"By the way, there is one thing that I am confused about," Gravis said.
"Yes?" Joyce asked.
"You saw that I had had a Will-Aura in the Body Tempering Realm, so why did you help me? You should've known about the Heaven Sect's ways," Gravis asked.
Joyce sighed. "Well, to be honest, I never expected you to pay me back."
Gravis lifted an eyebrow. "You didn't?"
Joyce shook her head. "I was sure that the Heaven Sect would kill you. The only reason I helped you was that I felt bad for you. Such a fate seemed too tragic in my eyes. But hey, good thing it didn't come true!"
Gravis smiled. "It sure is. So, anyway, the whole resource war thing is a no-go?" he asked.
Joyce showed an uncomfortable look. "Well, not completely."
"How come? Your teacher said that you never intended to partake in the war this year," Gravis asked.
"It's not that I decided against it, but that my father and teacher decided against it," Joyce explained. "My will is already very powerful, and the resource war has a 90% death-rate. They said that the risk is too high for me. If I had a weaker Will-Aura, they would've let me go, but my will is already powerful enough. Only a little bit more, and my will would be powerful enough to ascend. They said that I don't need to go through such a risky adventure. Safety is more important."
Gravis lifted a brow. "Depends on what your goal is."
Joyce looked with confusion at Gravis. "Obviously, my goal is to become powerful."
"Yeah, but how powerful exactly?" Gravis asked.
Joyce furrowed her brows. She hadn't thought about this before. The highest power that everyone in this lower world knew was the power of an ascender. They knew nothing about the path after that, so they also couldn't imagine how it would be in the higher worlds. Many people even believed that ascenders would ascend to the kingdom of God and live forever while watching over this world.
"Could you tell me more about higher worlds?" Joyce asked.
Gravis shrugged. "Sure. The world that ascenders go to is basically the same as this one, but with a higher power ceiling. Imagine an even lower world where there are so few resources that people would take over 50 years to reach the Magic Gathering Realm. Not many people are able to reach that Realm in that world due to the resources, but when they do, they appear in this world, as Magic Gathering Realm cultivators."
"Basically, as soon as you ascend to the next world, you can't be considered as being at the bottom, but you also can't be considered to be powerful. You basically get flung into a world while being at the lower-middle of the world's power," Gravis explained.
Joyce looked at the floor in uncertainty. "So, the higher world is no different from our world? There are still fights for resources and life and death tempering?"
Gravis nodded. "Exactly. The only difference is that you live longer and see a bigger mountain and higher Heaven in front of you. It's like when the strongest person of an isolated village goes to a town for the first time, thinking that they are mighty only to be beaten up by basic guards."
Joyce sighed. "And every other person in your Realm has also managed to ascend from their world, and therefore, could all be considered geniuses."
Gravis nodded. "Yes. The higher world only gives you the opportunity to see a new goal for your power. It isn't easier or more peaceful, but only crueler. Imagine the destruction that two fighting people at the Unity Realm would cause to the surroundings. The mortals have it even worse in the higher world than here since any random fight in their vicinity could annihilate them."
Joyce wasn't happy right now. She had thought that the next world would be kinder. After all, everyone had already reached the Unity Realm, so why would there even be a reason for fighting? Yet, she hadn't thought about the fact that there could be more Realms after the Unity Realm.
"Why does the world have to be so cruel?" Joyce asked herself more than Gravis.
"Because Heaven wants Energy," Gravis said.
Joyce was a little taken aback. "Heaven wants Energy?"
Gravis nodded. "I don't know the specifics, and I can't tell you everything I know about this, but Heaven wants powerful humans. The more powerful the human, the better."
Joyce sighed. "Is there ever an end to that?"
"Yes," Gravis said, surprising Joyce again. She hadn't expected that Gravis had an answer to such a profound and mystical question. "There is the highest world with the highest Heaven that has created every other world. If you manage to reach the peak there, only two beings are more powerful than you, and both of them don't care about you and basically let you do what you want."
Joyce looked with widely opened eyes at Gravis. She was absorbing the knowledge like a dry sponge. To her, it felt like the secrets of the universe were revealed before her eyes. "Two beings?"
Gravis nodded. "One is the highest Heaven, and the other is the Opposer, the strongest human who has the same power as the highest Heaven."
Joyce looked with wonder at Gravis. "A human with power equal to the highest Heaven? Do these two beings rule over the highest world?" She asked.
Gravis laughed dryly. "The opposite. They absolutely despise each other and fight regularly, but only the weak suffer from these fights as far as I know. The peak powers rarely get involved. There are exceptions, of course, for example, when Heaven schemes against the Opposer directly, but as far as I heard, those situations only happen, at most, every couple of million years, and the last one only happened about two years ago."
Joyce furrowed her brows. "How do you know that? You've been here for three years, so how could you know what happened two years ago?"
Gravis noticed that he forgot to explain something. "Oh, it's two years in the time of my homeworld. There is a huge time dilation between my homeworld and this world. While I have stayed three years in this world, only about a day has passed in my homeworld. If I were to calculate according to the time of this world, the incident happened about two thousand years ago."
Joyce couldn't completely wrap her head around these numbers. Millions of years between fights? It was possible to live for that long? Did their world even exist for a million years? She had no idea! No one knew how old the world was.
"So, how strong do you want to become?" Gravis asked again. "If you only want to have a nice life, I would suggest to stop cultivating at the Tree Stage. Your will is already powerful enough to reach that. Like this, you only need to wait to become one of the strongest people in this world. You can live in relative freedom and have enough power to protect those dear to you. Because, if you ascend, you are weak again, and your survival can be decided by thousands or millions of cultivators more powerful than you."
Joyce remained quiet as she thought about this. This was a serious choice, and she finally had enough knowledge to make an informed decision. Gravis told her about how her journey would eventually go in the higher world and what would await her. If she weren't ready to go through the same pain she had felt until now for many more times, it would be better for her to stop cultivating now.
Joyce thought for a full minute about her decision while Gravis remained silent.
"I can't stop now," Joyce said with motivation. "My brothers and sisters gave their lives to pave my path forward, and no matter how difficult it will become, I must continue, until the bitter end." Joyce took a shaky breath. "Even if I will be in pain for thousands of years."
Gravis smirked. "Alright, then you must never stop going forward. Everyone else in the lower worlds only sees the ascension and only temper themselves up to that point. You have the advantage of knowledge, so you know that any tempering you do now won't go to waste. Never stop tempering, and always remain ahead of the curve. Only like this can you become powerful."
Joyce heard this and wholeheartedly agreed. "Yes!"
"We will partake in the resource war, no matter what my teacher or father say!"
