprised. Kunyun had already died and his Dao had vanished, yet his imprinted avatar remained here. So, what happened to the qi destiny this avatar earned after defeating a challenger?

"...Hiss!"

Wang Ping looked back at the sprawling ocean of people on this floor and instantly recognized the massive business opportunity hidden within. 'That's it. Cultivators aren't immortal; they die. I bet ninety-nine percent of the cultivators in this crowd are already dead, yet Dao Proving Mountain still preserves their imprinted avatars.'

'Dead men can't receive qi destiny.'

Wang Ping furrowed his brow tightly, his mind racing.

'And yet, when challengers reach this floor and lose to the avatar of a dead cultivator, a portion of their qi destiny is still taken away.'

Those dead cultivators definitely couldn't claim that qi destiny.

So where did it go?

'Without a doubt, it's being pocketed by the master of Dao Proving Mountain!' A sudden realization hit Wang Ping as he recognized the staggering scale of this profit.

After all, in a wretched environment like the Immortal Gate, people died all the time. This wasn't just happening on the 999th floor; the 333rd and 666th floors were probably exactly the same. The vast majority of the avatars there belonged to the dead, which meant every single person who challenged the mountain was essentially paying tribute to Dao Proving Mountain!

'Not to mention, this Grotto-Heaven is open to practically the entire Immortal Gate!'

What was this?

This was collecting taxes from every single disciple in the Immortal Gate—heavy taxes, at that! The amount of qi destiny generated from this had to be an astronomically massive figure!

The more Wang Ping thought about it, the more absurd it seemed.

'And that's not all. Because it targets the entire Immortal Gate, the Dao paths cover nearly all Twenty-Four Qi, meaning the harvested qi destiny spans across all Twenty-Four Qi.'

At this realization, Wang Ping finally grasped how the master of Dao Proving Mountain managed to achieve mastery over the Twenty-Four Qi. With that much qi destiny at their disposal, they could easily command the qi of heaven and earth to open itself up to them, allowing them to comprehend it at will and elevate their Dao attainment. The benefits were self-evident.

'A genius! An absolute genius!'

Reaching this conclusion, Wang Ping was thoroughly awestruck. At the same time, he became entirely convinced that the cultivator who designed Dao Proving Mountain could not possibly be a mere Qi Refining practitioner.

Even if they were one back then, given the sheer profits of qi destiny generated by Dao Proving Mountain over so many years, even a pig could have ascended into a True Person by now!

'Sure enough, in the Immortal Gate, cultivation isn't just about having good talent and hiding away in secluded meditation. You need schemes and you have to know how to run a business!'

Wang Ping felt like he had truly learned a valuable lesson today.

'Cultivation requires playing damn monopolies!'

Dao Proving Mountain relied on monopolizing the qi destiny exchange, which was how it could levy a heavy qi destiny tax on the entire Immortal Gate. How much blood had been spilled in the wind and rain to establish this?

Moreover, Wang Ping hadn't forgotten the most crucial detail.

'Dao Proving Mountain is only one of the Immortal Gate's ten great Grotto-Heavens... Looking at it from this angle, the remaining nine Grotto-Heavens are probably running monopoly businesses too!'

These were all wildly profitable rackets.

'Given enough time, maybe I should learn from the master of Dao Proving Mountain and set up my own unique Grotto-Heaven. It would definitely bring massive benefits to my cultivation...'

Just as Wang Ping was lost in thought...

"Thud!"

Suddenly, a muffled thud interrupted his train of thought. He looked up, realizing that his time limit was up and Dao Proving Mountain had automatically matched him with an opponent.

In that vast ocean of people, the other figures quickly dimmed and vanished until only a single person remained. By sheer coincidence, it was Kunyun's imprinted avatar.

He stared blankly at Wang Ping without speaking a word, all emotions in his eyes completely masked by the blazing lightning, leaving not the slightest hint of anything unusual.