Familiar

Qingtong's request was somewhat peculiar, yet it did not seem excessive. There were plenty of similar precedents within the Pure Land, where many small sects had affiliated themselves under its banner. Such small sects were numerous, and that period had also coincided with the Pure Land's meteoric rise to power. Weighing it over, Wei Yuan saw no reason to refuse, so he agreed. Qingtong let out a long breath, appearing overjoyed, and said, "I shall return in three years. If the Realm Lord attains a method of achieving the Dao beyond the Nascent Soul stage, I hope you might bestow a copy upon me as well." Wei Yuan agreed to this too. If nothing else, Qingtong's pointer that another realm ought to exist between Nascent Soul and Scenery Command carried the weight of a mountain. Those template cultivators, after all, possessed cultivation bases far too shallow; being thousands of miles away from the Nascent Soul realm, they naturally could not identify any flaws within it. However, the cultivators of Qingming were already thoroughly adept at fabricating Dao realms from scratch, so bridging the small gap between Nascent Soul and Scenery Command likely would not take three years. When Qingtong departed, Wei Yuan escorted her all the way outside the Immortal City, watching her step into the void before he turned back. Yet with a stir of his divine sense, he detected two flying boats that had just entered Qingming. Aboard the vessels were cultivators with respectable cultivation bases, and their cultivation methods shared the same origin, appearing to belong to a single sect. Cultivators had been arriving in Qingming in ever-greater numbers lately, but entire sects relocating wholesale were still rare. Many small sects preferred clinging to the barren hills and treacherous waters left by their ancestors. Returning to the Immortal City, Wei Yuan entered the Splendor of the Many Realms directly to look into the origin of those two flying boats. Upon checking, he discovered that in the less than three months since the last grand battle, seven or eight small sects had mobilized en masse and arrived in Qingming, preparing to join the expedition battlefield. These sects had not merely come to participate temporarily; they had submitted applications seeking a small parcel of land for their sect grounds, planning to relocate permanently to Qingming. As it turned out, following the previous war, the cultivators whose names appeared on the rankings truly experienced an improvement in their natural aptitude after being blessed with merit. At once, the majority who had once been skeptical went completely wild. Not only did they take the field themselves, but they also notified every relative and friend to come partake in this unprecedented, momentous opportunity. It was easy to foresee that before long, cultivators across the realm would surge into Qingming like a tidal wave. From top to bottom, every office and bureau in Qingming had already anticipated this and swung into action, preparing to welcome the flood of cultivators. Wei Yuan quietly perused the various plans drawn up behind closed doors by the bureaus, which had not yet been formally submitted, and immediately felt as though a brand-new world had opened before him. First and foremost was naturally raising the barrier of entry for expeditions substantially. The standard prerequisite was belief in the Three Realms Dao Path; it did not matter if one ceased to believe later on, so long as one contributed the power of vows for now. A cultivator's karmic luck, power of vows, and merit were exceedingly rare and precious resources—Wei Yuan could never have too much of them. While the terms appeared quite lenient on the surface, reality was another story entirely. Presently, the Three Realms Dao Path had a flesh-body Buddha presiding over it, a complete suite of indoctrination rhetoric, and a rigorous, well-defined hierarchy. Every tier offered distinctive material perks, Buddhist power enhancements, and unique, potent Dao arts. The long, endless flight of stairs had been laid out, waiting for everyone to climb step by step. Any ordinary cultivator of sound mind who stepped into the Three Realms Dao Path could forget about ever escaping. The thrill of climbing the tower was far more intoxicating than licking psychedelic toads. Next came the matter of fees. Officials throughout Qingming understood that no one valued what they got for free. Hence, they introduced various pricing models for expedition cultivators, including monthly and annual subscriptions. The rates were not exorbitant; the key was that nothing could be handed out gratis. Yet if an affluent patron with deep pockets came along, there was a separate VIP package. Becoming a VIP granted not only a distinct avatar and all manner of dazzling immortal implements, but also a small private staging area to prepare for battle. The space could even be decorated to one's liking, though every piece of furniture and ornamental knickknack cost money. Moreover, Qingming provided handsome and beautiful servants for big spenders. These servants were not puppets, but fellow expedition cultivators who were simply too destitute to afford even the monthly fee. Such cultivators could sell themselves to Qingming: for every month of comprehensive service rendered, they earned one month of expedition eligibility. These constituted the basic system, primarily forged by absorbing the essence of the otherworldly realm and discarding its dross. As for what counted as essence and what counted as dross, that was entirely in the eye of the beholder. Wei Yuan did not need to trouble himself over these basic regulations; he approved them directly and ordered their implementation. Beneath the Tree of the Great Dao, Wei Yuan lifted his ten-zhang-wide head and looked toward the colossal mountain ranges in the distance that still lingered in an illusory, shadowy state. Under his deliberate control, the Land of Vitality had morphed into an ellipse, with one end gradually reaching toward the nearest mountain range. Wei Yuan had always sensed that those ranges had not originally been mountains, but something unknown. Thus, he intended to extend the Land of Vitality in that direction to uncover what they truly were. Sitting cross-legged beneath the Tree of the Great Dao, Wei Yuan extended two fingers and lightly pinched a grain of soil. Cyan light flickered at his fingertips, and before his eyes, the grain slowly took shape, on the verge of being refined into a new avatar puppet. Yet when the refinement was about seventy percent complete, Wei Yuan flicked his finger. A bubble enveloped the semi-finished avatar and drifted into the distance. Wei Yuan reached out again, picking up five grains of earth from the ground. Then another hand followed, and yet another, hands rotating in an endless cycle. Had any cultivator been present to witness the scene, they would have seen Wei Yuan seated beneath the Tree of the Great Dao with hundreds of arms, each hand bearing ten fingers, refining avatar puppets at a speed beyond mortal comprehension. Bubbles formed from thin air one after another, floating away from Wei Yuan into a shimmering river of iridescent dreams flowing toward the distance. At the end of this great river stood an enormous workshop, bustling with numerous engineering lay practitioners under five feet tall. From their vantage point, the sight was altogether different. The place where the bubbles landed was known as the Source Origin Hall, neatly lined with hundreds of spell formations. The formations flashed with light continuously, and in the wake of each flash, a semi-finished avatar puppet materialized. The engineering lay practitioners could not see the bubbles drifting down; they only saw avatar puppets conjured out of nowhere within the formations. Several engineering lay practitioners hauled each puppet onto a transport cart and sent it to the next procedure. After undergoing numerous stages—polishing, foundation laying, precise formation engraving, and armor fitting—a Mortal Tier avatar puppet was preliminarily complete. Finally came testing; once all functions were inspected and verified with no issues, it would be dispatched to the expedition warehouse for arriving cultivators to inhabit. The Mortal Tier avatars designed specifically for Golden Core cultivators boasted an output dozens of times higher than that of the Heaven Tier or Earth Tier. The entire production workflow had been optimized several times over the course of a few short months, ultimately arriving at this form. Wei Yuan was responsible for crafting and imbuing the rough puppet bases, a step no one else could perform. Once the foundational work was done, all subsequent fine-processing tasks were handed over to the workshop. As expected, progress surged at breakneck speed. To keep up with the workshop's production capacity, Wei Yuan had been forced to alter his form once, and then alter it again, striving for ever-greater efficiency. With each successive modification, he drifted further and further from his original self. Take the fundamental motion of pinching with two fingers to refine the soil: a normal human hand could only pinch one grain at a time, but now Wei Yuan had ten fingers of equal length on each hand, allowing him to pinch five grains at once. As for why he hadn't added even more, it was primarily because of Wei Yuan's own personal aversion; otherwise, according to Wen Guantian's proposal, a jellyfish was the optimal solution. And so, Wei Yuan's hundreds of hands moved like lightning, everything within a hundred zhang within easy reach. Soon the ground sank, gradually exposing grayish-white soil. Beneath the topsoil, the grayish-white earth was dead soil that had not yet absorbed sufficient worldly origin qi and had failed to fully transform. Wei Yuan's eyes parted slightly as countless threads of divine sense shot from his body directly into the void. Each thread served as a channel to siphon primal chaos. Once the extraction of primal chaos qi began, every thread of divine sense gleamed faintly. At the same time, a gentle radiance spread outward from where Wei Yuan sat, blanketing the grayish-white soil. Before long, the uppermost layer of grayish-white soil had turned into rich black loam. Transforming chaos was a drawn-out process. Overcome with boredom, Wei Yuan tossed out a few shadow-recording orbs, intent on seeing whether his current appearance was wise and majestic. Retrieving them, he looked at the figure in the shadow-recording orbs—seated cross-legged with a serene smile, bearing a solemn, sacred countenance, possessed of hundreds of arms and thousands of hands, radiating immeasurable light. Wei Yuan could not shake the feeling that it looked rather familiar.