Was the overall situation already decided?
Until the very last moment, Wei Yuan never believed any situation was set in stone and unalterable. Even when that final moment arrived, he believed he could still struggle a bit more, fight for one last resuscitation.
And even if resuscitation failed and he was laid out on the chopping block, he was sure his tongue would still be defiant.
Upon returning to Qingming, Wei Yuan did not go to the Hall of Mountains and Rivers this time. Instead, he made for the Palace of Immortal Beginning where the Qingming boundary stone resided, sat down directly across from Qingming, and began to ponder before the stone.
The Qingming boundary stone looked vastly different from when it had first been planted. Swathed in shifting clouds and mist, its color transitioned unpredictably from pale azure to deep indigo. Seen from afar, jade vapors cloaked the blue stone—a magnificent spectacle fit for immortals.
Qingming was now growing increasingly translucent. Inside, something small seemed to be gestating. It was merely the beginning, yet it already exuded an overwhelming spiritual aura.
That the boundary stone had evolved to such a state was not primarily Wei Yuan's doing; the greatest credit belonged to the hundreds of millions of living souls who dwelt upon it.
Their births, deaths, and illnesses, their joys, angers, sorrows, and delights, their endless cycles of reincarnation—all constantly washed over Qingming, steeping it in the rushing torrent of mortal fortune, gradually coaxing forth its metamorphosis.
Qingming offered a sanctuary where these countless souls could survive, while mortal beings granted Qingming the possibility of advancement and the birth of sentience. It was, in every sense, a mutual fulfillment.
Wei Yuan had never anticipated that the boundary stone he had planted decades ago on a surge of youthful bravado would develop to such an astonishing extent. It seemed he truly had altered the lives of many and reshaped a small corner of the world.
Now, with the great catastrophe drawing near, sitting beside Qingming gave Wei Yuan a faint sense of being one with heaven and earth. After all, Qingming had merged with his Mind Realm into a wondrous state both illusory and real. Beside the boundary stone, his thoughts were exceptionally clear.
If he were to introduce variables to alter the broader situation now, where would those variables come from? And where did the crises lie?
He had no leads on potential variables yet, but the sources of danger were abundantly clear. Aside from the Nine States, Qingming's foremost external adversaries were the Shaman Clan and the Mountain Folk. The Shamans directly bordering Qingming were the Nether Shamans' Kingdom of Rain and the Strength Shaman tribes. The Strength Shamans went without saying—even if they were not allies, they would not be enemies.
The Kingdom of Rain had been crippled by Wei Yuan during the last great war. Over twenty years had passed since, and he did not know whether they had regained their strength. Counting the years, Hongye had likely already perished. The descendants and clansmen he had left in Qingming were thriving, though all were ordinary mortals. A few among them had produced template Dao foundations, but nothing extraordinary.
As long as the Yellow Springs Grotto-Heaven remained, Wei Yuan knew the Ancestral Shaman would never let the matter rest. Yet what the Shaman Clan faced was Qingming—a Qingming armed to the teeth, bristling with fierce firepower that had nowhere to vent. Wei Yuan was not overly concerned on that front.
Yizhou, however, was a different story. Yizhou had only recently been established, with everything waiting to be built from scratch. It made use of nothing but ordinary boundary stones, meaning its transformation of heaven and earth was far slower than Qingming's, and it lacked Qingming's boundless potential.
Take grain production, the most critical element of the people's livelihood: Yizhou could manage only two harvests a year, with a few isolated areas managing three. Qingming, by contrast, yielded six harvests year-round, with an average yield approaching six hundred jin per mu—more than triple what it had originally been. In Yizhou, the yield lingered around two hundred-odd jin per mu; only fields treated with the newest fertilizers could surge past five hundred jin.
Qingming's chemical industry was still far from fully developed, and True Monarch Chuhe lacked sufficient cultivators with template Dao foundations under his banner. The fertilizer produced fell vastly short of demand, and the lion's share had to be diverted to manufacture explosives.
Then there were the Mountain Folk...
Wei Yuan recalled their last sudden assault. Had he not secretly transported five hundred thousand heavy infantry to Yizhou ahead of time, the entire territory would have been uprooted in that battle.
When all was said and done, the Mountain Folk and Cangwu had severely underestimated Qingming's strategic transport capability. Relying on past experience, they had assumed that even if Qingming exerted every ounce of its strength, it could move at most ten to twenty thousand heavy troops.
None of them had expected that within a brief span, Wei Yuan would construct an immense fleet of floating transports and airships, deploying half a million heavily equipped soldiers in a single breath. In terms of freight weight, that was equivalent to nearly ten million standard troops of the Nine States along with all their arms and provisions.
Even so, the Mountain Folk clearly would not take defeat lying down. When they returned, it would likely be on an unprecedented scale.
Setting the Mountain Folk aside, as Wei Yuan reviewed his list of adversaries, his thoughts turned to the little monk who had mysteriously pulled him into the world fragment beyond the heavens.
That young monk clearly bore the marks of a reincarnated powerhouse and had to represent a colossal power to pull off such a grand maneuver, dangling a fragment of an extra-worldly realm as bait to lure Wei Yuan onto the hook.
Although the monk had revealed not the slightest flaw and left behind no karmic ties—such that even Immortal Monarch Yanshi could not trace his origins—Wei Yuan had no need for deduction. By directly expending over ten million strands of mortal fortune, he had arrived at the conclusion that the boy was most likely the newly descended Buddha Son.
Calculations fueled by mortal fortune were just that unreasonable.
Since he was the Buddha Son, he was naturally tied inextricably to the Baohua Pure Land. Furthermore, during their clash of Buddhist will, Wei Yuan had faintly brushed against the core of his opponent's intent, ultimately determining it belonged to the lineage of the Great Sun Tathagata.
The teachings of the Great Sun Tathagata were widespread, and while the Baohua Pure Land was its most orthodox branch, one could not entirely rule out covert strikes by other sects.
Yet taking all the signs together, Wei Yuan was all but certain that the party moving against him was the Baohua Pure Land. This was rather thought-provoking. Previously, the Pure Land's posture toward him had mirrored the Sword Palace's current attitude toward Zhang Sheng: exhausting every means to recruit and win him over, sparing no expense.
When, then, had the Baohua Pure Land's stance changed?
Was it because the Buddha Son had descended and was not Wei Yuan? Or was it because of the *Three Realms Ruyi Sutra*, of which he had only penned an opening?
Wei Yuan could not tell the exact reason, yet he added the Baohua Pure Land to his list of enemies all the same. Strictly speaking, doing so was completely unfounded; he possessed not a shred of presentable evidence.
Yet at some point—perhaps ever since Qingming had emerged victorious in all the wars against its neighbors—Wei Yuan's outlook had quietly shifted.
Declaring a power an enemy required neither reasons nor evidence. It was enough that Wei Yuan felt it posed a threat to him.
If one wished to strike, what need was there to seek an excuse?
Should the Baohua Pure Land prove innocent, Wei Yuan was not unwilling to be reasonable; they merely needed to prove their own blamelessness.
Having tentatively designated the Mountain Folk and the Baohua Pure Land as his two targets, Wei Yuan swiftly set about formulating a counter-strategy.
Formulating it simply meant having the Flourishing of the Many Realms generate the plans, test them, and revise them, after which Wei Yuan memorized the result.
It was an exceptionally swift and effective method. Wei Yuan had resolved countless dilemmas through this process in the past, and this time was no different.
Yet one of the proposals suddenly made him pause.
This specific scheme was designed exclusively for the Mountain Folk, aimed at eliminating their threat fundamentally and permanently.
At its core, the plan utilized the knowledge acquired from the Umbrella Corporation to develop a self-cultivating supervirus. Once a supervirus at the level of a template Dao foundation was cultured and deployed into the Domain of the Mountain Folk, it could wipe out the vast majority of their population within a few years.
A single virion possessing the might of a template Dao foundation was utterly inconceivable in the world beyond the heavens, yet entirely achievable in this realm.
Still, one could easily imagine how staggering an amount of negative karma such an act would generate.
Wei Yuan stared fixedly at the proposal, his mind blank, brooding over it for several days and nights. Not until the dawn of the seventh day did a ripple stir in his frozen thoughts, coalescing into a single conviction: *How can another be permitted to snore beside one's own bed?*
The Mountain Folk had committed no fresh offense for the moment, yet they posed an enormous menace to Yizhou, having launched a full-scale invasion only a few years prior. With the great catastrophe looming, Wei Yuan could not tolerate such a peril at his flank.
Whether the Mountain Folk would actually attack Yizhou was beside the point. Wei Yuan could not afford to wait until they struck before retaliating; he had to nip the threat in the bud.
As for right and wrong, justice and fault—those were concerns only the weak dwelled upon.
As for all the negative karma, Wei Yuan resolved to shoulder it alone.
When that time came, his Red Lotus Bodhi would surely reach consummate perfection, transforming and taking shape, and Wei Yuan's silhouette would appear upon the lotus throne.
If a single person's transgression could secure the entirety of Yizhou for the human race, Wei Yuan deemed it worthwhile. The only regret was...
He felt somewhat guilty toward his master.
With a flick of his divine sense, Wei Yuan approved the viral research project. The blueprint instantly fragmented into thousands upon thousands of sub-plans, dispersing to various departments and individuals, and execution commenced immediately.
The moment he gave his approval, Wei Yuan felt as though countless specks of gray ash drifted from the void, clinging ceaselessly to his body. In the blink of an eye, a thick layer formed, greasy and clammy, as if he had gone weeks without bathing. Even his joints seemed rusted, his movements turning stiff and sluggish.
Under the overall coordination of the Flourishing of the Many Realms, Qingming's bureaucratic machinery operated with extraordinary efficiency. Half a day later, numerous captive Mountain Folk were escorted from their cells. These prisoners had long undergone comprehensive medical examinations, with every physical metric meticulously recorded, and Sun Yu had already finished sequencing their genome, setting to work on its decipherment.
Drawing on the existing data, the Flourishing of the Many Realms directly selected over ten thousand captives, each highly representative, spanning every tribe and kingdom of the Mountain Folk as well as every age bracket.
Several large hospitals were urgently cleared out to house the prisoners, while an entirely new, fully sealed research institute was erected.
Teams of medical personnel conducted another thorough examination of the Mountain Folk, drew small quantities of blood, and locked them away, with no further explanations given.
Countless blood samples were blended in varying proportions to create culture media, into which superviruses engineered using the Umbrella Corporation's templates were introduced.
Unlike in the world beyond the heavens, this cultivation was conducted in an environment saturated with spiritual energy. Spurred by that energy, the viruses underwent transformations never once seen in the other world. Their activity grew terrifyingly potent and their metabolism blindingly fast; when clustered together, they even developed the capacity to inhale and exhale spiritual energy!
The research and development of the supervirus progressed at an unimaginable pace. Backed by the Umbrella Corporation's mature framework for viral design and editing, nourished by True Monarch Chuhe's Dao power, and catalyzed every few days by Wei Yuan's karmic luck, several new viral strains were rapidly brought into existence.
Next came live-subject trials, the protocols for which Wei Yuan had drawn up personally. He had done so precisely to unburden his subordinates of any psychological weight.
The Mountain Folk fed upon humans; therefore, no matter how they were treated, the human race would feel no moral qualms. Thus, Wei Yuan selected a cohort of condemned Mountain Folk prisoners and commenced the testing.
Leaving the researchers to proceed autonomously, Wei Yuan turned his attention to investigating the Baohua Pure Land. Buddhism comprised numerous sects, and the Baohua Pure Land, all-encompassing in its doctrine, stood as a holy sanctuary of the Buddhist faith. The lineage of the Great Sun Tathagata focused primarily on delivering oneself, and secondarily on delivering others. Wei Yuan, however, sought to deliver the entire sea of worldly suffering—this was the fundamental doctrinal divide between them.
The Baohua Pure Land's history was far more ancient than that of the Palace of Grand Beginning, its foundation fathomlessly deep. None knew how many Buddhas and Arhats dwelt in the depths of the Pure Land atop Spirit Mountain, nor how many relics and golden dharma idols of past paragons were enshrined there.
Fortunately, the number of spiritual attainments was fixed; only with a vacant fruition could a corresponding Buddha, Bodhisattva, or Arhat emerge.
As he pondered, a detail suddenly surfaced in Wei Yuan's mind: among the memories from the Umbrella Corporation's world fragment, there seemed to have been a vision of the final apocalypse. In that vision, a rift had been torn through the sky, and pouring down from it was... boundless Buddhist light.
Buddhist light?
Wei Yuan instinctively wanted to brush the question aside, yet forced himself to commit it to memory.
The Baohua Pure Land's past conduct had always been elusive, leaving no trace behind. Yet after repeated deliberation, aided by the Flourishing of the Many Realms, Wei Yuan identified the single vulnerability tying him to the Buddhist sect: his only son, Prince Chu.
Standing high above Qingming, Wei Yuan gazed into the distance toward Jin and the ancestral mountain of the Palace of Grand Beginning, weighing his choices over another seven days and seven nights. Only then did he turn back, returning to the Hall of Mountains and Rivers, paying no further heed to Western Jin.
***
The Jin Capital, the Royal Palace.
Prince Chu stood in the garden, looking upon a plum tree blossoming amid the ice and snow. No matter how he looked at it, it seemed to resemble a tree of blood.
Irritation welled within him, and he barked, "Someone, bring plainclothes! I'm going out of the palace for a stroll!"
A maidservant stepped forward and said, "The King of Wei has instructed that Your Highness must under no circumstances step beyond the palace gates. This servant—"
Her eyes went wide, and she looked down in disbelief to find Prince Chu gripping an ivory dagger buried deep beneath her ribs. The agonizing pain drained every ounce of strength from her frame in an instant. A few garbled sounds choked in her throat, and she collapsed.
Prince Chu sneered and commanded, "Someone, drag her away and dispose of her!"
As the maid's corpse was hauled away, Prince Chu felt a sudden lightness wash over his entire body. He knew this maidservant had been planted by his true father to keep close watch on him.
After many days of discreet inquiries and careful observation, Prince Chu had confirmed that Wei Yuan had stationed only this single overt pawn. Most likely, Wei Yuan had been confident that Prince Chu would never dare defy him, which accounted for such lax precautions.
Narrowing his eyes, Prince Chu muttered under his breath, in a voice only he could hear, "Only by doing this will you remember you still have a son like me, won't you? Just when will you stop prolonging that old bastard's life? Once I ascend to the throne..."
A moment later, trusted confidants brought the carefully prepared civilian attire and helped him change. As for the maidservant Wei Yuan had planted, her remains were already in the bellies of a pack of ferocious hounds, leaving behind not a trace.
Fully prepared, Prince Chu was transformed into an elegant scholar, appearing in his early thirties with an extraordinary bearing.
Flanked by two personal attendants, he slipped out through a side gate of the palace. He had done this often in his youth, and the routine was second nature. The guards at the gate, seeing Prince Chu in plain clothes, tactfully turned a blind eye.
The instant he crossed the palace threshold, Prince Chu felt the layers of suffocating restraint lift from his shoulders. A wave of profound relief swept over him, and he let out a hearty laugh.
Before the laughter could fade, a young monk with features as delicate as a painting stepped out from behind a poplar tree ahead. Pressing his palms together, the monk bowed and said, "Benefactor, you share an affinity with our Buddha. This humble monk has been awaiting you for quite some time."
Chapter 1118