Qingming acted with swift efficiency. On the very day Emperor Zhao's grand nuptials were held, they had already gathered most of the materials.
Across the imperial capital of Great Tang, festive cheer overflowed everywhere. The Emperor's wedding was an earth-shattering event in the eyes of the capital's populace. Drums and music pierced the clouds; fragrant dust swirled about. Red lanterns and silk banners hung along every avenue and alley, kept lit day and night, and even ordinary street vendors had tied red paper flowers to their stalls.
Yet what the streets and alleys buzzed about the most was how not a single sovereign or prince from the nine states had attended, and over half had not sent an envoy at all. The danger of discussing such matters, however, far exceeded anything the common folk could have imagined. Those who whispered about it in the morning found themselves dragged into the Heavenly Prison by the afternoon. Even humble households were not spared; two neighbors chatting across a courtyard wall were hauled away just the same.
Inside the royal capital at this moment, secret agents from the Two Depots, Three Bureaus, and Six Legal Ministries were everywhere. No one could be sure of the true identity of the person sharing their bed.
The various bureaus acted with ruthless speed, rounding up tens of thousands of people in half a day. When the Regent King went on another incognito inspection, he could no longer hear any discordant voices; all that reached his ears were words of awe for Great Tang's imperial majesty and praise for the opulence and wisdom behind the wedding arrangements. The Regent King was thoroughly pleased, and his response was a single word: reward!
While Great Tang's royal capital was awash with festive joy, Wei Yuan was nursing a headache before several hundred phantom projections of all shapes and sizes arrayed around him.
These were the current Immortal Lords of the neighboring non-human races. Some were clearly known, such as the Twelve Heavenly Shamans, while others were deeply hidden, like the Esoteric Sect's Brahma Guru and the Huantian Dharma God of the Liao Clan.
Among these figures, Jiumu was conspicuously present.
Wei Yuan had exhausted every avenue to collect whatever data could be found, and then poured all the power of the Splendor of the Many Realms into deduction and analysis, wishing he could strip these fellows down to their underwear just to examine the fabric.
The monarchs of non-human races mostly possessed innately potent bloodlines, allowing them to reincarnate lifetime after lifetime with their true spirits remaining unclouded. In truth, many non-human secrets were hidden in epics, folk songs, and murals.
Take Jiumu, the one Wei Yuan was most familiar with: this was far from its first lifetime. In past lives, it had served as a Heavenly Shaman twice before, though nearly a hundred thousand years separated each incarnation.
During those two previous tenures, Jiumu had been a Spirit Shaman, only turning into a Strength Shaman in this current lifetime.
The evidence for this deduction lay hidden within the Shaman Clan's regional gazetteers, historical ballads, and epics celebrating the mighty, scattered across thousands of volumes. The Heavenly Shamans depicted in those poems closely resembled today's Jiumu, except that with each passing lifetime, it gained one more eye.
Secrets like this were impossible for ordinary mortals to uncover, but the Splendor of the Many Realms could process massive amounts of information in an instant, picking out minute clues from countless voluminous texts.
Touching upon such a secret past, Wei Yuan naturally could not go to Jiumu for confirmation. However, by expending some karmic luck, he obtained the answer. Furthermore, because he and Jiumu shared a close relationship and substantial karmic ties, it cost only two million mortal karmic luck to learn the truth.
Having verified his hypothesis on Jiumu, Wei Yuan grew vastly more confident and pressed forward with the analysis. As the Splendor of the Many Realms churned, one legendary non-human figure after another had their figurative underwear laid bare.
Within Wei Yuan's private space, the phantoms flickered out one by one until only four remained. One was Wei Yuan's old acquaintance, Great Khan Silver Moon, and another was the Shaman Clan's current First Heavenly Shaman, Minglei.
On the surface, records and appraisals deemed Minglei one of the weaker Heavenly Shamans in recent history, someone who generally maintained a low profile. Perhaps it was because back in the Martial Ancestor's era, Minglei's predecessor had fought the Martial Ancestor too fiercely, ending up claiming far too much authority from the Ancestral Shaman. When the Martial Ancestor sealed heaven and earth, the First Heavenly Shaman of that era had actually attempted to challenge the Ancestral Shaman, only to meet with a regrettable defeat.
The two subsequent Heavenly Shamans suffered for it: one was suppressed to barely the level of an Immortal Sovereign, while Minglei's situation was even more pitiful, equating only to an ordinary immortal at their peak.
Yet after detailed analysis, Wei Yuan discovered that Minglei had reincarnated at least three times, and in one of them, he had been an exceptionally powerful Heavenly Shaman. Seen in this light, Minglei's current lack of strength might stem from another reason entirely: the Ancestral Shaman was wary of him.
The third was a Brahma Guru from the Liao Clan's Esoteric Sect, an intensely enigmatic figure who reincarnated generation after generation without ever revealing his true form. Even the captured Dharma God Hongmo would tremble uncontrollably whenever this guru was mentioned.
The last was a saint of the Mountain Folk's bloodline faction, whose whereabouts had remained unknown for the past century.
Wei Yuan pondered at length and first eliminated the Mountain Folk. The primary reason was that Yizhou was the territory confronting them, and Yizhou was currently in a stage of rapid development, making excessive military operations inadvisable. Another reason was that the Mountain Folk and the Sea Clan were presently the main forces attacking the human race; even if Wei Yuan did not march against them, they were likely to strike his way regardless.
As Wei Yuan thought deeper, Minglei's phantom also gradually vanished. The reason was that a vast buffer zone already existed between Qingming and the Shaman Clan's heartland, with the no-man's-land alone spanning over ten thousand li.
Following Hongye's death, the Kingdom of Rain had fallen into decline and ruin, suffering defeat in several major conflicts against neighboring tribes. As a result, its forces contracted and migrated westward, leaving behind expansive stretches of vacant land. Wei Yuan did not even have the capacity to occupy all these empty grounds, and merely claiming territory without killing enemies held little practical value.
Another reason was that given his current relationship with the Strength Shamans, Wei Yuan felt uneasy about engaging in open warfare with the Shaman Clan. As for this relationship, it was not merely about his rapport with Tianyu and Jiumu; the Shaman Clan currently absorbed over forty percent of Qingming's total production, making them indisputably his number one patron.
Having ruled out the Shaman Clan, only the Liao Clan remained. The Liao Clan was currently beset by calamities and locked in a great war against the Shamans; if Wei Yuan intervened now, he would have a natural ally.
Wei Yuan knew little about that Brahma Guru, who was also closely tied to the Liao Ancestor, so he excluded him as well. In the end, only one threat remained: Great Khan Silver Moon.
With a thought, a map of the Liao domain appeared before Wei Yuan. Only a minor portion of it was illuminated; the rest was shrouded in darkness. Within the lit regions, more than a dozen territories were highlighted—places where Great Khan Silver Moon's suspected past incarnations had lived and ruled.
Given Silver Moon's methods, any place he had inhabited would surely contain preparations left behind, ready to be brought under his command when needed. Yet judging by surface information, these lands had no connection to the current Silver Moon whatsoever; they had been unearthed by the Splendor of the Many Realms from an oceanic expanse of data.
If these territories truly belonged to Silver Moon, then his reincarnation frequency and rate of growth far surpassed those of other powerhouses. That span of time was barely enough for Jiumu to reincarnate three times, yet Silver Moon had reincarnated over a dozen times. Considering that in this present reincarnation Silver Moon had attained immortality again within a mere hundred years, and sat right next door to Qingming, Wei Yuan could no longer remain calm.
To verify whether these places were connected to Silver Moon, Wei Yuan brought out his customary method: mortal karmic luck.
This time, however, felt like encountering a bottomless pit. Wei Yuan poured in over ten million points of mortal karmic luck, yet there was not the slightest reaction, leaving any result endlessly far out of reach!
Yet there was never only one way to verify a conclusion, and methods in the realm of calculation were myriad; even Wei Yuan could think of several indirect means of verification.
Take this instance: the very fact that no conclusion could be deduced was itself a clear conclusion. A great powerhouse had clearly meddled with heavenly fate, and with tremendous force.
This was what was known as trying to hide it only to make it more obvious.
If all these territories truly belonged to Silver Moon, he would only need to consolidate them to instantly place his strength among the top three great khans of the entire Liao Clan, giving him the qualifications to vie for the Golden Tent. And with Silver Moon's methods and temperament, his chances of success were extraordinarily high.
Was a Heavenly Khagan about to arise right beside him?
Chapter 1372