The existence of other sects aside from the five that he has always known was news to Loki, and it changed what he thought of the world. As he tried to accept this new piece of information and accommodate it into his worldview, he realized that the world was bigger than he once thought.
The eyes of his body in the first dimension became unfocused as his avatar said, "That means there are at least eight Dao Lords. Yet, we don’t know how Dao Lords get to appear. At least, it is not general knowledge."
"And since there are other sects, there must be pathways that they use that I don’t know about. That means that there are far more than the 14 pathways that I know about."
This realization made him pause what he was thinking about and ask Hammock, saying, "How many pathways are there, really?"
Hammock felt some pressure for being asked this question. He felt that he wasn’t the right person to ask how many pathways were in existence. But since Loki had asked, he could only answer.
However, he started answering the question with a cautious and careful tone as he said, "I don’t know how many pathways are in existence."
He quickly explained his lack of knowledge by saying, "Many pathways have been forgotten that I don’t know about, and some are in the process of being forgotten, like the Dual Cultivation Pathway. So I don’t have enough information to say how many pathways are in existence."
Luckily for him, Loki didn’t expect him to know every pathway in existence. So Loki said, "I don’t want to know every pathway that has ever existed, and I don’t expect you to know either. I just want to know how many pathways are still active."
"I especially want to know how many pathways the sects have. So you can start with that."
This reasonable request made Hammock sigh in relief. Then he said, "Aside from the nearly dead beast pathways of the Blessed Heaven World, the five pathways of the Blessed Heaven World have 14 pathways between them."
"The other three sects should also have at least two pathways each. That makes an additional 6 pathways. So the total number of active pathways is 20."
Loki nodded in understanding before saying, "How do pathways come to exist anyway? How are they created?"
Hammock began to sweat again as he said, "I do not know, master."
"All I can tell is that some pathways are related to Dao Lords and some seem to appear naturally in nature."
His answer was lacking, but Loki wasn’t disappointed. In fact, Loki chuckled and said, "This is another thing that I don’t expect you to know. I bet that Dao Lords have decided to keep how pathways are created a secret, just like they have made how they become Dao Lords a secret."
"Anyway, I still asked you to see how much is known about pathways. Who knows? Maybe I assumed wrongly, and the information about the origin of pathways is not a secret."
Hammock relaxed after hearing this. Meanwhile, Loki was already thinking about something else.
He said to Hammock, "Back to the topic of sects. If what you said is right and there are eight pathways, the fact that all six of them couldn’t be established in the Blessed Heaven World implies that there is a constraint of some sort."
"If Dao Lords are motivated for one reason or another to establish sects, then it should go without saying that they would want to establish their sect on every world, starting from the biggest ones like the Blessed Heaven World and other super worlds."
"Since all of them couldn’t establish their sects here, either there is no longer space for them here, or they have been blocked by the other sects. I am willing to bet that the second option is the case."
Hammock nodded and said in agreement, "Indeed. Competition is fierce between sects. Even in the Blessed Heaven World, which is mostly peaceful, the sects still kill a lot of each other’s disciples every month through the Earthly Battlefield and the Heavenly Battlefield."
"The Heavenly Battlefield kills about 100 rank 4 cultivators and at least one rank 5 cultivator from each sect every month. The Earthly Battlefield is more tame, but the fight is still significant because it allows the sects to bleed each other of souls, which reduces their manpower from the ground up."
In response, Loki snapped his fingers and said, "If that is how much they are willing to fight each other for, then it is reasonable to think that they wouldn’t want an extra sect to come and share the resources they fight for."
"And since they are not all here in the Blessed Heaven World, it makes sense that they all can’t fight here. They can only fight each other in other worlds for more territory."
This was all he wanted to know, so he decided to end the conversation there. Then he gave Hammock more instructions about the drones.
The instructions he gave Hammock were about modifying the blueprints for the drones so that they would be able to function properly on Oceania.
The original blueprint for the ant drones would only allow them to function at their peak on land. But since he is going to a world that has less than 1% land surface, the ant drones will need to be able to function properly in water if they are to be useful to him.
After tweaking the blueprint slightly, he used the Nanite Metac to change the structure of the ant drones that had already been produced. This way, the effort and resources that Hammock had put into making them wouldn’t go to waste.
Once this was done, his avatar dispersed, and he left Hammock to his work.
He didn’t thank Hammock for the information, and his avatar was no longer there, but Hammock still said to the empty air, "I am glad I was of help to you, master."