The World Is Vast

Regarding the disagreement between Chuhe and Xu Henshui, Wei Yuan directly issued the ultimate solution: thirty percent of the spiritual fields would go to each of their sides, and the remaining forty percent would belong to him. When the written decision was delivered to Chuhe and Xu Henshui, both slapped their foreheads. In the heat of their bickering, they had completely forgotten that Qingming still possessed such a figure as the Realm Lord. As the two had come out evenly matched, the outcome was barely acceptable, so each began to carry out their respective plans. Wei Yuan went back to handling official affairs. After some unknown length of time, he suddenly sensed that something was amiss. Pausing his work, Wei Yuan began screening through his mind bit by bit, not overlooking even the most hidden thoughts, until he finally identified where the unsettling feeling came from. Among the daily official matters Wei Yuan processed nowadays, only a tiny portion concerned affairs outside Qingming, and that portion even included the wars against the foreign domains. The vast majority of everyday business revolved around internal affairs within Qingming. From top to bottom, everyone was frantically engaged in development. To the cultivators, Western Jin's three billion people were not a burden, but a sea of boundless potential. Everyone seemed to have forgotten that a world existed beyond Qingming—that the nine states were still embroiled in bitter warfare, that two imperial candidates and a certain shit-stirrer had already been locked in combat for years, spreading the scourge of war across hundreds of thousands of li. The atmosphere of insular development within Qingming was growing increasingly pronounced. Mortals came to regard everywhere outside the realm as untamed wilderness; day in and day out, they cared only about their Body Casting progress and what template to choose in the future, having no interest whatsoever in hearing about outside affairs. Even popular novels set beyond the realm could not sell a single copy. As for the immortals in Heaven, they had even less bearing on people's daily lives. Mortals who grew complacent and lost their ambition due to an overly comfortable life were by no means a good thing for Wei Yuan. He thus decided he still needed to give everyone something to aspire to—a goal to strive toward, or at the very least, a grand topic to expound upon over food and wine. The simplest way was to show everyone what Heaven looked like. Conveniently, Wei Yuan had plenty of material on hand, with millions of projection spheres stored away in his warehouses. He selected footage from that day when the Twelve Heavenly Pillars forcibly ascended to the immortal heaven, and after extensive retouching and splicing, compiled it into several video clips, which he then published across the Splendor of the Many Realms. In the blink of an eye, these clips were shared and viewed like wildfire, to the point that the price of projection spheres inside Qingming doubled. Many cultivators even made their own edits, producing new projection spheres for sale. Wei Yuan had directly torn away the immortal heaven's fig leaf, allowing ordinary mortals to see what immortals were like, what the immortal heaven looked like, how magnificent the Twelve Heavenly Pillars were, and how decadent their daily lives truly were. With such an enormous carrot dangling in the sky, there was no fear that mortals and low-level cultivators would not be stirred to push forward. For ages, immortals had stood aloof and cultivators were strictly stratified, leaving everything concerning the immortal heaven veiled in mist. Slandering an immortal would genuinely bring down lightning strikes. But Wei Yuan had used Qingming to withstand all retribution from the immortals, so now, in streets and alleyways—and even in the most scandalous novels—the names of immortals frequently appeared. When a name was chanted over and over, it lost its mystery and its claim to loftiness. But when the immortal heaven above was constantly talked about, the opposite occurred: mortals began to feel that if they worked hard early on, perhaps they too might have a shot at ascending to immortality. That hope was precisely what Wei Yuan was after. Still, Wei Yuan had his subordinates remind all the authors of those scandalous novels: now that they had mocked the immortals, they had better not step outside Qingming carelessly, lest they meet an untimely death. Only after thoroughly laying bare the secrets of the immortal heaven did Wei Yuan feel that present-day Qingming had begun to resemble an earthly paradise. A true paradise had no need for a cluster of immortals enshrined above its people. Except for the Realm Lord, that is. Next was continuing development and building up the better part of Western Jin, striving to elevate those three billion people to the same standard as Qingming. On the other hand, Wei Yuan concentrated his military strength toward the Mountain Folk and the Liao domain. First, he planned to connect Qingzhou and Yizhou—which carried the minor consequence of boxing the State of Zhao into an interior enclave. Second, he planned to strike eastward along the Jin-Liao border until linking up with the northern mountain gate of the Palace of Grand Beginning, enclosing both Eastern and Western Jin within an inner circle so that, like the State of Song, they would find no foreign tribes left to fight. Wei Yuan felt these two modest goals were not excessive in the least. He was benevolent and generous, possessing no ambition whatsoever for territorial expansion. Right at this moment, Li Zhi paid an unexpected visit. By now, it was already the thirty-first year of Zhaoning. Great Tang's reign title was still in use, and Emperor Zhao had still not died. In fact, Wei Yuan had personally reflected on this question: why was Emperor Zhao still alive? Shouldn't he do something about it? Seeing him again, Li Zhi had already achieved Scenery Command. How he achieved it and when, Wei Yuan had no idea, mainly because he had never bothered to ask. Wei Yuan always felt that, as his brother, whether Li Zhi was at Scenery Command or dharma idol didn't matter at all; even if he ascended to immortality, it would be the same—he couldn't fight either way. Fortunately, Li Zhi's attitude was very upright. Upon meeting, he recounted how he had reached Scenery Command and displayed his mindscape world: Ancient Capital Ruins. His mindscape world was remarkably vast. At its center lay the ruins of an ancient city, and among the palace halls at the heart of the city, only a single great hall barely remained intact. The entire realm was cloaked in the dusky crimson of sunset, bleak and desolate. As far as the eye could see, there was not a trace of human life. This mindscape world drew upon the imagery of the former capital left behind by the ancient Human Sovereign, symbolizing worldly reincarnation and the rise and fall of dynasties. With Wei Yuan's discernment, he naturally saw that this was by no means flawed; in the future, if Li Zhi could erect a thriving royal capital within this mindscape world, by virtue of this conception, immortality would be well within his sights. For the time being, however, this mindscape world... aside from being somewhat large, was devoid of merit and practically lacked spirituality altogether. And cultivating a true spirit out of eternal samsara was truly as difficult as ascending to the heavens. Li Zhi's opportunity to break through to Scenery Command had come purely by chance. Back when he learned that Southern Qi and the Academy had both abandoned him, he had been despondent to the point of despair. But taking Sun Chao'en's advice to seek survival in the throes of death, he had resolved firmly to march into Southern Jin. Once he fought out a domain of his own, his Dao heart suddenly cleared, and he naturally attained Scenery Command, acquiring a mindscape world that could only be described as gigantic. Walking the path of a human king meant one's mindscape world differed from that of ordinary Daoist cultivators. Such a mindscape world was easy to form, but extraordinarily difficult to improve. In particular, with it being so vast, the accumulation required to ascend to immortality was terrifyingly massive—Wei Yuan had suffered immensely from this very predicament himself. Currently, the Splendor of the Many Realms spanned sixty thousand li, having expanded by twenty thousand li compared to before. But because its status and tier had risen drastically, achieving perfection had become vastly harder. By normal estimates, Wei Yuan was still one hundred and seventy thousand years of painstaking cultivation away from complete fruition and ascension to immortality. The problem was that the Splendor of the Many Realms was still expanding without pause. Once the Dao realm after Nascent Soul emerged and the miniature mindscape world was established, it would surely bring another wave of expansion. Then, as the extraterrestrial world grew and finished assimilating the two drops of immortal blood, there would naturally be yet another wave of expansion. Afterward, once that immortal from beyond the heavens finished his battle for fruition, he would inevitably return for vengeance. When Wei Yuan chopped off his toes after chopping off his fingers, the mindscape world would expand by another ring. So Wei Yuan simply stopped thinking about the matter. Having finished recounting his breakthrough, Li Zhi came to the main point and said sincerely, "I came today with two questions. First, with this mindscape world of mine, I truly do not know how to continue cultivating it, so I specially came to ask Brother Wei: is there any method that can save resources without harming my future true spirit?" Looking at Li Zhi's mindscape world, Wei Yuan felt a deep surge of empathy and sighed. "You really did make this a bit too big. The largest island in my sea is only about this size." Li Zhi: "..."