Wei Yuan divided his divine sense into myriad strands, controlling the gossamer filaments reaching out from the nodes of the World-Refining Grand Array, slowly weaving them into a great web.
Each filament had to be placed in its exact position by Wei Yuan himself before they could link together, like an exquisite master embroiderer whose work was no longer merely fabric, but art.
The Lu clan's Ancestral Mountain was shaped like a duck pear—narrow at the top and wide at the base—and beneath it lay buried boundless heritage. An immortal's remains should have transmuted into precious soil, but only a small portion had been transformed, covering the Lu clan's thousand-li ancestral seat. The vast majority of the remains' essence had been sealed with secret techniques by the immortal, hidden deep within the ancestral seat.
Evidently, the Lu ancestor had intended to bide his time and present a weak front to the world, hoarding enough resources to foster two or even three immortals for future generations. Once a peerless talent arose among his descendants, they could soar to prominence—an ambition to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Bao, Cui, and Li families.
Lu Changhe had ascended to immortality through sheer perseverance and luck, a celebrated tale in its own right, but after his ascension, his lack of innate talent was laid bare. His strength remained firmly anchored at the bottom tier of immortals, only marginally stronger than abnormal immortals like Cangwu and Liumiao.
Yet Cangwu and Liumiao possessed various formidable immortal treasures bestowed by the Venerable Master; if it came down to a true clash of arts, they could even hold the upper hand against him.
Still, Lu Changhe was an immortal after all. Given enough time, shortcomings in natural talent were not impossible to remedy. With his present abilities, defending this small foundation posed no issue, but had the underground secret become known to outsiders, things would have been quite different.
The Lu ancestor had calculated a thousand times over, but never imagined his descendant would fall by Wei Yuan's hand, causing the very treasure hoarded for the clan's grand rise to drop into Wei Yuan's grasp.
Even with Wei Yuan's capabilities, it had taken half a year of effort for the World-Refining Grand Array to barely wrap around the upper half of the pear shape; there remained the vastly larger lower half, waiting for Wei Yuan's greedy grasp.
The expansion of the World-Refining Grand Array was an extreme test of the array master's ability to divide divine sense into myriad threads. Every cultivator stationed at the nodes served merely to supply spiritual power and stabilize the formation.
Every bit of extension required the array master to weave it strand by strand without the slightest error. A single mistake meant not only starting over, but ruining a swath of the already woven web around it.
Having maintained its operation for over half a year, Wei Yuan had come to understand the array's secrets intimately. This formation reeked of the Venerable Master's personal style: lofty, controlling everything, omnipotent.
Apart from the array master, everyone else within the array was nothing more than a living battery. On the point of being power chargers, Wei Yuan felt a deep resonance, but in all other aspects, there was none.
Had Wei Yuan designed it from scratch, he would have made it a multi-centered, decentralized layout where each Scenery Command—no, each Dharma Idol—could independently operate and weave the array. Ah, it would be best if even Dao foundations could do it... but considering the capabilities of his template Dao foundations, Wei Yuan quietly abandoned that thought.
Surely, no matter how powerful the Venerable Master was, he could hardly match several hundred or thousand Dharma Idols combined... right?
Wei Yuan suddenly recalled how thrilled Cui Yu had been back in the day when he could process sixteen tasks simultaneously. Completing early-stage Dharma Idol normally allowed one to handle only a dozen or so tasks at once. Yet his current processing capacity of over eleven thousand tasks was already equivalent to five, seven, or eight hundred Dharma Idols?
The Venerable Master was clearly far stronger than Wei Yuan, so the two design philosophies for the World-Refining Grand Array each had their merits.
Of course, the main reason was that Wei Yuan had copied this version from the Venerable Master, and because he couldn't replicate many of its intricacies, he had been forced to "optimize" it—which is to say, patch it up until it barely worked.
If Wei Yuan were asked to design an entirely different World-Refining Grand Array from scratch... chickens would ascend to immortality first. No, even if chickens did ascend, Wei Yuan still wouldn't be able to design it.
It had nothing to do with computing power; it was a matter of mathematics. Mathematics was the sort of thing where if you didn't understand it, you simply didn't understand it, no matter how hard you tried.
Wei Yuan wisely abandoned his criticism and snark toward the Venerable Master, gaining a newfound appreciation for the man's mathematical prowess. He then realized that these immortals—such as the Venerable Master, Tinghai, Yanshi, and the Molten Dragon—if placed in the world beyond, would surely all be peerless mathematical giants of the sort who could scrawl "the margin is too narrow to contain this proof" on scratch paper and turn it into an eternal enigma.
Yet Wei Yuan immediately realized he had generalized too much, for right beside him was an exception: True Monarch Xuanyue. Xuanyue's mathematics was in a league of its own, or simply put: metaphysics.
Wei Yuan estimated the time. At his current computing capacity, sealing the entire ancestral seat within the array would still take around five years.
However, the crux of the World-Refining Grand Array lay in the word "refine." Having reached this stage, Wei Yuan would no longer remain in deep seclusion. Instead, he divided his mind: thirty percent dedicated to refining the ancestral seat, twenty percent to handling Qingming's daily affairs. Though this extended the time needed to complete the array to ten years, it ensured outside affairs would not fall behind.
After all, Wei Yuan was different from ordinary immortals. Other cultivators took centurylong seclusions as casually as eating and drinking. Xu Wangu, for example, had entered seclusion right after his battle with Tinghai. Wei Yuan had only recently arrived in the Western Regions back then, yet more than thirty years had passed now without Xu Wangu ever emerging.
Wei Yuan had countless administrative matters to attend to each day, and the vast domain of Qingming could not do without him for a single minute. How could he afford prolonged seclusion?
His mind made up, Wei Yuan adjusted his approach. From the already completed array network, he slowly extended over three thousand filaments, driving them deep into the ancestral seat like needles.
The moment the filaments pierced the ground, Wei Yuan faintly sensed a fleeting wisp of pain. But that intent was so ethereal and indistinct that he could not be certain if it was real. Could an Ancestral Mountain feel pain?
Whether it felt pain or not was outside Wei Yuan's concern; he simply directed the filaments to dig deeper.
These filaments were generated by the World-Refining Grand Array's divine abilities. Once driven in, they began absorbing all the spiritual essence in their vicinity, returning only when completely sated. The sheer amount of essence gathered by each filament astonished even Wei Yuan.
In the blink of an eye, several days passed. This round of refinement was finally complete, and countless streams of refined spiritual essence converged upon Wei Yuan, forming a dense ball of misty immortal fog.
This mist could be ingested directly. A single mouthful would save Wei Yuan over a decade of arduous cultivation! By his calculations, taking a hundred gulps would give him a thousand years of cultivation, and absorbing that much looked like it would take less than two years.
Truly, refinement was the true path of cultivation!
Looking at the swirling immortal mist, Wei Yuan felt energized. It was a pity no one was around, or he would have laughed aloud three times to vent his satisfaction.
Opening his mouth wide, he swallowed the mist whole in the manner of a jade toad devouring the heavens, rolling it eighty-one times within his belly before opening his mouth once more to exhale a burst of yellow-red immortal light.
Upon touching the air, the light instantly congealed and dropped, turning into plump, translucent, orange-red spirit pills, each the size of a fist. For a time, pills rained down in a clattering cascade, soon practically covering the entire floor of the vast stone chamber.
Wei Yuan picked one up, inspected it closely, and swallowed it in a single gulp. Savoring the medicinal potency, he nodded in satisfaction. As for pills being the size of a fist, that posed no issue to Wei Yuan, whose Heaven-Devouring divine ability was gradually awakening.
These pills had been crafted using the Void-Refining method through the array's power, with that breath of immortal mist as the primary ingredient. However, the mist possessed form but no substance; to turn it into pills naturally required a material base.
Creating matter from nothing was an immortal's technique, consuming immense dharmic power. Wei Yuan could not bear such a cost; with his current Dao power, he could produce seven or eight pills at most before running dry, so he naturally could not do it that way.
Thus, Wei Yuan had taken the surrounding Central Dense Earth as a base, infusing the immortal mist into it to produce these plump, round, pleasingly colored spirit pills.
The so-called "Central Dense Earth" was merely soil Wei Yuan had casually dug up from the ground nearby.
Consequently, the pills were somewhat hard to digest, grating against Wei Yuan's throat and leaving it slightly sore.
Still, such trivial discomfort was nothing to a cultivator. Wei Yuan had no intention of re-refining them, casually pulling out a storage pouch to sweep up all the pills—over six hundred in total.
The pills Wei Yuan had refined this time were specially made for Dharma Idols. Their effects were even better than the Haohua Pill; taking a single pill was equivalent to three years of bitter cultivation.
Furthermore, the pill could cleanse residual medicinal toxins accumulated over years, which effectively provided a slight boost to one's natural talent. This made it extraordinarily precious; out in the wider world, people would fight tooth and nail for it.
The immortal mist refined by the array contained remnants of immortal power as well as a trace of resentment and karma. Neither immortal power nor karma was something an ordinary Dharma Idol cultivator could withstand.
If a Dharma Idol cultivator ingested immortal power, their body would explode and kill them; if they ingested resentful karma, they would turn into a monster. If they ingested both, whether they turned into a monster before exploding or exploded into a swarm of little monsters depended on which force was stronger.
Hence, Wei Yuan had swallowed the mist first, using his own body to refine away all the immortal power and resentful karma before concocting the pills. Removing the immortal power reduced the mist's efficacy by nearly half, but rendered it pure and gentle enough for Dharma Idol cultivators to absorb safely.
Wei Yuan had withheld nothing from this round of refinement, turning all of it into pills that Dharma Idol cultivators could take. Once this batch was distributed, the overall strength of Qingming's Dharma Idol cultivators would take a leap forward!
In Wei Yuan's heart, Qingming as a whole had played the pivotal role in conquering the Lu clan's ancestral seat. Without the luck of hundreds of millions of people, he could not have slain a single immortal.
Now that there were gains, Wei Yuan felt they should first be repaid to the people of Qingming. Within Qingming, mortals were well-fed, warmly clothed, could raise families, attain enlightenment, and cast their bodies—they had already received their share of benefits.
The same was true for the template Dao foundations. Were it not for Qingming, they could never have achieved a Dao foundation in their lifetimes. This was the grace of attaining the Dao, which, in the traditions of the cultivation world, far outweighed the grace of birth and upbringing. Thus, the hundreds of thousands of template Dao foundations had also benefited, fiercely devoted and willing to live and die with Qingming.
Scenery Commands went without saying; Qingming's current Scenery Commands were all inner circle...
Only the Dharma Idols, steadily growing in number, served as core pillars in every field—vital and indispensable—yet until now, they had received very little direct benefit from Qingming.
Qingming's core Dharma Idol cultivators mostly originated from the Palace of Grand Beginning, many having been in Qingming since their Dao foundation days and rising through the ranks. But with more and more outside cultivators arriving, and Qingming producing large numbers of Golden Pellet Dharma Idols of its own, the proportion of Palace of Grand Beginning Dharma Idols had dropped to under ten percent.
Most Dharma Idols from outside the Palace of Grand Beginning had come for the future of their families and descendants. Some elderly cultivators near the end of their lifespans, whose direct kin could not form Dao foundations, joined Qingming simply to secure a few template quotas. Others came so their juniors would have a chance to access the Palace of Grand Beginning's heritage. In short, almost none had come for their own sake, and none had truly gained much for themselves.
As the sayings went: "taken from the people, used for the people," and "let the dew fall equally upon all." The initial fruits Wei Yuan gained from refining the Lu clan ancestral seat were thus all offered up to compensate this host of Dharma Idols.
Wei Yuan stepped out of his cave dwelling, where another Wei Yuan was already waiting outside. Handing the pills to his incarnation, the original returned to the array to preside over the refinement.
The Wei Yuan outside the cave dwelling suddenly received a surge of spiritual essence, his cultivation climbing to early Scenery Command. Leaving the ancestral seat, he returned to Qingming and arrived at Xu Henshui's pill pavilion.
"Take this batch of pills. Reserve half for the talents of the Qingming Outstanding Cultivators Program, and distribute the other half to those who have rendered meritorious service within Qingming."
Before Xu Henshui could speak, two heavy thuds sounded as two large sacks were dropped before him.
Looking at the two sacks—each large enough to fit a person—Xu Henshui was taken aback. How many pills were inside? And all for Dharma Idols?
He opened one sack and saw that it was filled with fist-sized pills. Only then did he feel slightly relieved, thinking the number wasn't entirely absurd—at most, seven or eight hundred?
Xu Henshui drew out a pill and inspected it closely. The more he looked, the more alarmed he became, crying out, "Void-Refinement alchemy? You can use immortal alchemy techniques now?"
"Nothing that exaggerated; it's all through the array's power," Wei Yuan said, showing rare modesty—primarily because Xu Henshui was too knowledgeable to fool.
Xu Henshui replied, "Even with the array's power, where did so much spiritual essence come from? I doubt the Creation Watch refines this many Dharma Idol cultivation pills in an entire year!"
"Haven't I been refining the Lu clan ancestral seat? I gained a few benefits, and considering the Dharma Idol cultivators have followed us for so long without seeing much reward, I refined a batch of pills to hand out."
Xu Henshui looked at Wei Yuan skeptically. "Are you out of your mind? Spiritual essence suited for Void-Refinement alchemy—wouldn't it be better if you swallowed it yourself? What cultivator in this world acts like you? Doesn't everyone boost their own cultivation first? Instead, you refined it into Dharma Idol pills. Well done—now it's useless for you to eat!"
Wei Yuan laughed. "I'm in no rush for the moment..."
Xu Henshui's voice jumped an octave instantly. "What do you mean 'in no rush'?! Which cultivator on the path of practice doesn't fight tooth and nail for every sliver of advantage?! Look at Xu Wangu—if he hadn't struggled desperately in his early years, seizing every scrap of opportunity, he would have turned into precious soil long ago. So often in cultivating the Dao, success hangs on a single breath! When the critical moment comes, regret will be too late! Even if your heart lies with everyone else, ascending to immortality yourself first is better than anything!"
Seeing Xu Henshui lose his temper for once, Wei Yuan quickly placated him: "My ascension can't be rushed. I have to wait patiently for the right opportunity; cultivating too fast would actually do more harm than good."
Xu Henshui's anger cooled considerably, and he nodded. "That's true enough, but waiting for an opportunity is something you do after reaching perfection. Immortal-grade spiritual essence like this is something you stumble upon, not something you can seek. Don't waste it next time! Even if you devoured everything from the ancestral seat by yourself, I doubt it would be enough!"
Touched, Wei Yuan felt a sudden surge of sentiment. "Actually, distributing the spiritual essence isn't a waste. Even if I achieve a perfect ascension, tens of thousands of years from now I must still return to heaven and earth. In the eyes of heaven and earth, tens of thousands of years are but the snap of a finger. Look at the celestial bodies in the heavens—haven't each of them existed for billions of years?
"An immortal's life is, in truth, like the morning dew—born at dawn, perishing at dusk."
Xu Henshui had also read texts from the world beyond, so he naturally understood. Yet he countered, "Tens of thousands of years may be a mere instant to heaven and earth, but to us, several great dynasties would have risen and fallen, while mortals pass in the flash of a spark. If that isn't the long view, then what is?"
Wei Yuan suddenly pointed in a direction and said, "Look there. That is what truly endures."
Following Wei Yuan's finger with his divine sense, Xu Henshui saw a caravan of carriages rolling slowly down the highway, with roughly several hundred people and a dozen carts of luggage. Such convoys were common—clans relocating entirely into Qingming.
In the central carriage sat an elderly man, opposite four youths sitting side-by-side, backs straight and full of deference.
The old man sighed, saying slowly, "I, Lei Xiao, could be considered fairly well-known in the world, and accepting the recruitment of the Qingming Outstanding Cultivators Program does tarnish my reputation somewhat. In my old age, throwing away my pride to serve another—what am I doing it for? Isn't it all for your futures!
"Once we enter Qingming, there is no turning back. When we settle down, you must remember to keep a low profile. Focus entirely on cultivation, and never pick fights or act aggressively!
"If you cause trouble, I might have been able to shield you out there, but in Qingming, it is impossible. Realm Lord Wei is an absolute powerhouse who could slay immortals while still a Dharma Idol. I am merely a perfected Dharma Idol; if you bring disaster upon yourselves, do you really think he will give me any face?"
The young people did not dare speak, yet their faces beamed with an excitement they could not hide—a yearning and hunger for a brand-new life.
The youngest girl suddenly asked, "Then when we cultivate to Dharma Idol in the future, will we be able to slay immortals too?"
The old man chuckled, and the tension in the carriage dissolved as they began discussing their future life. Outside, the rain stopped and the clouds parted, casting a beam of sunlight into the carriage and scattering golden warmth across the floor.
Sweeping his divine sense across them, Xu Henshui found the caravan utterly ordinary. Some fellow named Lei Xiao—he had never even heard the name. Among those qualified to join the Outstanding Cultivators Program, who didn't have some glorious past? Whose resume wasn't a long scroll?
Not like him, Xu Henshui, whose resume was only two lines:
One: Reserve Master of the Creation Watch, Palace of Grand Beginning.
Two: One of the Twelve Celestial Idols of the Grand Assembly of Dharma Idols.
Xu Henshui could not fathom what was special about this group; in every respect, they were as ordinary as could be. Wei Yuan knew he would not understand and offered no explanation, simply drifting away and leaving Xu Henshui so anxious he nearly lost his composure.
As he departed, Wei Yuan looked out across the horizon. Clouds drifted and shifted like fleeting dogs, gathering only to disperse, dispersing only to gather again. From the sea of clouds stretched a sliver of golden light, like a fissure in heaven and earth, illuminating the entire world. Ten thousand years of sorrows and laughter dissolved like frothing bubbles; though this body lingered here, this heart had found eternity.
Before heaven and earth, even an immortal existence of a hundred thousand years was merely like morning dew, born at dawn and perishing at dusk. Cultivator clans like Lei Xiao's might be utterly ordinary, but millions upon millions of ordinary mortals together formed the whole of the human race.
The old pass on, the new are born, an endless cycle of life enduring alongside heaven and earth—this was true eternity.
End of Volume Ten: Like the Morning Dew
Chapter 1178