In Wei Yuan's eyes, the grand formation within the Spirit Herding Ring was already magnificent, sleek, powerful, and deeply stackable. In theory, it had no ceiling—the only limits were the ring's interior space and the tolerances of the formation materials.
Seven days later, two sub-formations were completed. Over thirty thousand template Dao Foundation cultivators were inside the Spirit Herding Ring, working frantically to erect more. According to the blueprint drafted by these young templates, fifteen sub-formations would be built in the initial phase, accommodating a garrison of one hundred and fifty thousand template Dao Foundations.
While one hundred thousand templates were theoretically sufficient to severely wound an immortal, the designers argued there would be power loss during conversion. Moreover, Wei Yuan might not necessarily strike the immortal's vitals. The system demanded ample safety redundancy, so Wei Yuan's original figure was revised upward to one hundred and fifty thousand to guarantee that every single strike could sever an immortal's leg.
The sheer audacity of the new plan gave even Wei Yuan pause. Yet his astonishment was only beginning. The third sub-formation had just been finished when a report was delivered to Wei Yuan: the researchers had achieved a breakthrough and requested permission to upgrade the existing sub-formations.
Their breakthrough consisted of two newly invented mathematical tools that substantially boosted design efficiency. Using them, they had developed a next-generation pattern system, expanding the variety of formation patterns from several dozen to over two hundred, while doubling the number of patterns and talismans that could be crammed into a single square foot. In the art of formations, this was nothing short of a revolution, drastically augmenting the array's power. The designers had then used the newly unlocked capacity to add numerous subsystems to support the formation's operation.
As Wei Yuan read through the descriptions of these auxiliary subsystems, his expression grew increasingly bizarre.
The first module's primary function was spirit storage. Originally, the magic power siphoned by the array dissipated into the ring's interior space as spiritual qi, to be gathered anew whenever Wei Yuan prepared to strike. The new module instead stored the spiritual qi in independent spirit storage piles, vastly increasing total capacity and accelerating the rate at which qi could be discharged during an attack.
The second module was the grand formation's self-balancing system. It automatically regulated the magic power and Dao force drawn from each cultivator, ensuring a uniform input rate and quantity into the spirit storage piles to prolong their operational lifespan.
When Wei Yuan unleashed an attack, the system would prioritize drawing spiritual qi dispersed through the immortal ring's space, tapping into the spirit storage piles only to make up any deficit, thereby markedly enhancing the stability of Wei Yuan's attacks.
The third module was dubbed the full-time dynamic monitoring system. Put simply, it tracked every cultivator's condition in real time. The original rationale behind its development was cultivator safety, intended to prevent the array from siphoning too aggressively.
After all, template Dao Foundations were exceedingly fragile, like soap bubbles before Wei Yuan that popped with the slightest puff. If Wei Yuan ever grew desperate during a clash and drew on them with all his might, he could very well drain tens of thousands of templates into desiccated husks on the spot.
Yet to make this safeguard work, the system had to track each cultivator in real time, measuring their output intensity, remaining magic power reserves, recovery rate, and so forth. And in doing so, the module conveniently detected whenever a Dao Foundation cultivator was slacking off instead of cultivating with full devotion...
For slacking cultivators, the formation would issue two warnings. A third infraction resulted in deductions of meritorious service, immortal silver, and various benefits, along with an official demerit on their permanent record. Accumulating too many infractions would earn them the label of "infirm Dao heart," causing them to run into brick walls whenever they sought employment across Qingming's various administrative sectors.
The designers named the array inside the Spirit Herding Ring the White Tiger Mystic Realm Cultivation Grand Formation—an utterly literal title, chosen so that no cultivator could possibly misunderstand its purpose. In the designers' eyes, these templates had entered the mystic realm to cultivate. They drew in worldly essence and converted it into magic power, which was then channeled into the formation; their cultivation base would naturally advance in the process.
Furthermore, the designers calculated that cultivating inside the immortal ring would be several times faster than in the outside world, thanks to the complete lack of distractions! The underlying reason, however, was simple enough: under the formation's relentless surveillance, slacking off was impossible, which naturally increased their effective cultivation time.
At this point, Wei Yuan realized that these elite template designers harbored a profound lack of sympathy for ordinary templates who knew only how to grind. The report sat with Wei Yuan for an entire shichen before he finally approved it. Yet within that brief shichen, Wei Yuan experienced an epiphany that felt as if he had awakened the Sacred Physique of Mathematics, taking the modules a step further: by channeling power through the formation, he could bestow karmic luck upon each cultivator. With that karmic blessing, among the hundred-odd thousand templates, a few would inevitably transform, awaken, and embark on the path to the dharma idol realm.
What the designer templates failed to grasp was that surveillance and exploitation alone could never resolve the fundamental issue. The finest approach was to give people hope. Even if only a dozen or so ever attained a dharma idol, every single template would think, *Why shouldn't it be me?* With that thought came the drive to strive, followed by a lifetime of diligent toil, until they grew old and passed away as senior templates.
Why were those fortunate few remembered? Precisely because they were so rare.
With that, the grand formation was perfected. One after another, template Dao Foundation cultivators vanished from Wei Yuan's side, embarking on their grueling cultivation within the mystic realm to assault the next hurdle along the immortal path.
By now, the Lu clan ancestral grounds had taken on an entirely new look. Several massive construction sites had been carved out across the mountainsides, each rivaling a small city in scale. Swarms of cultivators piloted various construction Dharma artifacts, boring tunnels through the mountain.
Some of these passages were mining tunnels dedicated to collecting soil soaked in immortal blood, which was brought out to be refined. Several main shafts reached all the way to the immortal's finger bone. In Wei Yuan's divine sense, it appeared as a colossal finger bone hundreds of zhang thick and over ten li long. The exposed face was a jade-white stone with a yellowish tint, so exceptionally hard that even steel circular saws could barely make a scratch. Only Dao Foundation cultivators driving Dharma artifacts could chip away at it by force, taking ages to dislodge a single chunk.
In the old Qingming, mining immortal bone would have meant chipping away by hand or deploying dharma idol or Scenery Command experts to cut it, which certainly would have required Wei Yuan's personal intervention. But in today's Qingming, numerous technicians were already on-site collecting data and samples to send back for research, and an entirely new suite of excavation tools was in development. Before long, these template Dao Foundations would be able to quarry the immortal bone on a massive scale relying entirely on their own power.
The immortal power within these bones had long since bled dry, leaving behind only the raw material. Even so, it was more than suitable for crafting Dao Foundation Dharma artifacts. Once the entire bone was mined, Wei Yuan could equip Qingming's one million Dao Foundations from head to toe.
By then, Wei Yuan had transferred nearly three hundred thousand templates from Qingming in successive waves, transforming the Lu Clan Ancestral Mountain into one gigantic construction site. Standing at the mountain's peak, full of pride and ambition, Wei Yuan suddenly felt a stir in his heart and looked toward the east.
In that direction, at the edge of his vision, a faint, elusive aura rose—bearing the momentum to sweep across the four seas.
Chapter 1233