Zheng Fa waved to Lady Xuanhua, and the two of them headed towards Zheng Fa’s house, one following the other.
As they walked, Zheng Fa suddenly started talking about something:
"When I first joined, I met a fellow disciple surnamed Zhuang."
Lady Xuanhua looked puzzled but continued to listen quietly.
"He once asked me a question."
Back when Zheng Fa had just joined the Jiushan Sect, on his first visit to the Discussion Talisman Pavilion for lessons—Zhuang had treated him differently.
As time passed, he had long since stopped caring about it.
But he still remembered Zhuang’s question.
"He asked me, when Spiritual Energy is abundant, most ordinary people can’t cultivate and don’t enjoy the power and convenience Spiritual Energy offers."
"But when the Spiritual Energy declines, it is mostly them who pay the price."
"So, he wondered... is Spiritual Energy, or should we say cultivators, the poison of the Xuanwei Realm?"
Lady Xuanhua retorted, "How can these be compared? How can a Divinity Transformation cultivator and an ordinary person be the same?"
Zheng Fa nodded gently, seemingly agreeing with her, yet said nothing more.
The two walked in silence toward the courtyard of Zheng Fa’s house.
The villages they passed had street lights shining.
"A street light", which is actually a very cheap "Comprehensive Records."
To put it simply, it’s a signal receiver.
The Jiushan Realm is different from the modern world—it has Spiritual Energy.
Modern nuclear reactors, energy storage and conversion are mostly based on boiling water, and naturally, transmission is through wires.
But Jiushan Realm is different.
The interference from Spiritual Energy in the Jiushan Realm makes the cost of wired transmission too high.
Every five meters requires a set of shielding runes...
The consumption of spiritual materials is excessive.
However, the Jiushan Realm has its unique advantages, and cultivation can easily achieve what modern technology cannot—such as almost loss-free wireless electromagnetic wave transmission.
The more Zheng Fa studied the Communication Talisman, the more magical he found it:
To ensure the stability of information, electromagnetic waves in the Communication Talisman are lossless during transmission...
Thus, the street lights of Jiushan Realm are actually using a variant of Communication Talismans to propagate light.
This way, the street lights on Paradise Island only need to decode the Communication Talisman, and even the light itself is electromagnetic waves produced by Golden Cores...
It means that the street lights of Jiushan Realm not only do not need wires, they don’t even need to emit light themselves, hence lacking even light-emitting components.
These devices, extremely low in cost, also have a very high lifespan.
Zheng Fa walked with Lady Xuanhua to the gate of his courtyard.
Inside the yard, the joyful voice of his little sister Zheng Shan was heard:
"Mother! This light is so bright!"
She was talking about a street light near the little courtyard gate.
Frankly speaking, this was a bit of favoritism...
Or rather, it was the subtle considerations of the disciples during the planning of the street lights.
Street lights are not without cost, hence they are not installed inside every household, but their proximity to someone’s house certainly matters.
There it is, right by the door to the Zheng family’s little courtyard...
The matter was undisputed, no surprises, just a natural occurrence.
Zheng Fa had known this for a long time; he neither stopped it nor wanted to stop it—he cared about everything in the Jiushan Realm, but, naturally, his own family and friends were his top priorities.
Thus he did not argue with Lady Xuanhua.
As the two walked into the courtyard, they saw Mrs. Zheng standing there as well, squinting her eyes and looking towards the street light outside.
The light from the street lamp brightly illuminated Mrs. Zheng’s face.
Years of hard work had left some wrinkles on Mrs. Zheng’s face.
Even though Zheng Fa had always taught her martial arts, Mrs. Zheng’s progress was not fast... It wasn’t just about natural talent but also because the education she, Zheng Fa, and even the younger sister Zheng Shan received from childhood was different.
When facing many things, she would first think that she couldn’t do it, often lacking even curiosity—sometimes, when Zheng Fa discussed cultivation with others, she would consciously leave.
In reality, she felt that cultivation was something far beyond her grasp.
In Zheng Fa’s view... this attitude made it hardest for someone to make progress.
Today, the wrinkles on Mrs. Zheng’s face seemed somewhat relaxed, and her gaze towards the street light carried a rare curiosity.
"Is this... a light?"
"It’s so bright... much brighter than a candle," Mrs. Zheng continued to ask, "How is this made?"
Zheng Fa, not irritated by his mother’s lack of cultivation, gently explained what the Golden Core is and what a simplified Golden Core is.
Mrs. Zheng listened more seriously than usual.
After a long while, Mrs. Zheng nodded slowly.
"Cultivation is a good thing."
Lady Xuanhua was somewhat puzzled, isn’t cultivation widely recognized as beneficial?
Had Zheng Fa’s mother only learned about it today?
Unexpectedly, Mrs. Zheng counted on her fingers and said slowly:
"The grain production has increased from before."
"The vegetables are more abundant than before too."
She looked toward the corner of the courtyard, at the several acres of vegetable garden, smiling.
Then, she looked at the streetlamp in the sky.
"The lights are brighter than before too."
Listening to Mrs. Zheng’s remarks, Zheng Fa didn’t look at Lady Xuanhua, but Lady Xuanhua mysteriously understood something—
Sometimes, these few words from Mrs. Zheng might make Zheng Fa feel it’s worthwhile.
Yet, the goodness in Mrs. Zheng’s eyes, compared to her previous understanding of the benefits of cultivation, was different, and she found it a bit unclear how.
If left to Zheng Fa to explain, it might be—money is good, science is good, but these two, their goodness is not quite the same.
Lady Xuanhua took her leave from the Zheng party of three and walked from Paradise Island towards Ten Thousand Immortals Island.
Somehow, she started noticing things she hadn’t paid attention to before—
Several farmers, after a day’s hard work, were sitting under the light with their stools, enjoying rare leisure time.
A seemingly impoverished young man stood under a streetlamp, reciting softly from a textbook from school.
The fields too had changed, some experimental fields had lights installed, and several disciples of agriculture stood among them, seemingly recording something:
Lady Xuanhua knew that this was a new project set up by Zheng Fa, apparently to explore the effects of light on the various crops of Jiushan Realm, hoping to further increase the grain production of the Jiushan Realm.
Walking along, she suddenly understood why Zheng Fa had brought up Zhuang:
In facing the question from Zhuang, her answer had been a rebuttal.
But Zheng Fa’s answer was all these—
Spiritual Energy, cultivators, in the Xuanwei Realm, may be the source of suffering for ordinary people.
But it’s different in the Jiushan Realm.
She paused briefly, looking in the direction of Zheng Fa’s home, not knowing which answer is more realistic, but she knew which one could persuade the cultivator named Zhuang more.
The simplified Golden Core changed not just the face of Paradise Island but also Jingkai Island.
Compared to the simplistic streetlights of Paradise Island, the changes in Jingkai Island were more dramatic—many stores’ façades became colorful and flashy, and the signs even more radiant.
The strategic lighting in the shops cast spotlights on the merchandise, causing the cultivators who visited for the first time to frequently stop in their tracks, unable to resist opening their storage bags.
Indeed, such "special effects" were not rare in the stores of some big sects.
But nowhere was it like Jingkai Island, where even the shops opened by ordinary people could be so beautifully refined; hundreds of stores together made the night sky much gentler, dazzling those cultivators who had never seen such a scene, making their eyes inadequate.
Jingkai Island has been burgeoning these days:
For those in business, stability is the most desired... Now that the Xuanwei Realm is gradually falling into chaos, and news of the Demon Ancestor’s descent spreading everywhere, creating panic, the current stability of the Jiushan Realm naturally seemed precious.
On the other hand, the reputation of the outer elixir continued to rise, particularly some Foundation Establishment cultivators were even willing to spend all their wealth to buy one to enhance their strength.
Now the Jiushan Sect even had to limit the sale of outer elixir—about one a month.
People on Jingkai Island walk amid flowing lights and shadows, under these increasingly tense situations in the Xuanwei Realm, yet they feel an atmosphere of prosperity not seen in a long time.
"Is this the Jiushan Sect?"
A woman, enthusiastic, looked around and suddenly asked the man beside her.
"Why would you ever betray such a sect?" The woman widened her eyes, "Are you tired of living comfortably?"
Chen Ting twitched the corner of his mouth, looking at the bright lights of Jingkai Island, his expression seemed like from another lifetime—
When I fled from Jiushan Sect, it didn’t look at all!