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Three days later.

“Senior Lu, fellow Daoists, ahead is the territorial waters governed by our mermen nation,” Yushou An announced on the deck.

They were in the midst of the vast ocean, with no land or islands in sight.

Leading the way was a large ship of the mermen, followed by a warship carrying three thousand strong laborers, both piloted by mermen guardians.

Both ships were mystical treasures, capable of swift sailing.

The Mermaid Nation was located at the bottom of the ocean, more precisely, within a peculiar space at the ocean’s depths.

Yushou An controlled the treasure ship, creating a pale blue light screen around it.

The ship then dove into the water, with the light screen keeping the sea at bay, creating a space around the ship. The dark warship followed suit. These magical vessels were designed for sea, land, and air travel.

As they submerged, the surroundings became darker and deeper.

It took half a day for the mermen’s treasure ship to reach its destination.

During the journey, they encountered several large sea creatures, but none attacked them. In the mermen nation’s territory, marine life had spiritual awareness and could discern friends from foes.

Some playful large creatures approached the ship, only to be gently repelled by Yushou An using the ship’s magical tendrils.

The treasure ship descended slowly, revealing a vast lake at the ocean floor. The lake’s water was a light golden color, distinctly different from the surrounding sea water.

The mermen’s ship glowed, seemingly connecting with the lake, stirring its surface and opening a hidden spatial gateway beneath it.

The two ships sank into a space of interwoven light, as if sailing through a sea of light.

After crossing this sea of light, they entered a new world.

The sky of the mermen nation was also blue, but its hue was much deeper than that of the Archean Eon Realm.

On the deck, Yushou An pointed out to Senior Lu and the other Daoists that they were approaching the territorial waters of the mermen nation.

The mermen nation, situated on the ocean floor within a peculiar space, was governed by nine major families without an emperor. Instead, family heads formed an elder council to decide national affairs.

The current hot topic in the mermen nation was whether to change the ancestral ways and establish communication with land-dwelling races. The debate among the nine elders was intense, with the Yu family, Yu Shouan’s family, still undecided.

Yushou An, having ventured outside and experienced much, now leaned towards the reformists. Using a Sea Spirit Pearl inherited from his ancestors, he had purified his bloodline and risen to prominence in his family.

He planned to persuade his family to support opening up the mermen nation, believing that communication would promote development and help them keep pace with the world.

“Please follow me,” Yushou An said as the treasure ship docked, inviting the guests into his residence.

In the afternoon, Lu Xuan and Cheng Lingzhu strolled through the streets of the mermen nation, observing the similarities between the mermaids and land-dwellers.

The mermaids had developed their own civilization and shared aesthetic tastes with land-based cultivators. They wore clothes made from a special sea plant, emitting a faint glow.

The mermen nation wasn’t located at the sea bottom but in a separate small world. Unlike folklore descriptions, merpeople did not just wear sharkskin pants or shell coverings. They favored bright, glowing spaces and items, which Eastern Sea Sect’s Qianyin Island capitalized on by smuggling refined magical lamps into the mermen nation.

Despite the conservative faction’s awareness of this, they turned a blind eye since they also purchased from Qianyin Island.

As the market for their magical horns dwindled, Qianyin Island’s leader contemplated changing the sect’s name to “Qian Deng IslandO”, reflecting their new focus.

“Choosing to end its isolation and integrate with the cultivation world now is a good opportunity for the nation,” Lu Xuan remarked.

This trip to the Eastern Sea had led him to encounter Yushou An and subsequently the mermen nation, a mysterious race distinct from land-dwellers primarily due to their longevity.

The merpeople lived about twice as long as land races. For instance, while human Mahayana cultivators lived around 5,000 years, mermen of the same realm could live over 10,000 years. However, this extended lifespan comes at the cost of slower cultivation progress.

In contrast, land races might seem to have shorter lifespans, but their cultivation speed compensates for it. For example, a genius like Ji Lingchen could reach the Mahayana realm in a thousand years, while a less talented cultivator like Shen Li could achieve it in two thousand years.

This difference is a result of evolutionary trade-offs. In fierce competition among species, races might opt for faster cultivation at the expense of lifespan to cultivate more generations of powerful beings within the same time frame that an opposing race cultivates just one.

In the past, the Innate Demon Race was long-lived, but during eras of race wars, when human powerhouses were nearing the end of their lifespans, they would raid demon territories, exchanging lives with their equally powerful adversaries. While humans could cultivate a new powerhouses in a thousand years, demons took much longer. This disparity inevitably led to the demons’ decline.

To survive, the Innate Demons started to research methods of sacrificing longevity for faster cultivation, eventually embedding this in their bloodline.

Cultivation was not solely meant for immortality but for survival. To continue their lineage, a long-lived race might transform itself into a regular race.

As for the existence of a race that both cultivates quickly and lives long, such a race could only thrive in a world with unimaginably abundant cultivation resources. In such a world, competition might be less fierce, and races could focus on extending their lifespans again.

This was the essence of cultivation.