Passing through the front hall, Wei Yuan walked toward the main hall. The main hall stood a hundred feet high and had only partially collapsed, making it exceptionally conspicuous in the vicinity. From the front hall to the main hall was a full five li; Wei Yuan and Xu Wan'er felt nothing of the exertion, but Xu Wenwu complained incessantly as he trudged up the slope.
The main hall's gates still remained, though only one leaf was intact; the other lay shattered on the ground. Stepping into the grand hall, Wei Yuan's vision darkened. The interior was pitch-black, devoid of candles or lamps, illuminated only by faint daylight filtering through the damaged roof. At this hour, the sun was blocked by the main peak, casting an eerie gloom over the hall so that nothing in the distance could be seen clearly.
The air was thick with a damp, rotting odor, yet Wei Yuan sensed no aura of living beings—not even the insects that infested every corner of the Shaman Realm.
At the far end of the hall stood a divine statue, of which only a lower section remained; everything from the knees up had shattered into rubble strewn across the floor. The statue had been carved from stone—and not from a single monolith, but pieced together from dozens of blocks.
This statue stood over forty feet tall. By immortal methods, finding an intact boulder several dozen feet across was not difficult at all, nor was finding one over a hundred feet, and carving it would be even easier. Every past palace master of Lanshen Palace could be considered a formidable dharma idol cultivator; how could the main statue be made so shabbily? At the very least, it should have been a hundred feet high.
Flanking both sides of the hall were eight statues each, all roughly ten feet tall. Yet except for one, every statue had been smashed, leaving behind only empty pedestals. The surviving statue stood in a corner, depicting an exceptionally alluring woman; even overgrown with moss, it still exuded a captivating charm. However, the features of this goddess statue looked somewhat similar to the woman entwined by the giant serpent in the relief.
Except for the absence of blood on the statues, the hall was identical to the illusion Wei Yuan had entered when he encountered the woman in red.
Wei Yuan's heart stirred, and he slowly turned around. He saw the figure of the woman in red step out from Xu Wan'er's body. She bowed to him and said, "This humble one is Yun Feifei. Greetings, Senior Brother. May I ask how to address Senior Brother?"
Wei Yuan said, "Could it be you don't know who I am?"
By now, the red-robed woman's form had solidified, appearing no different from a flesh-and-blood person. Beside them, Xu Wenwu stared with wide eyes.
Seeing Wei Yuan's sharp tone, she showed no annoyance, explaining in a gentle voice, "I only knew that a senior brother from the Palace of Grand Beginning would arrive, but I did not know who would come."
"Then how did you know I come from the Palace of Grand Beginning?"
"I possess some minor means, though they are unfit for polite company, so I will not elaborate."
Standing face to face, Wei Yuan could clearly sense the dense incense power of aspiration on her, leading him to surmise that she had learned of it through divination powered by aspiration.
Wei Yuan did not beat around the bush and asked directly, "Where is the opportunity?"
"Once I reach the Palace of Grand Beginning and meet with the Immortal Monarch, I will present the opportunity with both hands. It is of grave importance, and it is not convenient to speak of it to Senior Brother at this moment. Senior Brother need only escort me to the Palace of Grand Beginning."
Wei Yuan frowned slightly and asked, "Don't you still have senior brothers and sisters? Where are they? Furthermore, who is hunting you down, and what formidable figures are among them?"
"Those pursuing me are primarily of the Shaman race, led by a Great Shaman skilled in blood curses and exceedingly formidable. I accidentally contracted a trace of his curse and have suffered greatly these past days; moreover, the moment I step beyond a thousand li of Lanshen Palace, he will instantly sense me. That is why I dared not leave until Senior Brother arrived."
A Great Shaman of the Shaman race was equivalent to a human True Person of the Dharma Idol realm. No wonder that despite Yun Feifei having the strength to wound a dharma idol cultivator, she was forced to hide away and dared not show her face.
"Eldest Senior Brother and Little Junior Brother are also here; they have been protecting me all this time. I must trouble Senior Brother to take them with us, though once we leave Shaman territory, you need only deliver them to Hanyang Pass. There is also Third Senior Sister; on that day, she and I fought side by side to the death and finally escaped with our lives. By now, she should have passed Hanyang Pass. In all of Lanshen Palace, only the four of us remain." At this point, tears welled in the red-robed woman's eyes.
Yet Wei Yuan remained unmoved and said coldly, "Refusing to reveal your true form even now—are you trying to test me?"
The red-robed woman said softly, "How could Junior Sister dare to do such a thing?"
Whether she dared or not, Wei Yuan had no intention of playing along with her schemes. The divine way of incense possessed many bizarre methods, and Yun Feifei was clearly a troublesome character, but Wei Yuan currently had many means bestowed by the Immortal Monarch and felt no fear whatsoever. Checking the formation plate with his divine sense, Wei Yuan found several points of karmic light in this hall alone, the largest of which lay directly beneath his feet.
Now that Yun Feifei had appeared, she naturally could not escape the Immortal Monarch's karmic tracing, and all nearby entanglements of cause and effect had nowhere to hide. Wei Yuan sneered coldly, ignored Yun Feifei, and walked straight toward the remnants of the main statue. There was a point of light on the statue's left foot; although not the largest, it was quite conspicuous. He intended to test Yun Feifei with this first.
Although the karmic link beneath the main hall was the largest, the mere thought of it gave Wei Yuan goosebumps, making him subconsciously want to avoid it. Combined with the results of the Inquiring Immortal divination earlier, Wei Yuan had no choice but to be exceptionally cautious.
Sure enough, Yun Feifei's expression changed. "Senior—Senior Brother! What are you doing?"
"What do you think?" Wei Yuan stepped before the remains of the statue and cleaved open the left foot with a single sword strike!
The statue's left foot appeared to be natural stone, yet inside lay a hollow cavity. When Wei Yuan cleaved it open, a small jade figurine roughly a foot long tumbled out.
Wei Yuan caught the jade statue and examined it closely. The jade figurine was pure green, depicting a woman entwined by a giant serpent. In the serpent's mouth was a medallion about an inch in size. The small medallion was carved with extraordinary finesse, holding a lively wisp of Dao rhyme of an exceptionally high grade. Only now, having left the statue's left foot, did the jade figurine begin to radiate fluctuations of Dao rhyme; previously, no matter how many times Wei Yuan swept his divine sense over it, it had felt like solid rock with nothing inside.
When he had first arrived at the main hall, Wei Yuan had swept the entire hall with his divine sense, but he had only scanned the two damaged statues once before subconsciously assuming there was nothing wrong with the wreckage and ceased inspecting them. Looking back now, he must have been unconsciously influenced by methods such as incense aspiration power.
Fortunately, the Immortal Monarch's methods overwhelmed everything, allowing this medallion to see the light of day.
Yun Feifei wore a look of pleasant surprise: "So the medallion was hidden here!"
Her delight did not appear faked, yet the momentary flicker across her face when Wei Yuan had walked toward the statue had not escaped his eyes. Wei Yuan asked with a faint smile, "What use does this medallion have?"
Before Yun Feifei could answer, her expression abruptly shifted! Ignoring Wei Yuan, she rushed straight out through the collapsed gap in the hall, looking fraught with mixed shock, fury, and panic.
Xu Wan'er wanted to follow, but looked back at Wei Yuan and hesitated, seemingly waiting for his decision.
Wei Yuan sneered inwardly; this Yun Feifei was still acting! Ever since entering the Shattered Lands, every single person he had encountered knew how to put on a show—not a single one was easy to deal with. As for someone honest and upright like himself, Wei Yuan had not seen a single other.
Wei Yuan called to Xu Wan'er, and together they stepped out of the hall's gap after Yun Feifei, following the aura she left behind to a roofless building. Wei Yuan and Xu Wan'er were both Dao Foundation cultivators, moving like lightning; in a single stride they had vanished, leaving Xu Wenwu all alone in the gloomy hall.
Xu Wenwu glanced around. The more he looked, the more ghostly silhouettes seemed to loom. Countless eyes appeared to be watching him from the dark; high female vocals seemed to faintly chant in the air; someone seemed to be blowing cold air on the back of his neck, colder and colder, and the darkness began to squirm.
Xu Wenwu had also read that storybook about the giant serpent scholar and the seven young misses, thoroughly enjoying it at the time, but recalling it now felt completely different. In particular, the standing goddess statue, whose face closely resembled the woman in the relief in the front hall, now seemed to be smiling right at him. Xu Wenwu turned cold all over, convinced this woman was lusting after his body.
Limbs going limp and legs losing strength, Xu Wenwu could barely stand. Only now did he realize how dangerous this world was; dominating it would probably require extra effort. And back in his original world, he had long given up on putting in effort, lacking only the opportunity to slack off completely.
Fortunately, the one seeking to dominate was Wei Yuan, not Xu Wenwu. Xu Wenwu had self-awareness: he knew he had the talent of a king's counselor at best, incapable of being an emperor of the ages. He had no grand ambitions anyway; once Wei Yuan ruled all under heaven, he would be satisfied just being a Prince of the First Rank with his own fiefdom, standing shoulder to shoulder with the sovereign. This world was huge, and Xu Wenwu wasn't greedy—a modest seven or eight thousand li of fertile territory would suffice to get by.
Once he had his fiefdom and stood beneath one man while above tens of millions, he would be quite busy. Xu Wenwu had plenty of ideas: wine pools and meat forests, leopard chambers and pleasure baths—all of them had to be built. Then, amidst the day-and-night toil of state affairs, intellectual sustenance could not be neglected; he would capture at least several hundred scholars and lock them in a pavilion specifically to write storybooks. Those who wrote well would be rewarded; those who didn't would be thrown into a dark room on clear water. Xu Wenwu believed that no matter what kind of scholar, after three days of starvation, literary inspiration would surely burst forth like a spring.
Thinking of all this, Xu Wenwu was no longer so terrified.
Meanwhile, Wei Yuan pushed open the door and stepped into the ruined house. Inside sat a bed upon which lay a woman with tightly closed eyes and a pale face, a faint dark-green haze swirling beneath her skin without dissipating. Her clothes were partially undone, her outer skirt pushed down to her ankles to reveal shapely, snow-white legs, and a swath of fair skin was exposed at her chest.
The moment Wei Yuan saw her, he recognized her by her essence soul aura as Yun Feifei's true body.
There were also two men in the room. One appeared to be in his thirties, with a sinister cast to his brow and eyes; he held a throwing-knife artifact, its blade dripping with blood. In the corner sat a younger cultivator, clean-featured and rather handsome.
The young cultivator clutched his abdomen with one hand, blood continuously oozing between his fingers as he said in a trembling voice, "Eldest Senior Brother! How could you strike me with such cruelty!"
Seeing the disheveled woman, the red-robed woman turned cold as frost and barked, "What are you doing?"
Eldest Senior Brother looked at the red-robed woman, his gaze turning tender and bitter. He said, "Feifei, I watched you grow up from childhood. Once you came of age, we were in love with each other, and Master intended to unite us... until Little Junior Brother arrived."
The red-robed woman said, "Little Junior Brother and I are completely innocent; there is nothing between us."
Eldest Senior Brother suddenly erupted, shouting, "You still lie to me! Over those years, the way you looked at him changed—do you think I didn't notice? The two of you went on missions together every time, experienced trials together. In the end, even Master stopped mentioning anything between you and me! Everyone wanted you to be with Little Junior Brother! Not a single person stood by me! Why? By then, we had known each other for sixteen years, while he had only been here for a few months!"
The red-robed woman sighed. "Eldest Senior Brother, it isn't what you think..."
Eldest Senior Brother threw back his head and laughed bitterly into the air. "You're still lying to me! In truth, I know why—you were taken by his family background, taken by his surname Xu! Even Master curried favor with power, bent on attaching himself to the Xu family!"
Beside them, the blood flowing from the younger junior brother's fingers grew heavier, his breathing steadily weakening as panic mounted.
Hearing this, he hurriedly said, "Eldest Senior Brother, I only stumbled upon your good fortune by accident! Since you love Senior Sister Yun, I'll yield her to you! I was merely acting on the orders of my clan elders to infiltrate Lanshen Palace and obtain that item. I never had any real interest in Senior Sister, and my clan would never allow me to marry some wild woman of obscure origin from the mountains. I... what I said to her was just playing along for the occasion!"
Eldest Senior Brother seemed swayed, asking suspiciously, "Is that true?"
The younger junior brother hastily said, "If there is any falsehood, may heaven strike me down with lightning! Eldest Senior Brother, I am gravely injured; please, save me! As long as you spare me, once I return, I will beg my father to step forward and betroth a clan sister to you, letting you marry into the Xu family as a son-in-law!"
Eldest Senior Brother grew even more hesitant, glancing between the red-robed woman and her motionless physical body on the bed. "But your senior sister and I..."
"Eldest Senior Brother, you've already made your move! It won't end well regardless, so you might as well see it through to the end! Take her body—you won't lose out either way! If she knows what's good for her later on and hands over that old bastard's secret, keep her as a concubine. If she doesn't, my family has plenty of ways to make her talk, and then we can send her to a brothel or just sell her off to the west!"
The red-robed woman was furious. "Little Junior Brother, I gave you my sincere heart in vain, and Master regarded you with high favor—is this how you repay us?"
Growing weaker by the second and desperate for treatment, the younger junior brother snarled viciously, "A wild woman from a backwater little sect—without even looking at your own origins, you think you can enter my Xu family's gates?"
Eldest Senior Brother's expression flickered with conflicting emotions, but upon hearing the red-robed woman's final remark, his face turned deathly pale. "Good, good, good! You truly did have feelings for him! Then I have nothing more to say—today, I will fulfill the desire I've harbored for years!"
With that, he stepped toward the woman on the bed, reaching out to tear at her clothes.
The red-robed woman flew into a rage, shouting, "You're courting death!"
Eldest Senior Brother sneered, gripping the collar of the woman on the bed and slowly pulling it open. "The Soul-Guiding Casket you secretly buried has already been dug up by me! Now, every bit of aspiration power you use is a bit gone forever! Still want to kill me? Go ahead and try! It's a pity the old ghost hoarded his secrets and died too quickly; otherwise, if I had obtained that Seven Stars Reincarnation Body and turned this essence soul of yours into a physical body as well, there would be quite a few more ways to play with you!"
At this point, Wei Yuan could finally stomach it no longer. He gave a cough and said, "Do you fellows take me for invisible?"
Eldest Senior Brother and the younger junior brother turned their heads in unison, staring at Wei Yuan as if they had seen a ghost. In one voice, they blurted, "Who are you? When did you come in?"
Wei Yuan was momentarily rendered speechless. As it turned out, they truly had treated him as nonexistent.
Chapter 110