The other man, a gloomy zombie with white hair, said, "Two out of three dying is bad enough and that’s even when you don’t count the people that died from the other sects."
The woman nodded in agreement as she said, "I heard that victory was acquired by killing every rank 4 soldier from the other 4 sects. It was a massacre."
The zombie said, "I heard that even rank 5 beings fell in that battle, not just the rank 4. So that battle was truly dangerous."
Loki said, "If you’re right, then that means that aside from the 66 that died on our side, 400 rank 4 cultivators died on the side of the other sects. So the survival rate isn’t actually 34 out of 100. It is 34 out of 500 or 6.8 out of 100."
Then he shook his head and said, "That’s a lot of deaths. How can the sects afford such a loss?"
His question made the man with the black hair, who was chuckling earlier, laugh and say, "Even if they lose 100 rank 4 every month, at most, they will lose a maximum of 1,200 rank 4 cultivators every year. Each sect controls a whole domain spanning 100,000 kilometers across with billions of people, so I’m sure that they can afford this much loss."
Loki nodded in agreement and said, "And there are the rank 5 cultivators. There is almost no way forward for them, so what else are they going to do but come here and die?"
His words caused a round of chuckles and laughter to erupt from the group. They talked some more about the Heavenly Battlefield, so Loki was able to learn that the person who helped the Four Directions Sect win the last Heavenly Battlefield and won the title of the most useful soldier was a death cultivator who had created a deadly viral disease.
This deadly disease killed indiscriminately, so it also killed people from the Four Directions Sect. Apparently, most of the people who died from the Four Directions Sect were killed by the disease.
The survivors who just returned from the Heavenly Battlefield said that they survived because they had listened to the warning of the death cultivator that she shared before the battle and had dug a deep hole in the ground where they hid for the entire battle.
So they had survived because they hid. This also meant that even though the sect was victorious in the Heavenly Battlefield, many of the survivors didn’t earn any merit points. After all, they didn’t do any fighting or kill any enemy.
When he heard this, he asked incredulously, "So they just went there for nothing?"
The woman chuckled and said in reply, "If you feel aggrieved for the people that returned with nothing to show for risking their lives, what about the people who went there to die for nothing?"
He could only shake his head and say to himself, "So it is definitely a good thing that I can’t participate in that Heavenly Battlefield."
After this, he grilled the three of them for more information. He was able to learn from what they said and what they didn’t say by reading their thoughts.
So even though they didn’t know it, he wasn’t actually engaging in a pleasant conversation with them. He was actually interrogating them. The appearance of a pleasant conversation is just a facade.
If they had refused to engage with him at all, this interrogation would have become more violent. He would have needed to use the Memory Read Metac, which would have broken their minds and forced him to pay a lot of money for the information he would gain through that method.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to do that. So he had a pleasant conversation with them. And when he was sure that there wasn’t much to gain from them, he left to go to his room.
On the way there, he said to himself with a smile tugging at his lips, "This alternate method of getting information is probably the best."
There are four methods of getting information that he knows of. They are the options of buying the information, using the Memory Read Metac, raping them while using the Knowledge Extraction Metac, or chatting with them while using the Thought Reading Metac.
He believes that the last one is the best because it is the cheapest. Not only doesn’t he need to pay money to buy the information, but he also doesn’t need to pay for extracting the information by force.
Considering that the targets this time around are rank 4 cultivators with Level 4 Dao Status, around grade 4 life insurance, on a grade 5 mission, and on sect grounds where violence is forbidden with a fine of up to ten times the life value of the victim, the amount of money that he would have needed to pay if he used force isn’t something that 100 million energy stones would be able to cover.
Even if he could afford the fines, nothing can beat the value of free information. This is why he had a smile on his face as he went into his room.
As usual, he didn’t leave his room for anything when he entered the room. No matter how the whole floating city tuasled and turned when the fight between a divine being and a small world started nearby, he wasn’t roused to check it.
He didn’t even stand up as the floor shook and glass windows shattered around him. He continued to work diligently, either refining his body or refining his Dao Heart.
Things continued like this until it was time to leave for the Heavenly Battlefield. He went out to board the airship and didn’t ask anyone for directions to find the airship along the way.
Nothing different happened from then on. The golden blond-haired money cultivator of the three rank 5 cultivators spoke to them about the plan for the game. Then Amy and Fern had a short spat, with Amu coming out victorious.