Alex was stunned when he heard Frits. His brows knit together, and he was taken aback.
"The destruction of more than a dozen worlds? What do you mean by that?"
"I know assessments are dangerous, and yes, people die. But how does that lead to the destruction of several worlds?"
Fritz stayed silent for a few seconds before meeting his eyes and speaking in a low voice. "The Celestial Path, in reality, is a force created by a bunch of lunatics. You should know that every Celestial Path Assessment requires a testing ground. Do you know what their testing ground is?"
"What?"
"It's worlds."
"Worlds?"
"Yes, you heard it right. It's worlds. To them, secret spaces aren't enough. They select several worlds and send the participants there to complete a few missions. Coincidentally or not, each one of their missions actually causes the worlds to collapse."
Fritz appeared to think of something all of a sudden, and then spoke, "Alex, do you know why the Celestial Path even holds the assessment to recruit geniuses?"
Alex frowned. He seemed to feel that the matters related to the Celestial Path were much deeper than he had imagined.
Shaking his head, he replied, "No."
Fritz seemed not to hear Alex's response at all. He remained silent for a long moment. His gaze was unfocused, as though his thoughts had drifted far away.
After a while, he began speaking again.
As he spoke, Alex noticed that his tone was low and absent-minded. The look in his eyes made it clear to Alex that Fritz was not truly speaking to him. He was simply murmuring to himself, voicing thoughts that had long been buried beneath the surface.
"I don't know when it started, but I actually started digging into the Celestial Path for some reason. It was as if some unknown force was guiding me to dig into the Celestial Path. Say it's a coincidence or accident, years ago, I stumbled upon a secret that revealed the true nature of Celestial Path Assessments."
"The higher-ups of the Celestial Path Assessments not merely test geniuses; they are stealing the Hearts of Worlds."
Alex's gaze sharpened the moment he heard this. Even in his past life, his highest cultivation had only reached the True Divinity Stage. Yes, he had roamed the universe, but not long enough to know all its secrets or fully understand the countless treasures it could give birth to.
Even so, he had heard a few things about the Heart of a World.
"The Heart of a Worldโฆ you mean the planetary origin core?"
A glint of light flashed in Fritz's eyes as his focus returned. He looked at Alex and nodded faintly.
"Yes. As you may know, every living world possesses a Planetary Origin Core, also known as the World's Heart. It is the condensation of that World's laws, Origin Energy, and even its destiny. It is what enables a world to give birth to life, generate spiritual energy, and nurture entire civilizations."
"What the Celestial Path does is design the assessment around it. The trial itself, along with the slaughter that accompanies it, is nothing more than a cover. While hundreds of thousands of geniuses fight over so-called inheritances and treasures, the true objective of the assessment still lies at the very location of the World's Heart.
"The entire assessment is structured to create widespread chaos across the planet. As participants battle, plunder, and destabilize the world's natural balance, the Celestial Path quietly pinpoints the position of the World's Heart. Then they dispatch their own trusted members to extract it.
"Once the Heart is removed, the world begins to decline irreversibly. At best, it may linger for a few hundred years before collapsing. Some worlds are far more fragile and cannot even last that long. They crumble within a single century."
This was all new information to Alex. He nodded his head in understanding, while a few thoughts were running through his mind. Then he asked, "How does a world die? I mean, tell me what happens after a World's Heart is extracted?"
Fritz took a deep breath and then explained, "As I already said, the world begins to die. At first, nothing obvious happens. But the spiritual veins dry up very soon. Natural disasters increases in the world. The world's laws destabilize, and within decades, the decline of spiritual energy and resources becomes irreversible. The world also no longer gives birth to treasures such as precious spirit herbs and fruits. Strengths of the cultivators in such worlds start to decline, and within a century or more, the world collapses completely."
"You can say that the Celestial Path doesn't just consume talent, they consume worlds."
"As for what they do with the extracted Hearts... They use them to forge Origin-ranked Treasures, fuel their cultivation, refine supreme pills that can instantly cause a leap in their strength, or even nurture artificial worlds under their control."
When Alex heard this, he suddenly thought of something, and the air around him subtly grew colder. He couldn't help but speak, "So, this is their so-called path to immortality? I mean, a World's Heart is definitely an extraordinary treasure. It is enough to create several Immortals. This must be how they promise to help people become an Immortal."
"Indeed," Fritz nodded in agreement. He had done his research about the Celestial Path thoroughly. Now that he had already told Alex so much, he didn't mind speaking more.
"The Celestial Path calls it the path to immortality. But it is built upon the corpses of many worlds. Do you know, the Celestial Path has millions of members, but not even ten thousand know how the Celestial Path creates Immortals. Only those higher-ups, the true controllers of Celestial Path knows these secrets. Even I only got to know about these things because of an accident."
Alex let out a deep breath. A cold flash appeared in his eyes as he looked into the distance. Then he said, "The Celestial Path Assessment is about to start again. This time, they must be planning to extract a few Planetary Origin Cores again."
"And the worst part? Not a single participant ever realizes that they are merely distractions in a much larger harvest."
