Displaying Divinity Before a Cat

Xiaobai's complete capitulation took a total of three shichen and a quarter. This gave Wei Yuan a renewed appreciation for a divine beast's integrity, as well as Fuyao's methods. All in all, regardless of the excuses, nothing could alter the fact that it had failed to hold out for even half a day. Consequently, when the little white lion saw Wei Yuan again, it could no longer hold its head high. Moreover, its body had shrunk by yet another size, so that it now looked just like a plump, oversized cat. The next step was to renovate the world inside the ring. On this matter, Xiaobai volunteered eagerly, hoping to redeem itself with a good performance. Unfortunately, all it remembered was the original grand formation. Furthermore, several millennia had passed, and the grand formation had long since been obliterated; laying it down anew was not merely a matter of remembering a formation diagram. Back then, the grand formation had utilized numerous rare materials, amply displaying the sheer extravagance of an immortal formation master. Several of those materials were now completely extinct, and even if any stockpiles remained, they were likely hidden in some unrevealed secret realm or the secret vault of a great clan. However, the formation Wei Yuan intended to set up was no longer that ancient one; it did not need to refine flesh, blood, and souls, possessing only a single primary function: drawing forth magic power. Moreover, laying formations in this era differed from ancient times. Even if they were to construct a grand formation with identical functions, one designed by Qingming possessed fundamental differences in both structure and underlying principles compared to the past. The core difference lay in the algorithms. Most formation talents in Qingming were template Dao Foundations. By nature, they lacked formidable divine sense; being able to divide out two or three strands of divine sense with the aid of the Splendor of the Many Realms was already incredible for them. Yet though their divine senses were as frail as candle flames in the wind, the ingenuity of their conceptions in the Dao of formations was nothing short of astounding. They had even developed nearly a hundred entirely new mathematical tools for designing new formation diagrams. Armed with these tools, the design efficiency of a Scenery Command formation master could hardly match that of a single template Dao Foundation. By comparison to the world beyond, ancient formation masters calculated using abacuses; even if they could flick the beads tens of thousands of times in a single breath, they still could not compete with a Qingming formation master holding a calculator. And that was merely the most basic application—the functions achieved by the mathematical tools designed by Qingming formation masters were things an abacus could never accomplish. Thus, separated by thousands of years, when Wei Yuan stood before the handiwork of that ancient immortal formation master, he took immense pride in Qingming's formation Dao—conveniently overlooking the fact that he could not understand those mathematical tools either. Before Xiaobai's eyes, Wei Yuan waved his broad sleeve. Amidst flashes of radiant light, silhouettes appeared across this desolate land, wave after wave. Among them, three figures were none other than Jun Weizhi, Lei Ling, and Han Li. The three sat facing one another, still maintaining their cross-legged posture of an intimate, knee-to-knee discussion. "—Therefore, we must never be hasty. We should first strive for more resources to boost our strength—dig deep tunnels, hoard grain widely, and advance step by step. We will surely find his flaw—" Mid-sentence, Jun Weizhi suddenly found the world around him transforming; he had been pulled from the Splendor of the Many Realms into the world within the Spirit Herding Ring, yet unable to brake in time, he blurted out that last half-sentence. Lei Ling's reaction was a fraction slower. Looking up, she saw Wei Yuan standing aloft in the air, watching them coldly. In an instant, it was as if a bucket of icy water had been dumped over her head; her entire body froze, and she cried out in horror, "Creation Immortal Venerable?! We're doomed—" Only Han Li remained as steady as an old dog, acting as though nothing had happened at all. He looked around half a beat later, wearing an expression of shocked bewilderment. In one breath, Wei Yuan summoned over a thousand cultivators from the Splendor of the Many Realms—all elite troops and capable generals from his mind-manifest world. Seeing the little white lion thoroughly dumbfounded and cowed, Wei Yuan felt his Dao heart brighten with clarity. He smiled faintly and said, "As for laying the formation, this Venerable naturally has his own hands—hmm??" Wei Yuan's gaze fell upon Lei Ling. He had never seen this woman before. Granted, the living beings in his mind-manifest world now exceeded ten million; every day, many new souls reincarnated and many returned to the Yellow Springs, so it was completely normal for unfamiliar faces to exist. However, someone of supreme strength who stood just a hair's breadth away from Scenery Command was someone Wei Yuan felt he could not possibly fail to recognize. As his gaze lingered on Lei Ling, a flick of his divine sense instantly revealed her entire background and origins. 'So it turns out to be the soul of that peerless foreign genius from the cave-heaven battle, reincarnated into Long Wushuang's body. Oh, and it was Fuyao's handiwork. Fuyao, that fellow... quite intriguing...' Still, Wei Yuan did not mind overly much. When numbers grew vast and the base became large enough, anything could happen. Just like back when he first created the template Dao Foundation, he had originally only sought a shortcut to forcibly elevate unqualified low-level cultivators a bit further. Who could have predicted that once the templates surpassed a million, figures like Wen Guantian would suddenly pop up in droves—and write treatises that even the Realm Lord could not comprehend? Without these templates, Wei Yuan could still have fancied himself an unmatched genius—perhaps even number one in the contemporary world, excluding Zhang Sheng. As for why Zhang Sheng had to be excluded, the reason was ample: one of his own. Thus, Wei Yuan's heart of invincibility had remained thoroughly immaculate and clear. Yet once fellows like Wen Guantian appeared, Wei Yuan ceased bringing up the topic of peerless genius altogether. There was an inescapable paradox here: if you were already a peerless genius capable of counter-slaying immortals, how could you fail to understand an essay penned by a mere template? During the days he had spent with Ronglong, having witnessed firsthand Ronglong's journey from complete mathematical ignorance to composing the Preliminary Exploration of the Desolate Realm, Wei Yuan had come to understand: mathematics was unlike other Dao arts or immortal paths; it never lied to you—if you didn't know it, you simply didn't know it. While Qingming had Wen Guantian and his peers, mathematics within the mind-manifest world was likewise advancing at a breakneck pace. Months ago, Wei Yuan had already found himself unable to follow the papers written here, and with every passing month, the difficulty ascended to a new plateau. Furthermore, Qingming cultivators possessed physical bodies with vital acupoints and meridians, whereas the cultivators in the mind-manifest world were effectively divine sense entities without fleshly bodies. Consequently, the branches of mathematics developed within and outside differed, independently giving rise to two distinct systems—though they shared common ground in that the Realm Lord could understand neither of them. And so, Wei Yuan intended to show Xiaobai—the spirit of an ancient beast who had lived for over ten thousand years—just what a magnificent sight the contemporary path of immortal cultivation had become! Sure enough, Xiaobai was dumbfounded beyond measure. When it saw those cultivators dazed for only a fleeting moment before spontaneously organizing, dividing labor, surveying the terrain, and charting out the grand formation, it was so stunned that it let out continuous yowls. Wei Yuan felt his Dao heart grow immensely gratified and clear. Though this was merely flexing divinity before a cat, given Xiaobai's identity and the status of its former master, the display was remarkably effective, elevating Wei Yuan's state of mind by another notch. Still, having not paid close attention to the mind-manifest world for quite some time, there were indeed quite a few extraordinary individuals among these thousand-odd top cultivators. Wei Yuan's attention had just shifted away from Lei Ling when it landed on an exceptionally sweet-looking little girl. When Wei Yuan's gaze fell upon her back, the little girl began to tremble visibly. Wei Yuan grew somewhat curious. She seemed terrified of him, yet he had clearly never met her. Could it be that, although he rarely visited the mind-manifest world, legends of the Immortal Venerable still echoed throughout every corner of it? As he pondered, Han Li walked over, holding a blueprint draft that he handed to the little girl. He pointed toward a hill in the distance, then manifested several tools in his hands and placed them in hers, indicating that she was to chisel through the mountain and quarry stones. Seeing the little girl carrying several tools nearly larger than herself toward the hill, Wei Yuan felt a twinge of pity. Yet once she took her position, she swung an iron pickaxe and hewed away a massive chunk of rock with a single strike! 'So she awakened a divine ability of innate supernatural strength. Interesting...' Wei Yuan mused. The girl appeared only seven or eight years old, with exceptionally sweet features, which suggested she had also been quite young before her reincarnation and a great beauty in her previous life. Such individuals were usually born into noble and prestigious families; he wondered how she had ended up reincarnating through the Yellow Springs. Her awakened gift was conspicuously at odds with her appearance—downright bizarre. However, she possessed negligible cultivation at the moment; in the future, she could simply practice Dao methods that utilized innate brute strength. And precisely because she lacked cultivation, Wei Yuan could not scrutinize her the way he had scrutinized Lei Ling. Currently, Wei Yuan's Dao power was as profound as the vast sea; his every movement swayed the surrounding world. With no cultivation to protect her, should Wei Yuan probe her too deeply, an accidental lapse could cause her to explode and die from his gaze. In truth, within the Splendor of the Many Realms, there were far stranger entities than this little girl—take Yin-Yang, for instance, whom Wei Yuan had yet to see through even now. Hearing Xiaobai's ceaseless yowls, Wei Yuan withdrew his gaze. He led the beast across the entire grounds, patiently explaining why this formation line had been designed that way, and what mathematical formula lay behind the curvature of that one, leaving Xiaobai questioning its entire feline existence. Wei Yuan soon confirmed that this ancient Qiongqi was a complete idiot when it came to mathematics, which greatly improved his impression of it. At this stage, the space within the Spirit Herding Ring was utterly lifeless, long unsuited for living beings to survive. The cultivators from the inner world, however, possessed no physical bodies; as long as spiritual energy existed, they could move about freely. The primary task of these thousand-odd cultivators was to establish the foundational grand formation to convert the worldly primordial energy drawn from the outside by the immortal ring into spiritual energy and vitality, binding it within the formation. Once that was done, living beings could operate in the area covered by the formation, and the external template Dao Foundations could enter as well. Supported by the Splendor of the Many Realms, tasks were broken down and assigned to each cultivator. These cultivators needed only to perform their specified duties, including engraving particular formation lines at designated locations, without needing to know what a line was for, let alone what the grand formation as a whole did. Thus, in Xiaobai's eyes, the thousand-odd cultivators bustled about like ants with intricate, high efficiency, and a grand formation coalesced at a pace visible to the naked eye. A day later, the foundational grand formation was complete. Wei Yuan then recalled these cultivators to the mind-manifest world and replaced them with several thousand Dao Foundation cultivators. This batch of templates had also received their tasks. The work they had to perform was far more complex: adding formations atop the foundational grand formation to siphon magic power and unleash an all-out strike. This grand formation was partitioned into multiple sub-sections, each capable of independently supporting ten thousand template Dao Foundations living and cultivating. Once one sub-section was completed, the next would be built. In this manner, foundational combat strength could be formed at the fastest speed. And so, three days later, ten thousand templates were stationed within the Spirit Herding Ring. On Wei Yuan's finger rested an immortal ring of archaic design, lending his words half a measure more confidence.