At the edge of the immortal city, within a quiet, secluded mansion compound, more than twenty young children were frolicking and roughhousing, leaping and scampering all about. Several of them conferred briefly before gathering beneath the courtyard wall. Dividing their duties, some acted as cushions while others gave a hoist and a boost, instantly lifting a little girl atop the fifteen-foot-high wall.
Just looking at that leap of well over ten feet, no one would ever associate it with children barely two or three years old. Once the little girl was on the wall, the children below waited eagerly for her to reach down and help pull up the next batch.
Yet the little girl merely poked her head out to gaze outside in curiosity, instantly dazzled by the sights of the immortal city, completely oblivious to the calls of her brothers and sisters below.
Suddenly, the children below fell dead silent. Sensing something amiss, the little girl was just about to turn around when a fair, delicate hand reached over, caught her by the scruff of her neck, and plucked her down from the wall.
Turning around, she saw the Sixth Princess standing there. Trembling with fear, she called out meekly, "Mother!"
"I've told you time and again you can never go outside! Not a single step out of this compound! But you just won't listen! Is a courtyard this huge not enough for you to play in?" The Sixth Princess roared the moment she opened her mouth, her booming voice whipping the little girl's bangs into disarray.
Yet the little girl was stubborn. "No matter how big the courtyard is, there's still a limit! Why can other people's children go out and play, but we can't?"
"If you want to go out, you can—after you turn five!"
"Why?"
"No whys! Since you have so much to say, stay in your room after dinner! You're forbidden from stepping into the courtyard! And the rest of you—all of you are staying in your rooms tonight and all of tomorrow! No coming out!" The Sixth Princess was stern in voice and countenance, devoid of her former gentle demeanor.
From behind her came Xiaoyu's voice: "Why must you go this far?"
Seeing Xiaoyu, the Sixth Princess huffed, casually smoothed down her disheveled hair, and said impatiently, "What are you doing here? If you've got nothing to do, I have work. Dinner is coming up, and I have to track down all these little kittens and shove them into the dining hall!"
Xiaoyu said, "My family sent me over to check on you and see if you need anything."
The Sixth Princess wiped the sweat from her brow with her sleeve, pointed at the swarm of children scampering everywhere and climbing up high, nimbler than monkeys, and snapped, "Great! If you want to help, please watch the kids for me tonight so I can get one night of rest."
"I seem to have some official business left unfinished. Farewell!" Xiaoyu turned on his heel to leave.
The Xiao family had grown very close to Zhao Ji over the past decade, so Xiaoyu had only dropped by out of courtesy to look in on the Sixth Princess. But babysitting for her? Forget it. Just one child gave Xiaoyu a headache, let alone over thirty.
"Halt!" With hands on her hips, the Sixth Princess barked, freezing Xiaoyu in his tracks.
Xiaoyu turned back helplessly. "Just endure it. Five years pass quickly. Besides, didn't you bring this on yourself? The first litter hasn't even grown up yet, so why did you drop a second litter?"
The Sixth Princess retorted in exasperation, "Others treasure a single son like some priceless jewel, while my two litters can't even compare to her one! How could one litter ever be enough? Once I catch my breath and psych myself up, I'll drop a third litter this year! The sooner I finish having them, the sooner I'm free!"
Xiaoyu tried to persuade her: "Didn't your family, the State of Zhao, already enfeoff twelve commanderies? Even if it didn't reach what was promised, it's still quite a lot. Who could have expected you to bear so many in one breath? Zhao doesn't have that many commanderies to give away!"
The Sixth Princess snorted. "You know it's twelve commanderies! But so what? It still pales in comparison to the boatloads of treasures someone else gave!"
Xiaoyu sighed. "Those twelve commanderies were given to the children adopted into Zhao. Furthermore, they are enfeoffed commanderies, not handed over to Qingming. No matter how well they develop, Wei Yuan won't gain a shred of karmic luck from them—all the benefits remain with your Zhao family, don't they? Your father, that slick old... venerable gentleman, has a very calculating mind."
The Sixth Princess knew this too, so she could only say resentfully, "Hmph! Then I'll birth every last one in my belly! When the time comes, it'll be ninety-nine sons vying for the succession! With ninety-nine of us, there's no way we'd lose to just one!"
Xiaoyu looked at this princess who was no longer gentle, an expression of total helplessness on his face.
Hands on hips, the Sixth Princess snapped, "What, was anything I said wrong?"
Xiaoyu shrugged. "With that wild-boar-like Realm Lord of ours, ascending to immortalhood is inevitable, and he might even take another step forward. If you want to vie for succession, I'm afraid that'll be ten thousand years from now."
The Sixth Princess froze, only then remembering that unless they ascended to immortalhood, not a single one of the little kittens scampering across the courtyard would outlive their deadbeat father.
Xiaoyu finally said, "Five years pass quickly. Isn't half of it already behind you? Once you endure these five years and sever most of the karma, you'll be free."
The Sixth Princess nodded reluctantly.
Back when the first litter was born and the initial batch of children had just been sent to Zhao, Immortal Zhao Li had issued an immortal decree requiring the Sixth Princess to take all the children into hiding and never set foot outside. She was only permitted to briefly step out on four designated days each year, thereby severing their karma with Wei Yuan. Otherwise, if the alien races cast another karmic curse, Wei Yuan might not suffer, but none of these children would likely be spared. Moreover, with the calamity of the Liao Clan descending and heavenly secrets thrown into disarray, curse arts had grown tremendously in power, so the Sixth Princess obediently complied. But no one anticipated that having to care for these dozens of little kittens every day would, in just a few years, transform a girl gentle as water into a shrew.
***
After seeing off the Bao family, Wei Yuan traveled to Fengqi City on his regular ten-day schedule to visit Bao Yun and their child.
Inside the warm pavilion, Bao Yun brought out the child and handed him to Wei Yuan.
Wei Yuan said, "Step outside for a moment; I want to talk to him alone."
Bao Yun nodded, then looked back at the doorway. "Don't scare him. He is our son, after all, not some other creature."
"I know. By the way, you haven't been breastfeeding him, have you?"
"It was always expressed first and then fed to him."
Wei Yuan nodded. "That's good."
Once Bao Yun left, Wei Yuan placed the child on the table in front of him and said, "Come out!"
Above the child's head materialized an infant sitting cross-legged, eyes like stars, wearing an untroubled smile.
Wei Yuan said in a low, heavy voice, "King Buddha, I was all prepared to serve as your reincarnation body. How did you end up on my son?"
The infant chanted a Buddhist epithet and said, "I am merely a Dao foundation right now, which is entirely different from possession or soul-stealing. Don't lump me together with someone like the South Pole Immortal Lord. If you insist on calling it soul-stealing, at most I stole the original Dao foundation—and that Dao foundation wasn't nearly as good as me anyway!"
Wei Yuan's expression softened slightly. "Were it not so, do you think I would have tolerated you until now?"
The King Buddha, having taken the form of an infant, replied, "Originally, you were only going to be a reincarnation body—at best, you and I would coexist and merge into one. Now you've become the reincarnation body's father. Isn't that better?"
Wei Yuan's face darkened, and he said coldly, "So you're still plotting against my son after all!"
The infant hurriedly waved his hands. "Look at you, getting agitated again! Take a good look first: I am nothing more than a Dao foundation, an inanimate object. Even if I can speak with you, I remain an inanimate thing, not a sentient living being. Besides, I haven't touched this child's soul. When he grows up, he will still be himself. At most, it'll be similar to Star Lord Shaoyang residing in that Xiao family child."
"Hmm?" Wei Yuan's scowl deepened.
Yet the infant King Buddha understood Wei Yuan and immediately added, "Of course, that Shaoyang is merely an avatar—he isn't even worthy to be our lackey!"
"Mm!" Wei Yuan's expression improved.
The infant King Buddha said, "All right, to make a long story short, what little spirituality I have left is only enough for a few more words. First, I am a fragment fallen from the King Buddha's attainment rank, which landed upon this child's Dao foundation and merged with it as one. If he achieves the Great Dao in the future, it can clear thirty percent of the obstacles ahead of time.
"Second, the King Buddha has a message to deliver to you. The buddhas of the Pure Land have long poured all their might into converting a world beyond the heavens. Several centuries ago, however, the buddhas suddenly sensed a crisis that threatened the Pure Land's foundational righteousness—a peril that would erupt before the conversion of that otherworld could be completed.
"Thus, the buddhas placed that otherworld and their righteousness on opposite ends of a scale to weigh their importance, and righteousness tipped the balance. Consequently, the buddhas took action, changing their method from conversion to refinement.
"The King Buddha was the sole dissenting buddha. He detached a single lotus petal from his attainment rank and cast it into the void—and that was me. I drifted for several centuries before finally encountering this opportunity to meet you.
"What the King Buddha wishes to tell you is: there is no need to wait for his return."
Chapter 1351