After learning so many hidden truths, another doubt arose in Wei Yuan's mind: by doing this, wouldn't the Liao Clan make themselves the public enemy of the entire realm? Why didn't the various races unite to wipe out the Liao Clan directly and eliminate the peril once and for all?
However, this was not a question Jiumu could answer. Of Jiumu's three remaining red jade vases, another suddenly shattered! Jiumu's expression instantly darkened. Clearly, one of the questions just now had touched upon a taboo, drawing a strike across space from some mighty being.
These vases were formed from eyeballs Jiumu had shed, possessing the power to substitute for calamity. Losing two over just a few sentences with Wei Yuan was equivalent to losing nearly half its life; every single one of its eyes ached with distress.
Seeing this, Wei Yuan hurriedly offered to generously sponsor a batch of medicinal liquor for the Desolate Realm, praising its cooling, heat-dispelling properties and promising it would greatly boost the Strength Shamans' morale. Under normal circumstances, Jiumu would have been overjoyed, but right now it was utterly dispirited. Any unusual movement from the Heavenly Pillars weighed upon its heart like an unyielding mountain. For Jiumu, who had only ever wanted to spend the rest of its days in peace and quiet, its heart was clouded with gloom, and nothing could cheer it up.
Having obtained the intelligence he sought, Wei Yuan went to bid farewell to Tianyu. Up close, he realized to his astonishment that this fellow was merely half a step away from advancing to a Desolate Shaman; his dharma body had been tempered to near perfection, brimming with the primordial power of the Desolate Realm.
Yet Tianyu's Dao heart had regressed rather than progressed, a complete and utter mess, worse even than Xu Wenwu's.
As it turned out, this fellow had taken a shortcut. Who knew where he had come up with the idea, but he had gotten his band of Strength Shaman brothers to worship him, using the resulting power of vows to replace a Dao heart and guide his mortal vessel through the tempering of the Desolate Realm's power.
In other words, Tianyu did not need to temper a Dao heart at all. Right now, he was like a man encased in steel puppet armor: extremely frail on the inside, exceptionally hard on the outside. His path of development was to continuously reinforce the exterior armor, leaving the interior as it was.
This path borrowed rituals from Buddhist cultivators, sacrifices from the Shaman Clan, and even bore traces of the human race's Incense Divine Dao. The method of refining his dharma body resembled artifact forging, while the separation of Dao heart, origin soul, and dharma body seemed akin to heavenly demons or ghost cultivators. It was a complete hodgepodge, yet it actually worked.
The fellow spent every day drinking and chasing girls, then lounging upon his altar listening to his drunken brothers flatter him—yet somehow he had cultivated all the way to the threshold of a breakthrough. Even Wei Yuan couldn't help feeling that the Heavenly Dao was deeply unfair.
Still, Strength Shamans had one unique trait: they were remarkably simple-minded. As long as they were provided wine, meat, and pretty female shamans, they would genuinely call someone "Daddy." The power of vows they contributed was pure and potent. And right after calling him Daddy, nothing stopped them from turning around and calling Tianyu brother again.
Wei Yuan lingered for half a day. After learning the ins and outs of this cultivation path, he asked about Tianyu's recent life.
Then Wei Yuan discovered that because Tianyu held a monopoly on trade with Qingming, he was no longer merely the richest man in his tribe, but the richest man among all Strength Shamans. Having become absurdly wealthy, one day Tianyu suddenly felt that a shaman's life was utterly devoid of meaning. Was the sole purpose of a shaman's existence to drink endless liquor, boast endless nonsense, and constantly swap out pretty girls?
And so, Tianyu had achieved enlightenment. Determined to better himself, he began to cultivate. Under Yaolan's guidance, Tianyu ultimately cobbled together this unorthodox path. Wei Yuan was left speechless.
Only then did Wei Yuan notice two jade pillars standing behind Tianyu's altar. On the left pillar was carved: "Feasting all day with nothing to do." On the right was: "Passing the years in peace, fortune naturally flourishes."
Wei Yuan truly couldn't hold back and cursed under his breath. To dress up pure dumb luck in such elegant verse—was this still a crude Strength Shaman?
Returning to the Immortal City, Wei Yuan began examining the memories stored across his various grotto-heavens.
Unsurprisingly, the Central Earth Grotto-Heaven held nothing. When the mirage demons needed status, they had quantity; when they needed quantity, they had status. Naturally, they could not preserve that memory.
Then, in the Eighth Grotto-Heaven, which had been a cluster of flowering trees, all the petals suddenly withered and fell, and a shrill scream echoed from within. Thus Wei Yuan knew that this memory was finished as well.
In the Pure Land and the Azure-Patterned Dragon, the memories had already begun to dissipate. Wei Yuan could not stop it, nor did he dare to try; doing so would be tantamount to trading blows across time with mighty beings.
After a brief thought, Wei Yuan understood why the memories in those two grotto-heavens were fading. The Pure Land had now descended into Xile Heaven, and temples were being widely erected across Qingming. As a result, it had manifested in the mortal world and was no longer in its former concealed state.
Once manifested in the world, it was difficult to evade the causal erasure of mighty beings—especially when more than one was involved.
As for the Azure-Patterned Dragon, it was more like a living automaton, having never given Wei Yuan the slightest response. Wei Yuan could only mobilize its power to exert limited influence over time. Lacking consciousness, it naturally could not defend against causal erasure.
The Immortal Sword Grotto was completely serene, whereas the Yellow Springs was in utter pandemonium.
Jialuo had urgently relocated out of the Underworld Palace, found a plot of land far away, threw together a stone hut on the spot, and led the underworld clerks inside to continue working. As for the original Underworld Palace, it was placed under heavy guard, and no wandering soul was permitted to approach.
It seemed that the memory stored in the Underworld Palace would likely be preserved. As for the Immortal Sword Grotto...
The Immortal Sword Grotto was excessively quiet, and Xihe was nowhere to be found.
Wei Yuan understood. After all, this Xihe was not that Xihe. At this moment, she was likely doing everything in her power to suppress the memory; not screaming out loud was already her final shred of dignity. Fortunately, the foundation of the grotto was still the immortal sword left behind by the original Xihe back then, possessing sufficient status to suppress the memory.
Finally, only the sun and moon remained.
The memory had been deposited into the Evil Sun Heavenly Pillar, but it was merely stored there; Wei Yuan had no hope of retrieving it. He did not dare make contact with the pillar's vitality—that would be no different from handling nuclear fuel with bare hands in the otherworldly world.
The Ancient Full Moon, however, presented a rather bizarre sight. That memory simply rested on the lunar surface without the slightest concealment, completely unharmed.
After speaking with Jiumu, Wei Yuan seemed to have learned a great deal, yet thinking on it carefully, he also seemed to know nothing at all. The calamity was too vast an affair—something for figures at the level of the Ancestral Shaman and the Liao Ancestor to ponder. It was simply too far removed from Wei Yuan.
Thinking back to the decisive battle in the grotto-heaven against the Wise King of the Left, Cui Zhengxing and Duke Yansheng had traveled tens of thousands of li to tell him that with the calamity looming, Wei Yuan must consider the big picture and not push the Liao Clan too hard.
Back then, Wei Yuan had given them no face whatsoever. What did they mean by offending the Liao Clan too severely? Where had the Liao forces that Wei Yuan encircled been located? Inside Eastern Jin territory!
Yet after talking with Jiumu, Wei Yuan realized he had still overestimated that scoundrel Cui Zhengxing. On the grand chessboard of calamity, the protagonists were the Shamans, the Sea Li, the Mountain Folk, and even Guiche. As for the human race, they were not even qualified to be served up on the table as a dish.
In a calamity occurring roughly once every hundred thousand years, even if Duke Yansheng crawled on his knees and begged, the Liao Clan probably wouldn't bother dumping the calamity onto his head.
For Wei Yuan, however, this was an exquisite opportunity. The Liao Clan's immortals were devoting all their strength to manipulating the calamity; the only immortals they could deploy were at the level of the Wise King of the Left. Powerful immortals like Silver Moon had to defend against the Shaman Clan's counterattack.
Wei Yuan keenly perceived that the world's powerful immortals were currently tied down; those left capable of intervening on ground battlefields were merely ordinary and miscellaneous immortals. Back then, the Shaman Clan had relied precisely on ground warfare to fight relentlessly for thousands of years, swallowing hundreds of thousands of li of Liao territory and somewhat evening the score.
As long as the mighty beings and Immortal Lords did not move, it was Wei Yuan's golden opportunity!
Wei Yuan was never one to hesitate and look over his shoulder. If he did not seize the moment now, once the calamity passed and the situation was settled, when those mighty beings freed up their hands, what would he have to withstand their retaliation?
Wei Yuan never pinned his hopes on an enemy's mercy or awakening of conscience. Rather than hoping the enemy would grow a conscience, it was better to be a bit unscrupulous first and annihilate them completely; then the problem would naturally cease to be a problem.
In fact, several borderline treasonous essays had already surfaced within Qingming, their spearheads pointed straight at Wei Yuan. The essays argued that great cultivators and mighty beings ought to shoulder the responsibility for all under heaven. At present, Qingming was doing wonderfully, but beyond Qingming, the vast majority of people were suffering immensely! How could mighty cultivators possessing supreme divine abilities turn a blind eye? Not a single essay named Wei Yuan, yet every single essay was about Wei Yuan.
Regardless of the reasons, it was also a fact that the people of Qingming were eager for war. Yet another dilemma lay before Wei Yuan: he could win the fights, but without boundary stones in hand, he couldn't occupy the territory.
Previously, when conquering Western Jin or the State of Ji, boundary stones were already embedded in the land. Wei Yuan then relied on rearranging the boundary stones and utilizing them rationally to maximize their coverage area, thereby conjuring nearly fifty percent more territory out of thin air. That was how Yizhou had come to be.
Now, fighting foreign races, there were no boundary stones; the seized land could not be transformed, and in the end, it would only have to be abandoned.
Fortunately, in Qingming today, many problems had unconventional solutions, just as Wei Yuan was accustomed to solving mathematical problems with human luck. Wei Yuan promptly opened the interface for Qingming's core engineering projects; it already contained an index of over a hundred projects, all major undertakings pushed forward with the full strength of the nation.
Scanning down the project list, Wei Yuan quickly found the karmic luck formation. The scale of this karmic luck formation was terrifyingly vast. Looking across the entire world, except for the Pure Land, the Academy, and the Imperial Palace of Great Tang, it likely had no rival. Even among those three places, it might not necessarily be outmatched. The karmic luck formation of the Palace of Grand Beginning was not even one-third the size of this one.
Such a grand formation naturally served a momentous purpose.
Wei Yuan immediately tossed the immortal chicken egg he had just acquired into the formation's core. When the fist-sized object fell into the hundred-li giant formation, it barely made a splash. Yet the moment it entered the formation, a colossal figure descended from the heavens!
The immortal chicken crossed the void, plopped its backside straight down onto the egg, and wriggled its hundreds-of-zhang-tall body a few times to adjust its posture. It then turned its head, looked at Wei Yuan in midair, and said briskly, "You want to use this grand formation, right? I'll guard it for you! Tell me, what do you want to fish for?"
The immortal chicken didn't say a word about brooding eggs, speaking only of its willingness to drive the karmic luck formation for Wei Yuan. Wei Yuan was naturally glad to have it so; having two immortal chickens in the formation core and having Old Daoist Chuhe tend to them well to stimulate their qi could elevate their status even further. Looking across the world, no one else had such extravagant bait.
Wei Yuan smiled faintly. "I want to fish for... boundary stones!"
"Just that simple? No problem, just wait for news. Don't mind me, I'll stay here and keep the missus company for a bit."
Wei Yuan nodded, turned, and departed.
Fishing with this grand formation, if the other side had no immortal to step forward and resist, they would most likely end up carrying boundary stones and wandering into Qingming themselves, baffled as to why. However, what could be drawn this way were only scattered, small boundary stones; Wei Yuan looked down upon such loose change now. What he truly looked forward to was whether he might fish out some relatives of Qingming or something similar.
With the boundary stones dealt with, everything was basically in place, needing only to open fire on all fronts.
Wei Yuan returned to his residence and came before the sand table of all under heaven. At the same time, he ordered attendants to bring the history books of various dynasties, contemplating before the sand table and flipping through the histories from time to time.
He now needed to resolve one most critical question: who were Qingming's enemies, and who were Qingming's friends?
End of Volume.
Chapter 1297