Returning to the palace after the morning court session, the King of Ji broke with custom by not going to see Xu Shang, heading straight for the Imperial Study instead.
By then, Cangwu was already seated inside the study, idly fingering one priceless antique after another.
Seeing the King of Ji enter, he placed the white jade auspicious horse in his hand onto the desk and said, "The grand array is finished, and the time is about right. We just need you to serve as its eye. Let us depart."
The King of Ji frowned slightly but said nothing, moving to stand beside Cangwu. The two vanished instantly, reappearing a moment later in the void. Wherever their feet landed, purple patterns rippled outward, enigmatic and eerie. Beneath the translucent patterns lay an endless void, where clusters of nether fire drifted about.
Cangwu smiled faintly. "Among the sovereigns of the Nine Kingdoms, you are the first ever to set foot in this Zichen Treasure Hall above Immortal Heaven."
Gazing down at the void below, which resembled an endless abyss, the King of Ji drew a deep breath, an irrepressible yearning surfacing on his face. Cangwu gave a flick of his sleeve, bringing the King of Ji to a secret realm in Zichen Heaven.
Here, the morning mist had not yet lifted, and the bluestones were faintly damp. Dew dripped from eaves onto boat canopies, pattering against dark-hulled vessels. A young maiden steered a skiff, parting the emerald ripples and shattering the water's reflection of white walls and black tiles into jade crumbs across the stream—the very spitting image of a Jiangnan water town.
Yet all the scenery was translucent, including the skiffs coming and going upon the water, lending the scene an indescribable sense of unreality.
Many of the flowering trees bore fractured fissures. Minute fragments drifted away now and then, only to return to the trees, never straying far—nor capable of doing so. Intrigued, the King of Ji stepped closer to inspect them, only to discover that every one of the tiny fragments was square and flat-faced, with smooth edges. It was as if everything in this realm had been pieced together from these tiny cubical particles.
Without knowing why, the moment he saw them clearly, a profound dread gripped the King of Ji. He felt as though he, too, would be assimilated by this world, gradually breaking apart!
Fortunately, no sooner had this fear taken hold than it was dispelled. Cangwu clapped the King of Ji on the shoulder, saying, "Manifestations of the true intent of the Great Dao of Annihilation are everywhere here. You must not look around recklessly. If you touch the true intent of the Great Dao without sufficient cultivation, you will become part of it, dead beyond dead. If I hadn't struck you just now, you would have already turned to stone."
Startled out of his wits, the King of Ji dared not speak or look around any more, following Cangwu into the valley.
At the center of the valley lay an enormous map of the State of Ji. Its topography was lifelike, accurate to the smallest detail, and the entire sand table map spanned a hundred li across.
Across the lands of the State of Ji were hundreds of nodes, large and small, all spewing wisps of black qi that converged high in the sky.
Tracing the black qi upward, the King of Ji saw that all of it poured into a stone pillar hanging down from the heavens.
The King of Ji found the pillar's shape rather peculiar. Looking closer, he was horrified to discover that it was actually a little finger—a little finger hundreds of li long!
Noticing the look on the King of Ji's face, Cangwu said, "You figured it out? The Venerable Master's dharma body is boundless and magnificent, beyond compare. That you could submit under the Venerable Master is an honor you could not have earned across several lifetimes! Stop staring and enter the array. I will explain the key points to you once more. The Venerable Master's spirit wanders beyond the heavens; at this moment, who knows how many tens of thousands of shiyao away he is."
"Shiwen?"
"This is a unit of measurement used only by immortals. One shiyao is the distance an ordinary immortal's divine consciousness leaps in ten breaths, commonly defined as one hundred million li. Step into the array!"
Following the instructions, the King of Ji tremblingly stepped onto the map of the State of Ji.
Yet the position where he stood was neither the royal capital nor any formidable fortress or great city, but a desolate mountain wilderness, devoid of human habitation for miles around.
Cangwu said, "Where you stand is the array eye for the next two-hour mark. Once the array eye shifts here, your bloodline karmic luck as the King of Ji will manifest accordingly, and the curse that the Martial Ancestor rooted deep in the bloodlines of your Nine Kingdoms' royal clans will reveal itself."
"Curse?" That single word made the King of Ji shudder.
"What did you think the Martial Ancestor left you? To maintain control at the bloodline level without slipping across generations, the most effective tool is a curse. Could it possibly be a blessing?" Cangwu's face was full of mockery.
The King of Ji said nothing, his expression gradually darkening.
Cangwu continued, "His Venerable Lordship is only slightly inferior to the Martial Ancestor, which is why it is possible to unravel the sealing curses the Martial Ancestor left behind. And only in this place can the influence of the Martial Ancestor's modifications to the Heavenly Dao be weakened enough to freely discuss the contents of his grand design. Otherwise, if we were in the native realm, even I would not dare discuss the specifics of that layout.
"The Martial Ancestor placed three seals in your bloodline. But what must be done first is to use the karmic luck of your royal seat as the King of Ji and the power of your bloodline to lay down the World-Refining Grand Array Severing Heaven and Earth across the lands of the State of Ji. Once the array is established, we can harness its power to break the Martial Ancestor's first curse seal in your blood. With this curse broken, and after consuming the elixir bestowed by the Venerable Master, you will achieve Scenery Command."
A tremor ran through the King of Ji's heart. He asked, "Dare I ask, Immortal Monarch, what is this array actually used for?"
Immortal Monarch Cangwu wore a mocking sneer once more. "There is no harm in telling you a little. The hundred li of Ji territory beneath your feet was refined over centuries from the earth vein nodes harvested across the State of Ji. You could say it now embodies the greater part of the entire State of Ji's essence."
Hearing this, the King of Ji understood in a flash. He muttered, "So that was it... No wonder when We consulted the histories, annual yields have dwindled over the centuries, the vitality of the land has grown barren by the day, and the common people have struggled merely to survive."
"What good does knowing this do you? Hundreds of years ago, it was precisely that renowned ancestor of yours, King Ying of Ji, who found a way to contact the Venerable Master on his own. The Venerable Master promised him the technique of samsara, and in return he offered up the Master Map of Ji's Border Passes and Rivers. With this map, one could bypass the Martial Ancestor's Heavenly Dao and harvest the earth vein nodes."
The King of Ji's heart seized. "The technique of samsara?"
"Indeed. He would reincarnate continuously through the royal bloodline, his true spirit unclouded—practically equivalent to rebirth. Besides him, several other ancestors of yours pledged allegiance to the Venerable Master and were granted this technique."
A chill gripped the King of Ji. "Then among Our children—"
"Naturally, it is possible."
The King of Ji's body began to tremble. There was a son and a daughter whom he was genuinely fond of, but the thought that their inner beings might have already been replaced by the souls of his ancestors filled him with uncontrollable terror and rage!
Cangwu said indifferently, "Completing this array means your merit surpasses theirs, which is why a layer of your curse seal will be undone to help you complete your mindscape world. Once you reach Scenery Command, those reincarnating ancestors will not matter. In any case, before you die, they will still have plenty of reincarnating left to do."
Calming his emotions, the King of Ji asked once more, "Then what is the true purpose of this grand array?"
Seeing that the King of Ji insisted on knowing, Cangwu replied, "Once this array is complete, it will link the State of Ji and this place into one entity, becoming two sides of a coin, reality and illusion interwoven, never to be sundered. The Venerable Master can then use this as a fishing line to reel the essence of the State of Ji's earth veins up to Immortal Heaven in one stroke, using it to repair the secret realm of Zichen Heaven. On the first pass, he will fish up the essence of seven commanderies."
The King of Ji asked, "What will become of those seven commanderies?"
"They will become perilous deadlands, where no living thing can stir."
The King of Ji sank into silence. Cangwu gave a cold sneer. "Trading seven commanderies for a thousand years of lifespan—is that not a bargain? It wasn't as if you conquered that land yourself anyway. There will be more benefits for you with the next harvest. By the time the harvesting of the State of Ji is complete, you will be on the verge of ascending to immortality. When that time comes, the seat vacated by Liumiao will be yours, and you can live carefree for ten thousand years."
At last, the King of Ji nodded slowly.
His expression relaxing, Cangwu extended a finger and tapped. Countless dark torrents surged into the King of Ji's body, then dispersed into the mountains and rivers, rushing toward node after node. A blanket of darkness crept silently across the lands of the State of Ji.
Cangwu let out a breath of relief and said, "This array is most vulnerable to interference from vitality, which is why the population in the commanderies being harvested must be purged. The living cannot exceed ten million, otherwise—"
His voice broke off abruptly. On the western border of the State of Ji, a pinpoint of light blazed with intensely fierce vitality—a vitality far exceeding ten million!
Under the illumination of this light, all the dark hues retreated swiftly as if scorched by flame, giving off billowing plumes of dark smoke, while countless resentful spirits shrieked, disintegrating into ash and smoke amidst the brilliance.
The grand array was shattered!
Cangwu's mind went completely blank, his entire body turning ice-cold. Only one thought ran through his head: *Impossible. That is utterly impossible—*
At that very moment, in Guantun County, Wei Yuan was looking over the latest aggregated census report. The total population within the territory of the State of Ji at this time was:
Twenty-three million.
Chapter 1044