The layout of the Western Jin Royal Palace had not changed in the slightest, as though time itself had frozen there. Wei Yuan gave it some thought and realized that nearly ten years had passed since he was last here.
Ever since his cultivation had grown higher, Wei Yuan had noticed that time seemed to slip away faster and faster. Sometimes, after sitting in a single meditative session just to refine an insignificant trace of dharmic power, days or even half a month would have gone by.
With affairs in both Qingming and Yizhou keeping him busy, Wei Yuan could not afford to enter extended closed-door cultivation. Otherwise, a single retreat might easily last several years, or even centuries.
At present, Wei Yuan had been enfeoffed as Prince Wei in Jin and granted the Nine Bestowals, possessing every conceivable honor. He also served as the Military Commissioner of Qingyang and the Minister of Southern Military Affairs; his power could truly be said to dominate the court. By this time, both the Left Prime Minister and the Right Prime Minister of past years had retired to their home villages, and their old associates and disciples had scattered like frightened birds and beasts. Across the court and the land, not a single rival from back then remained in sight.
With his current status, Wei Yuan could enter and leave the royal palace at will. No one dared bar his path, nor did anyone dare approach to disturb him. Only Zhao Tong came hurrying over upon receiving the news. Seeing Wei Yuan strolling at an unhurried pace, lost in contemplation, Zhao Tong did not dare speak out of turn. He merely trailed twenty feet behind, keeping up at a brisk trot without making the slightest sound.
To ordinary eyes, the palace looked entirely unchanged. But in Wei Yuan's gaze, subtle traces of wear and decay were still visible. Patches of moss had crept into many wall corners, fallen leaves had gathered in a layer on the flagstones, and fine cracks ran across the walls, signaling that another fresh coat of plaster was due.
Wei Yuan paused abruptly. A yellow leaf drifted slowly before his eyes, coming to rest on the ground. Wei Yuan looked up and saw a parasol tree whose foliage was already half green and half yellow.
So autumn had arrived once more.
For reasons he could not name, Wei Yuan always felt this was a melancholic season.
After lingering for a moment, Wei Yuan continued forward, crushing that fallen leaf underfoot. In the autumn of the fifteenth year of Hongjing, Wei Yuan crushed the palace's first autumn leaf.
Where he met the King of Jin was neither the main hall nor the Imperial Study, but rather a warm chamber beside the study. An array within the chamber was already active, making it as warm as spring. The palace maids and supervising eunuchs were flushed red from the heat. The King of Jin, meanwhile, was bundled in thick marten furs, curled up inside a chair and bathed in the warm autumn sunlight. He stared vacantly at the motes of dust dancing in the beams of light, motionless for a long time.
Only when Wei Yuan entered the room did the king's cloudy eyes turn slightly. Lifting a fingertip, he pointed toward a heated chair nearby. Wei Yuan walked over and took a seat, his posture relaxed and natural.
Taking a deep breath, the King of Jin produced a muddy, rattling sound from his chest and belly, like a clot of silt churning within. He sighed and said, "Over this past year, this king has finally come to understand what it means to near the end of one's days. Nowadays, I can actually sit in a daze for an entire day in peace, just like this, sitting from sunrise until the full moon hangs high. This is what it is to wait for death, isn't it?"
Wei Yuan said, "Your Majesty is still in your prime. There are still opportunities ahead; there is no need to grieve over autumn and mourn the spring."
A glimmer flashed across the King of Jin's eyes before fading away, and he offered a bitter smile. "There is no point hiding anything from you. In truth, this king knows full well that both of the life-prolonging medicines you offered were derived from the same main ingredient—likely the remnants of ancient phoenix blood. Those were already rare treasures for extending longevity. This king took them twice, and the second was a masterwork from the hands of an alchemy grandmaster.
"Even if there could be a third time, the medicinal efficacy would surely be far worse than before; granting another three or four years at most would be reaching the heavens. Besides, when every day feels like twilight and dusk like this, there is not much joy in living."
Wei Yuan said, "In recent years, Your Majesty entrusted the south to me while you personally rectified official governance in the north and granted the people respite. The northern frontier armies have re-equipped with new gear, vastly increasing their combat strength, to the point that the Liao can no longer breach the passes to push south. All of these are benevolent policies and virtuous deeds that must generate massive amounts of mortal karmic luck. Why, then, has Your Majesty grown so frail?"
The King of Jin let out a self-deprecating chuckle and said, "To counter Lu Changhe and avoid becoming a marionette manipulated in his hands, this king switched to cultivating an evil method in my middle years, with... as the core. By doing so, I naturally gained the aid of mighty figures. Thus, this king acted in accordance with the method—slackening governance, ignoring natural disasters, and letting the northern border wars persist without end. Sure enough, this king's cultivation soared step by step, and my lifespan increased as well.
"Over several decades, this method has sunk deep into my soul and mind. The mortal karmic luck that gathers on me now only causes my cultivation to regress and my lifespan to drain away all the faster."
Only now did Wei Yuan understand why the King of Jin, who should have still been hale and vigorous as a dragon or tiger, had turned so decrepit and dull. Yet, the moment the King of Jin spoke that one particular term, his voice had cut out on its own. Wei Yuan had heard nothing, and he immediately forgot that a word had even been missing.
However, Wei Yuan currently had great karmic luck gracing his person. Moreover, Splendor of the Many Realms was constantly backing up everything he saw and heard, and then backing up those backups in turn—rippling outward like pebbles cast into a pond, wave upon wave, layer upon layer, endless and inexhaustible.
The instant Wei Yuan forgot the missing word from the King of Jin's speech, his memory was overwritten and restored, then forgotten and restored again. After this repeated several times, Splendor of the Many Realms realized it had encountered a causal erasure event, and it focused entirely on replicating and backing up that exact segment.
In the blink of an eye, Wei Yuan forgot more than a thousand times before finally outlasting the duration of the causal erasure's effect, thoroughly imprinting the fact that a phrase was missing when the King of Jin spoke.
The entire process was merely the work of an instant; an ordinary person might not even realize that any time had elapsed. Yet Wei Yuan clearly remembered every backup and overwrite, thus overcoming the causal erasure.
What Wei Yuan did not know was that deep in the outer heavens, someone let out a soft exclamation of surprise. A gaze immediately descended and fell upon Wei Yuan. But in that observer's eyes, all that could be seen was a vast, rolling sea of azure karmic luck, and the gaze was promptly withdrawn.
Throughout the entire encounter, Wei Yuan remained completely unaware.
Looking at the King of Jin, Wei Yuan understood well enough in his heart. For someone to speak words subject to causal erasure, combined with the King of Jin's status, it required little thought to deduce that this was certainly connected to the Martial Ancestor's grand game.
Yet since it had already been causally erased, how had the King of Jin managed to say it in the first place?
Having reached his present height, Wei Yuan naturally understood that there were no coincidences or strokes of luck in this world. Behind every happenstance were countless invisible threads pulled from the shadows.
Listening to the latter half of the King of Jin's explanation, Wei Yuan realized that the king's cultivation technique seemed to require draining the state fortune and driving the common folk into displacement and misery to make progress. It sounded remarkably similar in spirit to what was happening in the State of Ji; evidently, both were driven by figures behind the scenes seeking to break the game.
With things laid bare, Wei Yuan grasped the underlying principle of the King of Jin's technique: by weakening Western Jin's national strength, he indirectly unsettled the Martial Ancestor's arrangement, thereby winning the backing of numerous immortals behind the scenes. With their support, Lu Changhe dared not act recklessly and could only resort to underhanded schemes in secret, such as swapping bloodlines.
Yet in his declining years, for reasons unknown, a spark of conscience had seemingly awakened in the King of Jin. He ceased cultivating the method, reached a compromise with Wei Yuan, and settled down to wait for death. Granting the people respite was, for him, simply an accelerated form of suicide.
What the King of Jin had never anticipated was that Wei Yuan would present him with life-prolonging medicines twice. Nor had Wei Yuan imagined that after the King of Jin handed the south over to him, Wei Yuan would bide his time once he had gathered enough mortal karmic luck, attributing the benevolent rule to the King of Jin so that the mortal karmic luck accrued to the king's person—nearly killing him in the process.
Chapter 1111