Chapter 327: Bases

"I see. Thank you for your trouble, Daoist. Have a cup of water."

Li Cheng nodded, picked up the teapot on the table as if he owned the place, and poured the Dao boy a cup of water.

The Dao boy froze for a moment, but still took the cup, took a polite sip, then set down the teacup and took his leave, pulling the door shut behind him as he went.

Li Cheng stood in place for a few seconds. Once the footsteps faded into the distance, he immediately rushed forward and carefully scraped the inner wall of the cup the Dao boy had used with a cotton swab.

"Bro, what are you doing?" Zhengyi got a fright.

"He's collecting DNA."

Yuan Zhixia watched calmly as Li Cheng pulled out a storage battery, a DNA sequencer, a centrifuge, and other devices, and began running tests on the spot.

All these instruments were high-grade goods Li Cheng had brought out from Gao Ta, with only an outer shell made to look like Earth products; they could drastically shorten gene-sequencing time.

"Hmm? The people of this world are six-base organisms?"

Li Cheng's eyebrows rose involuntarily as he looked at the genetic test results. Every life form on Earth uses the same genetic alphabet — the four bases a, t, c, and g.

Twenty amino acids and sixty-four codons, combined at random, have written the vast and complex evolutionary history of Earth's life, from bacteria all the way up to humans.

Put it this way: the difference between a six-base organism and an Earthling is greater than the difference between an Earthling and a banana.

One can perfectly well treat that little Dao boy just now, and every living thing in this world, as extraterrestrial life.

"The sundries in the room all show they can be put into the backpack slot, but cannot be taken out of the script world."

Yuan Zhixia reacted swiftly, weighed the legal documents in her hand, and said thoughtfully: "Just as I thought — the Killing Grounds won't leave us any obvious loopholes to exploit."

The power tier here is higher than other worlds; imposing restrictions can prevent situations where a player directly uses a spatial item to steal a warehouse of spirit stones, then uses an Emergency Escape Card to run.

The setting of six-base beings across the board also gets around the situation where a player casually brings a Foundation Establishment cultivation method out and sells it for tens of thousands of game coins — a cultivation method for six-base organisms would definitely not be compatible with four-base organisms.

"Tch, what a pity."

Li Cheng shook his head and put the syringe, hemp rope, handcuffs, hood, and towel he had just taken out back.

Zhengyi, watching from the side, had his eye corners twitching wildly, and began ranting furiously inside: 'Those are kidnapping tools, right? They have to be kidnapping tools, right? You were absolutely just thinking of rushing out, chloroforming that Dao boy, dragging him back to real-world Earth, locking him in a dark room, and forcing him to write out a cultivation method, right?!'

As if he could guess what was going through Zhengyi's mind, Li Cheng looked at him and smiled: "Relax, I'm not a bad person. I just feel this boy and I are fated.

By the way, a little piece of everyday knowledge — like the rags kidnappers stuff in mouths in TV dramas, those can be easily spat out.

But if you first press the tongue down, then twist a towel into a dead knot and slowly stuff it in, it becomes as hard to remove as a lightbulb stuffed in a mouth."

Oh, what a truly useful piece of everyday knowledge. My ass.

Zhengyi's face twisted in a pained, egg-like expression, and he grew a few more degrees pessimistic about the prospects of this mission.

"Alright, time to get down to business."

Yuan Zhixia hauled stack after stack of legal documents down from the bookshelf and began reading them at a pace of one page per second, like quantum speed-reading.

Li Cheng activated his Multi-Thread Brain Domain technique, his eyeballs trembling and vibrating as he flipped rapidly through the pages,

while Zhengyi put an entire set of marriage-law texts into a copier, and after printing out the copies, used a certain skill to cut the copies like a cake with a knife and fork, then washed them down with water, efficiently absorbing the information.

Each of them employed their own methods to gather intelligence, using the legal statutes to glimpse every aspect of this world.

The final result was quite. interesting.

"I see. Stripped to the bone, it's still matter determining reality."

Li Cheng set down the hefty legal tome. Before Buzhou Mountain was broken, mortal-world cultivators could, through cultivation, refine the void and merge with the Dao, transcend the tribulation and ascend, becoming loose immortals in the immortal realm, enjoying lifespans of easily several thousand years. During this period, whether male or female cultivators, all took ascension as their ultimate goal; hardly anyone gave marriage a thought, considering it nothing but adding to mortal karma.

But after Buzhou Mountain broke, the situation changed. Ascension became utterly hopeless, lifespans shrank drastically to two hundred years, and the world's spiritual energy was also fading.

The most significantly affected were Golden Core cultivators. When the spiritual aperture gives birth to wisdom-light, the nature appears and worldly passions perish. The noisy nature transforms into the true nature; the human heart becomes the Dao heart.

A single cultivator, no matter how outstanding their talent, would find it very hard to condense a complete Golden Core, let alone the subsequent Nascent Soul, Fusion, Void Penetration, and Mahayana realms.

Since a single cultivator couldn't do it, they had to find someone they could absolutely trust to partner with and share a single Golden Core. Masters and disciples would turn against each other; brothers would betray one another; fathers and sons would, too, become the picture of filial piety.

In the end, it still had to be the spouse — the one bound by the closest shared life and interests.

Thus, the importance of Dao companions rose sharply, and the marriage and courtship rate among male and female cultivators soared.

The two parties would assess each other's temperament, talent, personality, sect, and living habits, and once confirmed, would stay together for a hundred-plus years.

If they lived in harmony, all was well. But if a cultivator couple wanted to divorce. the division of property and even cultivation would become extremely, extremely troublesome.

Therefore, in most cases, Dao companions at Golden Core and above, even if they had long lost any affection, each doing their own thing, keeping little third, fourth, or fifth partners on the outside, would not divorce lightly.

No errors, no typos, no missing content — read at your leisure!

"Question is, why do Lord Xiao Shui Xingjun and Miaoyin Ju Shi insist on divorcing."

Li Cheng rubbed his chin and asked: "Zhang Wei, do you have any thoughts?"

"Huh?"

Zhengyi — suited and booted, mildly handsome, a third-rate lawyer back in the real world — pulled a bitter-melon face. "Sure, I look a lot like that Zhang Wei from 'iPartment,' and I'm a lawyer too, but my name isn't Zhang Wei."

Li Cheng waved a hand. "Got it, Zhang Wei, noted, Zhang Wei. The client is God. Lord Xiao Shui Xingjun will be here any moment. I order you, as a lawyer, to put together a defense-strategy PPT within three seconds."

"Three seconds. I'm not an AI."

Zhang Wei — ah no, Zhengyi — scratched his head in distress and said: "In the divorce cases I've handled, the reasons are nothing more than fading feelings, financial pressure, uneven distribution of family duties, cheating, domestic violence, differences in lifestyle and values, long-term separation — that sort of thing.

Cultivators in this world generally live two hundred years, and they all have divine abilities, so it's hard to map onto ordinary families."

Just as he was speaking, the sound of rushing wind came from outside.

Pushing the door open and stepping out, they saw a purple auspicious cloud descend from the heavens, and a middle-aged man in blue robes — transcendent in bearing, handsome and dashing — step down from it.

Li Cheng and Yuan Zhixia exchanged a glance, then, copying the Dao boy's earlier manner, cupped their hands in a bow. "Are you Lord Xiao Shui Xingjun, Daoist?"

"I am."

Lord Xiao Shui Xingjun dispersed the auspicious cloud, and the calm, breezy expression on his face abruptly turned to furious rage.

In a manner utterly at odds with his outward bearing, he irritably activated his Sleeve-Universe technique and flung a great pile of documents onto the table, then said through gritted teeth to the group: "You must be the lawyers the Immortal Court assigned me. No matter the cost, help me win this case.

Once it's done, I'll use my Immortal Court connections to keep your lotus-root bodies going, and give each of you ten thousand spirit stones."

The four players exchanged glances. Under the Cultivation Realm's criminal code, illegally mining five low-grade spirit stones could be treated as a serious crime; ten thousand spirit stones. however you looked at it, should be an enormous sum.

"I've handled no fewer than a thousand divorce cases — eight hundred at the lowest. I once helped a college student who'd lived with his dorm supervisor auntie for four years walk away with half the dorm building at graduation."

Li Cheng smiled and said: "Please set your mind at ease, Star Lord Lord Xiao Shui — we may be good at many things, but cheating a client is not one of them."

(Happy New Year~)

(End of chapter)