All Heavenly destiny reduced to ashes
Chapter 636 - 11: Bottom-up Perspective

Chapter 636: Chapter 11: Bottom-up Perspective

After some time.

Unaware of all this, An Jing walked out of the examination room with a heavy expression.

"How was it?"

Having just walked out from the exam room himself, Huo Qing asked with a relaxed smile, "Your exam paper should have been harder than mine, but it wasn’t a problem, right?"

"It felt terrible." Ignoring the skeptical look from Huo Qing, An Jing honestly said, "Honestly, I would rather fight a Foundation Establishment cultivation battle; the exam was too difficult, making up logical answers was tough."

"Making up logical answers?"

Huo Qing struggled to understand this: "What exactly was your exam about? Why did you have to make things up?"

An Jing told Huo Qing about his exam questions, which led to great confusion for Huo Qing: "What’s so difficult about that? Just criticize Master Qingye for his overly aggressive tactics, right? When initiating a war, it’s best to be steady and thorough, taking several decades of fighting isn’t unusual. But Master Qingye had a wager agreement with certain forces inside Xuanye City at that time; nobody knew what it entailed, but it must have been quite harsh, thus he decided to achieve results in one stroke, disregarding the opinions of his subordinates and insisting on a hard approach, which resulted in an overextension and collapse of morale."

"All these internal mountains, these contradictions among the parties, they’re just to save face for the real Masters and the Luofu branch they belong to, all superficial causes. Ultimately, it’s all carefully orchestrated by the real Masters. Even if there are some disagreements, hidden compliance, and mutual sabotage, actual internal conflict would still be unlikely."

"What?"

Hearing this, An Jing suddenly felt extremely ignorant; he had never encountered such situations in his past battles: "Aggressive tactics? Criticize Master Qingye? Opinions of subordinates? What are these about?"

He had not really found these thoughts on the Spiritual Network!

"An Jing, you are a genius, not having to worry about food and clothing in the Wilderness, and being a successor, so you might not be clear about the situations here."

And Huo Qing patiently explained, "Consider the huge interests behind a pioneering war. Everyone has to fight for decades to have enough to eat. Master Qingye wanted to finish it in a shot but what about the companies investing in him? What about those groups that hoped Master Qingye could use the war to test new types of Magic Artifacts, elixirs, and talismans? What about those Cave Heaven People who wanted to gradually take over new territories, become new Real Masters, create new leaders, and split off new branches?"

"Even our original gang benefited from the pioneering war as we cleared a lot of old stockpiled munitions! Those old Sword Boxes and bullets, if not used in this opportunity, would all have been wasted later, which would have been an absolute sin."

"If he had the backing of a True Lord, he could have united everyone, but he was just a True Person, and without any compelling moral arguments— aiming to finish the war in a few years, with nobody earning military merits, no subsidies available, and unable to seize much territory for development, even lacking in fame, how could his most supportive people benefit much? How could everyone’s morale not drop?"

This whole conversation silenced An Jing.

He suddenly realized that the war he fought in his previous life and the wars in the Tianyuan Realm, Embracing the Void, seemed completely different: he fought to defend his homeland, for the world to return to peace, ultimately unifying in battle... But here, war wasn’t for a noble cause, but rather tangled with countless interests, compromises between various powers, the result of a massive entity’s will rather than a tide of mainstream thoughts.

He certainly wasn’t wrong.

But also, the seemingly shoddy civilian thoughts in the Tianyuan Realm weren’t wrong.

One should not force these people, who even lacked ’lives’, to exhaust all they had for a pioneering war that was clearly not beneficial nor about defending their homeland.

Talking about grand narratives does not stir any fervor in their hearts, only an utter lack of ripples.

From his high standpoint, he always thinks about solving ’problems’ directly... But before the problems, there are even more ’causes’ that create ’problems’.

"...I still need to think and understand more."

An Jing let out a long sigh.

In the past, he had similar thoughts, but only now, after resolving the urgent survival issues from Embracing the Void, did An Jing have the spare time to calmly contemplate these differences and problems.

While An Jing was silent, Huo Qing pondered the question and gave the final answer: "As for the later discussion, it’s simple as well. Commands are good, but people are needed to execute them. Ignoring everyone’s needs for benefits and blindly pursuing efficiency, forcing everyone to comply with one’s will, will only backfire on oneself."

"The same principle applies to organizations, Formations, and Artifact Refining. Imposing inappropriately high demands on a Formation can cause it to overload and shut down; placing too powerful restrictions on a Magic Artifact can wear it out after a few uses. Rational planning and gradual progress, taking care of everyone’s needs and unifying them towards a common goal, is the proper way to operate."

In the end, Huo Qing arrived at a conclusion An Jing also considered correct, though the process was somewhat overly convoluted.

After listening, An Jing remained silent for a long while before he remarked, "I’ve never seen such things on the Spiritual Network."

To which Huo Qing shook his head, "Hey, there’s none of this stuff on the Spiritual Network. What we spread among the people are some rumors closer to the real truth, and spreading this kind of rumors online would get them taken down and earn a summon from the Sky Surveillance Bureau for a ’tea talk’."

"But the impression of Master Qingye from the Wilderness and the Safe Zones has always been quite terrible, hasn’t it? He deceived a bunch of people from the Wilderness and Safe Zones to pioneer, and in the end, provided neither a stable settlement nor immediate suitable compensation. He kept dangling the carrot, ’conquer certain places and you’ll get your Good Deeds,’ ultimately using people as cannon fodder to reinforce the Formation. This caused subsequent development in Xuanye City to also become difficult; everybody lost trust."

"However, lately everyone seems to have gradually forgotten about this, so Xuanye City is planning to start afresh. Including the policies of opening up free rights for developing the Ancient Immortal Ruins and other cultivation incentives recently, all signs suggest a new wave of pioneering wars is coming."

At this point, Huo Qing provided a very fair evaluation, "An Jing, you’re still too focused on cultivation—but maybe your way of thinking perfectly aligns with what those higher-ups think? Anyway, my perspective as a commoner isn’t likely to score high; they find it too ordinary."

In Huo Qing’s view, An Jing’s answer wasn’t wrong at all. Focused on cultivation, his viewpoint was perhaps high enough to earn high scores.

Anyway, if An Jing didn’t score well, it must be Third Middle School’s fault!

But An Jing understood that his knowledge of the Tianyuan Realm was still too superficial, fearing that he might not perform well in this exam.

"Forget it, let’s have some tea."

Thinking so, An Jing couldn’t help but sigh deeply—his development in the Tianyuan Realm was still a long and challenging road ahead, and he needed to deepen his understanding of the local world to better thrive in this world.

This thought persisted until Nian Quan, who sneaked over, excitedly whispered to the two men in a booth of a roadside tea shop: "The internal scores are out! An Jing, you ranked first in this literary assessment!"

"Principal He also told me that all the directors think highly of you, and as long as your Martial Test scores are somewhat normal, it’s definitely going to be stable!"

"Haha." Huo Qing laughed and cheered, "See, An Jing is number one!"

As for An Jing: "?"