At this moment in the Chaos Sea, four mindscape worlds radiating immortal light had already taken shape, their outer fringes wrapped in a faint shroud of tri-colored immortal radiance.
This immortal light originated from Fairyland Island, formed from the fragment of the immortal heaven within the Splendor of the Many Realms. In truth, Wei Yuan had shielded these mindscape worlds with his own immortal power, enabling them to unfold within the Chaos Sea and gradually evolve and mature.
Throughout this process, the mindscape worlds could absorb chaos. Over time, their fundamental essence would slowly elevate.
Previously, the mindscape worlds of the four—Jun Weizhi, Han Li, and the others—had not been merely ethereal, but illusory. Only by unfolding in the Chaos Sea did they pass from illusion into the incorporeal, becoming true mindscape worlds. By this single step alone, the strength of the four increased more than tenfold!
Before this, when entering this realm without relying on puppets, their combat strength had only been equivalent to late-stage to consummate dharma idol cultivators. Now, they possessed genuine Scenery Command cultivation. Although they still lacked a dharma body, leaving them only slightly stronger than ordinary Scenery Command cultivators, each possessed innate spirituality and distinct divine abilities of tremendous power, putting them far beyond ordinary Scenery Command practitioners.
Wei Yuan pondered for a moment, divided the remaining Chaos Sea into two halves, and then reached out toward the Splendor of the Many Realms. In an instant, thousands of motes of light flew out from all over—from the seas, the land, and the islands. All were the dharma idols of the living beings within the Splendor of the Many Realms.
Wei Yuan carefully enveloped these dharma idols in immortal light, placed them into the Chaos Sea to leave projections, shielded the entire area with his immortal power, and then returned the motes of light to their original places.
In this way, from the perspective of the dharma idol cultivators, the projection in the Chaos Sea was their dharma idol, and the returned dharma idol was also their dharma idol. In reality, the two were one and the same; they could perceive no difference at all, nor was there any distinction in practical function.
The only difference was mathematical. It was just that no one in this world could solve this branch of mathematics—save Wei Yuan, who solved it without needing to comprehend it.
Having done all this, a sudden flash of inspiration struck Wei Yuan: hadn't the ancient immortals and almighty beings done the exact same thing? Back then, they had possessed no mathematics and relied entirely on sudden enlightenment. If they grasped it, they attained the Dao; if not, they remained stuck at the threshold for a lifetime.
Wei Yuan's mood turned rather peculiar. Wasn't so-called sudden enlightenment just taking a blind guess? If you guessed right, even your chickens and dogs ascended to heaven; if you guessed wrong, you squandered your entire life. Looked at that way, what he was practicing right now was precisely the ancient grand dao of cultivation.
Wei Yuan quickly discarded the thought. How could mere ancient cultivators compare to him? He was equipped with the tools of mathematics, so his methods could hardly be called guessing. Guessing right once or twice was luck; getting it right every single time was talent. After marveling at his own mathematical genius and briefly regretting how difficult it was to find a kindred spirit—mostly because he hadn't known how to set up a projection sphere in the first place—Wei Yuan tapped lightly on the altered region, letting the Chaos Sea slowly submerge the dharma idols.
The radiance of all the dharma idols immediately dimmed, shifting from an illusory splendor to a tangible glimmer.
There were actually several thousand dharma idols within the Splendor of the Many Realms, an unexpected delight. Dharma idol cultivators had even appeared on some small offshore islands. Now that Wei Yuan had caused all their dharma idols to transition from illusion into the incorporeal, the strength of these cultivators surged, and their path forward opened wide.
At this moment, tri-colored immortal radiance suddenly suffused the vault of heaven above the Splendor of the Many Realms, and a resounding voice of the Dao echoed like thunder. The sound was not words in any tongue, but the direct vibration of heaven and earth's Great Dao. Every living being—regardless of race, intellect, or size—understood that single proclamation:
"On this day, the path of this realm is opened!"
All living beings fell silent for a heartbeat, after which a thread of joy welled up from the depths of their true spirits.
The Splendor of the Many Realms trembled continuously. As the spirituality and strength of the beings within rose, it began to slowly expand. This outcome was within Wei Yuan's expectations, bringing both joy and concern.
The joy went without saying; the concern was that the distance to reaching the immortal heaven had widened once more. After all, the labor required to build ten houses was vastly different from building one.
Yet this was the world Wei Yuan truly wished to see. At this moment, he finally let go of his obsession with the immortal heaven and turned his focus toward properly fulfilling his duties.
Wei Yuan prepared to allocate the remaining small portion of the Chaos Sea to the Nascent Soul cultivators in Qingming. Golden Core cultivators were still too weak; the faint spiritual light of a Golden Core could not withstand the immersion of the Chaos Sea and would be obliterated to ash upon contact. Only a Nascent Soul could endure it, leave a projection in the Chaos Sea, and reopen its path of cultivation.
Wei Yuan planned to draw upon otherworldly merit to enlighten all those in Qingming with hope of advancing to Nascent Soul. Within a few years, Qingming's Nascent Soul cultivators would experience an explosion in numbers, and this small expanse of the Chaos Sea would quickly be filled.
With that, the Chaos Sea belonging to Wei Yuan was completely distributed, leaving nothing for himself. Yet as living beings advanced, his mindscape world advanced; in the future, its projection in the Chaos Sea would grow larger, and new territories would naturally emerge. As for the immortal heaven, it could wait.
Wei Yuan's divine sense returned to Qingming, and he set about handling the recent backlog of official affairs. At the very top of the pile, a report automatically leaped before his eyes.
This document was a compilation of over a dozen separate reports detailing a sudden, drastic drop in refugees arriving from the directions of Southern Jin and Zhao. Over the past month, those reaching Qingming amounted to less than a tenth of previous levels.
At first, Qingming officials had assumed this was due to the newly implemented classification system. Soon afterward, however, refugee transit stations within Southern Jin and Eastern Jin were attacked in succession. Over a dozen transit stations were destroyed, several hundred working cultivators dispatched by Qingming went missing, and several thousand local staff were slaughtered without a single survivor.
The perpetrators were exceedingly professional, even carrying out purification and soul-cleansing rituals. Resentful spirits that could be guided into the beyond were purified, while those unwilling were extinguished on the spot.
Subsequently, near Eastern Jin's border with the State of Song, two more incidents occurred. Two convoys of refugees attempting to migrate to Qingming were suddenly ambushed by mounted bandits. The bandits slaughtered indiscriminately; half of the nearly one hundred thousand refugees were killed, while the survivors fled into the mountains and wilds, barely clinging to life.
These seemingly isolated incidents had been extracted directly by the Splendor of the Many Realms and compiled into a single report, accompanied by an analytical conclusion: an outside force was preventing refugees from entering Qingming, and the mastermind was suspected to be the Venerable Master.
Wei Yuan glanced at the report and knew immediately that it was indeed the Venerable Master. As for why, ask no questions—the answer was the ancient grand dao.
The Venerable Master's intention was glaringly obvious: to cut off Wei Yuan's supply of human luck by blockading the refugees. Several decades ago, this would undoubtedly have been a brilliant move, but now it had little effect.
At present, fewer than twenty million new refugees arrived in Qingming each year, while the number of newborn children exceeded fifty million. The three billion people newly incorporated from Western Jin were just entering a baby boom; newborns this year would surpass sixty million, and within two to three years, the annual number would exceed one hundred million.
From the perspective of fortune, the greatest source of human luck was actually Western Jin. Western Jin had contributed a massive surge of luck through newfound identity and belonging, and basic academies were currently being popularized across the entire territory. Intermediate academies would follow within five years, and advanced academies would be built on a large scale in a decade. The luck generated by enlightened minds was steadily pouring into Wei Yuan's sea of consciousness at a rate of over a hundred million each year.
Even if all twenty million refugees were cut off entirely, the impact would amount to no more than a million or so in human luck. The Venerable Master had exerted tremendous effort intending to choke Wei Yuan by the neck, never imagining he had merely pinched a hair on Wei Yuan's leg. Still, since the Venerable Master had made a move, Wei Yuan felt compelled to offer a response out of basic courtesy, even if he had no desire to bother with him.
Thus, Wei Yuan's sword cultivator avatar in the immortal city summoned the cultivator responsible for external military supplies and readjusted the supply principles for Southern Jin.
Once the cultivator had prepared his ledger, he asked what principles would govern their transactions henceforth.
Wei Yuan replied, "Just two: price hikes by notification, and supply by gracious bestowal."
Chapter 1457