Mobilizing a grand army was not the work of a single moment or a single month.
Wei Yuan was in no hurry. After arranging military affairs, he found several sheets of oiled paper, wrapped a few cured legs neatly, and took to the skies, flying toward the Palace of Grand Beginning.
The ancestral mountain of the Palace of Grand Beginning remained wreathed in clouds and mist, its jade waters pure and clear. Viewed from afar, emerald peaks layered upon one another. The sun was dipping halfway down the mountains at twilight; the setting orb trailed wisps of smoke that gave birth to azure mist, while broken clouds reflected across the water in scattered crimson light. Deep shadows cast by the peaks and breezes stirring from the valley mouth carried rich immortal qi, sweeping playfully toward Wei Yuan.
The moment Wei Yuan stepped through the mountain gate, heaven and earth abruptly shook. Innumerable spirit birds and immortal beasts turned their heads in unison, staring at him with mounting agitation.
Fortunately, a divine sense swept past like a gentle breeze, calming all the spirit beasts, and quiet returned to the mountain gate. Yet that momentary stir had already startled the entire ancestral mountain; many young disciples were filled with curiosity, eager to learn what had caused such an unusual reaction from the mountain gate's spirit beasts.
Wei Yuan, however, was struck with solemn awe. The divine sense that had brushed past like a breeze possessed an exceptionally elevated nature, truly of an immortal's caliber. Yet it was utterly unfamiliar; Wei Yuan had never encountered it before. Furthermore, that divine sense was ethereal and elusive; Wei Yuan could not latch onto it in the slightest, yet it could freely touch him. Were they locked in combat, Wei Yuan would be reduced to taking blows with no means of striking back.
At that moment, Wei Yuan's vision blurred, and an elegant young cultivator stepped forward.
This cultivator had refined features and a serene, bright demeanor, inspiring goodwill at first glance—yet only that. He was handsome, but not strikingly so; his gentle bearing invited no hostility, yet overall he seemed so ordinary that anyone who saw him would soon forget him.
Yet in Wei Yuan's eyes, this cultivator was shifting incessantly at every moment. Each shift and adjustment was infinitesimal, nearly impossible for anyone below the immortal realm to detect; only with Wei Yuan's current cultivation and foundation could he barely perceive it.
When countless shifts accumulated, the young cultivator naturally transformed into a different appearance. Thus, with every passing breath, his looks were different, and onlookers naturally could not remember what he truly looked like. Yet because each change was minuscule and continuous, no one could tell that he was changing at all.
Were he to walk through a bustling market, he would look like a different person in the memory of every single bystander.
What shifted was not merely the young cultivator's appearance, but his karma as well. As a result, it was almost impossible to lock onto him, let alone mount an ambush.
Wei Yuan hurriedly bowed. "Greetings, Immortal Monarch Zhu Yan!"
Zhu Yan laughed heartily. "That I could smoothly ascend to immortality was at least forty percent thanks to your help! But setting that aside for now, what did you bring this time to stir up all these beasts?"
Wei Yuan produced a package wrapped in oiled paper and said, "I obtained some immortal ingredients and came back to offer them to the sect."
The oiled paper was quite ordinary. A sweep of Zhu Yan's divine sense brought a smile to his face. "Xu Shuhe was overbearing back in the day, leaving no leeway in anything he did. Who could have imagined he would end up like this? Ah well, this immortal ingredient comes at the perfect time. A dragon rat was recently relocated to our palace; its cultivation has reached completion, lacking only an opportune encounter to become an immortal beast, and right then you arrived. Just now, it must have sensed that its opportunity had come, thus causing all the beasts to grow restless."
Zhu Yan took the wrapped parcel from Wei Yuan's hands, weighed it in his grip without unwrapping it, and opened a tear directly in midair, stuffing it inside. Then he said to Wei Yuan, "You've arrived just in time! Upon my ascension, I gained considerable insight and obtained a few excess wisps of Great Dao true intent. I may as well lecture on them for you."
Wei Yuan immediately felt an instinctive foreboding. Bracing himself, he said, "Junior still needs to make a trip to Zhao to deliver some things. Perhaps the matter of listening to the Dao can wait until later—"
"Going to Zhao a little later makes no difference. What could be more important than listening to the Great Dao?" Brooking no refusal, Zhu Yan seized Wei Yuan's arm and dragged him into the air, flying straight toward the Preaching Hall.
When passing through an array barrier, Zhu Yan did not undergo any immortal power inspection, nor did he use a talisman of a Palace of Grand Beginning watch-master or Palace Master. With nothing more than a simple flicker, he slipped through the gap in the array's vibrations without triggering the formation in the slightest.
Not only did Zhu Yan pass through, Wei Yuan also flickered in tandem, breezing through the array defenses alongside him and entering the Preaching Hall.
Over a dozen people were already seated inside the Preaching Hall, mostly hall masters and watch-masters of various halls and watches, as well as Scenery Command experts without official posts. Seated at the very front was Immortal Monarch Yanshi.
As the Master of Water Moon Hall, Wei Yuan had a seat of his own, though it was in the back row.
Zhu Yan wasted no more time, ascending directly to the preaching dais. Taking his seat in the center, he began his exposition. Every immortal's moment of ascension was a supreme opportunity to touch the origin of the Great Dao; how much Great Dao true intent one could comprehend at that time exerted a profound influence on their future immortal journey.
What Zhu Yan was about to expound was the origin of the Great Dao he had comprehended, displaying the Great Dao true intents he had gathered for his fellow sect members to perceive. This was a traditional ceremony following every immortal's ascension. Under normal circumstances, the Palace of Grand Beginning would throw open its mountain gates and invite close friends and kin to listen together—a grand event for the entire cultivation world.
However, the Palace of Grand Beginning was in special circumstances, and Immortal Monarch Zhu Yan was unwilling to let his post-ascension manner be known to outsiders. Thus, he had gathered only the sect's Scenery Command experts to listen.
Wei Yuan braced himself and sat down. Sure enough, the moment Zhu Yan opened his mouth, out poured numerical symbols, Heavenly Stems, and Earthly Branches.
In Wei Yuan's eyes, within moments the entire room was filled with swimming numerical symbols that drifted straight through his body as if he were thin air, not one deigning to stay. Certain mischievous symbols even formed ranks on their own, arranging themselves into patterns before Wei Yuan—two of which bore a striking resemblance to letters from the otherworldly realm, looking particularly jarring.
To say nothing of Immortal Monarch Yanshi, the other watch-masters and hall masters listened in enraptured delight, bobbing their heads to the rhythm. Only Wei Yuan felt as though he were sitting on pins and needles, thorns in his back, a fishbone lodged in his throat.
Zhu Yan lectured on the Dao for three whole days, during which Wei Yuan's arithmetic managed to regress slightly.
Fortunately, Wei Yuan committed the entire lecture to memory, storing it within the Flourishing of the Many Realms to ponder slowly in the future.
When Zhu Yan's exposition finally concluded, Wei Yuan felt as if granted an imperial pardon and fled immediately. Zhu Yan's style of lecturing differed from everyone else's: even as a True Monarch, he had disliked talking, preferring to explain principles through arithmetic.
Zhu Yan's arithmetic foundation had never been inferior to Tinghai or Yanshi's to begin with, and after ascending to immortality, he reeled off strings of formulas the moment he opened his mouth without uttering a word of ordinary human speech—quite evocative of the Buddha holding up a flower without relying on words.
Yet understanding it was impossible for Wei Yuan, while rote memorization posed no challenge. Thus, he had sat dryly for three days in utter agony, a bitter smile plastered across his face the entire time.
And so, "Zhu Yan reveals the Dao, Wei Yuan smiles bitterly" became a classic tale.
Quietly listening to the Great Dao for three days was not entirely without reward; at the very least, Wei Yuan was once again made aware of his shortcomings. After the lecture, Yanshi and Zhu Yan summoned Wei Yuan, and the three sat together in the Ancestral Master Hall.
Yanshi remarked, "Three days have passed, and Lu Changhe's Immortal Heaven has fallen. Everything within was swept clean away. Most of the grotto-heavens dispersed back into heaven and earth, while a few left their cores behind, which were likely claimed by those people."
The Immortal Heaven transformed from an immortal's mindscape world and the various grotto-heavens attached to it were assets second only to an immortal's physical remains. However, all of this lay up in the Immortal Heaven; it was difficult for Wei Yuan to ascend there. The best course of action would naturally have been to report to the Palace Master and have an immortal step forward to claim it.
Yet Yanshi had not gone himself, and had even joined Zhu Yan in using the three-day lecture to detain Wei Yuan until Lu Changhe's Immortal Heaven crashed before bringing up the matter.
Wei Yuan was clever enough to know there was more to the story.
Yanshi said, "Originally, I had some designs on Lu Changhe's Immortal Heaven and grotto-heavens as well. Luckily, I first asked the Master of the Hall of the Bright King to scout ahead, only for him to find no path there no matter how hard he tried. Thus, I understood. After conferring with Junior Brother Zhu, we decided to pass on this piece of bait and keep you here to prevent you from going to claim it."
Puzzled, Wei Yuan asked, "If you did not want me to go, a single word would have sufficed. Why go to such great lengths?"
Zhu Yan chimed in, "This touches upon karma. The principle is not complicated; you should understand once I explain. You knowing and choosing not to go is Cause A, which leads to the following derivations... yielding the following effects... The most probable outcome is this result, provisionally termed Effect A. You remaining unaware and not going is Cause B... which yields Effect B. And so forth..."
"Upon comprehensive evaluation, Effect B least disrupts the present overarching situation, inflicting a minor loss on the enemy, which is acceptable. And if one wishes to obtain Effect B, the best route with the highest probability is Cause B, rather than transforming from other causes."
"Hence the three-day lecture, which conveniently expanded your knowledge. Do you understand?"
Wei Yuan nodded. The human parts, he understood.
Yanshi added, "Now there is a second matter: to explain Junior Brother Zhu's divine abilities so that you have a clear picture and can plan accordingly in the future. While Junior Brother Zhu has not reached the point of existing outside calculation entirely, he is exceedingly difficult to deduce, and even harder to lock onto."
"Junior Brother Zhu can traverse most defensive arrays in this world, truly coming and going without a trace. In the future, several powerful immortal artifacts left behind by our forebears will be placed in his charge."
Yanshi explained at length. In essence, Zhu Yan's divine abilities centered on stealth, concealment, and traversing treacherous grounds; the power of his strikes on their own was not quite sufficient, requiring formidable immortal artifacts to compensate. Another of Zhu Yan's divine abilities was burning an immortal artifact, unleashing a lethal strike at the cost of its destruction. This strike was considerably more powerful than an immortal artifact's self-detonation, something ordinary immortals could hardly withstand.
Wei Yuan grasped it instantly: this patriarch was, in effect, a top-tier assassin, though his price per strike was exorbitant, requiring an immortal artifact for each blow.
No wonder the mighty figures on the opposing side had chosen to trigger Zhu Yan's opportunity for ascension prematurely as their opening gambit; at the core, they did not want Zhu Yan ascending to immortality. With someone like him around, more than half the immortals in the world would have to live in perpetual fear.
After all, he was the very first assassin-style immortal from the Palace of Grand Beginning. From the founding patriarch downward, the palace had always favored direct, overwhelming force, crushing all who defied them; not once had there been one who stabbed people in the back.
With Yanshi's briefing complete, Wei Yuan was finally able to take his leave and fly toward Zhao.
Treading upon shells, Wei Yuan's flight speed rivaled that of any immortal. Zhao was not far from the Palace of Grand Beginning's ancestral mountain, so by the time Wei Yuan entered the Zhao royal capital, the gazes of the mighty figures behind the scenes had yet to sweep across.
The moment he entered the capital, Wei Yuan felt an intuitive pull and turned toward the ancestral mausoleum of the Zhao royal family.
Immortal Zhao Li stood atop the mountain peak, gazing upon the vast sea of clouds before him. Layers of clouds roiled like turbulent waves, while Immortal Zhao Li stood motionless, his pure radiance dazzling and his chilly aura piercing. When Wei Yuan came to a halt behind him, he did not turn his head, merely saying in a flat voice, "Helping you that day was truly done on an impulse, a grave disservice to the forebears who established the Seven Clans and Thirteen Prominent Families together. I have come to regret it deeply. There is no need to speak further; be on your way. From now on, across the vast mountains and waters, let us forget each other in—"
Immortal Zhao Li suddenly felt a stir of intuition. Turning around, he saw the bundles of oiled-paper packages in Wei Yuan's hands.
At that instant, his divine ability to pursue good fortune activated instinctively. His hand reached out as he said, "Look at you, coming all this way, why bring gifts?"
Chapter 1144