Loki thought that he had misheard and expressed his disbelief by saying, "I’m sorry. Did you just say we pay rent? For what?"
To which Hammock said, "We pay rent for the privilege of being able to raise our cultivation rank while others can’t."
Loki still didn’t believe what he heard. He found it all incredulous from the beginning to the end.
He couldn’t help but raise his voice and say, "So you’re telling me that not only do we have to work for the sect like slaves, but we also have to pay for the privilege of being slaves, and to top things off, what we work for is not our permanent property as it can still be taken from us. Is that everything you’re saying?"
Hammock replied, saying, "Yes, that’s all.
Then the ant queen went silent, waiting for Loki to say something.
When it waited a few seconds and didn’t hear anything from Loki, Hammock decided to continue speaking. He said, "Rank 6 cultivators have to pay 10 years’ worth of lifespan for each 1 year that their Divine Position enjoys the privilege of being able to rise in rank. That made 100 years of lifespan that I had to pay for every 10 years."
"In 100 years, rank 6 cultivators will have paid 1,000 years’ worth of life span. The life-leech used to be every 100 years, but the Four Directions Sect changed it to every 10 years a while back, and the other four sects also went with the change."
"I hear that rank 7 and rank 8 cultivators have to pay even more. I don’t know because no one likes to talk about how much lifespan they’ve lost and when the life-leech is, because during the period of life-leech, the cultivator will be drastically weakened by the loss of lifespan.
Loki finally had something to say. He sneered and said, "I bet they made the change to every ten years because they want to maximize how frequently they collect the rent. If they make it every ten years, a divine being that dies frequently won’t be able to avoid paying their rent by dying just before the life-leech comes."
Hammock said, "I am not sure anyone can avoid the life-leech. It can be delayed by death, but it can never be avoided. As soon as the ten years are over, the life-leech will come."
So Loki was wrong to say the motivation for the change in the frequency of the life-leech was to prevent people from avoiding paying. But even though he was wrong, he still continued to sneer as he said, "Why am I not surprised that the life-leech can’t be avoided?"
Hammock didn’t know what to say about this. At the end of the day, he decided that he could only continue to answer the question about how divine beings become more powerful.
He said, "The remaining aspects of the power of divine beings are their stats, their Cave Heaven, and the rank of their Metacs. I will start with explaining how to improve the most difficult one."
"Improving stats has become the most difficult thing to do for divine beings because the period of organic growth is now over. No stat can be raised by hard work anymore."
"Every stat now requires a supporting Divine Metac to raise it. And since every Divine Metac is unique and difficult to create, not many people will be able to raise their stats, no matter how much lifespan or power they have."
"Not even the Will stat can be raised by refining the Dao Heart anymore. The maximum level of Dao Heart that one can reach naturally is Level 6. A Level 7 Dao Heart will need a Divine Metac that can support it."
"Even with a supporting Divine Metac, the Divine Metac will require some lifespan to use. So improving the stat with a Divine Metac is not free. In fact, improving the stat is expensive and costs a lot of lifespan."
Loki didn’t interrupt him with any question, so Hammock was able to continue answering the question in peace.
He said, "The next most difficult aspect of power for a divine being to raise is the rank of a Divine Metac. This is somewhat easy to accomplish because there are two feasible methods to do so."
"The first and most straightforward method is to pay the sect some divine merit points for the secret recipe for upgrading the Divine Metac. This method only requires working hard for the sect for a few years."
"Unfortunately, this method can only be used if someone has upgraded your Divine Metacs before and the sect has records of it. If you became a divine being by creating a new Divine Metac and Divine Position, the sect won’t be able to help you, and you will have to work this path alone."
"There is also the fact that even with a secret recipe, you won’t be able to upgrade the Divine Metac yourself. This is because upgrading Divine Metacs requires a refinement skill that only cultivators of the Pill Refinement Pathway possess."
This time, Loki had to say something. He said, "So every divine being has to solicit the help of pill refiners to upgrade their Divine Metacs? Wouldn’t that make pill refiners very powerful?"
Hammock nodded in agreement and said, "It does make pill refiners very powerful. But not every pathway requires the help of pill refiners to upgrade their Divine Metacs."
"Forgers, talisman masters, and array masters can upgrade their Divine Metacs on their own. And not every pathway has to go to pill refiners. Sword cultivators can come to forgers to upgrade their Divine Metacs."
This answer was full of a lot of information, which enlightened Loki but also made him suspicious. When he thought of what was common between the four pathways that could upgrade their Divine Metacs on their own, he discovered something that made them similar.
So he said, "These four pathways either belong to the Myriad Phenomenon Sect or used to belong to the Myriad Phenomenon Sect. It seems that whoever created the four of them believed in self-sufficiency."
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