There were several other reasons why Wei Yuan had made the Pure Land his primary target, none of which he had stated aloud. Some, Peacock could guess; others, Peacock might never conceive in his entire life.
Among the four great immortal sects, only the Pure Land spanned both humanity and alien races. The Esoteric Sect of the Liao domain had countless ties to the Pure Land, while in the Shaman domain it was simply known as the Pure Land Sect, where its converts were primarily blood shamans—the direct descendants of the Ancestral Shamans.
Within the Great Baohua Pure Land, there were also many high-level alien cultivators who had been converted, such as the Prison-Suppressing Arhat.
The other three immortal sects were purely human sects, with the Academy being the most extreme, refusing anyone with even the slightest trace of alien blood in their ancestry.
The second point was that as his understanding of the Pure Land deepened, Wei Yuan discovered that a struggle between paths of faith was, in truth, a fight to the death with no room for compromise or retreat. Wei Yuan could reform the scions of noble families and the bureaucrats of the nine nations, but changing believers was vastly harder.
The more uneducated the believers were, the more stubbornly they clung to a single, simplistic notion, never admitting fault. That stubborn, rustic ignorance transformed entirely into the unyielding rigidity of their faith.
As for the core devotees brought into the Pure Land Buddha Kingdom, their minds held nothing except the bliss and scriptures crammed into them. If those were drained away, they would become walking husks. Those who truly understood the scriptures and felt great bliss from the fulfillment of their grand vows were scarcely one in a hundred.
To describe it in terms from the outside world, mortals were like hard drives: even if filled with data, they could be wiped clean and loaded with new content. But for the core devotees, those convictions were welded permanently into their souls, and their consciousness and divine thoughts had been refined to accept only this single belief. That was why Wei Yuan remained helpless regarding the seven hundred thousand devotees in the Heaven of Joy and Bliss, able only to confine them to a small area. Nor could they be relocated; the moment they left the Heaven of Joy and Bliss, they would surely perish.
Just as Wei Yuan had no way to deal with the Pure Land's believers, the Pure Land faced much the same situation against Qingming. That day, when the old monk sacrificed his body to convert mortals, he could only target the commoners of Western Jin who lacked the protection of a boundary domain. Had he been inside Qingming, it was doubtful whether he could have converted even ten thousand people.
Yet in the eyes of the Pure Land, the worth of such an eminent monk was far greater than ten million believers. Had he not perished, he would without question have achieved the golden body of a Great Bodhisattva.
Wei Yuan and the Pure Land clashed in their fundamental doctrines while both walked the Buddhist path—just like two sons under an ailing emperor. There was inherently no room for maneuver, and since the people under the Pure Land's banner had zero chance of surrendering, the only option left was annihilation. Such was the cruelty of a struggle for ideological orthodoxy.
Beyond these two points, there was another core reason that Wei Yuan needed to verify further. Yet considering the Martial Ancestor's blockade of the immortal path, Wei Yuan's intuition told him that this reason almost certainly existed.
Having been pressured by the Pure Land for so long, Wei Yuan felt it was time to take action. He convened Feng Tingyu, Feng Chutang, Wang Hu, and a group of senior cultivators specializing in cultivation practice to discuss crucial matters concerning their cultivation paths.
Moments later, the cultivators gathered in the Immortal City's council hall. At this moment, the hall was undergoing renovations and modifications, with thousands of formation cultivators rewriting the hall's formations. The assembly began their meeting amidst the clatter and banging outside the hall.
Wei Yuan began, "I redesigned the protective formation for the hall. Previously, it was meant to defend against heavenly tribulations, but now it operates differently: it amplifies whichever parts of our deliberations provoke the Heavenly Dao, projecting them outward so the Heavenly Dao becomes aware and brings down heavenly tribulations."
"Why do that?" Feng Tingyu asked, highly curious.
Wei Yuan chuckled. "Minor tribulations bring cheer; major tribulations harm health. Experiencing more heavenly tribulations in daily life does wonders for tempering dharma bodies. Besides, the Heavenly Dao gets tired too. If we draw down enough minor tribulations, it won't have as much energy to spare when a truly major tribulation arrives."
The cultivators had long grown used to such antics and focused on the meeting, not minding having to undergo a tribulation while holding a council.
The topic this time was to discuss the latest template Dao foundation fresh from development.
At present, Qingming had at least one to two hundred template Dao foundations officially registered. There were also many designed and cobbled together by the populace, which were wildly diverse and bizarre—some founders specialized in discharging lightning, others could conjure snakes out of thin air, and so on. In recent years, Qingming's development of template Dao foundations had hit a bottleneck, but Wei Yuan felt the current templates were far from enough. Thus, he invested heavily to launch a special initiative named 'Foundation for Ten Thousand Generations.' The core of this initiative lay in breaking conventional cultivation norms and fundamentally elevating the success rate of breaking through to Dao foundation.
With a large number of researchers, all sorts of bizarre ideas were bound to arise; once eccentric ideas reached a critical mass, pleasant surprises inevitably emerged. Feng Tingyu had originally been put in charge of the project. That thoughtless girl took an unorthodox route as well, not only tackling the Dao foundation itself, but also casting her gaze toward the Body Casting stage that preceded it.
Thus, the newly introduced Dao foundation included a dedicated body casting method. Cultivating the body with this method produced a dharma body exceptionally suited to this Dao foundation, drastically increasing the chance of success.
The reason this body casting method was so important lay in the fact that this Dao foundation could not manifest outwardly like others. Instead, it merged completely with the physical body—one could say the body was the Dao foundation, and the Dao foundation was the body.
Though phrased nicely, the cultivators present all possessed discerning eyes and immediately understood: this new Dao foundation was simply too weak—so weak it could not manifest at all, requiring the physical body to host it. No matter how poor previous Dao foundations were, they could at least glow a little or drift out a wisp of white mist; this one produced nothing whatsoever. Only upon completing the entire Foundation Solidification stage and entering the middle stage of Dao foundation would it show any manifestation. Even then, what manifested was merely a phantom silhouette of the cultivator themselves, appearing as though their entire body were blazing with raging flames. In terms of presence and spectacle, it was not bad at all; its actual power, however, was concerning.
To evaluate Dao foundations, Qingming had developed an entirely new standard. Under this new metric, the strength index of a baseline Mortal Tier Dao Foundation was set at 100. The immortal sword False Sun, which Wei Yuan developed back then, had a strength index of 150; after all, the original sword it was modeled on had been exceedingly powerful, so the resulting replica immortal sword was correspondingly stronger than ordinary Mortal Tier foundations.
The strength of Qingming's new-generation template Dao foundations generally hovered between 30 and 50. This did not mean weaker foundations were always easier to cultivate; many civilian-designed foundations were both terribly difficult and terribly weak, which stemmed from fundamental flaws in their cultivation methods.
Yet as the first Dao foundation officially produced by the Foundation for Ten Thousand Generations project, its strength index hit an astonishing 19!
This number drastically lowered the floor for Qingming's Dao foundations. Correspondingly, its cultivation difficulty was merely one-eighth that of a normal Dao foundation, likewise setting a new record among existing template Dao foundations.
According to projections, if this new Dao foundation—which could not even manifest—were popularized across the board, the overall breakthrough rate from peak Body Casting to Dao foundation would exceed forty percent, marking a tremendous leap toward the ultimate goal of having every Body Casting cultivator achieve Dao foundation.
Among the seated cultivators, Xu Henshui cleared his throat and said, "The breakthrough pills tailored for Body Casting have already been developed; we call them Foundation Casting Pills. Additionally, there is a suite of auxiliary pills taken during the Body Casting stage. I believe we can blend a specialized auxiliary pill for this Dao foundation. Compounded together, it may raise the breakthrough rate for the new Dao foundation close to sixty percent."
Feng Chutang added, "Formations are also key. One can cultivate in spirit-gathering formations day to day, and transition into a karmic luck formation during the breakthrough. That way, the probability can increase by another ten percent."
Wei Yuan estimated that if he added his All Living Beings in a Flash and augmented it with human luck, the final breakthrough rate for the new Dao foundation would exceed seventy percent! That was a terrifying figure. It meant that in the future, Qingming's Dao foundation cultivators would certainly surpass ten million, approach one hundred million, and perhaps even add another zero. A thought suddenly occurred to Wei Yuan: if cultivators truly numbered in the hundreds of millions, would the spiritual qi between heaven and earth still suffice?
The question flashed across his mind and passed. In Wei Yuan's original plan, redistributing the world's spiritual qi was already a crucial component. Why should the existing distribution be set in stone?
As the cultivators discussed continuously, more and more refinements emerged; in the blink of an eye, they even devised dedicated medicinal diet recipes and massage techniques. The final success rate of the new Dao foundation was ultimately anchored at seventy-five percent.
The meeting had yielded remarkable fruit, leaving Wei Yuan greatly pleased. After a moment of contemplation, he said, "This Dao foundation bridges past and future, carving out a new path from the old way; its significance is immeasurable. In light of this, what do you think of naming it the Myriad Tribulations Imperishable Dharma Body?"
Qingming's naming conventions for Dao foundations had always been on point, and the Myriad Tribulations Imperishable Dharma Body was naturally no exception. Hearing it, everyone praised and rejoiced.
Wei Yuan smiled slightly and said, "There is one more matter. I intend to release the complete cultivation method for the Myriad Tribulations Imperishable Dharma Body to the world, allowing anyone with the affinity to cultivate it as they please. What do you all think?"
This remark struck like a clap of thunder, momentarily catching the cultivators off guard and leaving them at a loss.
Although the strength index of the Myriad Tribulations Imperishable Dharma Body was not high, its versatility, ease of cultivation, and completeness of path were all top-tier, representing the pinnacle of Qingming's template Dao foundations to date. The preciousness of its cultivation method was no longer inferior to the Six Body Casting Methods of the Palace of Grand Beginning. The entire cultivation system comprised over a dozen stages and more than a hundred critical nodes; an error at any point would cause its strength to plummet and its cultivation difficulty to soar. If an interested party learned even a fraction of it and used it to improve their own techniques, their efficiency would skyrocket.
Now Wei Yuan wanted to publish it entirely? Would that not mean that within a few years, countless cultivators practicing the Myriad Tribulations Imperishable Dharma Body would emerge across the nine nations? Ordinary cultivators aside, once the elite soldiers of the nine nations cultivated it, even a Dao foundation like the Myriad Tribulations Imperishable Dharma Body would vastly amplify their strength. Moreover, the cultivators present possessed discerning eyes and knew the true value of this method lay not just in the Dao foundation, but in the complete body casting method. While this body casting method only led to the Myriad Tribulations Imperishable Dharma Body, it allowed people to cultivate to peak Body Casting much faster and with significantly fewer resources. Many elite soldiers of the nine nations stuck at the second or third tier of Body Casting could use it to reach the late stage or even the peak.
A massive surge in the military power of the nine nations—was this not borrowing trouble for themselves out of nowhere?
At once, Feng Chutang gave a light cough, voiced several concerns, and then said, "In my view, this matter should be deferred for later consideration."
He still spared Wei Yuan's feelings; calling to defer the matter was merely a polite way of saying it should be dropped.
Wei Yuan was very patient. Waiting until everyone had finished airing their opinions and concerns, he said, "The opinions of my martial uncles and seniors are all very important, and I have considered them carefully. But releasing the cultivation path of the Myriad Tribulations Imperishable Dharma Body to the world hinges on two key factors:
"First, once someone achieves this Dao foundation, the probability of being forcibly converted drops to less than a tenth of what it was before, virtually eliminating the possibility of mass conversion. Even if they fail to reach Dao foundation, achieving success in Body Casting will still vastly increase the difficulty of converting them.
"Second, he who bears a weapon naturally stirs the intent to kill."
Three days later, Qingming published the complete cultivation method for the Myriad Tribulations Imperishable Dharma Body, including its dedicated body casting method. In an instant, the world was shaken.
Chapter 1300