There were quite a few wise commanders among the Mountain Folk. Seeing that the Qingming forces had received a blessing, though they did not know what it was, they still pulled back their attacking units.
Such a powerful blessing surely could not last; the best choice was naturally to wait until it faded before resuming the attack.
Viewed from the perspective of a local battlefield, this choice was not wrong. From the vantage of the whole situation, however, the millions of Qingming troops were also part of the grand formation. Troops that stopped fighting would steadily pour martial qi and karmic luck into the formation, accelerating Houtu's growth.
Several Mountain Folk Immortal Monarchs knew the situation was beyond saving and slowed their assault. Fifth High Mountain, who had suffered a minor setback, tilted his ear as if listening to something, and a moment later ordered the Mountain Folk host to cease their offensive, commanding each division to hold their defensive lines in place.
Di Ran sighed deeply and returned to the Mountain Folk encampment. Yet he did not stand with the Six High Mountains, standing far off by himself in another corner.
At that moment, a magnificent swell of music suddenly resonated across the Immortal Heaven. Clouds and mist roiled like boiling water across the sky, purple qi cascaded from the firmament, condensing into golden lotuses blossoming in the void, and a fine drizzle of sweet rain fell, releasing fragrance upon touching the ground. Houtu's figure rapidly shrank, growing more solid, until she was merely a hundred or so feet tall. Then light shifted, and at the center of the formation stood a woman only a head taller than an ordinary mortal.
Heaven and earth shuddered. A shrill, mournful wailing arose across the hundred thousand li of the mountain domain. Innumerable sentient spirit beasts turned blank and foolish once more, while spiritual flowers and wondrous herbs lost their extraordinary grace. Spirit springs dried up; the spirit fish dwelling within leaped onto the banks one after another, flopping on dry land until they were parched.
Internal strife erupted within countless tribes of spirit beasts, slaughtering one another. The strongest continuously consumed the flesh, blood, and souls of the weak, struggling desperately to keep their stature from tumbling. Yet the price of maintaining their standing was often the extinction of their entire tribe.
Many Mountain Folk dharma idol cultivators in seclusion broke out of their chambers and died in madness. Even more perished silently within their seclusion chambers. The Dao Foundation cultivators felt deep unease, though only those at the late stage or Dao Foundation perfection experienced the dispersion and regression of their foundations; those in the early and middle stages were largely unaffected.
For a time, the cultivation realm of the hundred thousand li mountain domain turned into an asura slaughterground. The higher the cultivation, the more severely the foundation was damaged—especially for Mountain Folk cultivators, who mostly bound their personal foundations to the earth veins, mountains, and rivers. For that very reason, whenever a spirit mountain fell, an entire clan's path of cultivation would be cut off. Thus the Mountain Folk placed supreme value on their territory, often fighting to the death as a whole clan.
However, when Mountain Folk reached Scenery Command, they almost always awakened a racial divine ability allowing them to relocate earth veins, mountains, and rivers with vast magic power. Yet relocating them once took a heavy toll on their vitality, requiring a century to recover.
And now, the earth veins of the mountain domain were depleted. Many minor earth veins were severed completely, while major earth veins steadily dried up, with no end in sight to how far they would degenerate. Among the Mountain Folk who had rooted their cultivation and Dao foundations into the earth veins, many dropped in realm on the spot. A few who had unhealed injuries, or suffered poor karmic luck and heavy burdens of karmic debt, died abrupt, violent deaths.
At this moment, the weeping across the mountain domain was not the crying of the Mountain Folk, but the lament of the earth, mountains, rivers, and the spiritual nexuses of the earth veins.
Yet the disaster had only just begun. Once Houtu's Saint Body was formed, it naturally began drawing in the spiritual essence of the hundred thousand li mountain domain. Any scattered spiritual essence, along with any that sentient beings failed to rein in, leaked out uncontrollably and converged toward Houtu.
By this time, red-eyed Wei Yuan had restored his body. Standing beside Zhang Sheng, he watched innumerable motes of light surge past in the air, resembling hundreds of millions of fireflies embarking on a journey of tens of thousands of li—a truly magnificent spectacle.
Yet at this moment, even possessing the nature of the Evil Sun, Wei Yuan could hardly smile. Every speck of spiritual brilliance here was forcibly torn from the bodies of living beings. A fleck of light that looked no larger than a bean meant the difference, in a mortal, between being naturally bright from childhood and being born dull-witted.
By current Qingming standards, it was the difference between earning admission into the highest Qingming Academy and barely managing to graduate from a primary preparatory academy.
For those sentient beings to retain their spiritual essence and keep it from being plundered by Houtu, they needed to be at least at the level of Cui Yu or Xu Yi—that is, possessing a Heaven Tier dharma idol. In the vast mountain domain, how many such cultivators could there be?
Furthermore, Houtu's traction carried the implicit stature of an Immortal Lord; it was a matter of immense karmic cause and effect. To prevent one's spiritual essence from being plundered, one had to resist with all one's might, which meant forming a karmic tie with Houtu. Houtu would naturally remember who, on the day of her descent, had refused to lend a helping hand.
The hundred thousand li of the mountain domain was finished.
Following the river of spiritual light, wisps of black qi invisible to mortals began rising from the mountain domain. These were the karmic debt and resentment of sentient beings.
Half of the karmic debt flowed toward Houtu, and half flew toward Qingming. And the karmic debt descending toward Houtu lingered briefly, then traversed the void to appear directly in Qingming, sinking toward the boundary stones.
It all seemed reasonable enough: Houtu was summoned by Wei Yuan after all, and having destroyed the cultivation realm, earth veins, and sentient life of the hundred thousand li mountain domain in one stroke, the vast majority of the karmic debt ought to fall on Wei Yuan.
Yet Wei Yuan knew karmic debt was not calculated this way; it was far more direct. That is to say, most of the karmic debt should have attached to Houtu, with only a small portion going to Wei Yuan. For nearly all of it to be charged to Wei Yuan's account now had to be the intervention of this realm's Heavenly Dao.
The Heavenly Dao of this realm did not act on mere instinct. Generations of Immortal Lords who had merged their bodies with the Dao had become part of the Heavenly Dao; one could say the current Heavenly Dao was a collective of their consciousnesses. And the one among them with the greatest influence, practically able to replace the heart of heaven with its own will, was the Ancestral Shaman.
Earlier, the Ancestral Shaman had let the Liao Ancestor act, holding back the Mountain Folk immortals so they were powerless to stop Houtu's descent, causing the hundred thousand li mountain domain to degenerate into a wild wasteland and heavily crippling their strength. Right on the heels of that, it twisted the Heavenly Dao to redirect the karmic debt around Houtu—and rather than casting it directly on Wei Yuan, directed it toward Qingming, aiming to heavily wound two major foes in a single stroke.
The Ancestral Shaman moved with unhesitating ruthlessness, striking straight at the vitals.
As the terrifying karmic debt descended upon Qingming, the earth shook in an instant. Across mountains, streams, and rivers, vast shoals of fish turned up their white bellies. Many sweet springs and spiritual lands reeked with foul stench. Innumerable cultivators collapsed in agony, their inner spiritual power boiling so violently it could scarcely be suppressed.
Though the affected cultivators were only a small fraction of Qingming, all of them felt as if heaven and earth were targeting them, as if catastrophe were upon them.
True Monarch Chuhe's expression grew solemn. Those rerouted rivers irrigated boundless fertile fields, and those stretches of rich spiritual soil were the very foundation of Qingming's rise. All of this had been his life's blood over the years.
At once, Chuhe pointed a finger, and the radiance of merit arose throughout Qingming. Wherever Chuhe had overseen land reclamation and irrigation projects, and across the billions of mu of fertile fields created after rearranging the boundary stones, strands of merit qi began to emerge.
Chuhe sought to counter the karmic debt with merit, preparing to take upon himself the terrifying karmic cause and effect of the mountain domain.
Just then, a ten-thousand-zhang beam of clear light suddenly rose from the heart of Qingming Immortal City. Every citizen of Qingming heard Wei Yuan's gentle, melodious voice: "This matter began because of me, and this tribulation I shall bear alone. The grace of Houtu, however, shall be shared by my people."
Under the illumination of the clear light, the dark mist of karmic debt permeating Qingming was swept clean. Rivers ran clear once more, the earth ceased rotting, and the fallen cultivators rose to their feet again.
In that instant, the hundreds of millions of people in Qingming understood what had transpired. Countless eyes filled with hot tears as they bowed to the ground.
Beyond the heavens, beneath the Dao Tree, countless streams of black qi converged. The surface of Wei Yuan's true body instantly decayed and rotted. Layer upon layer of flesh blackened, melting into putrid fluid that poured downward. In the blink of an eye, Wei Yuan lost all his beard and hair. Then both eyeballs dropped out one after another, smashing against the ground into two puddles of black, greasy, putrid slime!
Wei Yuan ground out two words from between his teeth: "Ancestral... Shaman—"
Yet the terrifying calamity of karmic debt from the hundred thousand li mountain domain stripped Wei Yuan of any ability to mouth harsh words. The sudden, agonizing pain struck straight into his divine soul, wrenching a wretched howl from his throat!
This agony was unprecedented and truly impossible to take in stride. Glancing around to see that there were no acquaintances beyond the heavens, Wei Yuan dropped all pretense and rolled across the ground in sheer agony.
Back in the mountain domain, Zhang Sheng suddenly turned to Wei Yuan and asked, "Are you alright? If you can't take it, don't try to tough it out."
The red-eyed Wei Yuan could not stop the corner of his eye from twitching no matter how he tried. He gave two raspy chuckles and said, "A petty tribulation like this... isn't even worth... mentioning!"
Chapter 1498