"Speak. Why did you betray me?" Wei Yuan blew gently across the tea leaves, his demeanor utterly casual.
On the tea table beside him lay that piece of ancient jade, unshielded and unprotected by any formation.
Hule Gao'en knelt before Wei Yuan. The ancient jade was right before his eyes; he had only to lunge forward a single step to reach it. Yet that one step was an insurmountable gulf.
He fell silent for a moment before countering, "If I am willing to surrender all my secrets, can I trade them for the safety of my clansmen?"
"No," Wei Yuan replied with crisp finality.
Seeing Hule Gao'en lapse into silence again, Wei Yuan said, "Whatever promises you could offer, you already gave away years ago. And what I wanted is already in my hands. As for your ability to manifest a shadow beast, it is hardly remarkable; I have no interest in it whatsoever. If you cannot offer something that changes my mind, your clansmen will be buried with you."
"But they are innocent!" Hule Gao'en grew agitated, struggling and roaring.
Wei Yuan remained expressionless, asking calmly, "What does that have to do with me?"
"You... you have utterly lost all conscience!" Hule Gao'en glared, his eyes nearly tearing at the corners.
Wei Yuan sneered. "Killing a few non-humans has nothing to do with conscience."
Seeing that Hule Gao'en had nothing more to say, Wei Yuan set down his teacup and remarked placidly, "Then so be it. I will pay top dollar to buy slaves from the Mountain Folk, specifically demanding your clansmen. Judging by this ancient immortal's heritage, they will come in handy anyway. Refining your entire clan should yield a thousand-li boundary stone."
Hule Gao'en struggled once more, but he could not break free from the Dao power binding his body. He knew that before long, the flying boat would land in Yizhou, and by then, anything he said would likely be too late.
"I... I will tell you everything. Just spare my people."
"That is impossible. At best, I will buy a few fewer." Wei Yuan's face was impassive.
Having no choice, Hule Gao'en lowered his head and said, "In my past life, I was originally a little girl among the Mountain Folk. I was bullied constantly from childhood simply because I was hideously ugly. Until that day, when I met that man..."
Hule Gao'en's memories of that past life were vague, making the story fairly simple. In short, an exceptionally ugly mountain girl met an equally hideous human cultivator. They fell in love at first sight and planned to break through the racial divide to live together.
The innocent mountain girl suspected nothing; she simply thought that someone as ugly as herself could never be a liar.
And so she revealed all of her clan's secrets to her lover. Then, on a certain night, their mortal enemies suddenly surrounded the clan's secret haven. What followed was slaughter and refinement. Not only were all her clansmen butchered, but their bellies were also ripped open, dying in agonizing torment. Their souls were harvested and refined into a boundary stone right before the young girl's eyes, destined to be sold to the human race.
Wei Yuan finally understood. A strange look crossed his face as he said, "So the ones you hate most are actually humans."
Hule Gao'en slowly nodded, grinding his teeth. "If you didn't buy them, my people wouldn't have died!"
Wei Yuan did not argue with him—or rather, her—and instead asked, "What about the shadow beast? Where did that come from?"
"Bestowed by an immortal in my dreams," Hule Gao'en answered in a low voice.
Wei Yuan finally showed a glimmer of interest and pressed for details. It turned out that after reincarnating, Hule Gao'en frequently dreamed of an immortal whose features remained indistinct, offering guidance at critical moments.
Before entering the Domain of the Mountain Folk this time, he had suddenly dreamed of this immortal again and received the shadow beast Dao art. It allowed him to manifest a shadow beast possessing the strength of a perfected Scenery Command cultivator to seize the immortal relic at a crucial juncture. Furthermore, once cast, the user could anchor their divine soul within the shadow beast to flee, leaving behind only an empty, soulless husk of a physical body.
Although the shadow beast could only sustain perfected Scenery Command strength briefly, it possessed innate concealment abilities and could hide away after escaping, making it an ideal tool for lurking and stealing treasures. Everything was sound in theory; the only flaw was that the dream immortal had underestimated the extraterrestrial entity's strength, and had also underestimated Wei Yuan's power. Colossal though that extraterrestrial entity was, what appeared was merely a single tentacle, yet devouring a shadow beast whose strength neared immortality posed no effort at all.
Wei Yuan, on the other hand, had relied on two blasts of Fission Yuan Light to blast open the extraterrestrial entity's maw and snatch the ancient immortal relic—quite literally plucking food from a tiger's jaws. The sheer destructive force of those two Fission Yuan Light blasts was terrifying, each equivalent to the full-strength blow of an immortal. Yet Wei Yuan had fired off two in quick succession without breaking a sweat, though it was somewhat peculiar that he had tossed an object each time before unleashing the spell.
Having obtained his answers, Wei Yuan asked a final question: "Was that dream immortal human, or of the Mountain Folk?"
Hule Gao'en's face changed drastically. He stammered, "A... a human."
Wei Yuan wore an expression that said just as I thought. He tapped a finger lightly on the tabletop and said, "You finally have some value. A vessel capable of holding an ancient immortal's Three Corpses is, after all, rather hard to find."
Hule Gao'en shuddered all over again and pressed his forehead against the floor, unable to rise. "So long as I can be of use to My Lord, I will not hesitate even at the cost of ten thousand deaths! Whatever My Lord wishes me to do, please command me. Whatever experiments require my cooperation, I will obey without question."
Wei Yuan finally nodded. "You may step down for now. There will indeed be experiments later that require your cooperation. As for your clansmen, that will depend on their own fortune and attitude."
"Thank you, Realm Lord!" Hule Gao'en kowtowed.
Just then, Wei Yuan glanced at him and said, "There is one more thing. Take some time to think carefully about who you really are right now—are you Hule Gao'en, or the ancient immortal?"
Hule Gao'en shuddered violently, his face gradually turning pallid.
"Go. Answer me when you've thought it through." Wei Yuan waved a hand and ordered his subordinates to lead Hule Gao'en away.
Upon returning to the human domain, Wei Yuan did not linger in Yizhou, instead transferring to a high-speed flying boat to return to Qingming. Entering the immortal city, he seated himself at the center of the Great Array of the Zhou Celestial Stars before finally inspecting the contents of the ancient immortal relic.
Back then, the merging of Wei Yuan's Dao Foundation, Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, with Qingming had caused him tremendous trouble. Yet as his cultivation grew, Qingming had now become akin to a half-manifested mindscape world. While within Qingming, the shackles and suppression imposed on Wei Yuan by the Great Dao of heaven and earth and karmic ties were diminished by a full tier. Because this matter touched upon the Martial Ancestor's designs, Wei Yuan had to rush back to Qingming before daring to examine it with peace of mind; otherwise, he would have had to travel to the Desolate Realm or the Nether Cold Realm.
Wei Yuan extended his divine sense into the ancient jade. The moment he made contact with that slumbering ancient immortal beast, darkness suddenly seized his vision, and he lost all consciousness!
Alarmed, Wei Yuan was just about to trigger his contingencies to pull his divine sense out of the ancient jade when a beam of light suddenly pierced the darkness before his eyes. Then, a slightly raspy yet melodious voice sounded:
"Those who receive my heritage become my disciples, and you cannot remain ignorant of my life and origins. My name is Cangxu. I attained the Dao upon the highest peak of Mount Xiao, achieving the immortal body of the White Snake. An ancient scripture states: 'On Mount Xiao emerges an immortal snake, with a body of jade and a tail of gold, consuming qi and feeding on karmic luck, named Cangxu.'
"Having attained the divine beast's immortal form, I took the Dao title Cangxu, returning my original name to heaven and earth. From then on, only Cangxu existed in this world."
A young Daoist appeared before Wei Yuan's eyes—with long brows, slender eyes, a gentle countenance, and an otherworldly aura—walking toward him. Somehow, Wei Yuan felt as though an enormous white snake was slithering along behind the Daoist, yet whenever he tried to look closely, the white snake was nowhere to be seen.
Standing before Wei Yuan, the Daoist suddenly sighed and said, "In this life of mine, I was made by boundary stones, and undone by boundary stones. Since you have received my heritage, young friend, this is something you must know. Come with me!"
The Daoist turned around, and Wei Yuan found himself following automatically. Looking down, he realized that the white snake had somehow slid beneath him and was gliding smoothly forward with him on its back. And on the white snake's tail grew gleaming scales of gold.
After just a few paces, the light and shadows shifted before Wei Yuan's eyes, revealing a small village. It was an ordinary human settlement, densely populated with at least a thousand inhabitants. Smoke curled from hearths everywhere, and altars were erected in the four cardinal directions, where many villagers were offering sacrifices in worship.
The tranquil atmosphere was suddenly shattered by a bloodcurdling scream. Moments later, countless tall warriors clad in iron armor stormed into the village, killing almost everyone in sight, sparing neither the young, the old, nor women and children!
In the blink of an eye, screams erupted across the entire village, and bloody light surged to the sky!
A commanding general entered the village riding a barbaric bear. He glanced around, inhaled the scent of blood in the air, and frowned. "The resentment is insufficient!"
Several surrounding military officers sighed. "Let's go. Looks like we can't cut any corners after all!"
They immediately split up, each leading soldiers to haul corpse after corpse to the altar square on the eastern edge of the village. Blood quickly stained the entire square red. Once all the corpses from the village were assembled, a Daoist priest stepped into the square and sat cross-legged to cast a spell. Under the influence of his art, countless souls of the freshly dead were dragged back and stuffed right back into the corpses!
This was equivalent to undergoing the agony of death all over again. Figures who had been lifeless corpses moments before sat up one after another, shrieking in agony. Then, numerous heavily armored soldiers patrolled among the bodies, disemboweling them one by one.
Unable to endure the torture, the villagers perished one by one amidst excruciating pain and colossal resentment. The souls that drifted out after dying this time were cloaked in a chilling, dark-green vapor.
The general took out a stone and thrust it into the pool of blood in the center of the square. That stone immediately absorbed all the souls, essence-blood, and resentment, after which cyan patterns rippled across its surface.
Wei Yuan's pupils constricted. He had seen this kind of stone countless times—it was a raw boundary stone that had not yet been nurtured!
The general pulled out the newly formed boundary stone, looking thoroughly pleased. He turned to leave and ordered his men to set a massive fire to burn the entire village to the ground. In an instant, the blaze engulfed everything.
However, the general failed to notice that a child blessed with karmic luck was hiding beneath the altar table. Later, after hauling away the corpses, the soldiers had even specifically checked beneath the altar table, which was completely empty by then.
The child had been pulled out by a woman and shielded under her body. Even when the woman's back was split open with a sharp axe, her ribs wrenched out, and her internal organs gouged out, she had never shifted her body away.
Later, when the inferno engulfed all, half the woman's body turned to charred cinder, but the child, soaked in her blood, managed to survive.
At this moment, Cangxu's voice echoed: "Such is the fine work of the Saint."
Chapter 1339