In the celestial vault, that immense wound was shocking to behold. Boundless blood from parts unknown plunged into the mortal realm, turning into cataclysms across the earth.
Then, suppressed by some manner of power, the wound gradually drew shut. In an instant, every immortal in the mortal realm felt a looming sense of catastrophe, as if at boundless heights, a pair of eyes had slowly opened to scrutinize the mortal realm, their gaze unspeakably frigid and cruel.
Wei Yuan, however, felt a lightness wash over his body, as though an invisible yoke had loosened somewhat.
Given the vastness of Wei Yuan's Mind Realm world, even the slightest easing of heaven and earth's shackles immediately brought an immense influx of world origin qi. Wei Yuan's cultivation speed surged dramatically; the threshold to immortal ascendance was now only eighty thousand years away.
At this moment, the Grand Beginning cultivators still in the Immortal City stepped out of their rooms and looked toward the sky. That horrific wound healed swiftly, yet everyone knew that between heaven and earth, certain rules of the Great Dao had been altered. And this was only the beginning.
For a thousand years, the Martial Ancestor's restriction had held firm, but now a breach had finally been opened. The high cultivators capable of witnessing Heaven's Demise also understood: Great Tang's fate had run dry.
Only a few high cultivators could perceive Heaven's Demise, so for the moment, the world at large still appeared calm.
Returning to his study, Wei Yuan immediately entered the Splendor of the Many Realms, urgently convening all cultivators holding key posts for council. At the same time, he activated the Dao Court system, cascading orders down through the ranks. Within ten days, all blessed believers of the Three Realms from one end of the realm to the other would be informed.
First, in his capacity as Prince Regent of Western Jin—Prince Wei—Wei Yuan issued edicts to government offices throughout Western Jin, demanding loyalty from all officials. Any unwilling to obey were dismissed and arrested on the spot, with no room for discussion.
With chaos about to engulf the world, Wei Yuan's priority was to secure Western Jin and prevent internal disorder. At present, a scattering of officials across Western Jin were still appointees of the King of Jin rather than Wei Yuan's assignees, so Wei Yuan had to rectify this procedure.
Next, Wei Yuan immediately enacted contingency plans: within three months, he would reinforce Yizhou with a million troops, while deploying ten thousand heavy artillery pieces and massive stockpiles of ammunition to stabilize the situation there.
Third, he mobilized an army totaling five hundred thousand to deploy along the border with Zhao, preparing to negotiate with Immortal Zhao Li to have the State of Zhao withdraw its forces from eleven border commanderies and redeploy those garrisons toward other fronts—particularly along the borders with Ji and Song—while Wei Yuan took over defense of those eleven commanderies.
Finally, he mobilized five hundred thousand reserve troops into active service, immediately outfitting them and providing supplemental training against unforeseen contingencies.
Wei Yuan moved with swift and decisive vigor, countless times faster than the sluggish nine states. Nor was his concern unfounded: though the Shaman and Liao peoples were locked in fierce war and temporarily tied down, the Mountain Folk seized the opportunity, immediately dispatching armies along multiple routes to launch a coordinated invasion of Great Tang.
Fortunately, in the direction of Yizhou, Hule Gao'en had thoroughly muddied the waters. The holy war between the two Mountain Folk factions raged white-hot, engulfing hundreds of tribes large and small and entangling hundreds of millions of Mountain Folk. For the moment, none could be spared to attack Yizhou. However, small advance detachments of Mountain Folk began appearing in Zhao and Li Zhi's Zhenshan Fief, launching harassment raids.
To the southeast, the Sea Li suddenly stirred up tsunamis, inundating over ten coastal cities of the State of Wu in a single day and swallowing tens of millions in surging waves. Then the Sea Clan army mounted a full-scale assault, its elites pushing straight upriver along waterways.
Yet Wu's territories had dealt with the Sea Clan for tens of thousands of years and were well prepared. Layers of checkpoints and fortresses lined the primary waterways. After losing six successive checkpoints, Wu finally halted the Sea Clan at the seventh barrier—which lay over nine thousand li inland from the coast.
The Guiche had not yet made a move, but Wu had long since detached a million elite troops southward to set up defenses. Yet Ji was hollowed out, and Li Zhi's strength had suffered grievous losses; defending a southern frontier nearly one hundred thousand li long with only a hundred-odd thousand troops was clearly beyond his power.
All at once, the realm plunged into turmoil.
Facing this chaos, Qingming was already naturally efficient, and now with the Dao Court newly established, the followers of the two Communication Arhats spread wider by the day and their power grew, capable of handling tens of times the communication volume of its early inception.
Tens of thousands of core believers enjoyed the Dao Court's blessing, all able to receive Wei Yuan's instructions immediately. Thus, vast though Qingming was, it answered to his direction as effortlessly as an arm moves the fingers.
Without sleeping or resting, Wei Yuan held meetings for more than ten consecutive days, laying out plans down to the minutest detail and setting the great juggernaut of Qingming into motion. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief and withdraw from the Splendor of the Many Realms.
A flotilla of dozens of skyships glided across the skies above the Immortal City, heading south. This was part of a multistage fleet deployment that would continuously transport troops and military supplies to Yizhou.
By now, Qingming had elevated skyship production to supreme priority. Wei Yuan's objective was to construct an additional five thousand skyships, giving them the capacity to deploy one million heavy-armor troops five hundred thousand li away in a single operation.
With preparations in place and war readiness fully initiated, Wei Yuan finally let out a breath, only to realize that more than a month had passed since Heaven's Demise.
Now that all orders had been dispatched and Qingming was operating at full throttle, Wei Yuan discovered he once again had nothing to do. Could it be that whenever world-shaking upheavals arose, all he had to do was flap his lips?
Wei Yuan felt a sudden touch of annoyance. Rising, he left his study and paced about the courtyard. Just then, leaden clouds blanketed the sky; moments later, snowflakes drifted down, quickly dusting the ground in frosty white.
With each step he took, silence held a sound—the falling of snow, the singing of the wind. In the blink of an eye, the palace eaves were cloaked in white, and a thin layer settled upon glazed tiles. Drifting clouds stirred; carvings on stone balustrades were half-concealed beneath the snow. The jade steps lay bare and wide, the snowy surface smooth and level, unmarred by footprints, untouched by wind traces. Through the haze, distant pavilions rose tier upon tier, their upturned eaves draped in snow, fading into the ash-white sky.
All around was still, save for the soft rustle of falling snow.
Wei Yuan looked up at the frigid, desolate celestial vault.
The snow in the Immortal City was supposed to fall tomorrow, but feeling somewhat somber, Wei Yuan had brought the snowfall forward.
The residents of the Immortal City had long grown accustomed to such things; after all, the Immortal City issued weather forecasts a month at a time, and inaccuracy was the norm.
As snow drifted down like blossoms, a figure suddenly appeared in the courtyard, standing with hands clasped behind his back, gazing quietly at Wei Yuan.
He was quite handsome, with brows peaked like mountains, presenting a commanding aura, but that was all; there was nothing else unusual about him. Yet the moment he appeared, Wei Yuan found himself unable to move.
Not only him—snow, plum blossoms, clouds, and wind all came to a dead halt. The entire world seemed frozen in place.
The man scrutinized Wei Yuan up and down, looking with great care, before speaking: "Our reign title is Tianwu."
Great Tang's Martial Ancestor?!
Wei Yuan was profoundly shocked. Could the Martial Ancestor still be alive? If so, the sixty percent of Western Jin's state fortune he bore would be glaringly conspicuous—a veritable invitation to death!
The Martial Ancestor asked, "Do you know the true meaning behind why We drove out and destroyed the Immortal Lords and sealed heaven and earth?"
'I don't know, and I don't want to know...' Wei Yuan thought inwardly. But outwardly, he could only play along: "Truthfully, I do not."
The Martial Ancestor said, "In that year, We ascended to Immortal Lord, peerless among all heroes under heaven. Yet once atop the summit, We discovered that our human race's Immortal Dao had been withered and derelict for over ten thousand years. For those ten thousand-odd years, a few ancient immortals clung to life, plundering the realm's resources to sustain themselves merely to drag out their days a little longer.
"Across the Immortal Dao, from top to bottom, every person of note was the disciple, grand-disciple, or kin of those old monsters; everyone was tied by blood or favor. Any cultivator under heaven who did not hail from their lineages faced endless obstruction, plots, and assassination if they sought to ascend to immortality, stooping to every conceivable extreme. It reached the point where, in assessing talent for the Dao, people no longer spoke of innate aptitude or karmic luck, but only of blood relations and closeness."
Wei Yuan listened in silence. Just hearing the Martial Ancestor speak revealed how dark and hopeless the Immortal Dao had been back then. Whether one achieved greatness depended neither on talent nor effort, but solely on whether one was born into the right womb.
The Martial Ancestor continued, "Originally, the people of the world believed that the growing prosperity of those few immortal clans over the millennia was a good thing. It was not until the Patriarch of the Palace of Grand Beginning burst onto the scene that the world came to understand: the Immortal Dao was never meant to be such stagnant water.
"The Patriarch of the Palace of Grand Beginning was far too dazzling and unyielding in his ways. Though the patriarchs of those great immortal clans were all Immortal Lords, not one dared to face him in direct battle when he was merely a young newcomer to the immortal realm. One after another, they went into seclusion—those with a shred of shame claiming hundreds of years, while the brazen ones declared seclusions of three millennia.
"The cultivators of the realm believed that after ten thousand years, a new path of the Dao had finally opened, and they flocked to the banner of the Palace of Grand Beginning. But how could those old monsters of the immortal clans let it rest? Conspiring in the shadows through unknown means, the dormant Ancestral Shaman was suddenly awakened, intending to march upon the human domain in person and annihilate our race.
"At the time, the great immortal clans all withdrew from the world, and some even migrated their entire clans into grotto-heavens, openly abandoning the tens of billions of mortals to their fate. Unable to stand by, the Patriarch of the Palace of Grand Beginning went west alone. He fought a host of Heavenly Shamans, slew the First Heavenly Shaman, struck the Ancestral Shaman with three sword strikes, and forced it back into slumber.
"After We ascended to the imperial throne and suppressed all immortals of the age, We finally uncovered that the Ancestral Shaman's sudden awakening was actually tied to those old wretches. Following the fall of the Palace of Grand Beginning's Patriarch, the gates to immortality were once again monopolized by those clans. Any immortal not belonging to their houses would invariably perish early due to one mishap or another. Such was the fate of the Three Immortals of Grand Beginning, and such was the fate of Suchan and Xihe.
"We could not bear to see the mortal realm and immortal world reduced to the private estate of a few clans. Thus, We refined the realm's Great Fortune into Our own body, hunted down those old wretches one by one, and slaughtered them, returning their immortal souls to heaven and earth. Then, pouring out the might of the state, We sealed heaven and earth, cutting short the lifespans of all immortals and barring the gates to ascension.
"First, this karmic luck would nourish the human race in return, so that after several generations, outstanding talents would rise in abundance and restore our golden age. Second, if ancient immortals do not die, the world cannot flourish. Only when those who rose through bloodlines have perished and vacated the immortal seats of heaven and earth can our human race rise anew.
"Great Tang's dynastic mandate originally spanned eighteen thousand years, yet by extracting and refining it to seal heaven and earth, perhaps only three thousand years remain. We have no face to meet the ancestors of Great Tang, but We can stand upright before the Human Sovereigns of antiquity."
The Martial Ancestor looked at Wei Yuan and said, "We tell you this so you understand the true purpose behind sealing heaven and earth. Bearing so much karmic luck upon yourself, you should naturally know what must be done."
With that, the Martial Ancestor turned and walked away, vanishing into the vast wind and snow.
Wei Yuan was so overwhelmed by shock that it took him a moment to process what had happened. That was it?
Where were the grotto-heavens? The magic treasures? The secret manuals? A Dao companion—why wasn't there anything at all?
In the royal palace of the State of Ji, Li Zhi had stayed awake all night, pacing his study restlessly, his anxiety plain to see. The celestial sign had manifested, and the auspicious hour had arrived. According to what Elder Mr. Gu had explained previously, once Li Zhi killed the King of Ji and breached the Martial Ancestor's restriction, the Martial Ancestor's true spirit would appear on this day to meet the future common sovereign of the mortal realm and entrust the affairs of the coming age.
Li Zhi waited bitterly through the night, but outside the window, only the north wind howled in vain.
Chapter 1366