The battle sage monkeys have just finished the third challenge, while the other side has finished for quite some time. It is because the other side was able to finish the second challenge quickly. The challenge for the last man standing didn't cause too much of a divide among them.
The normal competitors killed each other in a free for all, and the last one sacrificed themselves to their paragon. So the paragons became the last man standing without any effort. They were lazy about it, but they were also efficient.
Their society is United that way. They are a society with a strict and clearly defined hierarchy. Paragons always come first, and they always get the best. In turn, the paragons always protect the members of their society. It is the basic foundation of their society.
This sort of privileged stratification of society usually causes strife in some societies, but it works to unite them. Paragons are born special, and their divine ability works to unite their race, so their race is very united. Paragons also need their society to prosper. After all, the better their society is, the stronger paragons are. They are very similar to Soverick in that way. They both gain power from the people of their plane.
Battle sage monkeys, on the other hand, are not united. They must each fight for what they want or what they believe they deserve. Everything is up for grabs in their society. If you want something, then you must take it. Hierarchy is determined by strength.
Salvos thought he deserved the divine crown despite there being a child of the plane competing for it. He didn't give up. He even went to challenge the child of the plane. Salvos didn't let prestige and title stop him from trying to take what he wanted. Strength was to determine who deserved the divine crown.
Strength reigns supreme with the other side too. It is just that paragons are born special. Paragons will grow up to be strong, and non-paragons can never catch up to them. Paragons are like gods to the normal vipers. They are respected, feared, and worshipped.
The arrangement of social hierarchy ensures that there is no dissent in their society. There is conflict, but it is quickly resolved by the will of the people. It can be said that paragons are the ideals of the common people given life. So they are a united people. The common people will certainly not fight their paragons. They also won't win even if they do.
Most conflict in their society is between paragons. Paragons don't compete with normal people. They compete among themselves. Their conflict is also resolved quickly with a fight to the death. The weaker paragon is killed and absorbed by the stronger paragon.
All the power in the society is fixed. It is because their population is finite. The lesser the number of paragons, the stronger each paragon is. They don't have to spread the power of their society too much. So it is not a good thing that there are just nine paragons among the 3 million Vipers that qualified for the 4th challenge. It means that each paragon will have an average of 300 thousand normal people as their anchors. I think you should take a look at
That is not a lot for a paragon to have in this age and time. That kind of number would have been considered a bit much in the era of transcendents when paragons were still few in number. But the Vipers have swelled in quantity and quality in their plane since that era. Things would have been worse for the battle sage monkeys if the first sage had not placed a limit on the number of people that could participate in the fourth challenge.
If the slot for participation were open and unlimited, the paragons would have called for everyone that met their requirements. They have a large population because they don't send their transcendents to the tower of heaven for compulsory participation.
Viper paragons cherish the lives of their people. Every single one of them is important to the paragons. Their people are the foundation of their powers, so they encourage reproduction, not culling like battle sage monkeys do.
So the Viper race is very large, and yet the paragons have tight control over them. They can have 100 million participants in the competition instead of a mere 3 million if only they are allowed to. They would have won the competition hands down that way. Even so, the unity they have is admirable. It is nothing to scoff at. They wouldn't try to sabotage their paragons, whose duty is to protect them.
Meanwhile, battle sage monkeys fight amongst themselves all the time. They will even scheme and pick fights with the protector of the plane. Only the racial council can order the forces of the plane around. They would have surely behaved better and helped Soverick instead of antagonizing him if the first sage had told them, but the sage wasn't allowed to do that.
The sage wasn't even allowed to tell the inhabitants of the Virut plane about the enemy that they would be fighting in the competition. That would have surely spurred the entire plane into action. But he couldn't, so the initial interest in the competition was very low.
Not many thought much of the competition. Only those that cared about the plot of land around the tower of trials cared about the competition. The rich and powerful combatants of the plane surely don't care about it. They have Origin energy in their cities, so they would rather cultivate than fight for something they don't need.
The racial council had tried to woo the people of the Virut plane with all sorts of perks so that they would participate in the competition. It is the major reason why they decided to endorse the Unified Skill Index as a substitute for the trial of heaven.
The racial council even made it so that there won't be any death in the competition. They made it a safe alternative to the trial of heaven. It was meant to make people less afraid so that they will attend the competition and fight for the battle sage monkeys.