Am I the only one who didn't ascend?

Chapter 540 Losing control
The weight of the Lord of Heaven left Wang Luo speechless for a long time.

"…So, how bad is the situation now? Do you two, who have been enemies for thousands of years, need to put aside your grudges?"

"very bad."

The Lord of Heaven did not shy away from this.

"In theory, replacing is a method of removing the firewood from the bottom of the pot. It is not necessary to cultivate the replica to its original height. As long as it can shake its uniqueness as an immortal, it is fatal enough. And unlike my sister's fabrication of you, I don't need to consider the personal safety of the replica. It is best if the replica and the original body perish together at the moment of the conflict of uniqueness. Based on the same theory, perish together is the result that should be. But unfortunately, reality does not respect the theory."

Wang Luo was silent for a while, and made the worst guess: "The difficulty of imitating a sincere ancestor is at least ten million times that of imitating me. Even if you have the cultivation of a golden immortal, you must mobilize the resources of the entire heaven to start. And once the plan is launched, there is no turning back. Even if the start is not good, you can only ignore the sunk costs and continue to invest, so that the imitation body will eventually expand and become completely uncontrollable..."

The Lord of Heaven smiled bitterly: "Yes... I, the Lord of Heaven, am not like Chicheng. I can be said to be born with defects. From the moment I inherited the immortal law and took the throne, I had to compete with the immortals. And it is not easy to convince those old guys who are rotten in their brains and wish to rot in the deep cave to come out and confront Chicheng. I have to paint a huge cake for them and promise them huge profits with almost no risk..."

Wang Luo couldn't help but interrupt: "Wu Tong exiled the immortal, do they believe this kind of nonsense?"

The Lord of Heaven said: "All classic immortals - that is, immortals who ascended without the opening of the immortal gate, are top masters of wishful thinking. Without enough wishful thinking, it is impossible to condense one's own immortal path. Therefore, it is easier to carry out this kind of financial scam in the immortal world. I just promised a future of rebuilding the immortal world, and there will be no leader among the immortals, and everyone will be their own master. Half of the old Zongzi crawled out of the deep cave. Later, I didn't even need to write a feasibility report for this matter. They would fill in the gaps in their minds and cheer for me. Ha, it was a relaxing and fun time, but it was a pity that the good times didn't last long... If the lie is told for too long, people will never wake up again."

After a pause, the Lord of Heaven recounted those not-so-good years.

"I mentioned before that Jingzhou had a brief period of glory. At that time, the Golden Immortals of the Xi and Zhen families had experienced the fall of the Bai family and were quite determined to govern the country. They were also willing to support me, a junior, to ascend to the top. We cooperated happily, and Jingzhou was once prosperous... But later, just when it was flourishing, Jingzhou experienced a painful setback. Many things took a sharp turn for the worse."

"A tragic setback?"

The Lord of Heaven smiled bitterly and revealed his scars. He said, "My senior sister started the plan to replace me, which forced me to retreat to the cave for several years, busy with reconciling the uniqueness and not being able to move. As a result, Heaven was without a master, and the Golden Immortals of the Xi and Zhen families could only temporarily perform their duties... and that's how the problem came. When I was the middle check and balance mediator, the two Golden Immortals worked hard and were impeccable. However, once there was no check and balance and they had to work together to share the huge power, many frictions immediately arose, and they were even more quarrelsome in private. In fact, they were willing to support me in the first place because they expected that after losing the Bai family, the two families would not be able to work together due to historical factors. But no matter what, the final result was very bad. During the years when I was in seclusion, the two families lost the rationality that the helmsman should have because of the struggle for power and profit, and kept accelerating the control of the huge Jingzhou. In the end, they launched a headless and brainless full-scale attack on the Immortal Alliance without sufficient preparation."

Wang Luo immediately recalled the relevant records in the textbook...

"Great victory in Nanxiang?"

"Yes, according to the historical records of the Immortal Alliance, it should be the Nanxiang Victory. Of course, we have a different version of it here. In short, that battle caused Jingzhou to shed unimaginable blood, which further led to the desolation of the entire state. Such a heavy price only resulted in the devastation of Nanxiang, and also left Lu Zhiyao with an extremely rich political legacy in the last years of her rule."

Wang Luo couldn't help but nodded.

As the "honorable lord" jointly promoted by the Immortal Alliance, Lu Zhiyao has been in a superior position for hundreds of years. However, given her personality and skills, it is self-evident that she has accumulated political enemies and hidden dangers over the past few hundred years. She later retired, and many historians analyzed that she retired at the right time in order to seek a good end. However, this argument cannot become the mainstream opinion in the academic community. The main reason is that before she retired, she led the Immortal Alliance to a great victory that was famous for a thousand years. In Nanxiang, the Immortal Alliance buried more than ten young true immortals and a hundred times more wild demons and beasts. The reputation of this battle is enough for her to still be respected as the honorable lord five hundred years later. It is indeed a generous gift from Jingzhou.

"In that battle, the Celestial Court lost ten times as much as the Immortal Alliance won. The new generation of Jingzhou, born in the years of advancement, suffered heavy casualties, and those who survived lived in the shadows for the rest of their lives... There was a kid with a cultivation talent comparable to you and me, who was expected to ascend to the Golden Immortal realm within two hundred years, but after that battle, he wasted five hundred years and returned to dust as a mortal. And someone must take responsibility for such a disastrous defeat."

Wang Luo immediately understood: "No wonder you and Xi Zhen's families have become mortal enemies."

The Lord of Heaven smiled and said, "Yes, our three families can actually share the joys but not the hardships. When Jingzhou was thriving, we could smile and hug each other, bragging about how awesome our brothers were. But when someone caused a terrible disaster and had to take the blame, they would not even recognize their own parents. Although I was injured and had to retreat at the time, and had almost nothing to do with the whole thing, I was still caught and criticized, saying that I neglected my duties. Some people even accused Lu Zhiyao and I of being enemies in name only, but in fact we rekindled our old feelings and cooperated with each other to bring down Heaven... To be honest, when Senior Sister replaced me, I had a chance to suppress it on my own. After being disturbed like that, my future was almost cut off."

After hearing this, Wang Luo could naturally imagine what would happen next.

The game ended in a complete loss for Jingzhou as all three sides suffered losses.

"Yes, that is truly my lifelong regret... I was in such a bad condition at the time, and those two people took away too much power. I really couldn't suppress the situation in a short period of time, so in the end, all three parties suffered losses. If the three parties each took responsibility, it would be equivalent to no one taking responsibility. No one took up the responsibility completely, so a tragedy that drained all the blood of Jingzhou ended up with nothing. And this was an unspeakable betrayal for the immortals in the heavenly court, and Jingzhou was almost torn apart because of it."

Wang Luo then guessed: "Then you took advantage of the situation and launched the plan to re-establish the Heavenly Venerable?" "Yes." The Lord of Heaven said, "That was the only way to save the situation, or to delay the situation, in the face of defeat. Since everyone is extremely disappointed with the current Lord of Heaven and the two major families, then... let the dead be resurrected. For the immortals at that time, there was no one else in the world who could be the Lord of Heaven. Even if they fabricated a replica of Chicheng, it should be better than me, a young man who failed at the critical moment, and even better than a group of corrupt and selfish Golden Immortals from aristocratic families. And the worst result, at least we can replace Taixu Tianzun of the Immortal Alliance... So an almost absurd plan to resurrect the dead was accomplished."

After a sigh, the Lord of Heaven said, "It is human nature. When people are defeated, they will instinctively seek a way to get out of this mess. Moreover, who among us who practice the way of immortals does not have great respect for Chi Cheng? He is certainly the culprit that caused the fall of Heaven, but compared to this group of useless upper-level golden immortals today, most people would rather accompany Chi Cheng to fall again. In short, after I proposed the plan, Jingzhou regained its vitality for a while. The immortals gathered together again, looted all the heritage in the cave, and even sacrificed the immortal charm of many true immortals, and finally condensed together into the prototype of Tianzun. From that moment on, Heaven was completely hopeless."

Wang Luo said: "There is no way back, and there is not even the possibility of slowing down."

"Well, since then, the offensive and defensive situation of the Heaven's Left and Right has been completely reversed. Lu Zhiyao has seen through the strengths and weaknesses of the Heavenly Court. Although she has retired, the Immortal Alliance has been expanding the land more frequently and even radically since then. As long as it does not affect the political structure of the Immortal Alliance itself and does not make the Immortal Alliance lose control, they will boldly expand the land and erode the occupied areas of the Heavenly Court. The Heavenly Court is almost helpless in this regard... Although we have drawn forces to resist every time, it has been in vain every time. So in the end, no True Immortal was willing to go down in person, and they all chose some ignorant immortal servants and a group of brainless beasts to die. And every failure will make the remaining people put more hope on the Heavenly Venerable."

Wang Luo said: "And Tianzun completely lost control from that moment on."

"Yes, Jingzhou is out of control, how can Tianzun be immune? You can see that Jingzhou today is not desolate, but it is also 'ordinary'. Thousands of years after the catastrophe, the Immortal Alliance has flourished, but what about the Heavenly Court? Everything in the Heavenly Court is dedicated to the high and mighty Immortal Ancestor. Many times, people would rather eat less, use less, and practice more slowly, but they would also dedicate the only immortal treasures they have to Tianzun."

Hearing this, Wang Luo couldn't help but ask, "And you should also be adding fuel to the fire, right?"

"It's hard to get off the tiger, brother." The Lord of the Heavenly Court sighed, "The Tianzun Plan has absorbed too many resources, but it has not yet given a clear result. People can certainly deceive themselves and say that everything will be fine when the Tianzun is perfected in a few years... But the contradictions in reality still need a solution. And how can I explain it? Say that the plan to imitate the Tianzun was not perfect at the beginning, and Jingzhou Tianzun may not be able to perfectly replace it? By the way, complain that during the construction of the Tianzun, many Golden Immortal families were corrupt and illegal? I have no complaints and can only explain that everything is because of the cunning of the Heavenly Court. The Tianzun there has developed faster and suppressed the Tianzun on our side. And to reach a better tomorrow, we must double our bets and let Jingzhou Tianzun overwhelm Taixu Tianzun. At this point, no matter how perfect the original plan is, the result is destined to be imperfect. Probably when the Immortal Venerable Plan advances to a hundred years, it will be almost impossible to replace it, because I found that the so-called uniqueness of the true immortal is invalid for Chicheng..."

"invalid!?"

"The specific principle is very complicated. I can explain it to you slowly later, but the actual situation is like this..."

Wang Luo was silent for a long time, then asked, "So, this is the legacy you are going to leave to me? A group of crazy believers and a god on the verge of losing control?"

"Haha, good question! But don't be so pessimistic. This is the heaven after all, so it still has a lot of history."

"Have you and Lu Zhiyao already reached a tacit understanding on the issue of Tianzun?"

The Lord of Heaven shook his head and said, "It can't be said that we have a tacit understanding, but obviously we have considered the same problem. That is, how to cook the dog after the rabbit dies. Putting aside the case that was almost out of control on my side, even if we only talk about Taixu Tianzun, he is actually facing the same problem. Tianzun is a stubborn person and will never learn to turn around in his life, so when using him to attack and defeat the enemy, it can be said that he is always successful, but if there is no enemy to defeat, you have to be careful of backlash. Not to mention making peace with the enemy. For Lu Zhiyao and me, the relationship between the left and right of heaven has never been a relationship where one of us must die. But for Tianzun, there is no room for compromise in the dispute over the orthodoxy. Ha, you might as well recall it carefully, and you should know that what I said is true."

When Wang Luo heard this, some memories of the Lingshan period emerged in his mind.

I vaguely remember that there was an elder on Lingshan Mountain who loved to study ancient history, and then simplified it into vivid and interesting fairy tales, and told them to the young descendants of Lingshan Mountain. It is said that he intended to enter Taoism with fairy tales and fables, but unfortunately he died before ascending because the story was not completed... He once mentioned that although the immortal ancestor Chicheng left behind stories about his great deeds in creating the world and his benevolent heart in supporting his fellow Taoists in later generations, what really made him the supreme immortal ancestor was his absolute ruthlessness towards heretics.

Before the Immortal Ancestor Chicheng, there were hundreds of thousands of Daos contending in the vast land, but after Chicheng, all things were headed by humans, and the Dao was respected by the Immortal Dao. Those who did not bow down, or even if they bowed down, seemed too threatening, were all completely wiped out from the long river of history by the Immortal Ancestor using various means.

Although I know that those memories only came from Lu Zhiyao's indoctrination... but at this moment they do correspond to the statement of the Lord of Heaven.

The Immortal Ancestor Chicheng is not a person who is tolerant enough towards heretics.

Therefore, when the two Heavenly Lords on the left and right of Heaven are unable to cancel each other out...the peaceful reunification of the two lands becomes a pipe dream.

"So, what do you want me to do? Or rather, what can I do?"

The Lord of Heaven said: "Of course there is something you can do, otherwise Lu Zhiyao and I would not have taken the trouble to bring you here. However, there is no rush. Let's talk here for a long time, and then come to my house for a simple meal and a few drinks. You still have a long time here..."

(End of this chapter)