All that needed to be said had been spoken, and the cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning had had their fill of basking under the suns. Wei Yuan crouched down, patted the mountain range formed from Molten Dragon's petrified body, and rose to his feet. A few flickers later, he was already back at the cultivators' side.
Returning this time did not require Nine Eyes's assistance. Relying solely on his own Desolate Realm authority, Wei Yuan could already match the speed of a Heavenly Shaman. As for Nine Eyes, he sat cross-legged where he was, muttering on and on, saying who knew what to Molten Dragon.
Wei Yuan looked back over his shoulder. Across thousands of li, he could still see that solitary figure atop the peak.
Wei Yuan had not known Nine Eyes and Molten Dragon for long, and for most of that time, they had belonged to opposing camps, divided by deep, blood-soaked enmity between their races.
Between them, there was only a single shared trait: when faced with an impending catastrophe, every one of them was willing to bear the ominous tribulations of heaven and earth upon their own body for the sake of their kin.
Wei Yuan could not recall when he had first begun to believe that once great power was gathered within oneself, one ought to stand before all one's kin and face calamity head-on.
With a soft sigh, Wei Yuan looked away.
Sweeping the surroundings with his divine sense, he first went to Feng Tingyu, who was closest. She was still locked in combat with her dharma idol, clearly carried away in the heat of it. A cloud of black mist appeared and vanished at an exceptionally high frequency. To Wei Yuan's eyes, her whole body seemed to flicker incessantly, her silhouette blurred at the edges. Just one glance at her strobe-like flickering made Wei Yuan dizzy.
So Wei Yuan adjusted his vision slightly, synchronizing the sampling frequency of his sight with the flickering mist. In his eyes, Feng Tingyu's body stopped flashing, appearing before him in all its original, unvarnished detail. The result was that Wei Yuan felt even dizzier.
A body like hers truly was not meant for lingering stares—look too little, and you ruin your work; look too long, and you ruin an empire.
"It's time to head back," Wei Yuan said.
Feng Tingyu had thought there was still plenty of time before the three days were up. Besides, let alone three days, she could easily bathe under the suns for thirty or three hundred days. Yet she perceptively caught an unusual shift in Wei Yuan's mood. He seemed... unusually joyful?
Feng Tingyu promptly dispersed her dharma idol, swiftly slipped into her robes, and asked no questions. When someone like Wei Yuan showed an abnormal fluctuation in emotion, whether elation or sorrow, it meant something monumental had happened. At times like this, Feng Tingyu set aside all her petty antics and chose simply to obey.
Wei Yuan made a circuit and gathered the cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning scattered in every direction. Everyone had gained a great deal, with only a minor hitch on Xiaoyu's end: Star Lord Shaoyang's parasol had been burnt through with a gaping hole. Wei Yuan had appeared so suddenly that Star Lord Shaoyang had no time to put the parasol away, getting caught red-handed.
Wei Yuan saw it, but did not call him out. The combined might of the Desolate Realm's three suns was utterly terrifying; relying on a mere parasol to hold out for an entire day had never been realistic. With Xiaoyu's level of cultivation, she really should have ducked into the sunshade awning from time to time. But who could help it if Xiaoyu insisted on putting on the air of a supreme cultivator? Getting sunburned was merely the inevitable outcome.
Having rounded up all the cultivators outside, Wei Yuan returned to the awning, scooped up Princess Ningguo—who was already so sun-dazed that her wits were drifting—and led everyone back to Qingming.
Now that Wei Yuan possessed Desolate Realm authority, he could activate teleportation arrays on his own to send the cultivators straight back to the primary realm.
Upon returning to Qingming, Wei Yuan went directly into the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World and stepped into the small temple of the Pure Land. Six sticks of incense stood in the censer, curls of smoke drifting lazily into the air.
Wei Yuan suddenly realized he had forgotten whether it took seven sticks or nine before a fundamental transformation would occur in the Pure Land. He had known before, but after absorbing the Heavenly Pillar's vitality, the heavenly secrets had shifted, and everything concerning the small temple had grown murky once more.
Yet the King Buddha's methods were boundless. Standing in the temple, looking back over his past, Wei Yuan could now discern subtle traces of orchestration along the course of his fate. He had been like a donkey trotting after a carrot dangling in front of its nose, walking steadily down the path laid out by the King Buddha, all while convinced he was making his own choices.
During the fiercest expansion of the Heavenly Pillar's vitality, it had taken Honglian and Liandeng channeling the King Buddha's power to deliver a crushing blow to the pillar, stabilizing the situation in one fell swoop.
And the price was those six sticks of clear incense burning in the censer.
At this moment, Wei Yuan was only a single step away from the golden body upon the lotus throne.
If it were only about himself, Wei Yuan would not have cared all that much. But when he turned and walked out of the shrine, Liandeng, who was sweeping the courtyard, hurriedly turned his back to Wei Yuan, not daring to meet his gaze.
Paying Liandeng no mind, Wei Yuan took another step and arrived at Maiden Yin-Yang's residence in the central city. It was a serene little courtyard shaded by lush green trees, where Yin-Yang sat alone at a stone table, arranging stones across a Go board.
Wei Yuan sat down across from her and asked casually, "You know how to play Go too? How long ago did you learn?"
Maiden Yin-Yang raised her head and said, "As long as you have."
In an instant, blood surged into Wei Yuan's head, his face burning hot, rendering him speechless.
His mindset had just been in an unusual state, so he had spoken out of habit. As a renowned grandmaster of the age, speaking down with casual authority on the game would normally have posed no issue. The problem was that the true foundation behind Wei Yuan's supposed grandmaster skill was the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. And the core of that Smoke and Fire was precisely the maiden sitting before him.
This was no different from a cheating exam-taker turning to the hired test-taker he had brought in and asking, "Well? Didn't I do great on this test? If you need, I can give you a few pointers—"
Seeing Wei Yuan's face blush as red as the blazing sun—or perhaps the rosy rump of a spiritual ape—Yin-Yang covered her mouth and giggled. Then, layer by layer, her garments began to slide off.
With so many shocks crashing down at once, Wei Yuan was at a total loss as to how to defend himself. Maiden Yin-Yang spoke slowly, "No matter what I learn, I will always remain just as I was in the very beginning."
Wei Yuan barely managed to suppress the overwhelming wave of embarrassment. Without pausing to ponder the deeper meaning behind Yin-Yang's words, he merely nodded, rose with deliberate composure, and fled the scene in disarray.
After Wei Yuan left, Xihe manifested beside the table.
In truth, she had been sitting right there all along. Though this was within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, so long as she willed it, she could make Wei Yuan look right through her without seeing a thing.
Xihe gave Maiden Yin-Yang a curious look and said, "I have to admit, you really do look quite lovely without clothes. But what was that all about just now?"
Maiden Yin-Yang fell silent for a moment before replying, "What else could it be? Seduction! But it didn't work at all, and I can't understand why. Those women out there get their way the moment they take off their clothes. Why doesn't it work for me?"
Xihe said nothing.
Maiden Yin-Yang suggested, "Why don't you help me think of an idea?"
Xihe remained expressionless. "I am a sword cultivator."
"What's wrong with being a sword cultivator?"
Xihe kept her expression blank. "I am a sword cultivator who has never been in love."
"Never been in—" Maiden Yin-Yang did not quite grasp Xihe's meaning.
Xihe sighed helplessly. "You ask me how to seduce men... All I can say is that cleaving them in two with a sword is far simpler."
Maiden Yin-Yang pondered this. "Isn't Zhang Sheng a sword cultivator too? If you're both sword cultivators, how can the difference between you be so vast?"
The next instant, a towering pillar of sword qi erupted from the central city as the twin dragons of yin and yang clashed head-on, neither yielding an inch. A brilliant spark of light suddenly burst forth within the sword qi, bathing the entire Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World in pure, blinding white!
Liandeng let out a shrill scream and fell backward, his eyes swollen red with tears streaming down, utterly unable to pry them open. Anyone else who dared pry met the exact same fate.
Across the grotto-heavens of the various realms, only the house fiends carried on with their busywork, most of them not even noticing that the sky had briefly turned stark white.
Amidst this drastic upheaval within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, Wei Yuan noticed nothing at all.
He refined the production schedules for the various supplies in Qingming once more, primarily adjusting the priority of material shipments destined for the State of Ji, and then traveled through the secret realm to return to Ji.
Upon arriving back in Guantun County, Wei Yuan returned straight to Zhang Sheng's side and recounted everything that had transpired.
After listening, Zhang Sheng fell into contemplative thought and asked, "Why were you willing to do what the ancient Human Sovereign once refused to do?"
Wei Yuan had already contemplated this question at length, so he replied, "The eras are different, and so are the circumstances. Back then, the human race was weak and lacked foundational strength, struggling merely to survive. At that time, our race's greatest enemies were the alien tribes, not the extraterrestrial fiends. By refusing to shoulder that burden and leaving the extraterrestrial fiends and alien tribes to wear each other down, the ancient human king created an opportunity for the human race to rise.
"If he had accepted the responsibility back then for the sake of the so-called 'greater good,' what stake would the human race have had in this world's future? History is filled with such examples: whenever someone urges another to sacrifice for the greater good, that 'greater good' usually has nothing to do with the one being asked."
Zhang Sheng nodded. "Well said. And what makes now any different?"
Wei Yuan said, "Today, humanity stands divided across nine states with sprawling territories, more than a hundred times larger than in ancient times. Whether measured by population or the number of immortals, our human race is one of the premier powers in this realm. Since we already have a place in the greater picture, we can afford to consider the greater good.
"I weighed every angle carefully, and it boils down to one simple conclusion: taking up this cosmic duty means perilous steps from here on out, but the benefits are immense; refusing it, however, would bring catastrophic harm with unfathomable fallout."
"Mm. Weighed every angle carefully... and what did you use to weigh them? The Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World?"
Wei Yuan froze, then nodded, immediately sensing that something was amiss. The Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World? It was vast and contained countless things, practically an entire world of its own. For instance, the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss was also part of the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. The Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss?
Wei Yuan snapped to awareness. "Was that... influencing me in secret?"
Fortunately, Wei Yuan was quick-witted enough to pull back from the brink, stopping short of uttering the title of the Great Joy King Buddha.
Zhang Sheng let out a soft sigh. "It cannot truly be called an influence in secret. It merely laid two paths before you—one beneficial, the other harmful. Naturally, you would weigh the pros and cons and make a choice. As long as you aren't a fool, you wouldn't choose wrong. When the King Buddha places his pieces, he leaves no trace. It is not something you can resist right now."
"It really was!" Wei Yuan sprang to his feet, staring at Zhang Sheng in shock.
Zhang Sheng remained as calm as ever. "I cultivated the World's Sword Tomb, and my lucid sword heart is rare in this world. After sitting in your Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World for even a little while, I naturally hear many things. Even the temple has been built—how could I not know that you are the reincarnated vessel of the Great Joy King Buddha?"
Wei Yuan felt as though countless heavenly tribulation lightnings had struck him from the heavens, blasting his sea of consciousness completely blank, leaving him unable to think of a single thing. And if she had even overheard a secret this monumental, was there anything left she didn't know?
Zhang Sheng said faintly, "No need to worry. Aside from the most critical matters, I listened to none of it. Otherwise, hearing too much of your sordid affairs would anger me to death sooner or later."
Guilt gnawed at Wei Yuan, and he dared not utter a word.
Zhang Sheng extended her straight calves, her robe rippling in gentle curves before she slowly crossed them, resting her hands upon her knees. "Back then, I only wanted to forge a strong bond of destiny for a troublemaker like you, so I gave Girl Bao a gentle push. Had I known back then that I would end up so hopelessly entangled with you later on, I never would have opened that door, and your happy days would have been far fewer."
On this topic, Wei Yuan could only maintain silence.
Zhang Sheng let out a soft sigh. "Six sticks of clear incense already burn in that censer. If you have anything to say to me, say it quickly. Once the seventh stick is lit, you might forget much of it."
Wei Yuan blinked. "Isn't it nine sticks?"
Zhang Sheng paused as well. "Nine?"
Having cultivated a lucid sword heart, Zhang Sheng could peer deeply into herself. She instantly detected an unnatural patch within her memories—a piece of karma must have been altered. Perhaps another mighty figure had intervened from the shadows. Yet whether it was seven sticks or nine, the outcome was the same.
Things had progressed to this stage, and both of them understood clearly that the arrival of that day was unavoidable.
Thinking of Wei Yuan's behavior throughout the past, Zhang Sheng's heart softened, and she sighed, "This Heavenly Pillar vitality is a crisis, but it is also a tremendous opportunity.
"I suspect that if you miss this chance, you might never find another opportunity to attain a Blazing Sun Grotto-Heaven. Therefore, whether for yourself, for your fellow disciples of the Palace of Grand Beginning, for your Strength Shaman friends, for Molten Dragon, or even for the world itself, you must accept it."
A sudden soreness stung Wei Yuan's eyes. His desperate resistance against the King Buddha's karma had been driven by only one reason: her. He had never expected the crisis of the Heavenly Pillar to be thrust before him so abruptly. Just as Zhang Sheng said, he had never had a choice. The King Buddha's design was completely seamless, a riddle without a solution.
Wei Yuan's voice trembled slightly. "If that day comes and I truly forget my feelings for you... what will we do?"
Zhang Sheng said, "I told you: no matter what you become, I will face it with you. Whether the firmament shatters or this world falls to ruin, I will be by your side. It was so in the beginning, it is so now, and it will remain so in the days to come."
At this moment, silence spoke louder than words, rendering all speech hollow. Wei Yuan could only hold her tightly in his arms, cherishing every minute and second before him, treasuring this time while he could still remember how truly special she was to him.
Sunlight crept over their bodies like climbing vines, then quietly slipped away. Their breaths intertwined, tender and lingering, as if they had always held each other like this, and always would.
After an unknown time, Zhang Sheng stirred gently, and Wei Yuan released his embrace.
Zhang Sheng tilted her head slightly, looking into Wei Yuan's eyes. "Are you afraid that once you become the King Buddha, you will forget your love for me, and leave only wanton amusement in its place?"
Wei Yuan had not expected the worry he had harbored for so long to be laid bare by Zhang Sheng so directly.
Zhang Sheng suddenly broke into a gentle smile, ripples of light shimmering in her eyes. "It's nothing, really. If it comes to that, I'll just let you have your way with me!"
Those words struck Wei Yuan like an unprecedented heavenly tribulation, blasting his consciousness stark white and nearly causing the inner heavenly fiend to dissolve into nirvana on the spot.
Zhang Sheng drew a slender finger lightly across the sculpted line of Wei Yuan's jaw, her eyes brimming with brilliant sword qi. "If your master here decided to unleash her wanton side, what room would there be for Girl Bao and the rest? In the coming days, let us look together to see what suitable attainments flank the King Buddha's seat. If you truly become the King Buddha, I'll simply cultivate in that direction."
To this day, the Great Tang had already witnessed the reign of two emperors, and the two of them had finally arrived at the nexus of fortune and destiny. Their every move had begun to faintly sway the great tides of the mortal realm.
The affairs of the world shifted, oceans turned to dust and back to seas, yet those figures walking side by side had never changed—just as they were in the Palace of Grand Beginning, just as they were when they first set out from Fengyuan Commandery, and just as they were beneath that graceful ancient tree behind the old Wei family manor.
<End of Volume: *How Could This World Allow Both*>
Chapter 1018