Standing amidst the ruins, Wei Yuan pondered and asked, "If he has such a treasure, how much can it hold?"
Houtu said, "I doubt it could compare to my Cold Nether Pool. An ordinary Immortal Lord-grade treasure would be nearly full holding this much. I can't rule out the possibility that he can process karmic debt himself, but having seen him, I don't think he has that kind of ability."
"The Venerable Master can't process karmic debt on his own?"
"Certainly not! To process karmic debt, one must interact with heaven and earth. A fellow hiding away in a secret realm, completely cut off from karmic ties—where would he go to process karmic debt?" Houtu sounded utterly certain.
At that moment, a curtain of light rippled out beneath Wei Yuan's feet, spreading outward in concentric waves, only to rebound when it collided with an invisible wall at the edge of the ruins.
Houtu looked toward an empty patch of ground and asked, "What are you stepping on over there?"
That open space had been completely vacant, yet another Wei Yuan now stood there. This Wei Yuan appeared somewhat ethereal, though his features were picturesque.
He stood quietly, pinning down the rippling waves of light beneath his foot and preventing them from escaping the ruins.
Wei Yuan glanced at the avatar and said, "It's nothing. If the Venerable Master cannot process karmic debt himself, he must have accumulated a considerable amount over all these years. Even if he possesses a supreme containment artifact, it shouldn't have much room left."
Houtu nodded. "That should be the case."
Wei Yuan said, "Then let us wait."
Houtu looked a bit puzzled. "Wait for what?"
"The Venerable Master has already cast away all shame, and after plotting for so long, he won't simply stop here. He will strike at least once more—we just don't know what his target will be."
Houtu produced a straw from who knew where, stuck it into her jade bowl, and took a sip of the sweet water inside before speaking. "I can help you construct several arrays to protect vital locations. Once completed, it won't be so easy for the Venerable Master to destroy them. The only problem is the cost.
"Alternatively, you could upgrade the Great Array of the Heavenly Constellations, and I can preside over the array eye. If the Venerable Master moves again, I would have a fifty-fifty chance of stopping him. However, enhancing the realm's Earth power would have to be put on hold, and having me oversee the great array still comes down to one word: expensive."
With a face as dark as still water, Wei Yuan shook his head. "When an Immortal Lord seeks to mount a sneak attack, defending against it is practically impossible. If every crucial site had to rebuild its defenses, the additional cost alone would be... 4,670,000,000 Qingyuan."
Wei Yuan stated the exact figure after only a brief pause. Others had long grown accustomed to this, but Houtu reacted as though she had discovered a new continent. "Did you just calculate every single facility that requires protection?"
Wei Yuan nodded.
"Isn't that completely unnecessary?" Houtu was utterly bewildered. Reaching a similar conclusion didn't require tallying up every single important site, did it? Wouldn't a rough estimate suffice?
Wei Yuan simply waited, offering no answer.
***
Deep within the immortal heaven, a secret realm quietly unfolded. The interior was pitch-black, its ground and boundary walls marred everywhere with wounds that slowly wept thick, rancid blood. A massive, bloated figure crawled slowly across the expanse, chunks of flesh falling from its body from time to time. Whenever one dropped, an arm sprouted from its side, snatched up the piece of flesh, and shoved it back into an opening on its torso.
At last, it crawled to the center of the secret realm, where a deep pool lay. The bloody liquid streaming across the ground continuously drained into the depths, yet the pool's water level never shifted.
From within the deep pool came bouts of agonizing gasps, punctuated by occasional shrill shrieks. These screams acted like invisible sonic blades, slashing fresh wounds into the secret realm. New injuries piled atop old scars, leaving the entire secret realm resembling a dying behemoth, barely clinging to its final breath of life.
The figure crawled to the edge of the pool, leaned over, and peered down into the depths. The water churned, revealing a twisted, agonizing human face. From time to time, the face forced a smile, and though interrupted by spasms of torment, the grin was surprisingly joyous.
"Ha... haha! I'm almost finished, and you're done for too! After plotting for so long, you still ended up here, didn't you? Without me to shoulder the karmic debt for you, you... are nothing more than a living corpse!"
The figure beside the pool checked the water level. On the rocky bank was a jagged notch, and the surface of the water was now less than two fingers' width below it.
At last, it spoke. "A miscalculation. I didn't expect the karmic debt here to be so vast. Even so, there is still enough room for one more strike, after which you will be freed. Help me evaluate these few places—which would be best to raze to the ground?"
Four images materialized above the pool: a smelting workshop, an elixir workshop, a floating vessel construction center, and a research laboratory.
The face in the water sneered. "You want me to serve you again? I told you, finding that Wen Guantian was the last time. With only this little bit left anyway, I'll be free sooner or later."
The figure on the bank said slowly, "If you refuse to help, I will leave this last bit of karmic capacity empty forever, and you will never attain release."
The face was consumed with rage and hurled endless curses, yet the figure remained unmoved. After cursing for a time, the face finally yielded. Its divine sense swept over the four images, and countless points of light lit up within the pool, flickering like a deep starry sky submerged underwater.
"The smelting workshop," the face concluded.
"...Why?"
"Materials are the foundation of everything. If you destroy that smelting workshop, they won't have the critical materials, so they can forget about building giant floating vessels. Nor will they be able to produce high-grade cauldrons or the equipment needed for other workshops. That single link is the most vital, foundational layer of the entire chain."
"Why not the research base?"
"Wiping out the research base alongside it would naturally be better, but most things inside a research base ultimately turn out to be failures. And the materials developed in a research base are still a very long way from industrial production. That workshop has incorporated many refined techniques. If you destroy it, even if they retain the formulas in the laboratory, rebuilding such a workshop isn't something that can be done in a year or two.
"If you want to strangle them by the throat and plunge them into terror, that workshop is your best target. It will make them think that you truly understand what matters."
Persuaded, the figure on the bank grunted and slowly crawled away.
***
In Qingming, the moon had already reached its zenith. Wei Yuan remained standing in the ruins. The survey teams waiting outside for orders had rotated several times to rest, yet no command ever came.
Houtu had obtained a few immortal fruits from somewhere and was squeezing their juice into her jade bowl. Squeezing as she spoke, she asked, "Do we still need to wait? Are you certain the Venerable Master will strike?"
"Certain!" Wei Yuan replied without hesitation. "The Venerable Master took great pains to strike twice in succession precisely to incite panic and fear in me. Yet I have made no move at all, not even imposing martial law. That will make him feel as though he hasn't struck a nerve. If he only prepared this much, it would hardly fit his style. He loves playing a few cards first while keeping one hidden in hand, ready to spring a surprise on us when necessary.
"The delay in his strike simply means he has few cards left. He wants to pick the best possible target to deal me one final, vicious blow. If I fall into panic and squander our national strength on defense, it would play right into his hands."
At this point, Wei Yuan smiled faintly. "The old bastard can't live well himself, so he'll never stand by and watch us prosper."
Houtu appeared pensive, then said, "I don't think—"
Before her words could finish, towering flames suddenly erupted in the distance, and the earth trembled faintly. A massive breach was torn through the Great Array of the Heavenly Constellations by the soaring pillar of fire, and warning sirens blared across the array eyes of nearly every city.
Qingming's largest smelting workshop was now engulfed in raging flames. White-hot molten steel flowed in all directions, and two blast furnaces had been blasted hundreds of zhang into the sky by the explosion, tumbling without having landed yet.
The entire workshop spanned several li, and it was now an ocean of fire. Scattered through the sea of flames were figures lying motionless, left to burn. Most were templates, while a few were Golden Core cultivators; all had perished the instant the explosion struck, grotesque smiles still frozen upon their faces.
Across such an immense workshop, not one of the several thousand cultivators inside managed to escape.
Wei Yuan's avatar, clad in green robes with grey hair, arrived immediately, but a single look at the scene told him he was too late. Naturally, the Venerable Master would never linger.
Standing upon one's own masterpiece to taunt the victim was a trope found only in storybooks. In reality, the Venerable Master was heavily cursed and gravely wounded, while Wei Yuan had Houtu by his side. If the Venerable Master dared leave an avatar behind to boast face-to-face, Wei Yuan might very well trace the karmic ties back to his lair.
Wei Yuan swept his divine sense over the entire workshop and cross-referenced the figures with the data in Splendor of the Many Realms, instantly discerning how many had died. He let out a cold sneer. "Greedy to the extreme, leaving no leeway whatsoever! Very well, I'll show you the cost of leaving no leeway!"
Within the ruins of the military academy, the Wei Yuan who had remained motionless suddenly opened his eyes and lifted his foot. The suppressed waves of light gained their freedom, streaking in all directions in an instant.
Throughout Qingming, people began dying silently. Most were the elderly, women, and children—all relatives and kin of the military academy's cadets.
Whenever a cadet entered the Qingming Military Academy, they were bound to their family members through the great array. Originally, this was a measure Wei Yuan had implemented to guard against enemy curses.
The moment cadets were targeted by a karma-based curse, the curse's power would disperse through the array to their families, borne collectively by everyone. Furthermore, as cadets of the Qingming Military Academy, they received daily infusions of karmic luck. The allotted amount was generally more than they could use up themselves, so the excess was bestowed upon their families.
Thus, if an enemy attempted to curse someone hailing from the Qingming Military Academy, they would find that they were cursing not a single individual, but an entire clan—each carrying karmic luck, and the vast majority being the elderly, the weak, women, and children. Wei Yuan believed that any reasonably sane enemy would balk at expending dozens of times more curse power and suffering dozens of times the karmic backlash, only for the vast majority of victims to be targets devoid of value.
The foreign races that frequently clashed with Qingming now understood that one should never use karmic curses against Qingming officers, for the consequences were akin to blasting a cesspool with fiery dao arts. But the Venerable Master clearly did not know this.
In truth, the hundreds of thousands of cadets' kin had already died the moment the military academy was destroyed; it was only that Wei Yuan had used the power of time to postpone the array's activation.
Now that Wei Yuan had finally waited for the Venerable Master to strike again, he ceased suppressing time. Hundreds of thousands perished in silence, their terrifying karma, resentment, and karmic debt condensing into speckles of blood-red light that drifted up toward the immortal heaven!
Deep within the secret realm, a bloodcurdling shriek rang out as a massive new wound split open, nearly severing the entire realm in two.
Chapter 1505