She shook her and said, "But at the end of the day, everyone whom the old ghost has set his eyes on will still become his zombie. This is why some of them take the risk to advance to the fifth mortal despite the failure of their predecessors. They want to fight for the slim chance of survival."
"What those who advance to the fifth mortal coil hope to do is to escape. But no one has ever been able to escape from that old ghost. He is like a god of death reigning over his fief with absolute power. If not for the existence of us, the Blood Skull sect, and our ability to wield lightning, the fief and dominion of that old ghost would have extended to every corner of the Five Veins region."
Arthur sighed and said, "We may be tyrants, but we are not the worst kind of tyrants."
Storm Hawk nodded in agreement. But she added, "That's only because we don't have a need for the corpses of people at the third mortal coil, fourth mortal coil, and the humans at the first mortal coil. If we did, the lives of everyone in the Five Veins Region would be worse."
She was saying that the Blood Skull sect not being worse than the Black Bones sect was only due to chance. Arthur had to agree with her on this. It is something that he did without feeling any guilt.
The only thing that he was feeling now was being lucky for not being born in a region under the control of the Black Bones sect and for getting admission into a sect capable of protecting him.
It was the same feeling he had in his past life on earth when he felt lucky that he wasn't born in the wartorn eras of the past or unstable regions of the world in his era.
After feeling lucky that he avoided the fate of being turned into a zombie for a corpse refiner to control, he remembered something else that he wanted to ask Storm Hawk.
So he said, "What happened to the disciples of the Purple Flower sect that came here for the exchange program? They looked downtrodden and beaten down. Did you mistreat them?"
"Also, what was that about Lady Evergreen's reaction to what Void Claw said. Is she angry about something?"
His questions made her laugh smugly. She didn't speak yet, but he knew that she was proud of something she had done.
When she was ready to speak, she said, "Unlike the games you had in the Purple Flower sect, we had long training sessions and brutal tests. The disciples from the Purple Flower sect were trained as if they were recruits preparing for war."
"There were performance tests every week. They were trained in fighting every day, which usually involved physical or mental strain of some kind. Then they finished the month of training with a simulated battle against the disciples of our sect."
"They lost every battle against us. Their scores in the performance tests were always mediocre compared to ours. Finally, I made sure to wear them out every day."
Arthur in surprise, "Why though?"
She smiled and said, "No reason in particular. It is just that I didn't have as many scruples as you did. After all, I was on my home ground. I could do whatever I wanted without worrying about getting them offended. And they had no choice but to do what I wanted."
Arthur nodded in understanding and said, "Lucky you. You could decide to wear them down for no reason, but I had to tiptoe around my host's feelings where I went."
She said, "There is also the fact that the two golden core elders who accompanied them made some snide comments about me being weak and how I shouldn't be the one to host them. What they said didn't offend me in any way. It only made me decide that I had to be a good host to them, so I went all in on their training."
"So in a way, making fun of their host's strength was a good thing for them. Because of what they said, they will never forget their experience here for the exchange program."
Arthur chuckled and said, "So there was a reason for running them ragged. It was payback."
She said innocently, "I don't know what you're talking about."
At this point, they had reached his floating island. So he had to stop here.
But before they separated, he said to her, "I was calling you a vengeful and petty person."
She rushed away from him while saying, "What is that? I can't hear you."
He didn't pursue, but shouted at her, "I was calling you vengeful and petty."
She continued to feign deafness, and this time, she acted as if she wasn't aware that he had said anything at all.
She left him like that. As for the matter of his question about why Lady Evergreen was pissed, she only acted like she had forgotten about it. She hadn't truly forgotten it. She just didn't want to speak about it with their divine sense.
Earlier, after he asked the question, she sent him a text message on the sect ID card that it wasn't safe to speak about nascent soul seniors with their divine sense.
She had said, "Talking about the reason why an angry patriarch is angry with our divine sense is not a good idea. It is much safer to chat here."
So the two of them had acted as if they had forgotten about that question.
Meanwhile, as they separated from each other, they were still chatting on the sect ID card.
She said, "It seems that Patriarch Sword Flash and Lady Evergreen wanted to go to war in his absence. She wanted to attack and subdue the other four sects and have a unified front held together by force instead of one held together by some exchange program and word of mouth."