The three hundred and sixty hexagonal mirror facets of the Great Celestial Extermination Immortal Light spread out like the stars of the celestial sphere. The light emitted by each facet could be individually adjusted, allowing the converged divine extermination beam to take on different attributes. Of course, manual independent adjustment involved far too many variables and was excessively complex, so Wei Yuan always used precalculated configurations.
Seeing that although the stone palace trembled, bubbles continued to emerge all around it, Wei Yuan immediately intensified the barrage of summoned flying swords, bombarding the perimeter in a full circle without any blind spots.
As expected, the stone palace took the bait. Most of the bubbles rushed to replenish the outer defenses, and Wei Yuan unleashed another blast of Great Celestial Extermination Immortal Light, nearly melting through the palace's roof.
With a shrill shriek, a cloud of white smoke billowed from the entire stone palace. Then it settled into quietude, falling completely silent as all the manifest bubbles vanished. Judging by this, the artifact spirit had likely been incinerated out of existence.
Wei Yuan landed at the entrance of the stone palace and pushed gently. The double doors swung inward, revealing a pitch-black interior.
Wei Yuan threw out a cluster of puppet insects, which swiftly darted into every corner of the hall. There was no natural light source in the hall, yet light invisible to ordinary human eyes existed. However, this swarm of Wei Yuan's puppet insects covered almost the entire spectrum, leaving them unaffected and allowing him to see the hall's layout clearly.
The main hall was the largest; its central floor was engraved with terrain of mountains and rivers, supplemented by a grand array. Relying on his knowledge of array dao, Wei Yuan felt it resembled some sort of karmic luck array. The left hall held a storehouse and an alchemy chamber; the right hall was the artifact hall; and the rear courtyards were living quarters, a cultivation chamber, and a scripture library. This was a standard cultivator's cave abode, though its layout was far less detailed than those of modern times.
Embedded within the map of mountains and rivers in the center of the hall was a large pearl. This pearl resembled a bubble, flickering between presence and absence, and was exceptionally sensitive to mortal light. Wei Yuan could not help feeling fortunate; had he recklessly summoned a ball of light or lit a torch just now, this large pearl would surely have vanished.
Although marvelous, its material did not strike Wei Yuan as exceedingly rare—at best, it barely counted as an immortal object. Such items often served a specific function rather than possessing immense inherent value.
Most of the supplies in the storehouse had rotted away; only one kind of timber remained in vast quantities, stacked neatly in piles. In the alchemy chamber, over a hundred bottles of pills still sat on the shelves, but given the passage of eons, Wei Yuan deeply doubted how much medicinal potency could possibly remain. Standing in the center was an alchemy furnace coiled with three beasts that had endured ten thousand years without decay. Barring any surprises, it would likely be the greatest harvest of this trip.
The artifact hall was also blanketed in thick dust. The earth fire had long since extinguished, and even the earth veins were blocked. Yet in a storeroom to the side of the artifact hall lay great heaps of materials, where pleasant surprises could surely be found.
In the cultivation chamber, the spiritual veins were blocked long ago. A prayer mat inside appeared intact, but there was nothing else. It seemed the master of this chamber had been fond of ascetic cultivation. In this regard, Wei Yuan felt the past fell short of the present.
In the cultivation chambers of aristocratic clans and major immortal sects today, the spiritual energy was as dense as could be, and the furnishings were as lavish as one could imagine. According to modern thinking, this was also a method of tempering one's state of mind—after all, if one could not maintain composure amidst opulence, how pathetic must their Dao heart be? At this thought, Wei Yuan sighed inwardly; had this ancient cultivator followed modern conventions, he could have collected quite a few fine treasures from this cultivation chamber alone.
In the study, the array on one bookcase was still faintly glowing, and several scripture texts resting upon its shelves appeared to be in good condition.
Manipulating the puppet insects, Wei Yuan surveyed the entire palace in the blink of an eye. The stone palace had clearly been refined; as a whole, it was equivalent to a spirit treasure, but since the artifact spirit had been incinerated by Wei Yuan's strike, the treasure was now ruined.
Wei Yuan did not enter to explore immediately. Instead, he continued deploying batch after batch of puppet insects to scour every corner, inspecting even previously checked areas several more times. He tested repeatedly in this manner until Sun Yu, Hule Gao'en, and Xu Wenwu arrived. Only then did Wei Yuan recall the puppet insects. He then took out ten spell-refining puppets, controlling half himself and distributing the rest to his companions to continue probing the stone palace.
Only after every single inch of the stone palace floor had been trodden upon did Wei Yuan step inside. The whole process had dragged on so long that even Hule Gao'en grew somewhat impatient by the end; only Sun Yu remained as unperturbed as ever.
The stone hall was steeped in a primitive, archaic atmosphere. Neither walls nor ceilings bore any ornamentation. The map of mountains and rivers had also been matched to real topography: it depicted the surrounding hundred thousand li with the secret realm at its center.
Wrapping the precious pearl in Dao power, Wei Yuan slowly drew it into a storage artifact. The entire process consumed over a million of Wei Yuan's mortal karmic luck; otherwise, the pearl would inevitably have shattered.
What interested Wei Yuan even more was the location marked by the pearl, situated more than seventy thousand li from here. An ancient immortal had expended immense dharmic power specifically to mark such a place, clearly for good reason.
Having inspected the main hall, Wei Yuan followed the principle of tackling the easy before the difficult and headed to the left wing first.
Sure enough, the medicine bottles in the alchemy chamber contained nothing but gray sludge from decayed pills. Well-versed in the alchemical dao, Wei Yuan could tell at a glance that the sludge held not a shred of medicinal potency and was utterly useless. Since these bottles had failed to preserve the medicine over the long passage of time, they naturally were nothing extraordinary either.
The only treasure remaining in the entire alchemy chamber was that furnace. After examining it closely, Wei Yuan was quite disappointed. Its functions were simplistic and its arrays crude: one port to feed herbs, another port to spout fire. Melting ingredients, controlling alchemical fire, condensing liquid, and forming pills all relied entirely on a cultivator's single-minded concentration. By contrast, Qingming's industrial alchemy furnaces featured multiple feed ports, each serving different purposes with methods like spraying, blowing, flinging, or floating ingredients. The alchemical fire was also divided into over a hundred types, each with its own nozzle. Temperature regulation comprised dozens of major categories and over a thousand sub-techniques, calibrated with minute precision, and the furnace's interior could be divided into over a hundred zones whose temperatures were managed independently.
The entire alchemical process could be adjusted according to formulas. Currently, Qingming had achieved fully automated concoction for six types of Dao Foundation pills. Even the infusion of karmic luck could be handled through preprogrammed arrays; Wei Yuan only needed to replenish the array with karmic luck at regular intervals without having to be present in person. In Wei Yuan's eyes, what made this furnace truly precious was that having endured eons, it had naturally developed spirituality. In other words, its spirituality was far more valuable than its materials. Next were the three strange beasts, none of which Wei Yuan recognized. That they were carved upon the furnace suggested they served important roles. Yet such knowledge had long since scattered and vanished when the Martial Ancestor sealed Heaven and Earth.
Under normal circumstances, the warehouse adjacent to the alchemy chamber should have been an herb depository. However, the herbs inside were entirely rotted. Instead, firewood originally meant for kindling had unexpectedly survived in its entirety. Not only had it survived, but it had also absorbed who-knew-what, with many pieces even developing faint spirituality!
Even the most common wood, if preserved unrotted for ten thousand years and imbued with emergent spirituality, was no less precious than ten-thousand-year herbs. And this half-warehouse of spiritual wood was vastly greater in quantity than herbs. Wei Yuan estimated that this half-room of spiritual wood alone was worth at least fifty to sixty million Qingyuan.
There was nothing overly extraordinary in the artifact hall. Most of the materials were used for forging immortal artifacts; despite the passage of ages, they largely retained their original forms. Fortunately, two or three types had gone extinct in the present age, and thinking that Yu Zhizhuo would be overjoyed to see them, Wei Yuan collected them carefully. The materials in the artifact hall were worth roughly forty million Qingyuan, bringing the total value of the two wings to a hundred million Qingyuan. Wei Yuan then walked into the rear palace. He first looked around the cultivation chamber, where sure enough there were no treasures, and then entered the study.
Most of the bookshelves in the study had rotted, but the array on the central bookcase was remarkably still running, protecting the dozen-odd scriptures within. Wei Yuan's ability to dismantle arrays could only be deemed decent among contemporary cultivators. Yet "decent" by the standards of today's Palace of Grand Beginning was unquestionably equivalent to a grandmaster of array dao in ancient times. Arrays were a classic example of modern superiority over antiquity; thus, though this bookcase array may have been peerless in its own era, to Wei Yuan today it was entirely crackable. And as long as a breakthrough was possible, Wei Yuan could use karmic luck to turn "possible" into "inevitable."
Seven days later, Wei Yuan finally unraveled all the arrays, and the bookcase transformed into a deep, secluded hall. This was its true form. In the depths of the secluded hall was a cluster of soft light, enclosing a piece of natural precious jade. Asleep within this jade was an ancient immortal beast! When Wei Yuan probed it with his divine sense, he was both startled and overjoyed.
This immortal beast was formed from the true intent left behind by the ancient immortal, containing the culmination of the ancient immortal's lifelong legacy. This was precisely what Wei Yuan had been searching for: a complete ancient immortal heritage!
"I'll scout the path first!" Hule Gao'en spoke up suddenly.
From his body, an ethereal shadow beast suddenly materialized, moving at a speed comparable to a peak Scenery Command cultivator! In an instant, the shadow beast reached the ancient immortal heritage and reached out a claw to touch it. Everything occurred so fast that neither Sun Yu nor Xu Wenwu could react in time.
Just as the shadow beast's claw was about to touch the immortal jade, the world before their eyes suddenly shifted, leaving a momentary blankness in their souls!
The deep hall, the ancient immortal heritage, and the shadow beast all vanished, as though wiped from existence.
The field of their divine sense suddenly expanded without limit, and they saw a monstrous beast unlike anything seen before coiled in the void. It was so colossal that, except for Wei Yuan, none could even take in its entire head, let alone discern it clearly.
Slowly, it opened its gaping maw and drew closer. And there, the deep hall reappeared—with the precious jade holding the ancient cultivator's immortal heritage resting right on the tip of its tongue.
Chapter 1337