Sword Flash explained his reason for saying that there would be war by saying, "If there is a new rank 4 secret realm, it means that there will be a slot for a new sect."
"This is the best-case scenario, as most of the fighting will be limited to the cultivation families in our region. At most, the sects will support a cultivation family and assist them from the side."
"It is also possible that cultivation families from other regions will come here to vie for the new rank 4 secret realm. But if the five rank 4 secret realms upgrade to rank 5, you can be sure that sects from our neighboring regions and large cultivation families from upstream will come down to fight us for the sects."
"In both cases, we should be safe because we have the strength required to own a rank 5 secret realm. Even if we don't have the strength and are eventually eliminated, the other four sects will be eliminated before us, so the Five Vein region will change completely."
"This is all for the future, though. We don't know when the mana tide will happen. In the meantime, I have outgrown this place and might have to leave soon."
This news saddened the golden core cultivators. After all, Sword Flash was their most reliable patriarch. This was proven today by how he intervened to end the war. So they didn't want to lose him.
Sword Flash only laughed and said, "Our separation won't be permanent. If you can advance to the sixth mortal coil, we can surely meet again."
"Anyway, back to what I was saying about the Red and Blue Fire sect. Once it was determined that the Red and Blue Fire sect would come here, someone approached us to destroy them completely."
"We were going to fight them anyway because we didn't want them here to compete with us for resources. They were too strong to be allowed to be our neighbors. But after that person approached us, we had another incentive to fight them."
"Without the incentive and the payment that was promised to us, we would have just rebuffed the Red and Blue Fire sect and sent them away if we had defeated them. But the person who approached us insisted that we eliminate them completely and was only going to pay us if we killed every one of them."
"This is why I acted to kill every one of them. It is also what I meant when I told their leader, Dancing Fire, that there was no way out for the Red and Fire sect. If I didn't kill them, someone else would have done it. Their fate was sealed."
He shook his head and said, "I truly pity the Red and Blue Fire sect. It is a shame for such a great and powerful sect to be reduced to nothing just like that."
"I feel extra sympathy for them because this kind of thing can also happen to us. One day, one of us can offend someone too powerful to offend, and that will doom all of us to death."
He sighed and said, "The only thing that we can do is to continue to grow stronger. We have to keep moving forward, or we will be smashed to pieces easily by an unlucky turn of events."
Then his voice perked up as he said, "Fortunately, we have many ways to grow stronger in a short amount of time. Let me start listing them one by one."
"The first and most important opportunity that we have to grow stronger is the leadership assessment of the League of World Eaters. Because I performed so well and because our sect has a lot of potential, we were granted the opportunity to become leaders in the league of world eaters."
"The Red and Blue Fire sect was a leader in the league, too. This is why they were not destroyed easily. The rule that protects the league would only protect me, as I'm the soldier of the league. But if our sect passes the leadership assessment, everyone in the sect will also be protected by the rule."
"The main reason why we were granted the opportunity to take the leadership assessment is because we have a rank 7 cultivation technique that can help us advance to the seventh mortal coil. So with enough resources and time, it is possible for us to create a divine transformation cultivator."
"Seventh mortal coil cultivators are called divine transformation cultivators. They are not the strongest in the world of Ethera, but they are the backbone of the league of world eaters and the main force in the league."
"In fact, from what I've heard, most worlds in the universe can't produce rank 7 beings. Then again, many worlds can barely produce rank 4 beings. But the fact that we have the potential to achieve rank 7 cultivation made us eligible for the leadership assessment."
"If we pass the leadership assessment, we will be designated as junior leaders for now. But we will still have the right to investigate a world, decide to invade it, lead the invasion of the world, and keep most of the resources of that world for ourselves."
"To be a leader is to be an independent part of the league of world eaters. We will get to pick our fights, and we can keep everything that we earn from the fights. If you want to know how that will benefit, think back to how easy it was for the Red and Blue Fire sect to best all the five sects, even though we technically outnumber them."
At this prompt, everyone thought back to the events of the battle. They thought of the vast array of mobile fortresses and the usage of the armor suits. Then everyone thought of the power of the patriarchs of the Red and Blue Fire sect.
No matter which part of the battle they started thinking from, everyone eventually returned to the last part of the battle. They thought of how every patriarch in the Red and Blue Fire sect had a rank 6 weapon.