"You really know nothing… What was your name again?"

As soon as I asked this question that I could finally use to end this debate and move on, Celleria's face turned ugly, with her eyes filling with ridicule.

"Bart Katenari, what about it?"

Since this name had any meaning only all the way back in the first cultivation area where my journey started, there was no point in hiding it. After all, even if it wasn't the maiden name of Eve's mother, I could guess that her father never used the same name for all the families that he would make if Celleria's words were true.

"What a cute, little snowflake you are, when compared to the vast and dangerous world out there… Like I said… You know nothing, Bart snowflake…"

Shaking her head, I could see how the expression of contempt disappeared from her face, replaced by one of extreme sadness and curiosity alike.

"To answer your question… I can do it with just a single word. Everything."

As if the entire world shattered upon me…. not. I was already kind of expecting this kind of answer. Even though I never followed the normal cultivation route as any other citizen of this world would, I knew more than enough to project how others were growing in strength.

And just like the blood essence that was beneficial even for me back in the arena city, not to speak about spiritual stones, so any other cultivator would kill for the chance of obtaining a huge amount of it. After all, what was the point of wasting years to cultivate the energy out of thin air into a form that would be dense enough to get adapted to one's dantian, if one could get exactly the same effect by consuming specific nourishing drinks or sapping the energy from the stones?

Yet as one would leave the basic, mortal realm of cultivation behind, all the usability of those resources would dimmish at a rate that was just depressing. No matter how much of a great wealth one amassed during his first stage of cultivation, by going with the rational ratios that I could come up with after simple round of math, an overlord possessing an entire country worth of wealth under his name would be just above your average beggar upon stepping into Saint realm!

Exactly the same thing happened upon one's advancement to the sage stage. I could already tell that the stuff that I used in the period between my last system upgrade and my current situation, would be simply meaningless.

All the herbs that I attempted to cultivate in my stronghold… I could even go as far as to make an assumption that all the energy that I could drain from the stronghold core, something that before was enough to shatter the gates of my bottleneck just by itself, now, if drained completely, would have as much of an effect as drinking an energy drink would have on a normal human!

"So you want me to believe that literally every person that wishes to advance past sage's realm, is going around the world, fucking with as many people as they can only to cultivate their children and drain their offspring blood for the sake of one's own strength? As much as it feels real when compared to other types of atrocities that human commit on their quest to power, I simply can't believe this kind of crap!"

As much as it would be fitting of the human atrocious nature, it wasn't something that I was willing to accept. Even if some people tried to use their own damned children for their own benefit, I couldn't believe that everyone who wished to ascend or even to reach the stage of grand sage, would go so far!

"Of course it's not like that! It's just the easiest, albeit the most time inefficient way to go about it. Others just kill their fellow immortals or grand sages in order to feed on their blood. This way, just by killing a few of them, one can reach the ascendance. I think I said enough for you to paint the picture of how wicked the society of the pinnacle sages and immortal is already!"

As if speaking those words caused physical pain to Celleria, I nodded my head in response to her weak and unvoiced request. In fact, there was no need for me to hear anymore.

I knew almost for sure that everything that one would go through in this part of the universe, was nothing more but preparation before he would ascend to the divine realm, where he would be instantly thrown into the battlefield against other factions.

If that was the case, then there wasn't any point in keeping the higher echelons of the local society as civil as one would think that an absolute top of the world would be!

Yet outside of this fact alone, by putting everything into this perspective, all the other restrictions that I faced so far, suddenly started making sense!

Why did certain areas have limits to how powerful a person could be while living there? Because if said person were to wreak havoc by relying on the strength he or she attained, then other talents might have a harder job in advancing to the respective limits of their talents!

"Just the last question before we finish this and get all some in my underdimension, how one crosses the threshold? How one decides whether they want to be an immortal or grand sage? And what's more, if the only way to advance beyond the sage realm is by consuming the blood of the immortals, then how was the first immortal created in the first place?"

As much as I would like to make sense of this story, there were simply too many points that didn't add up. Even though I could figure out the answer for the last of my questions myself by putting the God's interference into the picture, I still had to know just what kind of big hurdle separated the average Sage Joe, from reaching for the entry to the path leading beyond the mortal realm in the first place!

"As you have guessed, only by consuming the blood of immortals, one can break through the confines of the sage realm. While this is something I discovered while scouring through countless libraries, I'm quite sure about this point. The reason because this strange situation is that while growing up to the pinnacle of the sage level, you are developing resistance to the natural force present in this world. And as this force is the basis of the power used by the divines, you need to alter your body with the help of blood that was already reformed, if you ever want to take control over the power of decay!"