What Is This Thing?

"What are the Mountain Folk trying to accomplish by sticking their noses in at a time like this?" After returning to Qingming, Wei Yuan pondered this question continuously. On the surface, perhaps Hule Gao'en had struck them too hard over on his end, causing the Mountain Folk to direct their hatred onto Wei Yuan? That was indeed possible. Wei Yuan promptly opened his map and reviewed the progress of the war in the Domain of the Mountain Folk. By this point, Hule Gao'en was holding high the banner of the Prophet faction. Several years ago, he had driven over twenty thousand li deep into the land of the Mountain Folk, shattering over a hundred tribes large and small. Now he commanded an army of four hundred thousand assembled from more than forty tribes. Flanking him on either side were more than a hundred thousand Qingming troops each, serving as detachment forces that were also taking cities and seizing territory. Wherever the two Qingming armies passed, they not only swept away all manner of rare treasures and local resources, but also marked the earth veins and spirit nodes along their route, harboring thoroughly ill intentions. Still, Hule Gao'en was no useless fool; he had real tricks up his sleeve. To prevent anyone from making an issue of the Qingming forces, he outright proclaimed that the God of the Three Realms Dao Path was the chief deity of the Mountain Folk, and that Wei Yuan was God's agent in the mortal realm as well as one of the Great Prophets of this era. Therefore, Wei Yuan's word was divine will. As for why Wei Yuan was human, the explanation was simple: God required human believers. If anyone pressed the matter further, Hule Gao'en would send them to meet the True God so they could ask God directly. Such an absurd claim, repeated often enough, actually convinced quite a few people. Thus, Wei Yuan inexplicably gained tens of millions of believers among the Mountain Folk, which greatly improved his opinion of Hule Gao'en. Now, however, since even the Fifth Mountain had stepped in, Wei Yuan had no intention of holding back any longer. He resolved to expand the scale of the war and teach the Bloodline Faction a sufficiently painful lesson. In the Domain of the Mountain Folk, inside a magnificent golden hall, Hule Gao'en reclined upon a throne woven of silk and animal pelt, enjoying songs and dances. Two handsome young serving boys held bowls of fruit in their hands; the moment he opened his mouth, one would quickly pop a piece in. Several other youths, clad in gossamer robes, massaged his shoulders, back, and thighs. Several dancing girls stepped barefoot across brocade carpets, their waists swaying like willows. As they spun, sheer veils drifted on the air, revealing jade-like, frost-fair arms and half-exposed breasts. Slits in their skirts reached all the way to their thighs, every movement and pause brimming with allure. With lotus steps and tinkling jade pendants, a single glance back with a smile left the entire hall intoxicated. The hall was packed with chieftains of tribes great and small, their faces flushed red from drink, staring fixedly at the dancers in the center as if wishing their gazes could strip away the few remaining scraps of cloth. Just then, Hule Gao'en suddenly shivered. He felt a pair of eyes open high in the unseen depths, looking down upon him. The gaze was freezing, chilling, remote, and aloof, as though peering from another world. Terrified, Hule Gao'en tumbled from his throne and prostrated himself on the floor, not daring to rise. That gaze unmistakably belonged to Wei Yuan—something Hule Gao'en, who now held a position in the Daoist Court, could never mistake. Yet he could not fathom why Wei Yuan now gave off the aura of an extraterrestrial fiend, to the point where he actually feared being devoured. He unconsciously shuddered, feeling that this master of his seemed less and less like a human being. Wei Yuan gave a few instructions and then vanished. But Hule Gao'en remained kneeling on the ground, long hesitant to stand. He had penetrated deep into the Domain of the Mountain Folk and had not erected any human boundary stones, so how could Wei Yuan look upon him whenever he pleased? It seemed the Realm Lord's might was growing ever more unfathomable. After waiting a long while, Hule Gao'en finally scrambled up. He glanced around at the tribal chieftains in the hall, raised his voice, and shouted, "A divine oracle!" All the Mountain Folk instantly dropped to their knees. Hule Gao'en, acting like a madman, shrieked in a shrill voice, "The holy war has begun! The True God will launch an all-out strike against the followers of the false lord, and the Great Prophet will soon dispatch his holy crusaders! Our duty before their arrival is to secure the corridor for the army's westward march and intercept those devil-worshipers who attempt to flee!" The hall was immediately engulfed in feverish roars! Qingming had always moved with blistering speed. Within days, troop mobilization was complete, and in less than ten days, the first fleet of floating barques departed, ferrying five hundred thousand troops and their full array of equipment to the Mountain Folk front line. The Qingming army had changed drastically. When fully equipped and manned, these five hundred thousand elite regulars required a logistical volume of gear and ammunition equivalent to a traditional army of three million. The equipment and supplies allocated to each soldier weighed five to six times their own body weight. For this deep push into the Domain of the Mountain Folk, Wei Yuan dispatched Feng Tingyu, Wang Hu, Cui Yu, and Xu Wenwu all at once. They carried three commandery-grade boundary stones, intending to seize key strategic positions and build city fortifications on the spot. On Wei Yuan's map, this army would carve a massive arc, planting three strongholds along the way to encircle all the Mountain Folk territory bordering the State of Zhao and the State of Ji. This was a vast expanse spanning over two hundred thousand li across, and Wei Yuan intended to hem it in first, then gradually swallow it whole. Following them, Wei Yuan would mobilize another two million troops to press deep into the mountain domain. While Wei Yuan was mobilizing on a grand scale, the date of the decisive duel between Xuanyue and Qilizhayi finally drew near. Qilizhayi set out three days early. Just as he was about to arrive at the designated Immortal Heaven Dao domain, he received sudden news: Qingming forces aboard floating barques had launched a surprise raid on a Mountain Folk tribe fifty thousand li behind the front lines. The tribe's more than three hundred thousand members were all valiant warriors. They fought fiercely for two days and mounted countless charges, only to be harvested mercilessly. Over the course of two days, a total of a hundred thousand were slain, after which the tribal fortress fell and the chieftain and all the nobles were taken captive. Crucially, the White Mountain within that tribe was one of the sacred peaks of the Mountain Folk, where the True God was said to have once taken an afternoon nap. Furthermore, among the tribe's two ancient giants, one was Qilizhayi's great-great-...great-granddaughter, and the other was a grandson-in-law. When the Qingming forces withdrew, the White Mountain was smeared with black lacquer and the blood of cattle and sheep. The two giants vanished together, leaving behind only one of the giantess's severed hands. Qilizhayi's fury shook the entire Immortal Heaven in an instant, sweeping across everything like a tempest. He revealed his true body directly—a colossal stone form hundreds of zhang tall—and strode into the designated dueling ground, roaring, "Damned humans, I will make you pay for your vile atrocities!" His roar still echoed, but the rest of his words died in his throat, all because he caught sight of Xuanyue. Xuanyue's immortal true body was less than ten zhang tall at the moment, far smaller than his opponent's. Yet his attire was peculiar: around him stood a metal cage formed from steel railings, from which trailed eight long cables braided from metallic wire. At the other end of each cable lay a deep pool filled with a viscous liquid that Qilizhayi had never seen before. Though he had never laid eyes on it, Qilizhayi felt an inexplicable resonance with the eight pools, as if they were calling out to the lightning power within his body. True Monarch Xuanyue gripped an arm-thick cable in his hand. The other end connected to a massive, intricate metal apparatus, from which extended a whip of lightning. The lightning whip was the only thing Qilizhayi understood. He stared suspiciously at the contraption Xuanyue was hauling behind him. Had the thing been smaller, one might call it a flail, but this was a giant box ten zhang square that looked exquisitely intricate and complex, clearly not meant to be swung as a hammer. Stranger still, Qilizhayi saw immense karma attached to it, yet saw no divine tier or status. "What is this thing?" Xuanyue stroked his long beard with his free hand and said, "This is a treasure this poor Daoist recently acquired. It is called... a transformer." Qilizhayi did not understand in the slightest. But when his gaze fell upon a Daoist in front of Xuanyue, bathed in the seven-colored immortal light of karmic virtue, he could no longer keep his composure. Enraged, he demanded, "And what about that one?!" Xuanyue smiled faintly. "That is this poor Daoist's armor."