Within the Splendor of the Many Realms, all living beings had taken their positions. Whether sentient or nonsentient, each had a designated task.
By now, the Splendor of the Many Realms had severed its connection to the mortal world, and the divine senses of the numerous outside cultivators had been purged. However, Wei Yuan kept the divine senses of Zhang Sheng and his close kin, the cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning, and a group of cultivators who had rendered great service, such as Wen Guantian. To personally observe and experience the process of ascending to immortality would bring them incomparable benefits.
The multitude of living beings formed arrays of varying sizes. Whenever an array took shape, it lit a star in the firmament. The arrays encompassed all manner of things: some were formed by a cluster of ancient trees; some by an expanse of grass intermingled with wild blossoms; some by interconnected rivers and lakes; and some even by a cultivator together with their meditation chamber. They were diverse and manifold, too numerous to count.
In the blink of an eye, numerous stars lit up across the heavens. The vault of the Splendor of the Many Realms gradually receded, revealing a deep, boundless void.
As the stars lit up one after another, the immortals fell into fervent discussion. Some guessed it would be eighty-one, the ultimate number of the heavenly cycle; some guessed one hundred and eight, the number of the Heavenly Spirits and Earthly Fiends; and some even guessed the Great Heavenly Cycle. Unnoticed by anyone, the Venerable Master's expression had turned sullen from the moment the very first star caught light.
Atop an unknown, desolate mountain in this realm, a fierce-faced bald man stroked his chin and said, "It's definitely not the Great Heavenly Cycle. How strange—what else could it be?"
Beside him, a slender scholar in green robes turned and said, "Eldest Brother, that old bastard is up to no good. Speaking of which, why did Young Master choose such an awkward, ill-timed moment to ascend?"
Behind them, an old master sat on a boulder, fanning himself with a kerchief. He wiped away a handful of sweat, waited until his breathing steadied, and only then said, "To stay outside of their calculations, I imagine."
"Are we just going to let that old bastard act so rampant?" the bald brawny man asked.
The old master shook his head. "It is not yet time. Let's watch for now."
The green-robed scholar said, "Then we watch. But Young Master's mind-manifested world is truly an eye-opener!"
In the firmament of the Splendor of the Many Realms, stars lit up one after another, long having surpassed the three hundred and sixty of the Great Heavenly Cycle. In the blink of an eye, the count broke a thousand, and soon after, they blazed to life in vast swathes. Differing in size and aura, not a single star was identical to another. Clustered together, they resembled a ten-thousand-li Milky Way. Finally, an immortal possessing both keen vision and profound cultivation discerned a trace of the mystery and blurted out, "Th-this... each star is a Heavenly Dao! He is replicating the Heavenly Dao!!"
At this moment, sheer shock was not enough to describe what the gathered immortals felt. Even after ascending to immortality, everyone had to bitterly pursue the Great Dao of heaven and earth, all for the sake of comprehending a fraction more of its mysteries and advancing their cultivation by a sliver.
Yet now, someone actually sought to replicate the Heavenly Dao within his own mind-manifested world. How arrogant, how wildly insolent was this!
Many immortals subconsciously harbored a thought: *Could it be that we immortals are only fit to reside inside his mind-manifested world in the future?*
Fortunately, the Venerable Master's voice rang out once more: "With every additional authority over heaven and earth contained within a mind-manifested world, its weight increases by a measure. Insatiably greedy, this boy actually wishes to supplant Heaven itself. This mind-manifested world is already impossibly heavy—even this Venerable One could not lift it. How could he possibly hoist it into the immortal heaven? What a pity. A paragon of his generation, halted at Scenery Command—a worthy cautionary tale for posterity."
The immortals let out a collective "Ah," all breathing a sigh of relief.
By this point, the Splendor of the Many Realms had completely surfaced from the earth. Within Qingming, every soul stepped into the streets, gazing up at that illusory world, complete in every microscopic detail, too awestruck to contain themselves.
Wei Yuan stood in the exact center of the vault of heaven and flicked a finger. Another new array took shape upon the earth. This array was exceptionally magnificent and intricate. Suddenly, endless radiance erupted from within it!
The brilliance surged like oceanic waves, each cresting higher than the last. An echoing song resounded from somewhere unknown in the air. The singing was ancient, desolate, distant, and profound, as if unraveling the grand mysteries of the turning of time and the birth and death of heaven and earth.
In a flash, the radiance pierced through the tribulation clouds, soaring straight into the immortal heaven and transforming into a colossal pillar of light that connected heaven and earth!
Wei Yuan pointed again, and another grand array formed. Crimson radiance surged forth, instantly turning into another crimson pillar standing rooted in the earth and piercing the heavens! With every pillar of light that appeared, the Venerable Master's expression turned a shade darker, a fraction more ferocious.
In the span of a breath, there were ten heavenly pillars. Yet beyond anyone's expectations, a blue heavenly pillar rose from the ocean.
The array for this heavenly pillar was constituted by hundreds of billions of aquatic creatures, large and small—from colossal fish tens of li long to invisible microscopic particles, each contributing its own share of power.
This was not the end. In the center of the earth, from the Central Spirit Mansion, black and white radiance erupted, instantly transforming into an unimaginably immense, black-and-white pillar of light that reached straight into the heights of the immortal heaven—rising even higher than the Venerable Master's head!
The Venerable Master shot to his feet, eyes blazing with fury! Only after a long moment did he slowly sit back down.
At the peak of a snowy mountain, Shengxin and Huixin stood side by side, gazing up toward the immortal heaven. Upon seeing that black-and-white pillar of light, Shengxin finally let out a long sigh filled with unspeakable desolation.
In another hidden place, the green-robed cultivator and the bald brawny man exchanged a glance, filled with both shock and worry. Then they turned to look back, only to find the old master leaning against a tree, already asleep.
On the shores of the Eastern Sea, Old Lady Bao stood in midair and sighed, "After the Grand Beginning Patriarch and the Martial Ancestor, someone has finally attained the Dao of the primordial origins of the Great Dao once more."
Beside her, a young immortal of the Bao family asked, "What are the primordial origins of the Great Dao?"
"Chaos, Yin-Yang, Time, Return to Silence, Constant Existence, and Emptiness."
"Are there others?"
"Perhaps, but that is beyond what this old woman can know."
With the twelve heavenly pillars standing firm, Wei Yuan divided his one billion strands of human luck into ten portions, allotting one to each of ten heavenly pillars. However, two heavenly pillars were still lacking. Thus, before the eyes of the gathered immortals, Wei Yuan took the merit from pioneering a new cultivation realm and bestowed it upon the ocean pillar formed purely of nonsentient creatures; he then took the merit from restarting a world to bolster the central Yin-Yang heavenly pillar.
Karmic luck and merit burned at once. The ancient song echoed across the immortal heaven as countless tendrils of immortal mist enveloped the colossal world, gently lifting it! Facing the torrential, waterfall-like bluish-white tribulation lightning, this unprecedented mind-manifested world ascended along the twelve heavenly pillars, forcefully storming its way toward the immortal heaven!
The entire immortal heaven shook violently, and countless grotto-heavens and secret realms quaked with intense turbulence. Suddenly, a falling star appeared, plunging toward the earth in flames! That was a flimsy secret realm that could not withstand the turmoil of the immortal heaven and had actually tumbled out of it! The foundational heritage of an illustrious sect was wiped out just like that.
The Venerable Master suddenly roared, "What are you all waiting for? Do you truly wish to see a second Martial Ancestor emerge? I shall bear all the resulting karma and retributive backlash myself!"
Taking the lead, he flicked a finger toward the largest, central Yin-Yang heavenly pillar. A glaze-like sheen of light manifested and descended upon it. The moment it touched the pillar, it melted away vast swathes of the Yin-Yang heavenly pillar.
Only then did the gathered immortals snap out of their stupor. While they were still hesitating, a giant brush spanning a thousand li suddenly appeared in the immortal heaven, wiping away one of the heavenly pillars in a single stroke! The sage's brush that recorded the annals of history! The one who struck was Duke Yansheng!
Master Gu let out a sigh, and numerous ancient artifacts flew from his sleeves, mostly relics of the Sage of the Heart and the Sage of Principle. Though inferior to the true treasures of the sages, each possessed its own wonder. It could be said that aside from the sage treasures destroyed by the Martial Ancestor's contingencies, they had emptied out the entire treasury of the Academy.
The other immortals struck as well. Countless dazzling streaks of light flew toward the twelve heavenly pillars, destroying the sections that breached the immortal heaven in the blink of an eye.
"This is going too far! To hell with this immortal body!" At the ancestral mountain of the Palace of Grand Beginning, Zhu Yan hoisted a bulging sack over his shoulder and moved to charge into the immortal heaven, only to be grabbed by Yanshi.
"It is not yet time," Yanshi said softly.
Zhu Yan raged, "Who says it isn't time? If now isn't the time, then when the hell is?"
Yanshi replied, "It was not I who said it."
Beside Wei Yuan, Zhang Sheng appeared. In her hand, an immortal sword rippled with azure light—it was none other than Qingping, which had just been successfully forged.
Lifting her sword, she called out clearly, "Qingping is forged! Now is the time to slaughter our way across the myriad realms!"
Wei Yuan suddenly reached out and held her wrist, saying, "It is not yet time."
Zhang Sheng's sword-like brows twitched slightly. "Then when must we wait for?"
By this point, under the fierce onslaught of the gathered immortals, the twelve heavenly pillars could no longer hold, collapsing in vast swathes. The Splendor of the Many Realms slowly descended, returning to the earth. Amid their relief, some immortals in the sky suddenly discovered that their hands were wrapped in thick black miasma, prompting cries of alarm. Some immortals even had darkened foreheads, and the stench of rotting, ulcerated flesh began to waft through their grotto-heavens.
Everyone was pale with fright. They had clearly seen the Venerable Master divert the vast majority of the karmic retributive backlash, yet the tiny remnant of backlash was still this terrifying!
At that moment, Wei Yuan appeared above Qingming, his voice echoing across heaven and earth: "Today's little test of ascending to immortality was merely to see what trump cards everyone was hiding—and to see just which clowns exist above and below the heavens."
Chapter 1428