As long as they pay off the other four sects and give up some benefits, such as the control over the rank 3 realms for harvesting, they will be able to maintain control over their rank 4 realm, and their status as a sect in this part of the world will be maintained.
With enough time, the Blood Skull will be able to produce more fifth mortal coil cultivators. After all, they have many talented golden core cultivators.
But if they can't keep the other sects from attacking them or if they also lose all their golden core cultivators, then the fate of the Blood Skull sect will be set.
This requirement to fall is clear to him. But he doesn't see how it will happen since the sect already has many cultivators at the sixth mortal coil.
He just doesn't see how the sect will lose everyone at the sixth, fifth, and fourth mortal coils. It is not that he doesn't think thay it is possible. But he believes thay is is going to be difficult for it to happen.
For example, the Blood Skull sect could lose its strongest cultivators if they join the fight to vie for the rank 6 secret realm that the Red and Blue Fire sect is vacating. But he doesn't believe that the sect will also lose the people in the fourth mortal coil because those people wouldn't join the fight at all.
Yet, as difficult as he thinks it is, the Red and Blue Fire sect managed to do something like that. They lost their rank 7 manpower if they had it. But instead of replacing it, they also lost all of their rank 6 combat power.
These series of losses and incompetence finally led to the situation where the Red and Blue Fire sects had to invade the Five Veins Region and attack the Purple Flower sect.
This made Arthur sigh and say, "This is a war that no one wanted or wished for. Not even the invadaers are happy about it." ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ NoveI[F]ire.net
He doesn't believe that the Red and Blue Fire sect are looking forward to the war. After all, their victory in the war will only confirm their fall from grace.
Unfortunately, both the attackers and the defenders have to do what they don't want to do in order to avoid a worse situation.
Meanwhile, there are people watching both sides, waiting for them to mess up so that they can take advantage of them.
All of these made Arthur sigh even more. Then he shook his head and switched his attention to something else that he learned from the memory crystal. This was about the Ethera tree.
It was mentioned in the memory crystal many times about how the Ethera tree was the source of all life and mana. This is not a matter that he wants to dispute.
He is sure that the many powerful and smart people of this world have a lot of reasons and evidence for believing that the Ethera tree is responsible for all life in the world.
If he had read the origin of life story before he entered the Blood Skull sect or even before he participated in the Sect Regional Examination and seen the level of technology that this world is capable of, he would have doubted the contents of the memory.
What's more, the people of this world are not religious. So he can't say that what they believe in is based on nonexistent facts.
He truly has no reason to doubt the story about the origin of life in this world. But if what they say is true, it would mean that the Ethera tree is far more powerful than he thought.
He thought to himself in jest, "I mean, the Ethera tree has to be very powerful, or a powerful cultivator would have captured it, enslaved it, or scrapped it for materials by now."
"But if the Ethera tree is powerful enough to create life, how did life appear on earth? Was it through something like the Ethera tree? If so, why was there no mana on earth? Or was there mana there, but the majority of the world didn't notice it?"
After asking all of those questions, he stopped midair and asked himself, "Where even is Earth relative to the world of Ethera?"
He has many questions about the planet that he lived his last life on. It should exist somewhere, and according to the memory crystal, the world of Ethera is not the only one in existence.
The memory crystal has enlightened him about the world, but it has also given him a lot of questions to ask. To be fair, it wasn't the memory crystal that made him curious about the location of Earth. He has always been curious about that.
But it is the memory crystal that made him aware of an existence that created life in a world. It is also the memory crystal that has made him wonder how life is created and if he will be capable of such a thing in the future.
So with all of the questions came the motivation to find answers. It turned out that the memory crystal had also given him things to discover and the motivation to grow stronger to find the answers that he wanted.
With this, he smiled to himself. Then he continued on his way to his apartment.
He soon reached the place he had been calling his home for more than 10 years. He looked around with nostalgia for a while.
Then he shouted to the sleeping dog, "Wake up. It is time to move."
Roar stood up from his bed and asked with slight hope, "Where are we going?"
Arthur grinned at him and said, "You know where. Prepare yourself."
His reply made Roar groan and say, "It seems this is the day that I face my fears."
Arthur just laughed and went ahead to pack his things. As he packed, he dipped his divine sense into the third memory crystal that he had received.