Dan Heng had now returned to his normal appearance.
He could finally put aside the troubles of the Xianzhou, at least for a little while.
"Dan Heng, have we... have we resolved the crisis? I feel like I didn't do anything at all!"
March 7th felt like she had just been along for the ride.
Her only contribution was to lead the Xianzhou's General to the Astral Express to wake up Dan Heng, then ask the High Elder to return and open a seal that turned out to be useless.
It was truly absurd. March 7th had never experienced such a nonsensical adventure in her life.
Stelle didn't know what Dan Shu's final choice was, nor did she know if the future of the Xianzhou would become the scene of a faith-based struggle that Noldrei had described.
But today, she had witnessed a breathtakingly cool scene.
Who would have thought that such a thing could really happen? Everyone was at their wit's end, and then a big brother comes out, says a few words, and the big boss just accepts what he says.
What kind of scene was this? This unexpected method of conflict made Stelle grow up a little.
Stelle said to March 7th with a serious expression, "Little March, I have a new idea! I've decided, I'm going to become someone like Noldrei. Think about it, all those people are fighting for their own interests and ideals, whatever they may be..."
"And then, I just calmly walk out and say to everyone, 'Give me some face'."
"And then they actually stop fighting, and I solve the conflict by pointing out the way. Little March, that's just too cool!"
Mr. Yang pushed up his glasses, looking at the unconscious and unfortunate Yanqing in the distance.
The thought that this young man had given his all and still couldn't stop Noldrei from entering gave him a good idea of Noldrei's power level.
Especially since Yanqing hadn't been seriously injured, which meant that Noldrei's combat prowess completely crushed this young man from the Luofu.
And this young man was the personal disciple of the Xianzhou's General.
"Stelle, my advice is that you'd best not try to learn from him. He wasn't using 'face,' he was clearly leveraging the power of faith behind the Aeons."
Mr. Yang had already gleaned some understanding of the Xianzhou's conflict from the conversation between Noldrei and Dan Shu.
This conflict had nothing to do with long life or not. It was purely a massive conflict born from the twisted entanglement of two different powers.
Long life was never the most important thing here, not even the Ambrosial Arbor.
What was important was that long life could solve the suffering of most people. But when faced with the troubles brought by long life, the Xianzhou people had played a game of three steps forward, two steps back, bringing people back to their original social groups.
The result was that while the Xianzhou people seemed to have solved a lot of suffering with long life, most of that suffering had resurfaced due to the regression of their social state.
The leaders of the Xianzhou had discovered that while they couldn't solve the conflicts brought by the long-life Xianzhou created by Yaoshi, they could solve the troubles brought by the Xianzhou people who needed Yaoshi's blessings by collectively regressing.
This was a completely head-on conflict of interest. Faith was just a battle skin in this conflict.
This was also an internal civilizational conflict that the Nameless of the Astral Express could not easily intervene in with their own values.
Stelle shook her head. "But I think that person is really amazing. With just a few words, he changed that Dan Shu's actions. You see, the Xianzhou's General and the Master Diviner of the Divination Commission couldn't do it, but he solved it with ease."
Mr. Yang sighed. "That's because that person easily grasped the points of conflict between them. It's like a domino effect; if you find the key piece, a gentle push is all it takes to change the path. And for people, the hardest part is accurately finding that key point of conflict."
He looked up in the direction where the Ambrosial Arbor had been. It had disappeared at some point.
The surrounding terrain had stabilized into a new state, and the areas where the roots had been drawn out were now filled with the water of the Fyxestroll Garden.
Elysia pulled Noldrei's arm and pointed in the direction where the Arbor had been. "Where's Dan Shu? Is she dead now?"
Noldrei shook his head. "I don't know either. I can't possibly know more about the Ambrosial Arbor than Dan Shu does. There are too many things tied to the power of the Abundance in there. I'd say it's similar to the tertiary materialization of Imaginary Energy. From what I've read in the archives of the Alchemy Commission, I don't think the Xianzhou people themselves even know what other changes there are. It's like..."
Noldrei nodded in realization. "It's like in those wuxia novels where they don't know how a divine skill works, but they somehow manage to master it anyway."
Elysia almost couldn't suppress a smile at this comment.
With things having come to this, she felt that Noldrei had gotten too deeply involved in the Xianzhou and shouldn't continue to be influenced by these Aeon believers.
And Elysia was sure that what she had seen wasn't an illusion.
Just now, in front of Dan Shu, Fu Xuan had undoubtedly stood by Noldrei's side, even sharing the same position as him.
Her body language even expressed a strange kind of dependence.
Fu Xuan's intimate attitude would inevitably lead to more actions from Noldrei, and Elysia didn't want any more trouble like this.
"I say, big boss... you can't just throw a beautiful girl like me into such a dangerous job next time. If something really happened, someone might have taken it out on me. You wouldn't want Elysia to have just recovered from her memory form, only to meet a fragrant, jade-like end, would you?"
Perhaps it was Elysia and Noldrei's overly intimate actions that attracted the attention of others.
Fu Xuan, who had been explaining the situation to Qingque, had at some point quietly reappeared by Noldrei's side.
"Noldrei, what exactly are you planning?! Are you really just trying to make me the Master of the Alchemy Commission? I no longer believe you would do something so simple!"
Fu Xuan was very dissatisfied with Noldrei's actions. It was precisely because she had discovered that Noldrei had always kept himself out of things that she was so genuinely unhappy.
Noldrei looked at Fu Xuan and asked curiously, "Why haven't you used your divination ability to do a reading? Is it because it's not accurate anymore? Or is it because you can't divine my next move?"
Fu Xuan was also unsure. She didn't dare to be certain of her own divinations.
This time, she was really worried that her divination would be too accurate. If she divined an outcome she didn't want, wouldn't that mean that things would definitely develop that way?
Noldrei unexpectedly saw a hint of hesitation in Fu Xuan's eyes. It seemed she was beginning to waver in her own divinations.