Worried and laden with anxiety, Xu Henshui took his leave ahead of the others. He did not return to Qingming; instead, he set off for the Palace of Grand Beginning, intending to consult True Monarch Danming thoroughly about the issues surrounding this furnace of pills.
Ji Liuli lingered a moment longer. She scrutinized Wei Yuan up and down, then asked, "Is this body an avatar?"
"It is."
"Refined quite well. If its strength weren't noticeably weaker, even I wouldn't have been able to tell. What did you make it with?"
Wei Yuan rattled off a long list of pill-refining ingredients and high-grade puppet materials.
Then Ji Liuli asked another question: "Are its sensations synchronized with your true body?"
...
At this moment, Wei Yuan's true body remained deep within the ancestral mountain. Most of his divine sense was directed toward controlling the grand array to weave silk threads deeper into the earth. The web woven by the World Refining Grand Array had now penetrated a thousand li underground, only just barely brushing against the faint silhouette of the domain's outer edge.
Only at this point did the ancestral mountain begin to show signs of restlessness. From time to time, faint howls and roars resonated from its deepest recesses, as though an ancient ferocious beast were buried underneath.
The World Refining Grand Array was truly worthy of being a formation created by the Venerable Master. Its subtleties far surpassed those of ordinary immortal arrays; its erosion was like spring rain nourishing the soil—gentle, delicate, and soundless. After several years of Wei Yuan's efforts, just as he was on the verge of enfolding the entire ancestral mountain, the hidden consciousness deep beneath finally realized something was amiss and began to struggle.
Yet by now, the World Refining Grand Array had reached fruition. That consciousness was not a true sentient being with a soul, but merely a knot of spirituality naturally conceived by this land. Consequently, it could only barely slow the array's advance, powerless to change the outcome.
Given that such a major anomaly had occurred during this pill refinement, Wei Yuan took it very seriously. After Xu Henshui departed, he reviewed the entire refining process and every ingredient used.
Following analysis by the Splendor of the Many Realms, three probable sources of the problem were identified: first, karmic luck; second, the blood-soil that resembled black sludge; and third, the ancestral ground itself.
This time, without even needing to expend karmic luck to divine it, Wei Yuan knew the problem definitely stemmed from karmic luck—or rather, from himself.
Having grasped the crux of the matter, Wei Yuan decided to deal with the black sludge.
This soil saturated with immortal blood had already proven to be an invaluable pill ingredient. Conveniently, several tens of thousands of newly minted template Dao Foundation cultivators had arrived, so Wei Yuan tailored a brand-new foundation-stabilizing activity just for them: excavating the blood-soil.
Refining the immortal remains with the World Refining Grand Array did not conflict with template Dao Foundation cultivators excavating the mountain. Wei Yuan had already identified six veins of blood-soil. The shallowest was merely several hundred zhang from the mountain surface, while the deepest lay several li down. Wei Yuan selected four of these veins to excavate simultaneously.
Mining in Qingming had achieved a whole new level. Professional cultivators dedicated to mining and geology naturally took charge of specialized tasks; Wei Yuan only needed to point out where to dig.
Yu Zhizhuo had sent nearly a thousand professional geology cultivators. They first drilled holes in the rock to inspect the underground structures. Several Dharma Idol cultivators endowed with unique divine abilities burrowed directly into the mountain using earth-travel techniques to inspect its composition and map the strata and ley lines, using that data to design excavation plans.
Next, several dozen template Dao Foundation cultivators took up specialized mining artifacts—Stone-Melting Gold-Cleaving Drills—and took their positions. At the supervisor's command, every drill discharged a slender stream of water shimmering with crystalline flecks, striking the rockface!
These streams possessed tremendous corrosive force. Striking the solid stone, they hollowed out small holes in the blink of an eye, deepening at a pace visible to the naked eye.
Several dozen template Dao Foundation cultivators continuously channeled their artifacts, each tending to their assigned section. In mere moments, a massive cavern opened in the mountain flank. The Golden Pellet Dharma Idol cultivators overseeing the site periodically cast rushing-torrent spells to flush away the pulverized stone cleared by the artifacts.
One of Wei Yuan's avatars observed from a hidden vantage in midair, feeling a surge of emotion. The streams discharged by these artifacts wielded by the template cultivators were none other than his own Golden Light Water Blade Art. Years ago, Wei Yuan had relied on this very technique to traverse underground alongside Yu Zhizhuo, laying the very first foundations of Qingming.
Now, this technique had been forged into an artifact, becoming a divine tool for mining. A single template Dao Foundation cultivator with such a drill in hand could excavate a mountain faster than an ordinary late-stage Dao Foundation cultivator. Acting in formation like this, several dozen templates excavated faster even than a Dharma Idol.
Rotating shifts every half day, each drilling cross-section was as large as a house, and the daily excavation progress reached more than ten zhang. Wei Yuan had designated four vein locations, and after studying them, the geological cultivators opened dozens of shafts simultaneously—otherwise, they would not be able to put so many template cultivators to work.
After watching for a while, Wei Yuan returned to his cave abode and checked the condition of the cultivators who had taken the previous batch of pills through the Splendor of the Many Realms.
Over a month had passed since the Base-Consolidating Pills were distributed. Nearly all five hundred thousand pills had been claimed, and of the more than ten thousand Lingxi Base-Consolidating Pills, only around a thousand remained. The vast majority had been redeemed within three days of being listed.
These were five hundred thousand pills! This showed just how terrifying the demand of a million template Dao Foundation cultivators truly was. Under conventional circumstances, even if over a hundred alchemists across several generations in the Monastery of Creation worked day and night without rest, they could never sate a million templates.
As for the Jade Void Base-Consolidating Pills capable of elevating Earth-tier Dao Foundation aptitude, more than half still remained. Because of their immense value, Xu Henshui had set a very high exchange threshold, reserving them strictly to reward those with meritorious service.
Over the past month, Wei Yuan had begun to reap Dao Foundation karmic luck. Although Dao Foundation karmic luck was also azure, its shape and texture differed distinctly from ordinary human luck, bearing a contrast akin to jade versus glass.
From this wave of distributed pills, Wei Yuan collected over fifty thousand strands of Dao Foundation karmic luck. His spirits lifted immensely; he knew he had taken the right step.
In truth, shifts in aptitude were not yet overtly visible at this stage. But if even one or two fortunate individuals in a city managed to improve their Dao foundations, every Dao Foundation cultivator in the entire city learned of it immediately. That was how much of this luck had come about.
Yet looking at the azure of the Dao Foundation karmic luck alongside the azure of human luck, Wei Yuan felt an incessant sense of dissonance. The karmic luck of cultivators and mortals was vastly different, yet both shared the exact same color. To an ordinary cultivator it would not matter, but Wei Yuan was now effectively a master of karmic luck, dealing with diverse varieties day in and day out, so the sight grew increasingly awkward to him.
A thought suddenly struck him: the colors of these types of karmic luck had been defined by the Patriarch long ago. Could it be that in the Patriarch's eyes, all karmic luck below Scenery Command looked identical, so he had simply brushed them with the same color?
The more he pondered, the more convinced Wei Yuan became that his deduction was right. Times had changed, and Wei Yuan felt it was high time to reclassify karmic luck.
Once the thought took root, it could no longer be restrained. Wei Yuan immediately parted a thousand strands of divine thought and set to work redefining karmic luck.
...
In that profound, indescribable abyss, countless auras churned with restless energy.
A voice rang out: "Sovereign, the hundred thousand mighty champions of our realm have all assembled! The Grand Array of Dutian Shenshang is fully laid out! Awaiting only your command, one hundred thousand brave warriors will strike in unison, following the markers left by our Old Ancestor along the path of his ascension, to jointly cleave with the Azure Abyssal Demon-Slaying Saber!
"No matter what arch-demon or maniacal fiend dwells in the Upper Realm, there is only one of them. Even across two realms, they could never withstand one hundred thousand demon-slaying blades!"
A composed, majestic voice sounded: "Very well! If demons run rampant, I shall slay demons; if heaven is unjust, I shall smite heaven! Cleave!"
A hundred thousand battle cries coalesced, shaking heaven and earth. Innumerable ancient demon-slaying blades soared into the air, merging into a surging river of sabers that pierced the celestial barrier of the firmament and blasted into the Upper Realm!
All at once, countless cultivators across Qingming fell victim to dizzying fevers, limp limbs, and even bouts of vomiting and diarrhea, with the worst afflicted bedridden. Every physician in Sun Yu's clinic mobilized, laboring frantically day and night; Sun Yu himself and his three hundred fair, personally trained disciples joined the fray.
A day later, Sun Yu arrived at a conclusion: this was an affliction of wind-heat invading the lungs and blazing toxic heat.
Chapter 1198