novelraw Chapter 974 - 534: The Human Utopia
Chapter 974 - 534: The Human Utopia
The maid skillfully divided the strands of hair in front of her, tying a knot at the top, letting it fall naturally, and tied it in a small tail dangling on the shoulder. She secretly wondered, this hairstyle was beautiful, but generally, only unmarried girls dared to wear it. Does this Immortal count too?
When Miluo came to visit, he was told that Ning Xiaoxian was dressing up. He drank tea in the hall for a while before she gracefully emerged.
His gaze swept over the two maids. These two were indeed well-taught in the Prince’s Mansion; they instantly understood the situation, bowed, and retreated, leaving space for a private conversation.
Hey, isn’t this like the guest outshined the host, and you two just retreated like that? Ning Xiaoxian blinked, realizing that for these two maids, anyone who could enter here was likely a guest.
In front of her, Miluo’s eyebrows and eyes were full of smiles, was there any trace of dignity a Sect Leader should have? Seeing him smile so happily, did she imagine the little bit of loneliness he revealed when they parted on the Great Snow Mountain?
She said irritably, "What are you smiling at?"
"You asked to find me, didn’t I come right after seeing Huang Fusong Yun?"
She wondered, "When did I ask to find you?"
"Your eyes are full of questions." He comfortably sat on the hardwood couch, leaned back, and as he closed his eyes, a hint of previously concealed fatigue slipped out, "Just ask if you want to know something."
Indeed, he had just become the Master of Fengtian Prefecture and surely had heaps of important tasks. The fugitive Qing Ji undoubtedly gave him no peace of mind either.
She indeed had a bunch of questions to be answered, and asking this information broker was the most suitable.
She thought for a moment, then asked, "What is the origin of the Mirror Sea King? During the visit just now, I found he was indeed just a mortal." Her implication, he must understand.
"The Mirror Sea King governs thirty-one Great States as a mortal, a rare case on the Southern Continent. The Huangfu family started from humble beginnings, supposedly began to rise around 300 years ago, and has since expanded step by step to its current scale."
Three hundred years, enough time for a dynasty in Huaxia to experience the cycle of rise and fall, but here, three hundred years passed in a flash, and the Great Demon sitting before her was over three hundred years old.
Her eyes were full of inquiries, and Miluo, seeing her, smiled lightly, "I know what you’re puzzled about. It’s still a mystery with no definite answer. Every ruler in the Mirror Sea King Mansion has been a mortal, yet more and more cultivators are willing to serve them. The family’s enterprises are flourishing, where nearly every business is profitable: maritime transport, land trade, banks, restaurants, almost none are not lucrative. In just a hundred years, the wealth accumulated by the Huangfu family reached astonishing numbers, becoming the wealthiest human family by the Mirror Sea. I’m speaking of human family, not mortal family. No sect or Demon Sect along the Mirror Sea coast at that time had their fortunes prosper to such an extent."
"I have perused several hundred-year-old records of the Immortal Sects—ha, these materials they don’t even look at themselves—and learned that during the Huangfu family’s rise, the capital they exchanged and mortgaged was not ordinary gold and silver, but valuable items even cultivators couldn’t procure. For instance, the Lingyin Sect, extinguished two hundred years ago, mentioned in its sect secret abstracts that the Huangfu family mortgaged seventy pounds of sea floor gold and twenty pounds of outer space meteorite iron to gain exclusive operating rights to sixty-three shops across seven states under the sect’s control. Combined, these amounts surpassed two million Spirit Stones in value."
She suddenly recalled the Treasure Bowl currently left in the God Demon Prison among miscellaneous items. It was the size of a sea bowl, perfectly suitable, so she kept it in a small wooden house to hold bath gel...
Did the Huangfu family utilize the Treasure Bowl back then, birthing numerous wonders and strange treasures, completing the first step of amassing wealth? In a single transaction with the Lingyin Sect, they exchanged nearly a hundred pounds of precious metals—how many human lives did that cost? During that century, how many such transactions did they make? Considering the Treasure Bowl’s greedy appetite, how much mortal essence blood would it need to consume to produce so many treasures for trade?
She could only sigh quietly for the cruelty buried in the truth of history. The primitive accumulation of capital has always been bloody and violent, not unique to the Huangfu family; every family and dynasty’s rise cannot escape such an unfortunate cycle.