Wei Yuan sat upright in the center of the grand array, focusing the vast majority of his divine sense upon the formation. Nearly ten thousand wandering filaments moved under his command like tentacles, slowly drawing up a mass of mysterious light from deep within the ancestral mountain.
This mysterious light was merely the size of a house, yet it was inconceivably heavy and dense as solid matter. Wei Yuan was completely absorbed, nearly losing his hold several times. He did not know what this light was, only that as the excavation drove deeper, the mass had gradually surfaced before him.
Once he uncovered it, Wei Yuan marshaled the full might of the grand array to haul it out inch by inch.
At last, the mysterious light rose into the range of Wei Yuan's direct control. Reaching out a large hand, he captured it in his grasp. It proved to be a jade bead covered in white feather-like patterns.
The bead possessed a lustrous sheen and a sleek texture, appearing unremarkable at first glance. Yet within Wei Yuan's sea of consciousness lay the equivalent of the Palace of Grand Beginning's entire treasury of Daoist texts. Sweeping his divine sense across it and cross-referencing it with the records, he instantly recognized its origin.
This precious bead was not formed naturally. Rather, when an immortal being perished, its immortal essence leaked out with nowhere to go, slowly congealing over the ages. It was a product a grade above the blood clay Wei Yuan used for pill refining, known as immortal embryo jade, suitable for artifact crafting or refining into pills.
The piece resting in Wei Yuan's palm was equivalent to the entire Dao power of an early Scenery Command cultivator.
Because this immortal embryo jade had remained buried deep underground for so long, affected by subterranean qi and bearing immense pressure, it was riddled with impurities. Preparing it for pill crafting would require slow, meticulous refinement—a matter of patient, grinding labor.
Yet to Wei Yuan, the Splendor of the Many Realms encompassed all things, and its six great grotto-heavens devoured everything. Impurities had their own uses, making the entire mind-image world richer and introducing more possibilities.
Without hesitation, Wei Yuan opened his mouth and swallowed the immortal embryo jade whole.
In the blink of an eye, dark clouds gathered across the mind-image world, plunging the entire sky into pitch-black gloom! Across the vast firmament, only a corner in the west retained a pale yellow hue and a faint glimmer of sky-light.
Mortals throughout the city fell into panic, while the Holy Battle Hall and Creation of Heaven and Earth erupted into frantic activity. Every cultivator who had a spare moment rushed outside and took to the skies, containment artifacts at the ready. Even several who had been in seclusion were forcibly summoned out.
The immortal flora presented a wholly different spectacle. The Bingli Divine Wood unfurled a massive sheet of water-blue ice clouds like a soaring canopy, directly blanketing a vast area. Not to be outdone, the immortal orchids sprayed a seven-colored curtain of petals; due to their sheer numbers, they covered an area even broader than the ice clouds.
The Flame God Flower conjured clouds of fire, but clearly restricted by the five elements, its spread was modest, covering merely a few li. The Phoenix Blood Moss showed no reaction whatsoever.
As for the Jianmu sapling, it possessed no such flamboyant displays; a casual unfurling of its branches and leaves spanned hundreds of li.
The most composed were the aquatic creatures. After all, land was scarce compared to the ocean; once the spiritual rain fell, most of it would inevitably pour into the sea.
Those who had established spirit manors were far calmer, remaining completely unmoved. In the area where spirit manors had yet to be opened, the mirage demons were still tangled in a tight mass, only visibly a layer thicker.
Only from the moon did a platinum bough stretch forth, eager for a taste.
Suddenly, thunder roared as lightning bolts thick as giant trees crashed violently into the earth. Fist-sized raindrops—some grayish-black, others turbid yellow—slammed whistling into the ground. Ordinary roofs could not withstand the assault, battered and splintered everywhere. The ground was pitted into an ugly mess, riddled with irregular craters.
In moments, muddy torrents swept across the land, rivers surging and roaring, while along the coast waves rose sky-high with signs of backflowing inland. Rain poured down like an apocalyptic disaster, yet the vitality within the Splendor of the Many Realms surged by leaps and bounds!
Lightning struck the sea, blasting countless aquatic creatures to death, yet it also gave birth to a multitude of microscopic particles, some bearing faint sparks of life.
In cities and villages, tens of thousands of mortals were struck by celestial thunder and collapsed dead, yet several miraculously survived the lightning strikes, most of them young children.
Amidst the chaos, a cultivation chamber on the top floor of the Holy Battle Hall swung open. Dugu Cangqiong, who had been in seclusion, walked out and looked around in bewilderment, having no idea what had happened. Right then, crimson lightning dropped from the heavens, blasting him three times in succession—scorched, but still alive.
In a corner of the city, the statue of the Creation Immortal Venerable became the focal point of heaven and earth. Bolts of lightning struck as if driven mad, layering by the dozens to violently bombard the statue!
Yet a faint black light hovered over the immortal statue. No matter how wildly the thunder hammered it, the statue stood firm and unbroken.
Several divine senses observed in secret, turning solemn at the spectacle.
"The Creation Immortal Venerable truly possesses great karmic luck..."
"Utterly unshakeable..."
"...Who drew down this heavenly thunder? Was that not a bit reckless?"
"...Not me."
That last denial was spoken by many divine senses in unison, though whether any of them truly believed it was anyone's guess.
At this moment, Wei Yuan felt light and unburdened throughout, every pore across his body steeped in pure comfort. Countless tiny sparks of life had emerged within the mind-image world, many unprecedented and worthy of thorough study.
He mused inwardly, *It seems this step was indeed correct. A mind-image world, being called a world, must naturally accommodate all things and allow all living beings to flourish. If one only absorbs pure qi, then as the saying goes, 'water that is too clear harbors no fish'—and that would be counterproductive...*
After all, this piece of immortal embryo jade was equivalent to the lifelong accumulation of a Scenery Command cultivator. Not only did it increase the variety of living beings within the Splendor of the Many Realms by thirty percent, but it also replenished the entire small world with spiritual qi, advancing overall progress toward completion by roughly one percent.
Such progress was more than enough to delight Wei Yuan, saving him over a decade of painstaking labor. His spirits soared—at last, it was his turn to enjoy a good meal.
With his cultivation advancing, his divine sense grew accordingly, allowing him to perceive farther into the immortal mountain. Before long, Wei Yuan detected three more clusters of mysterious light deeper down. He immediately adjusted the excavation's direction, sending countless netted filaments probing slowly toward the lights.
The thunderstorm within the Splendor of the Many Realms raged for half a day before finally subsiding. Rivers rose by over a zhang, and well water crested right to the rims.
The Creation of Heaven and Earth Research Institute urgently requisitioned several thousand cultivators from the Holy Battle Hall. After instructing them in a newly devised Qi-Discerning Heart Mantra, it dispatched them in all directions to identify and catalog the newly emergent life-forms. Any brand-new species were to be carefully safeguarded with bounded formations to prevent ordinary beasts from ruining them before reporting back.
In the Central City, a thorough inspection was conducted. Mortals struck dead by thunder who still retained physical bodies were examined one by one, though most who died in the disaster simply dissipated.
The Yellow Springs Grotto-Heaven was equally frantic. The Hall of the Underworld was packed with souls—outsiders and those reincarnating from within the Splendor of the Many Realms were all crammed together. The underworld clerks wrote so furiously their brushes nearly smoked, yet the queue outside the hall only stretched longer.
Just then, a figure walked over. Graceful of stature and extraordinarily beautiful, an aura of noble elegance clung to him, tinged with unearthly transcendence that seemed utterly incongruous with the Yellow Springs.
He looked upon the endless queue with a worried expression. One soul in line, already frail as paper, finally could hold out no longer and dissolved into a wisp of blue smoke, dissipating into nothingness.
Frowning slightly, he glanced across the open grounds surrounding the hall and murmured, "Busier and busier! With just this one hall, handling outside reincarnations alone is overwhelming; add in those from within the realm, and it has long been inadequate. This sudden upheaval will likely cause thirty percent of the weaker souls to slip through. This will not do. I must speak with the Realm Lord, request some resources, and erect several more halls."
With a mere thought, Wei Yuan's figure materialized beside him. "Jialuo, what is it?"
Pointing to the long queue, Jialuo shared his concerns with Wei Yuan. Wei Yuan quickly understood. Qingming now spanned a vast territory, with a population in that single region exceeding two hundred million; hundreds of thousands died and passed into reincarnation each day. The Grand Hall of the Yellow Springs had seemed spacious back then, but now it was packed beyond capacity.
Wei Yuan surveyed this world. The torrential rain had ceased, the clouds parting, leaving a small patch of bright yellow particularly eye-catching in the western sky.
That was the Western Jin state fortune allocated to him. Ever since he became King of Wei, Western Jin's state fortune had diminished drastically, though its quality had noticeably improved. After taking down the Lu clan, Western Jin's state fortune was halved once more. Now only a small patch remained at the edge of the sky, yet its hue was pure and radiant, an awe-inspiring sight in itself.
By now, the downpour had ended, and the immortal spiritual qi had long since been divided among the various factions. Even Wei Yuan had nothing left to gather. Having no other choice, he promised Jialuo that when the next piece of immortal embryo jade came into hand, he would set aside a portion to restore and expand the Nether Soil. Only then did he manage to escape Jialuo's plaintive gaze.
As he took his leave, goosebumps still prickled Wei Yuan's skin. Even though this fellow had severed its karmic ties with the Beyond-Heaven Abyss, it hadn't discarded an ounce of its heavenly demon tricks—not to mention bearing a face eighty to ninety percent identical to Xiaoyu's...
So much so that every time he emerged from the Yellow Springs Grotto-Heaven, Wei Yuan had to carefully examine his Dao heart and curse himself a few times.
Yet this time, Wei Yuan turned his thoughts to another matter—an exceptionally important one. Those who died within Qingming naturally entered the Yellow Springs Grotto-Heaven for reincarnation, but the world outside Qingming was where the true bulk lay.
Yizhou was vast and sparsely populated, its numbers growing rapidly as vast streams of displaced refugees poured in, now reaching a hundred and fifty million. Not to mention newly acquired Western Jin, and the Lu clan's ten commanderies in Ganzhou, which had enjoyed peace for so long and possessed dense populations; currently, their souls entered samsara pointlessly—a tiny fraction reincarnated, while most simply dissolved back into heaven and earth.
Those billion-plus mortals had to be brought into Qingming as well.
Wei Yuan split off over a thousand strands of divine sense to ponder this. Yet Qingming's reach was already supreme among realm stones; it could not expand further, let alone stretch hundreds of thousands of li to cover Yizhou.
To escort souls into the Yellow Springs Grotto-Heaven, Wei Yuan would have to be physically present on the scene. Anything beyond that belonged to the realm of immortals, a divine ability that present-day Wei Yuan had yet to achieve.
Though Wei Yuan possessed extraordinary innate gifts and could already slay lesser immortals from below, the distinction between immortal and mortal was no mere empty saying.
In the cultivation of this realm, mortals and Dao Foundations marked one divide: once a Dao Foundation was achieved, one stepped onto the path of cultivation, effectively becoming of an entirely different race from ordinary mortals.
Above the Immortal Heavens lay yet another divide: beneath the immortal status, diverse divine abilities tied to varying authorities could only ever be wielded by an immortal body.
Thus in the Yuangu era, the earliest human cultivators had only three realms: Mortal, Cultivator, and Immortal.
Cultivators of that era were known as ancient cultivators. Their cultivation methods differed radically from today's; there was no division of Dao Foundation, Dharma Idol, and Scenery Command. Many simply relied on a single Dao Foundation to commune with heaven and earth and step through the immortal gate.
Wei Yuan's ancient full moon had been the immortal foundation of one such ancient cultivator.
Yet Wei Yuan's thinking naturally diverged from this world's ancient ways. If souls from outside could not be received from afar, mortals were living creatures—they could be encouraged to walk to Qingming on their own feet, thereby earning reincarnation within the Yellow Springs.
With his decision made, Wei Yuan set about drafting a plan. In mere moments, a document was born: *Outline of Qingming Merit-Based Naturalization*.
Chapter 1204