"If I had refused to cooperate with the Celestial Pivot Bureau, what would they have done?"
"I find myself rather curious." Ye Xuan murmured with a faint smile after Su Mengyao's departure.
Was the carcass of a mutant creature really that important to him?
As Su Mengyao had pointed out, with Spiritual Energy concentrations still this low, even if mutant creature meat did contain some of it, the quantity was small and the benefit to his strength would be negligible. So why had Ye Xuan behaved as though he only cared about that meat and was completely indifferent to everything else the Bureau had to offer?
On one level, it was because those benefits genuinely held no appeal for him. On another, he and the Celestial Pivot Bureau needed a reason to maintain some form of connection between them.
Join or cooperate. Those were the two choices Su Mengyao had presented on behalf of the Bureau, and behind the Bureau stood the state.
For cross-dimensional treasure holders, did anyone truly believe the state would simply watch them grow stronger and do nothing?
Preventing it was impossible, but they had to demonstrate goodwill. And by offering goodwill, they could observe who would ignore the gesture.
Ye Xuan could certainly have refused to cooperate with the Celestial Pivot Bureau entirely.
They were just mutant creatures. He could search for and hunt them on his own without any help from the Bureau's information network. But he hadn't refused. He had deliberately chosen that as his condition for cooperation.
Because he understood that "cooperation" represented the greatest concession the state was willing to make toward cross-dimensional treasure holders.
Refusing to join, refusing even to cooperate, being that unwilling to accept the state's goodwill. What would that say about a person's intentions?
Did they want to carve out their own kingdom?
Ye Xuan had no such ambitions, but whether the people above him would suspect him of it depended entirely on what he did. Before he had the strength to simply disregard every threat that existed, accepting goodwill from those who currently held power was the sensible course. And Xia Nation's conditions were remarkably lenient, asking almost nothing of him, only that he accept the gesture.
That they were willing to go this far was something that probably wouldn't have been possible in most other countries. Though of course, there was always the chance Ye Xuan was overthinking it and they had no such calculations in mind at all. Even so, thinking carefully about these things never caused harm.
"The mutant rats at school today were almost certainly the work of a Celestial Pivot Bureau ability user."
"Either a summoning-type ability or a beast-taming one."
"Though the second is unlikely. In the future, as Spiritual Energy grows denser on Blue Star and mutant creatures continue to strengthen, their intelligence may eventually rise to something approaching human level. But right now, that would be impossible."
"Given the level of intelligence those rats demonstrated, they were most likely summoned creatures. And not through ordinary summoning either. There was probably some kind of shared connection, like shared sight or memory between them."
"Otherwise their behaviour would have been inexplicably sophisticated."
After Su Mengyao left, Ye Xuan turned over the information that had been implicit in their conversation.
Regarding the rats at school, though neither of them had brought it up directly, it was beyond doubt that the Celestial Pivot Bureau was behind it. Based on the creatures' intelligence, they were very likely the summoned beings of a summoner-type ability user.
Raw strength aside, being able to summon creatures of that caliber when Spiritual Energy concentrations were still this low was proof that the ability user in question had exceptional talent.
Then again, that was hardly surprising. What kind of ability user with mediocre potential would be admitted to the Celestial Pivot Bureau?
Considering that the target location had been a school and the subjects were students, those rats were probably a deliberate understatement on the summoner's part, not the ceiling of what they could call forth. At full capacity, they likely could have summoned far more powerful mutant creatures.
Only three months had passed since the Spiritual Energy Awakening began, and they had already developed their ability to this level. When the Spiritual Energy Tide Su Mengyao had described finally arrived, their strength would almost certainly surge to a dramatically higher tier, possibly reaching a point where they could compete even with lower-level cross-dimensional treasure holders.
If in the future many cross-dimensional treasure holders found themselves overtaken by gifted native ability users, Ye Xuan wouldn't be at all surprised.
Every world had its own power system, and cross-dimensional treasures were simply derivatives of those systems. Who could guarantee that the potential of Blue Star's own Spiritual Energy system would be inferior to those from other worlds?
But regardless of the power system, the gap between a genius and an ordinary person would always be vast. Among ability users, some began from day one with enormous destructive output, while others showed no improvement at all from the moment their ability first awakened.
It was fortunate that this world had more than just personal abilities. The cross-dimensional treasures from the dimensional invasion gave ordinary people a genuine chance to change their fate. Without them, under such an absolute disparity in power, a world that was already unfair might have become immeasurably more so.
"But none of that has anything to do with me."
"If anything, the more geniuses there are on Blue Star, the more people who obtain cross-dimensional treasures, the better it is for me."
"Standing alone at the very top would get lonely."
"Having rivals and companions alongside you as you grow is something to be grateful for."
For Ye Xuan, who had the Cross-World Fishing System, becoming the strongest was a foregone conclusion. The only uncertainty was when. Walking so far ahead of everyone else that they couldn't even see his shadow had its appeal, but growing powerful alongside a generation full of exceptional people, trading blows, demonstrating what each of them was capable of, and forging strength through real contest was its own kind of joy.
As for worrying whether this era might produce someone who could render him helpless, or someone with a warped enough mindset to try destroying human civilization outright before he had time to develop, he wasn't concerned.
The system had stated at the very beginning that this world's mystery level had only just reached one percent. Every cross-dimensional treasure that had broken through into reality came from worlds with relatively modest power systems.
That meant there was a ceiling to the level of cross-world items that could currently appear on Blue Star. Things from top-tier settings like Shrouding the Heavens, Perfect World, or Honghuang couldn't simply manifest here directly.
Under these conditions, if someone with a system like his was still outpaced by others or lacked the confidence to compete, what would that make him?
Steady people were like still water, calm and unbroken. Geniuses were like rivers in flood, stirring up waves wherever they went. And even an ordinary person, in the quiet stream of their everyday life, couldn't help but wish sometimes that the predictable course of things would become a little more alive.
"After returning from the Outer Circle, Wangquan Baye comprehended the Wangquan Sword Intent in only a matter of months."
"With everything the template gave me, and with the Sword Heart that he lost still intact in me, what reason do I have to fall short of that?"
"And let's not forget, the talent I gained from the template doesn't replace my original talent. The two layer on top of each other. My foundation right now already exceeds Wangquan Baye's own."
"Consuming years of life? Since when was the Sword Intent something so demanding?"
"If the Wangquan Sword Intent required burning one's own life to wield it, then I'll forge a new Sword Intent entirely."
"Whether devil or monster stands in the way, a single strike of the sword will cut it down!"