Wei Yuan stood amidst a boundless expanse of hazy emptiness, surrounded by nothing.
This was the core of Splendor of the Many Realms, a space belonging exclusively to Wei Yuan. Here, he could draw upon forces of every kind at any moment to evolve and manifest a miniature realm. Wei Yuan frequently used this to deduce situations and forecast the future.
In the beginning, it could only simulate shifts across a single li, the scale of a small village. Later, as the various true spirits manifested and the types of power gradually grew complete, the realm constructed here expanded accordingly, and the varieties of creatures within it multiplied. Once all five elements became complete, the world formed here could practically pass for reality.
Now, Wei Yuan wiped the space clean to begin a fresh deduction, intent on resolving a crucial question: the strata of this native realm.
At the highest level, there were two ways to categorize them: by race and by the divide between immortal and mortal.
By race, this realm could be divided into three categories: the human race, alien races, and other sentient beings. Alien races of various sizes constituted a secondary classification. By the immortal-mortal divide, it could be divided into three tiers: mortal beings, cultivators, and immortals. The gulf between these three tiers was as vast as heaven and earth; they were practically different species altogether. Within each major tier, the distinctions were not quite so extreme. Among cultivators, for example, Dao Base, dharma idol, or Scenery Command were fundamentally all stages in a creature's gradual transformation toward the heavens and earth. Next, using race as the horizontal plane and the immortal-mortal divide as the vertical axis, Wei Yuan constructed an initial model.
At the very base of the model were densely packed miniature figures, all mortals. Above them were cultivators, and above them, immortals.
Looking down from above, the center belonged to the human race, with the various alien races distributed around the periphery.
Within the human race, there were four further subcategories: sects, noble clans, the Nine Nations, and others. These subcategories likewise spanned every tier from mortal to immortal; visually, they appeared as pillars carved out from within humanity.
Each subcategory could be broken down further, but Wei Yuan did not continue, stopping right there. By this point, the fundamental general situation under heaven was clear; further subdivision was unnecessary.
Looking at this model, Wei Yuan felt that something was amiss.
He retrieved the hidden memories stored away in his grotto-heavens, reviewed them, and expanded the hazy space, turning the entire native realm into merely a small patch at the space's center.
Outside the native realm, Wei Yuan incorporated numerous otherworldly things, making it truly complete. Some of these otherworldly entities were already assaulting the native realm; every major point of contact sparked a calamity.
Yet this current picture was merely an outline, insufficient to support a conclusion. Wei Yuan assigned weights of strength to each stratum, then set the evolution in motion once more.
Thus, a patch resembling grassland appeared in the hazy space. This grassland represented the aggregation of countless mortals, but even with all the wild weeds in the entire world gathered together, they coalesced into nothing more than a wisp of faint white mist.
Above the white mist, cultivators of various tiers hung across the firmament like scattered stars. Dao Base cultivators were like fireflies, dharma idols were torches, and Scenery Command cultivators were massive fireballs.
Near the vault of heaven hung colossal stars. Several among them blazed fiercely, veritable great suns that eclipsed all other stars, standing aloof and supreme!
These stars were immortals, and the great suns were Immortal Lords.
Now it was abundantly clear: measured by strength, virtually any immortal was worth nearly half a world of mortal lives. If karma and causal backlash were ignored and no other immortals intervened, just three or four immortals would suffice to bring about the apocalypse, slaughtering all living beings, cultivators included.
The otherworldly realm where the Umbrella Corporation resided, which Wei Yuan had once experienced, could be thoroughly refined and consumed by any single immortal.
If the total strength of all mortals in the world were set at one hundred, the sum of all cultivators would be several thousand, while above the Immortal Heaven, the total strength was in the hundreds of thousands! Splendor of the Many Realms lacked sufficient data, so the portion regarding the realm above the Immortal Heaven relied largely on extrapolation—for instance, there was no way to determine the exact figure for the Ancestral Shaman. Yet compared to the mortals' one hundred, whether immortal strength was tens of thousands or millions made no practical difference.
Thus, viewed from the perspective of strength, the saying that immortals were the overarching destiny of the world was entirely true.
Yet Wei Yuan did not stop there. Instead, he shifted to another angle, re-projecting the model based on soul strength. Wei Yuan possessed the Yellow Springs Grotto-Heaven, and his heart-image world formed its own cycle of reincarnation; consequently, he knew the size and quality of mortal souls intimately, enabling him to perform such a deduction.
Such models seemed simple, but the hardest part was obtaining the data. Under all the heavens, those capable of doing what Wei Yuan had done probably numbered no more than two hands.
This time, Splendor of the Many Realms computed for several days before gradually sketching out a brand-new world. To drive the calculations and overcome impassable bottlenecks along the way, Wei Yuan invested several million points of human luck.
At the very bottom of this newly deduced world lay a boundless ocean, formed from the convergence of countless mortal souls. Specks of light glimmered over the waters, and seabirds wheeled through the air.
The Dao Base cultivators were those faint glimmers, dharma idols were bubbles bobbing on the water's surface, and Scenery Command cultivators, already showing signs of transcendence, manifested as seabirds aloft. Seabirds naturally came in different sizes, yet even the largest seabird was negligible compared to the vast ocean.
Above the sea and sky floated islands of varying size—some magnificent, some bizarre, some desolate. And at the highest altitudes hung several colossal floating continents, faintly blotting out the sky and sun.
Those floating continents were the Ancestral Shaman, the Liao Ancestor, the forebears of various alien races, and the human Immortal Lords and Venerable Masters. Their heart-image worlds had long since materialized into physical realities, and what sustained a heart-image world was the sea of consciousness and soul. Thus, the souls of these mighty beings were incomparably powerful.
Wei Yuan had clashed with the Venerable Master several times and faced Immortal Lord Liuli's strike across space firsthand, so he already possessed an understanding of Immortal Lords. After his deep discussion of hidden truths with Jiumu, his comprehension of the other mighty beings grew even clearer, making this deduction possible. Discrepancies certainly remained, but they did not alter the conclusion.
The conclusion was this: if the total soul mass under heaven were set at one hundred, the mighty beings accounted for ten, all other miscellaneous immortals combined made up three, all cultivators under heaven totaled a mere two, and the remaining eighty-five belonged entirely to mortal lives.
Accounting for more than eighty percent of the world's souls, yet commanding less than one ten-thousandth of the power between heaven and earth—this was a chasm-like disparity. In the view of high cultivators from noble clans, this merely proved that mortals were dull-witted and deserved to suffer through endless cycles of reincarnation.
Yet in Wei Yuan's eyes, he saw two things: potential, and injustice.
Among the talented across the world, not one in a million could ever grow to fruition. The vast majority never even knew they possessed talent before being submerged beneath the rolling mortal dust. This was not their fault; it was this world, from beginning to end, that had never given them even the slightest sliver of opportunity.
No matter how few the opportunities were, so long as a rudimentary fairness remained, there would still be hope, and it could still be justified. But to have no opportunity whatsoever—that was a failing of the world itself.
Present-day Great Tang had long fallen under the grip of noble clans and prominent lineages. While there seemed to be a handful of opportunities, without fairness, those chances had nothing to do with mortals; in truth, they did not exist, serving merely as tools for the scions of prominent houses to cultivate their reputations.
And present Qingming had, in fact, carved a small breach in this suffocatingly tight cage of heaven and earth.
With the strata demarcated, the question became which stratum he would stand with. And this question required no analysis; Wei Yuan had possessed the answer long ago: humanity's mortals and low-level cultivators.
Before today, Wei Yuan's willingness to protect mortals came from seeing so much suffering among ordinary folk since childhood—suffering that many scions born into noble clans would never witness in their entire lives.
Ever since he was young, Wei Yuan considered himself an ordinary person; Wei Youcai had always taught him so.
After stepping onto the path of cultivation, Wei Yuan was surrounded almost entirely by children of noble clans; he was the sole anomaly. In the quiet nights between cultivation sessions, Wei Yuan could never forget that barren landscape of mountains and waters, nor that rustic courtyard home.
Recognizing that he too was a mortal, seeing the suffering of mortals would evoke pity, empathy for his own kind, and dread that such misery might one day fall upon himself.
Driven by this simple emotion, even mediocre folk would be willing to do something for their people, while others would step forward, striving to alter all of this at its very root.
If it ended there, standing with the human race's mortals would suffice. The reason low-level cultivators had to be included as well was that transitioning from mortal to Dao Base was a fundamental, qualitative transformation—like a pupa shedding its cocoon to become a butterfly.
This realm was not isolated; there were otherworldly things beyond it, continuously probing and mounting attacks. If humans remained merely mortal, this realm was destined for destruction. The fragments of otherworldly realms and the deathly still world Wei Yuan had hailed from all attested to the cruelty of this cosmos. Therefore, mortals needed to become cultivators, and cultivators needed to grow stronger, step by step.
Having chosen his footing, the question of who was a friend and who was an enemy had its answer: whoever stood on the side of mortals and low-level cultivators was a friend; whoever obstructed mortals from pursuing prosperity and happiness, or choked off cultivators' paths of advancement, was Wei Yuan's enemy.
With this as the benchmark, every stratum and ethnic group took its place. Wei Yuan factored in every aspect and finally set his sights on Northern Qi and the Baohua Pure Land.
Just as his gaze settled, far away, a dark cloud laden with killing intent silently gathered.
Chapter 1298