A year had passed in the blink of an eye.
The year did not seem that long, but it didn’t seem that short, either.
To both the Blessed Enclave and the Earth Federation, that one year brought about explosive developments.
Due to the exchanges organized by Lu Xuan over the past year, both parties had a lot to gain.
Under pressure from Lu Xuan, the cultivation forces from the Blessed Enclave were forced to hand over several of their precious texts and records, whether they liked it or not.
While none of those texts and records were actually the core pieces, they were nonetheless precious to those from the Earth Federation at that moment.
While Lu Xuan had his own lineage of cultivation methods that encompassed everything from martial arts to spells, yet it was not like they could suit everyone. The cultivators from Earth needed diversity in their cultivation methods.
In that regard, the texts and records from those clans and sects were the crucial pieces for making up for their shortcomings.
After coming into contact with the Earth Federation, those from the Blessed Enclave learned that that the world government was propagating cultivation to the best of their ability. A massive plan of widespread propagation of cultivation among the people was laid out right before their eyes.
Despite those forces having histories dating over 1000 or several thousands of years, they were nonetheless taken aback by the sheer scale of the Earth Federation’s endeavor.
That was because, during the past regimes that came before the Earth Federation, nobody possessed neither the will nor the determination to take on such a task.
Naturally, there was no denying the benefits of such widespread propagation of cultivation. Sects and clans had to depend on sheer luck to find their own people and successors in the past.
The elders often put important matters aside and ventured outside their places just to find disciples suitable for practicing their arts.
It was deemed very efficient for an elder of a cultivation force to have several disciples of their own, yet it was also common for some elders to never find even one who could truly succeed them no matter how much they looked.
After the Earth Federation propagated cultivation far and wide among the people, everything changed. While all of the data would be sent to the officials, the people all got to build their own comprehensive cultivation portfolio that could last a lifetime.
Doing so made locating one’s suitable disciple significantly easier, so much so that even the education methods of regular secular schools were an eye-opener for them.
Such methods enabled the masters to possibly foster hundreds to even 1000 disciples throughout their lives. Those were the results of selecting the best of the best to become their disciples.
Working like that allowed all of the sects and clans to see exponential growth.
In the past, expanding a sect or clan to merely double their current size would’ve required up to 1000 years of work. Now, however, it was possible to achieve such levels of expansion in less than 10 years.
The Earth Federation government also did not forbid its citizens from personally visiting the locations of the cultivation forces to get recruited. Then again, the one that held the best cultivation resources was still the Earth Federation government. The elders and even sectmasters of these forces had to periodically teach in programs organized by the government, after all.
If the sects and clans from the Blessed Enclave were to recruit disciples en masse, they first needed to register with the Earth Federation. Otherwise, they would all be treated as heretic cults without hesitation.
The sects, clans, and even sacred grounds from the Blessed Enclaved had to work with the Earth Federation under such circumstances. None of them dared to stand against its government.
Otherwise, they would have had to simply watch on the sidelines as the others take in a variety of superior geniuses. In that case, none of them could do anything about it.
When the next generation was fostered, these forces would be completely left in the dust.
The wealth and history of sacred grounds were not as significant to these cultivation forces as recruiting disciples at such scales.
A single generation could close the gap that had grown over nearly 1000 years or even several thousand years.
Seemingly rare geniuses would’ve been rendered as abundant as weeds by the roadside. Rarer ones of even higher grades would be available in numbers just about as massive.
There may even be those so rare that only one was seen every 50 to even over 100 years. Even so, many of these kinds of people had yet to be found.
Every single one was a top-notch genius whom everyone raced to get their hands on.
The way things were done now was completely different from how it was back then. In the past, the cultivation forces could simply take anyone they wanted back to their bases or lairs. With the Earth Federation now overseeing everything, the sects and clans had to seek approval from both the Earth Federation and the guardians of these prospective disciples. Abducting potential disciples or otherwise bypassing this rule would only result in altercations with authorities.
During the early days of the exchange between both sides, some from lesser sects and clans went about throwing their weight around and abducting potential disciples without knowing that times had changed.
Fighters from the Heavenly Palace went up to these sects and clans as soon as the parents and guardians reported the disciples missing.
Those lesser sects and clans dismissed the Heavenly Palace at first, kicking out the enforcers right away when they came.
Yun Ling’er, the eldest disciple of the Heavenly Palace, came as soon as she heard the news. She leveled those sects and clans all on her own and rescued the abductees.
The disciples of said forces were punished by the severity of their crimes. Some were assigned to excavate spirit stones, while others were sentenced to labor camps for three to five years.
With such precedence put in place, everybody else from the Blessed Enclave fell in line. They finally understood that the Heavenly Palace was an enforcer agency of the Earth Federation.
The current palace lord of the Heavenly Palace was none other than the one whom they feared most: Lu Xuan.
Everyone had to cast aside their initial thoughts and prejudices regarding recruitment almost immediately.
After all, there were just too many in that world whom they could not afford to mess with.
The first-rate sects, clans, and even sacred grounds were forced to entice the geniuses with all kinds of lucrative deals and conditions just to recruit them into their fold.
They even learned that there were many more of those geniuses that they salivated over. They were surprised to learn that this kind of genius, whom they initially thought would only need one to ensure their lineage would continue propagating and developing, was actually found all over the world.
To put it bluntly, many people were just as powerful as those geniuses.
For a while, the sects, clans, and sacred grounds went about chasing after geniuses like there was no tomorrow.
However, they also quickly realized that no matter how hard they fought at it, they still paled in comparison to the Heavenly Palace in more ways than one.
The general public saw the Heavenly Palace and its backer, the Yunxuan Villa, as godlike entities.
It was especially so in Lu Xuan’s case, who was revered as a living god. Countless religions all over the world were dedicated to worshipping him, even though none of them were formally recognized organizations. As such, they were nothing but cults.
Even so, that still spoke volumes of Lu Xuan’s prestige.
The Heavenly Palace spent all year recruiting newfound geniuses all over the planet who first wanted to further their studies at the Heavenly Palace as soon as they finished their basic cultivation programs. The best among these geniuses were even allowed to further their studies at Yunxuan Villa.
Currently, the most powerful fighters that could be found in the entire Earth Federation were in Yunxuan Villa.
One could imagine just how attractive the Yunxuan Villa was to the seven billion people throughout Earth. The Blessed Enclave never imagine it to reach such a scale.
They had no way of competing against the Yunxuan Villa at all.
