"Huo Yue... Do you believe in gods?"
'Of course not,' Huo Yue thought immediately, the cynical instinct of a hunted cultivator flaring within her mind.
To anyone raised under the harsh, cutthroat skies of the cultivation world, the concept of a true "god" was nothing more than an archaic myth concocted by terrified mortals who lacked the spiritual roots to cultivate.
Mortals invented gods to comfort themselves against catastrophic droughts, pestilence, and the casual collateral damage of cultivators clashing in the upper firmament.
When an elder at the Heavenly Saint realm split a mountain range with a single wave of his sleeve, ignorant villagers would prostrate themselves in the dirt, weeping about divine wrath.
When a wandering Supreme stepped across the sea, creating islands from cooled magma, the primitives etched his silhouette onto stone tablets as a creator deity.
To a cultivator, the cosmos was cold, indifferent, and governed strictly by strength.
