Inside the royal palace of the Jin capital, a flowering tree suddenly burst into flames. Wei Yuan stepped out from the smoke and fire, his gaze keen as lightning. With a single sweep of his eyes, his divine sense had already blanketed the entire palace.
Consort Yuan flashed into view. The moment she appeared, she grabbed Wei Yuan's sleeve in distress and cried, "The child... Prince Chu snuck out of the palace, and then... then he vanished!"
Without a word, Wei Yuan rested a hand on Consort Yuan's waist. In an instant, the two flashed to the palace's side gate—the exact place where Prince Chu had departed.
There they saw Prince Chu standing safe and sound right where he had been, as though he had never left at all.
Consort Yuan froze in astonishment. Reaching out with her power to seize a gate guard, she snapped, "Where was Prince Chu just now?"
Utterly bewildered, the guard stammered, "Isn't Prince Chu standing right there? After leaving the palace gates, His Highness didn't go any farther. He just stood there."
"Standing there the whole time? Standing there this entire time?!" Consort Yuan demanded, her tone harsh and severe.
Terrified, his face turning the color of dirt, the guard had no idea what was happening and answered tremulously, "His—His Highness has only been standing there for a dozen breaths or so. It looked like he hadn't decided where to go yet. I saw it with my own eyes, I would never dare lie! In so little time, even if His Highness wanted to leave, he couldn't have gone far!"
Consort Yuan paused, then immediately checked the time. Only then did she discover that merely a fleeting moment had elapsed—not even the time it took to drink a cup of tea.
Yet in her consciousness, several days had unmistakably passed. She had spent those days in agony and turmoil, watching the sun set and the moon rise, endlessly torn over whether she should tell Wei Yuan.
How could an experience so vividly real have taken up such a brief span of time? With her current cultivation, Consort Yuan actually found herself at a loss.
Wei Yuan frowned slightly, scanning the surroundings before finally fixing his gaze on Prince Chu.
Only now did Prince Chu seem to wake from a dream. He looked around, and when he turned back, he saw Wei Yuan and Consort Yuan standing in midair. His face drained of color at once.
Wei Yuan remained expressionless. After inspecting Prince Chu up and down, his figure vanished. This had merely been a wisp of divine sense he had stationed in the palace, set to trigger only upon a major crisis and imbued with a single countermeasure.
This countermeasure was not known for its destructive might, but rather for being exceptionally difficult to cleanse or shake off, striking with the true intent of the Peerless Dao Domain. Once struck, an enemy would be marked, allowing Wei Yuan's true body to sniff them out anywhere within a thousand li.
However, this wisp of divine sense never found an enemy, nor did it detect any anomaly on Prince Chu, leaving it with no target to strike. When its time ran out, the divine sense turned into a shooting star and flew back to his true body.
Outside the Jin capital, the little monk strolled through the mountain woods. The shooting star happened to streak right over his head. He looked up, merely chanted a Buddhist invocation, and continued walking forward, drawing farther and farther apart from the falling star.
Within Qingming, Wei Yuan suddenly opened his eyes, having reabsorbed his divine sense. He inspected it repeatedly, and only after confirming no one had tampered with it did he examine its contents.
Having reviewed them, Wei Yuan had a clear grasp of the situation and set the matter aside for the moment, waiting for the Pure Land Buddhist realm's subsequent moves. With his layout already in place, all he needed to do was quietly wait for the enemy to take the bait.
Yet after seeing that game of weiqi in Prince Chu's memory, Wei Yuan felt an itch—it had been a long time since he had seen such a simple board. Unable to resist, he pushed Prince Chu aside in his mind and took the board over to play it again himself.
Stones flew on both sides. Yet in less than twenty moves, Wei Yuan was already teetering on total collapse. Remaining outwardly impassive, he quietly activated Flourishing of the Many Realms. Sure enough, he was instantly possessed by the spirit of a peerless grandmaster, unleashing ingenious masterstrokes one after another to forcefully turn the tables.
With this, Wei Yuan's Dao heart grew luminous and clear. Truly, when it came to the art of weiqi, no one under heaven could surpass him. And thus, his heart of invincibility grew one fraction stronger.
Setting that memory aside, Wei Yuan entered Flourishing of the Many Realms. He still had a momentous decision to make.
He went straight to the secret realm courtyard in Central City, only to see Xihe and Maiden Yin-Yang drinking tea and chatting. However, countless strands of sword qi flickered into being and perished between the two of them, while the yin-yang twin qi formed tens of thousands of miniature dragons that swirled and danced, clashing countless times every instant.
The instant the Creation Immortal Venerable stepped through the courtyard gate, he was caught in the aftermath. The clothes on the front half of his body were shorn away clean in a flash, while the back half remained completely unscathed.
Even with Wei Yuan's prowess, he had been completely stripped of his equipment before he could even react. Inside Flourishing of the Many Realms, Wei Yuan appeared in the form of his primordial spirit, but even a primordial spirit's divine reaction had its limits; at this moment, the attire on his body actually represented his primordial spirit's defenses.
So the situation was this: Wei Yuan had wandered into the battlefield and had his primordial spirit defenses cleared in an instant. Yet Xihe and Yin-Yang's attacks were exceedingly spiritual—any resistance they met was forcefully pulverized, but they automatically recognized Wei Yuan's identity, ensuring not a shred of harm befell his primordial spirit itself.
The process had been so fast that, in Wei Yuan's awareness, he had simply been stripped of all equipment, subconsciously manifesting the exact appearance his physical body had out in the mortal realm.
Both Xihe and Yin-Yang halted their hands, gazing at him with thoughtful expressions.
At this moment, Wei Yuan finally displayed what decades of bitter cultivation had truly given him to look down upon the world. His face had also entered the tempest of sword qi and twin yin-yang dragons, yet it was completely unharmed. Even facing such a predicament, not a flicker of change appeared on his face.
Wei Yuan remained as calm as ever, first snuffing out the thought of turning to flee.
Such a thought should never have existed; it was merely that his divine sense had been influenced by the sword qi and the yin-yang qi, causing unwarranted thoughts to sprout involuntarily. This was also one of Xihe and Yin-Yang's killing arts—anyone who fought them would find their mind overrun with stray thoughts as the battle raged, questioning their very immortal existence.
Wei Yuan first took half a step back, withdrawing from the combat zone. Next, he snuffed out the thought that his clothes were ruined and needed to be changed; and then he snuffed out the thought of adjusting the external structure of his primordial spirit body to make certain defining areas vanish.
The former thought was habitual thinking; the latter was a redundant motion. In battles between immortals, wavering even slightly over such notions would lead to immediate defeat.
Having stepped back, Wei Yuan reconstructed his primordial spirit's defenses. His garments automatically restored themselves, their material shifting as tri-colored immortal radiance drifted over them before sinking into his body.
Having suffered such a major embarrassment, Wei Yuan immediately reinforced his primordial spirit's defenses, drawing upon the power of his mindscape world to bless himself. His defense amplified hundreds, even thousands of times over, to the point where even Xihe's sword qi would struggle to breach it, finally putting his mind at ease.
Wei Yuan walked back into the courtyard, calm as though nothing had ever transpired. Even Xihe had to admire how thick his skin was... no, how consummate his self-control was.
Wei Yuan had come for only one thing: he intended to borrow Xihe's power to temporarily seal the heavenly demon's strength and ascend to Scenery Command. Once Wei Yuan attained Scenery Command, the mindscape world would lift its Heavenly Dao seal, allowing a contingent of beings within to break through to Scenery Command as well.
At present, the only Scenery Command entities in Flourishing of the Many Realms were three mirage demons, who were hardly up to major tasks. Bullying dharma idol cultivators was trivial for them, but against a true Scenery Command expert, all three would have to join forces just to hold their own against one.
This time, Wei Yuan intended to release the Heavenly Dao restrictions and let Han Li, Jun Weizhi, and the others attempt to break through to Scenery Command. And this, naturally, would also require Yin-Yang's cooperation.
Soon, news spread among all living beings throughout Flourishing of the Many Realms: in twelve shichen, a crack would open in heaven, and the breakthrough chances for all cultivators would surge dramatically!
Chapter 1120