Outworld Liberators-Chapter 162: The State of Regressing Minds in the Samsara

Chapter 162: The State of Regressing Minds in the Samsara

The Five Summit Emperors were not men who lingered when they smelled profit. Eldric watched their eyes track the lighting boards, and the estimator.

He knew what they wanted, the same thing old powers always wanted when a new rule appeared. Monopoly.

"Follow me."

They answered without words. A few quick gestures sent sons, daughters, and disciples away, back toward their lofty mountains and the comforts of distance.

The five stayed behind, faces calm, hands loose, already negotiating in their heads.

Eldric tapped his fingers at empty air. The space rippled like disturbed water. The arena vanished.

They dropped into a hidden passage below, a corridor that felt older than the stone above it.

Ancient arrays glimmered along the walls, lines of light stitched into the dark like veins.

Even the Summit Emperors paused, not from small minds, but from honest awe.

The world was vast. Its secrets were vaster. None of them asked a question, not yet.

The passage ended in a chamber with twelve chairs and a marbled table.

The air shimmered with faint motes of different elements, fire warmth that never burned, water coolness that never wet, metal sharpness that never cut.

"Sit."

They did. Agrippino slipped his spiritual sense outward, casual at first, like a man checking locks he had owned for years.

His qi threaded through the room. A smirk tugged at his mouth. Then the smirk froze.

He pushed farther. A hundred meters. A thousand. Ten thousand.

Nothing met him. No walls. No echo. Only darkness.

Agrippino swallowed and drove his thread out again, harder. A hundred kilometers.

Still nothing. No elements. No matter. No life. Not even the faint haze that clung to places where death had happened.

The absence felt deliberate, like a blade that had cut the world clean and left no seam.

Sweat beaded on his forehead. He knew he should not have tested this place.

Eldric looked at him and smiled. It was the same kind smile he had shown the crowd, yet in this room it felt like a door closing.

"We wanted to order those boards," Tiberius said, cutting into the tension as if it were rope.

His trade was security, construction, and swords for hire. His voice carried a business steadiness that had outlived wars.

"We would like to try the service for a decade. Is that possible?"

Eldric nodded. He reached into his sleeve and drew out an abacus, simple and plain, almost mocking in a room like this.

Beads clicked. Numbers settled. He turned it so Tiberius could see.

A thousand high grade spirit stones.

Not small. Not ruinous. Tiberius’s shoulders loosened a fraction. His mind was already moving to the next problem, the real problem.

The wasted time. The endless bargaining. Men with half knowledge arguing over what a job should cost.

Eldric spoke before he could.

"We can run the details of your job. Have a staff list what the service entails, and it will flash through the boards."

He opened his palm and produced a smaller board, a sample. Light swam across its surface.

An image appeared, crisp as a painting. A grand pagoda rose into view, tiered roofs, carved eaves, a place that looked expensive even as a picture.

Lines of specification followed beneath it. Materials. Labor. Time.

All of it arranged so neatly it felt like fate pretending to be accounting.

Tiberius stared in silence, checking the details while mimicking the dumbest buyers, the ones who asked about everything.

[Seven Story Pagoda]

[Target Capacity and Crowd Flow: 4000]

[Utility Availability: Array Lighting, Defensive Arrays, Heaven and Earth Energy Gathering Array]

[Structural Frame Material: Thousand Year Old Acacia, Forged Cold Steel] 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

[Exterior Cladding: Stone, Brick, Metal, Terracotta, Charred Wood]

[Set Price Starts at 999 Middle Grade Spirit Stones.]

"Simply genius," Tiberius blurted, the words coming out too loud.

"This is what I’ve been fucking looking for. Why didn’t we think of this?"

His grin held, but his eyes sharpened on the numbers. The board gave him a price close to what his instincts demanded, yet not quite the number he would have carved into a contract.

He weighed the room, weighed Eldric, and decided the question would not bruise anything that mattered.

"Senior Eldric," he said, voice roughening into something more careful, "are you going to delve into construction by any chance?"

Eldric shook his head. His face stayed calm, almost blank, like a man waiting for the real question to arrive.

Tiberius snorted once, then nodded as if the refusal itself confirmed something.

"I’m done. It is a deal."

The other four Summit Emperors exchanged looks, silent and quick. Profit made men speak, but it also made them guard what they revealed. Gregodor was the first to break.

"We lend money," he said, fingers tapping the marbled table as if counting invisible beads. "We fund new business owners. How do we hide the fine print and use this straight to the point?"

Eldric’s hand lifted, and light gathered on the small board like paint poured onto glass.

What appeared was not a list this time, but something meant to hook the eye.

A colorful portrait, rich and polished. Spirit stones lay scattered all around it like offerings, their glow pooling along the edges.

In the center, clean and impossible to ignore, sat the loan number itself, bold as a brand burned into flesh.

A second line pulsed beneath it, urgent without raising its voice. Limited slots.

[999 Spirit Stone Loan]

[Only 88 Slots Available.]

[Go to your nearest Lenderstone Branch to check if you are eligible.]

"Your people would do the rest," Eldric said. "Once the customers walk through the door, I concur you can handle them from there, correct?"

Gregodor stared as if he had just watched a lock pick itself. His mouth hung open a heartbeat too long.

Then he remembered his face and coughed lightly, smoothing his robes as if dignity could be adjusted like a collar.

"Why yes," he said, "however, I must know..."

Eldric raised his palm, cutting him off cleanly. The gesture pulled the attention of all five, the way a bell calls a hall to order.

"I am doing all this not for money," Eldric said. "Not to progress my Dao."

His voice stayed gentle, but there was a weight under it that made the room feel smaller.

"My Dao is life and death. To advance further, I seek enlightenment, big and small. With my observation, I do not wish to be treated too highly, too venerated. It makes everything unnatural."

The Five Summit Emperors sat still, and in that stillness their thoughts shifted.

They had taken Eldric for an eccentric, and he still was, but now the shape of the eccentricity made sense.

In their world, to speak of Dao like this meant two things, and both were dangerous.

He was already at the Mortal Apotheosis Stage.

They had seen their own sect master stuck there, trapped not by lack of spirit stones but by the cruel requirement of understanding.

At that level it was no longer a matter of absorbing energy. It was embodying a path so completely that it could carry you beyond flesh, beyond breath, beyond the low ceiling of the world.

Jalin, Agrippino, and Calixtus watched Eldric with new caution. Doubt bled out of them in silence. Whatever his reasons, they were not petty, and petty men did not build rooms like this.

One by one they agreed. Ten years of service. Ten years of a thousand boards and mirrors and reshaped markets.

"I, however, may require your help in return. I will be creating a business. I would say it has something similar to what Gregodor is already running."

Gregodor did not judge the old man. All of them waited for his words to drop.

"I want to make a bank for both cultivators and mortals."

The Five Summit Emperors were confused, because they had never heard such a word at all.

Radeon, on the distant pavilion, observed everything through Eldric’s eyes and frowned.

"Even the Concept of Wealth had been eroded in the minds of men to this extent?" he murmured to himself.