Cultivation begins in Qingfeng Market.

Inside the garrison headquarters, all was deathly silent.

Yan Chiheng's Adam's apple bobbed, but he didn't speak.

Old He had his eyes closed, seemingly lost in thought.

Lin Zhao stared at the now-darkened memory stone, his face expressionless.

After a long silence, he spoke.

"What about those ten Foundation Establishment cultivators?"

Yan Chiheng said, "After the last recording stone was transmitted back, their divine consciousness within the Forbidden God Plate was extinguished."

Lin Zhao nodded. They were just cannon fodder for the cultivator raiders anyway, so their deaths were not a pity. He turned and walked towards the secret chamber.

Behind them, Old He and Yan Chiheng exchanged a glance, both seeing the complex emotions in each other's eyes—a mixture of relief and lingering fear.

Fortunately, they didn't go to join in the fun.

What's frightening is that if they had gone, their names would probably be on the list of those who have vanished into thin air right now.

---

After that night, the situation in the Zixuan Dynasty completely spiraled out of control.

In that battle, the Zheng family patriarch killed more than a hundred Foundation Establishment cultivators, including more than a hundred outsiders.

However, the capital city also paid a heavy price – hundreds of Foundation Establishment cultivators launched a counterattack in desperation, causing enormous damage to the capital city.

The destroyed and collapsed buildings killed more than 100,000 ordinary people. The fire burned for three days and three nights before it was extinguished. Many more died in the chaos of looting and slaughter.

Subsequent statistics showed that more than 300,000 ordinary people died in that battle.

The Zheng family patriarch did not conceal these things.

Instead, he had these casualty figures engraved on a monument and erected in front of the main gate of the capital.

Below the inscription are densely packed names—the names of over a hundred Foundation Establishment cultivators, categorized by origin, sect, and family, clearly engraved.

Among those names, Zhou Yuanqing of the Yunhai Cangming Sect was listed first.

It also included photos of them attacking the royal city, as well as images of the countless casualties they caused to ordinary people.

Through these means, he thoroughly condemned these people to the pillory of the dynasty's shame.

To kill someone, you must first destroy their spirit!

At the same time, the royal forces launched a counterattack, which was even more intense than that of the outsiders.

The current King of Qin of the Qin Palace

He was a taciturn, middle-aged cultivator at the peak of the Foundation Establishment stage. He was the first to step forward, leading three thousand cultivators to begin the purge of the rebels.

Princess Blood Phoenix followed closely behind.

This female cultivator, who supposedly possesses a third-tier magic weapon, the Blood Phoenix Bow, is even more ruthless than the King of Qin.

She led her men to conquer three markets, slaughtered over ten thousand cultivators, and seized resources that filled countless storage bags.

The other three Foundation Establishment Peak cultivators also made their moves one after another.

There is the patriarch of the Wang family, the first Foundation Establishment family; a lone wolf who came from a "rogue cultivator" background; and a powerful cultivator who was said to have been the leader of the Dingfeng Plain Tribulation Cultivators and was later recruited by the Zheng family.

The five people shared a surprisingly consistent goal—to kill all the cultivators who had "participated" in the turmoil.

Demolishing mountains and temples.

In just three months, eleven markets were breached by the royal family, and dozens of Foundation Establishment families were uprooted.

Some of the Foundation Establishment cultivators from those families escaped, some died, and some knelt before the capital city gates begging for mercy, but in the end, they were all beheaded and their heads displayed before the inscription.

According to statistics, including those who died in the capital, the number of Foundation Establishment cultivators who died in the Zixuan Dynasty this year has exceeded three hundred.

More than three hundred foundations were built.

What does this mean?

A sect that only reaches the Core Formation stage has only a few hundred Foundation Establishment cultivators under its command.

The Zi Xuan Dynasty single-handedly slaughtered an entire sect's Foundation Establishment cultivators.

Of course, in true Core Formation sects, Foundation Establishment cultivators are only a small part of the force. Each Core Formation sect possesses several methods for cultivating Foundation Establishment cultivators.

The true core strength of a sect lies in its Core Formation cultivators, third-tier magic weapons, and the sect-protecting formation.

------

After that battle, the Zi Xuan Dynasty underwent a complete transformation.

The foundational forces of the dynasty dwindled from over six hundred at its peak to just over three hundred.

In the past, this number would have been enough to surpass the Heavenly Fire Dynasty – the Heavenly Fire Dynasty claimed to have 500 Foundation Establishment cultivators, but in reality, they only had a little over 400.

But now, Zi Xuan has become the weakest of the three dynasties.

After the news spread, several unfamiliar Foundation Establishment cultivators appeared outside the dynasty's borders.

Those were spies from Tianhuo and the Nanli Dynasty, openly loitering outside the borders of the Zixuan Dynasty.

The royal family sent several teams of Foundation Establishment cultivators to drive them away. The two sides faced off in the air for half a day before finally retreating.

External forces were ultimately wary of the Zheng family's overwhelming power in killing three hundred Foundation Establishment cultivators.

They were also wary that this might be him, so they set up another trap to kill him when he reached the Core Formation stage, but in the end, the fight didn't happen.

But everyone knows that this is just the calm before the storm.

If the Zixuan Dynasty fails to produce a new Core Formation cultivator in the foreseeable future, its demise may not be far off.

Originally there were twenty-three markets, eleven of which, along with the dozens of Foundation Establishment families behind them, were completely reduced to ruins.

Today, the Zixuan Dynasty only has twelve markets left.

Of these, seven were directly controlled by the royal family, while five markets were spared and remained independent of the royal family's power. Cangyun Mountain was one of them.

After all, Cangyun Mountain did nothing from beginning to end; it did not participate in the siege of the capital, nor did it take advantage of the chaos to plunder.

He simply did his business quietly, gathered some basic information, and remained an uninvolved observer.

But the dynasty's power still arrived.

Dozens of Foundation Establishment cultivators hovered several miles outside the market, observing it for a full hour.

He didn't say a single word from beginning to end.

But everyone understood what it meant; it was a clear warning.

However, they ultimately did not make a move, as the Zheng family patriarch was still wary of the background of the Cangyun Mountain sect's headquarters.

-----

Outside of Cangyun Mountain,

The entire Foundation Establishment level of the Zixuan Dynasty is immersed in a tragic atmosphere.

After all, with a Foundation Establishment cultivation lifespan of two hundred years, most of the cultivators of the same level in the dynasty would know each other.

They all have their own networks of relationships. So many Foundation Establishment cultivators were killed or injured in this incident, and many of them were friends or relatives.

Even those with bad relationships will inevitably feel some embarrassment, like the saying "when the rabbit dies, the fox grieves."

But no Foundation Establishment cultivator dared to say anything more.

Because everyone understood what the Zheng family patriarch truly wanted when he eliminated the foundation-building forces of the dynasty.

Resources.

Abundant resources.

The storage bags of Foundation Establishment cultivators, the spirit stones, pills, and cultivation techniques in the family treasury...

These things are usually scattered among hundreds of Foundation Establishment forces, and even the strongest royal family cannot collect them.

it's good now.

When a person dies, their belongings naturally belong to the royal family.

More than three hundred Foundation Establishment cultivators, plus the families, markets, and industries behind them, how much resources must that require?

That's enough to train the next Core Formation cultivator.

This was the plan of the Zheng family patriarch.

All talk of "fishing for outsiders to form a golden core" and "acting on behalf of Heaven" is nonsense.

The real purpose, from beginning to end, has only been one thing—to gather some resources for the dynasty to reach the Core Formation stage.

As for those who died, those destroyed markets, those cultivators wailing in the ruins...

-----

But in the eyes of Qi Refining cultivators, this year presented a completely different picture.

lively.

It was bustling like never before.

Those breached markets and destroyed families are graveyards for Foundation Establishment cultivators, but for Qi Refining cultivators, they are treasure troves full of resources.

The Qi Refining cultivators swarmed in, pouring into one ruin after another, like ants gnawing on dead giants.

They rummaged through the rubble, searching for any remaining elixirs, magical artifacts, spirit stones, and cultivation techniques.

Most of the good stuff was taken by the royal family, but the "small things" that the royal family didn't care about were resources that Qi Refining cultivators could only dream of.