A mere fourth-tier sect Dao Foundation dared to be so arrogant? Wei Yuan was naturally enraged. Conveniently overlooking the effect of having an Immortal Monarch's status backing him, he struck directly.
A golden cauldron manifested above his head; then both his body and the cauldron expanded by a ring. Reaching out to seize the cauldron's leg, he swung it up and smashed it down right upon the Eldest Senior Brother's head! The strike was savagely ferocious. With no way to dodge, the Eldest Senior Brother could only raise his flying daggers in a desperate block.
With a resounding chime of the cauldron, the golden vessel in Wei Yuan's hands shattered. The Eldest Senior Brother, meanwhile, spewed blood, his flying sword snapping into several pieces as more than half of his body was driven straight into the earth! This smash from Wei Yuan was equivalent to a direct collision of their Dao Foundations; in just a single blow, it wounded the Dao Foundation of the Eldest Senior Brother—who had already reached Spirit Nourishing—leaving his Dao power sluggish and difficult to circulate.
When the golden cauldron shattered, Wei Yuan felt a faint dizziness in his mind, and a stone upon his Dao Foundation fractured into several pieces. However, it was merely scattered rock rather than part of the solid stratum, so its shattering caused Wei Yuan little pain. With a shift of Wei Yuan's divine sense, another boulder on the ground began to deform, turning into a square, three-legged cauldron. Wei Yuan reached out and grasped it, and once more a golden cauldron appeared in his hands.
As the golden cauldron slammed down this time, the Eldest Senior Brother had no room left to resist. He was battered into coughing up mouthfuls of blood, his Dao Foundation cracking as his entire body sank into the ground, leaving only half his head exposed. In truth, the Eldest Senior Brother's defeat was thoroughly humiliating. Lanshen Palace had risen on the divine way of incense and possessed countless bizarre arts, but frontal combat was not its forte. Clashing Dao Foundations head-on with Wei Yuan in such a cramped space was truly pitting his greatest weakness against his opponent's greatest strength; even with a cultivation at Spirit Nourishing, he could not withstand three blows.
Seeing his Eldest Senior Brother on the brink of death, the Little Junior Brother cowered in the corner, his eyes filled with pure terror.
Having flattened the Eldest Senior Brother in two strikes, Wei Yuan habitually reviewed the battle: "Molding a cauldron on the spot takes a bit of time, easily giving an enemy a chance to catch their breath. Next time I should mold a few spares in advance."
Putting away the golden cauldron, Wei Yuan looked at the motionless, partially exposed Yun Feifei, then glanced at the red-robed woman whose Primordial Soul aura was completely different, asking, "Who exactly are you?"
The red-robed woman cast a somewhat resentful glance at Wei Yuan and said, "This soul body of mine actually belongs to Feifei's Senior Sister. When the sect was destroyed years ago, I suffered a tragic death, and a wisp of my soul was taken into Feifei's Soul-Guiding Casket to be nurtured. Over these years, as we hid and fled, I went wherever it was inconvenient for Feifei to go. My movements, as well as the yin wind that blew upon you that day, were formed by consuming the incense vow power that our palace accumulated over all those years. A while ago, Feifei fell victim to a blood curse and could only suppress it by sleeping, so she attached a wisp of divine sense to my body. Thus, I am myself, yet I am also Feifei."
"Then where is the thing she carries? Hand it over quickly so I can return to the sect and report my mission accomplished," Wei Yuan said expressionlessly.
Taken aback, the woman in red asked, "Feifei is already like this, and you won't take her with you?"
"Taking the item she carries back serves the same purpose." Wei Yuan made no effort to hide that he had no desire to drag dead weight along.
The woman in red had never encountered such a situation. In the past, anyone who saw her or Yun Feifei would scramble to offer help. How could anyone be like the man before her, who treated Feifei as a corpse merely because she was in a temporary slumber?
"Refusing to speak?" Wei Yuan stared at the woman in red, a cold sneer gradually curling the corner of his lips.
"Wh-what are you going to do? Don't you dare touch Feifei!" the woman in red cried out, even though Wei Yuan showed no intention of laying a finger on Yun Feifei.
Ignoring her warning, Wei Yuan drew a simple diagram on the floor of the room. Suddenly, the woman in red found herself unable to move!
The Ghost-Restraining Formation. This formation could briefly immobilize ghosts and yin souls, setting the stage for subsequent attacks. Originally, Wei Yuan had not been sure what sort of creature the red-robed woman was, but now that she had admitted to being a remnant soul, the Ghost-Restraining Formation was naturally the optimal choice.
Wei Yuan traced another circle of formation lines outside it, and the red-robed woman instantly felt a scorching heat throughout her body, faint flames beginning to spout from her mouth and nose!
The Soul-Refining Formation! This was a formidable array, capable of refining weaker ghosts straight into nothingness. Even though the red-robed woman had vow power protecting her, being reduced to flying ash was merely a matter of time.
Yet she was exceptionally stubborn; despite screaming continuously from the burning, she refused to divulge what that thing was or where it was hidden. Not bothering to waste more time with her, Wei Yuan stopped the Soul-Refining Formation and said to Xu Wan'er, "Watch over them here."
Wei Yuan jabbed his finger three times, including the red-robed woman, and gave specific instructions: "No matter what they say, do not believe them. Kill anyone who tries to run."
Before leaving, Wei Yuan still felt uneasy, so he set up a feng shui formation in the room, bestowing the misfortune of bad luck upon everyone around. Wei Yuan's own karmic fortune was overwhelmingly potent, leaving him unaffected by the feng shui formation.
He laid all this out because he realized the melodrama among Yun Feifei and her fellow disciples was truly messy, and not a single one sounded like a decent person—perhaps only the Third Senior Sister who had fled to Hanyang Pass was somewhat normal. In Wei Yuan's view, there was no need whatsoever to take the Eldest Senior Brother and Little Junior Brother to Hanyang Pass; not butchering them on the spot was already an act of mercy.
Of course, if they could prove their value, that would be another matter. Wei Yuan was by no means someone who would compromise his principles for immortal silver—unless the amount was exceedingly large.
As for Yun Feifei, once he obtained the item, there would be no need to bring her back to the palace either. What the Immortal Monarch valued was that item, not her person. Having read so many books, Wei Yuan naturally would not lose sight of what mattered. As for showing tenderness toward a fair maiden or having pity on beauty, such notions simply did not exist for a temperamental sword cultivator.
Xu Wan'er, on the other hand, was rather simple. Perhaps having grown up in official residences from childhood, she had not witnessed much of the world's hardships, resembling a sheet of blank paper that was as sharp as a blade.
After giving his careful warnings, Wei Yuan walked toward the grand hall. The formation plate indicated that the greatest karmic tie was hidden beneath the hall's floor, and the key to opening it was likely the medallion in the jade figurine's hand. Therefore, whether Yun Feifei spoke or not was largely irrelevant. Once Wei Yuan searched all the locations tied to the karmic threads, if he still hadn't found that item, it wouldn't be too late to return and bargain with Yun Feifei.
After Wei Yuan left, the room abruptly fell silent. Everyone was staring at Xu Wan'er, making her subconsciously take a step back.
The woman in red urged, "Quick, help me rub out the diagram beneath my feet, and I'll take you away!"
Xu Wan'er took two steps toward the red-robed woman, then stopped. The red-robed woman's expression shifted several times before she said, "Y-you couldn't possibly be..."
Xu Wan'er's face flushed slightly, her voice like the hum of a mosquito: "I think... it's better if we listen to Senior Brother, lest we ruin his important plans."
The woman in red fumed, "He treated you like that, and you're still speaking on his behalf?"
Looking at Xu Wan'er's thoroughly blushing face, she suddenly understood: "Could it be that you want to..."
"No!" Xu Wan'er denied flatly.
The woman in red stamped her foot in frustration, but suppressed her temper and prepared to persuade her further. She knew Xu Wan'er was mild-tempered and lacked opinions of her own, making her easy to sway. As for Wei Yuan, she wasn't particularly worried, believing he was only boasting and could never find the patriarch's secret vault. Back then, the Wuyu Clan's army and those others had searched back and forth for days, tearing down all of Lanshen Palace, and hadn't they still come away empty-handed?
The urgent priority was to escape first. Once Wei Yuan left empty-handed, they could return and find a way to open the patriarch's secret vault.
At the thought of the secret vault, the woman in red ground her teeth in secret, cursing inwardly, *The old bastard got what he deserved! Good riddance to him, refusing to hand over the secret to me even before he died! He deserved death!*
In the Patriarch Hall, Wei Yuan hauled the paralyzed Xu Wenwu to the side and paced through the hall, observing the reactions of the various karmic light motes. The most intense one remained underground, roughly a hundred feet deep. Another was within the relatively well-preserved goddess statue, and yet another was in the ruins of the disciple quarters. Because that spot was farther away, it was already near the edge of the formation plate.
Wei Yuan approached the goddess statue and examined it closely. Whether viewed with the naked eye or scanned with divine sense, there was nothing out of the ordinary; only through the Qi-Gazing Technique could he perceive a considerable amount of incense vow power lingering upon it. It seemed that even though Lanshen Palace had been destroyed, many people still worshipped these deities.
Wei Yuan pointed a finger, blasting the statue with a Water Flow Technique. In this region, water- and wood-attribute Dao arts were exceptionally effective, possessing many miraculous properties absent elsewhere. Wei Yuan's Primordial Soul was formidable; where others casting a Water Flow Technique might branch it into three or five streams, Wei Yuan could split it into over a hundred streams, each of them immensely potent.
The slender streams of water sheared the surface of the statue like blades, peeling away its exterior like an onion to finally reveal the mechanism within. Inside the statue was yet another statue—also of a goddess—with an indentation between her chest and abdomen whose shape matched the delicate medallion exactly. Wei Yuan took the medallion from the jade figurine and fitted it into the goddess's chest.
A hazy glimmer abruptly lit up in the grand hall, accompanied by the faint murmurs of countless common folk praying and making vows. Several floor tiles in the hall gradually faded away, revealing a dark, deep passage leading underground. This passage was visible only to Wei Yuan, who held the medallion; in the eyes of anyone else, the hall floor remained solid and intact.
*Truly unoriginal,* Wei Yuan remarked inwardly.
This method of setting up hidden chambers and mechanisms could be traced back tens of thousands of years, entirely devoid of novelty. Meanwhile, in Theory of Arts classes, the instructors had taught dozens of ways to design secret rooms alone; among them, placing a secret room's switch on an inanimate object was the most foolish, and using an inanimate medallion to open an entrance was stupidity multiplied.
Those instructors pushed the boundaries of innovation and had long developed countless ingenious schemes. One widely acclaimed method was to bind the secret room's mechanism to the master's Primordial Soul, requiring the master to be in a specific emotional state before the secret realm would open. In plain terms, one had to coax the person into a good mood before the secret realm could be unlocked.
Someone else had further innovated upon this method: coaxing them required a honey trap, and the beauty not only had to match the person's ideal goddess, but also had to fall hopelessly in love with them for the person's emotions to reach the required threshold and unlock the realm. The moment this method emerged, countless female cultivators cursed it vehemently, and a senior powerhouse even stepped forward in fury to teach the creator a lesson.
Yet from then on, some female cultivators secretly adapted the method for their own use and developed numerous new applications, turning it into a wellspring of inspiration for many later storybooks.
However, in all of history, the one with the highest caliber of designing entrance mechanisms was not among those who taught the Theory of Arts, but the teacher who taught the Theory of Heaven and Earth.
That master had simply left a problem at the entrance: calculating the orbital trajectories of two great stars revolving around each other. Solve it correctly, and the door opened; calculate wrong, and you took a lightning strike.
In the entire Palace of Grand Beginning, barely anyone could solve that mechanism.
Likewise, the most ingenious method for navigating from the entrance to the secret room had also been created by that master. Once the problem was solved, a door would open into a boundless void. One had to fly strictly along the calculated trajectory to finally reach the secret room. If the trajectory deviated even slightly, one would be lost in the void, never to find the secret chamber again.
This method was specifically designed to foil cheaters who relied on others to solve the problem and open the entrance. It was said that for a period after it was introduced, several True Monarchs were inexplicably in foul moods, venting their frustration wherever they went. The True Monarchs of the Palace of Grand Beginning were all accustomed to arrogance; they could neither accept being inferior in the Dao nor being inferior in intellect, even when it was the plain truth.
Thus, during that period, the Palace of Grand Beginning had been thrown into utter chaos, and for once, Zhang Sheng didn't even get a turn to throw a temper tantrum.
Chapter 111