Betrayal

After a grueling three-day, three-night tug-of-war, Qingming's first Mindscape World Auction finally came to an end. The annual lease prices for the two sword intent worlds reached eight and nine million Qingyuan respectively, while the one bearing the true intent of lifespan extension fetched a staggering thirteen million. Great clans never lacked money, nor did they lack madmen willing to wager everything just to live a few more years. Bao Manshan secured the two sword intent worlds, but lost the lifespan extension world to a mysterious figure who refused to disclose their identity. Yet to acquire a mindscape world, one could harbor no secrets before Wei Yuan. The buyer hailed from the Xu family of the Eastern Jin, and the end-user was an obscure, elderly cultivator who seemed tangled in countless ties with Xu Youyi. Once the auction concluded, it was time for Wei Yuan to take the stage and say a few words. What everyone cared about most right now was when the next batch of mindscape worlds would be released and what rank they would possess. The timetable Wei Yuan gave was next year; quantities would increase, and rents would come down slightly. However, none of the second batch of mindscape worlds would come with any true intent of authority. The second question from the crowd was how to propagate faith in the Three Realms Dao Path within their own territories. Qingming's shared mindscape worlds actually operated through the arts of the Three Realms Dao Path, thereby requiring users to hold faith in it. This was an open prerequisite, but many astute merchants had already recognized the great prospects of the Three Realms Dao Path and were preparing to strike early, taking the initiative to construct temples and shrines. Wei Yuan naturally welcomed this with open arms, subsequently assigning a dedicated team of bald staff members to receive them. These workers were not monks; they had simply shaved their heads. With the grand gathering brought to a successful close, Wei Yuan began meticulously taking stock of his karmic luck—his favorite part of the process. Once his accumulated karmic luck reached a certain threshold, he could go to the world beyond the heavens to awaken another sacred spirit. Now that heaven and earth had restarted, every sacred spirit he awakened yielded a vast amount of merit, which in turn could support Chuhe in advancing the transformation of the Liao domain even further. Lately, Chuhe had become obsessed with the Mountain Folk, making daily trips out to Yizhou. This made Wei Yuan immensely nervous, prompting him to dispatch Wang Hu and Xu Shiba as personal bodyguards. The merit Wei Yuan earned from awakening a sacred spirit would be completely squandered by Chuhe in less than a month. At this rate, it wouldn't be long before a Mountain Folk version of golden thread grass made its debut. However, the Mountain domain differed from the Liao domain and the Shaman Domain. It was largely rolling mountainous terrain teeming with vitality, with sparse soil and water to begin with; even if one wanted to devastate its soil and water, doing so would prove exceptionally difficult. Yet Wei Yuan had faith in Chuhe's ingenuity, as well as the ingenuity of Qingming's templates. Construction was difficult enough, but destruction? How hard could that be? From this auction alone, Wei Yuan had reaped over a hundred strands of dharma idol karmic luck. By his calculations, it was nearly enough to awaken a new sacred spirit. The Taiyi God-Enfeoffment Method possessed the formidable might to seize creation itself, but its consumption was equally immense. Merely awakening a sacred spirit's soul required over a hundred strands of karmic luck, and they had to be at the dharma idol level or higher. By comparison, crafting a physical vessel was far simpler: gather vital earth, mix in a few other materials, add anywhere from one to nine strands of dharma idol karmic luck, and refine it for several days to produce a dharma idol-grade dharma body. Just as Wei Yuan was happily tallying his gains, his heart suddenly stirred. Through the eyes of his avatar, Wei Yuan saw countless eerie sin-beasts crawling out from the void! An assault of sin-beasts occurred nearly every few days. The combat strength of Wei Yuan's avatar was extraordinary; essentially, whatever Wei Yuan knew, the avatar knew, and it could also draw upon limited empowerment from the Splendor of the Many Realms. Bolstered by the assistance of the four sacred spirits, repelling the sin-beasts was somewhat strenuous, but manageable. The more the leaf of the Great Dao grew, shining its light across the void, the more sin-beasts it attracted. Wei Yuan had already come to view this as an alternative form of heavenly tribulation, or what could be called a Chaos Tribulation. Relying solely on the leaf of the Great Dao to resist the sin-beasts was naturally fraught with immense difficulty, virtually impossible. But Wei Yuan was reaping karmic luck on a massive scale in this world, then awakening sacred spirits in the world beyond the heavens. Each sacred spirit possessed formidable combat power; if this continued, he would sooner or later completely suppress the sin-beasts. Wei Yuan had initially assumed this was just another ordinary sin-beast raid, yet more and more beasts surged from the void—several times more than ever before—with no sign of slowing down. Wei Yuan instantly knew something was wrong and immediately hurried toward the world beyond the heavens. Yet even traveling via the Primordial Violet Qi required a bit of time. At that moment, a woman actually stepped forth from amidst the endless horde of sin-beasts. Her figure, build, and movements were identical to those of a human, save for her pupils, which were two burning clusters of pale fire. As she walked, she left two stark scorching trails across the void. The corners of her mouth curved up slightly as she said, "Had these sin-beasts not suddenly appeared in such vast numbers, they wouldn't have caught my attention, and I never would have known that the remnants of that era were still alive—and deluded enough to try reopening this heaven and earth! No matter. I'll pluck this leaf first, then follow the trail to wipe out every last remnant in one stroke!" She raised a finger and tapped it toward the center of the avatar's brow. The avatar looked grave. A halo of light suddenly materialized between his hands, forcibly warping time to slow the woman's finger hundreds and thousands of times over, buying time until Wei Yuan arrived. Yet the woman let out a cold laugh that rang directly within the depths of the avatar's heart. Pale fire rippled from her form, blasting back the four besieging sacred spirits. Then, layers of afterimages shimmered at her fingertip as she forcefully warped the slowed time back—and then some. Her finger accelerated abruptly, pressing straight against the avatar's brow! From her fingertip surged boundless true intents of destruction, annihilation, and erosion, seeking to directly strangle the avatar's spiritual consciousness. Had this finger landed solidly, the avatar's soul would have perished on the spot, with no hope of reincarnation. Yet a clear, radiant light flared in the avatar's eyes, and in that instant, he seemed to gaze across past and future. He did not dodge. Instead, he reached out into empty air. Right where his hand fell, a slender hand materialized, just about to pluck the leaf of the Great Dao. Its fingertips were on the verge of brushing the leaf tip when the avatar caught it by the wrist! The avatar said abruptly, "You shouldn't be here." The woman was taken aback and replied, "I said, the sin-beasts suddenly surged—" The avatar interrupted her. "Even if they increased tenfold or a hundredfold, it shouldn't have alerted you." "How could you know that so clearly? Do you recognize me? Who are you?" the woman asked, somewhat astonished. The avatar said, "Who I am is not important. Tell me how you found out about this place." "Fine. Someone from your side secretly transmitted a divine sense to our heaven and earth, telling us to watch out for areas where sin-beasts have recently surged. So I took a look around, and sure enough, I found this place. Heh heh!" The avatar said slowly, "How laughable..." The woman agreed. "Indeed. A sheep sending a message to a pack of wolves, revealing the location of another flock of sheep. Once the wolves finish devouring that flock, won't they just follow the trail of the message to track down the sender?" Her finger sank bit by bit into the center of the avatar's brow as she remarked, "You people are still the same. Slaughtered so many times, having so many worlds eradicated, yet there are still those who, for this reason or that, betray one another. Do you not realize that this is betraying the entire world?"