The Venerable Master was no longer an Immortal Lord? All the immortals pricked up their ears.
Regrettably, Immortal Heaven remained dead silent, offering no response.
Seated upon the celestial body, Houtu watched as the Mirage Demons gradually evolved and transformed. Only when every Mirage Demon had manifested wings and could fly through Immortal Heaven would this grotto-heaven be considered fully evolved.
In the World Beyond, Wei Yuan's true body slowly lowered its head, gazing at a speck of dark-yellow light within his colossal form. The ascension of the Xutu Grotto-Heaven into Immortal Heaven had brought about corresponding changes in Wei Yuan's true body, transforming a portion of it into an immortal physique. In theory, the part transformed was tied to one's Dao path, karmic causes and effects, and the nature of the grotto-heaven—meaning that this specific part had been predestined to turn immortal.
Yet as Wei Yuan looked at the lower half of his body—at that dark-yellow orb radiating prismatic immortal light, several times larger than its companion beside it—his face was a mask of helplessness. He wouldn't believe it even if beaten to death that Houtu hadn't done this on purpose.
With the Xutu Grotto-Heaven's ascension into Immortal Heaven, Qingming's earth-phase qi was finally complete. Ley lines everywhere began shifting, and the earth trembled thrice a day. Countless people of Qingming felt their bodies grow sturdier, their constitutions improve, and even their innate aptitudes receive a boost.
With a portion of his body having become an immortal form, the count of Wei Yuan's divine thoughts climbed dramatically, now approaching five hundred thousand strands. He divided a vast number of divine thoughts and, like a consummate chess master, began fine-tuning Qingming's industries and policies bit by bit. His touch was gentle, moistening things like a fine drizzle, imperceptibly accelerating the whole of Qingming's industry.
In truth, the Mirage Demons were part of Qingming's grand Immortal Heaven Research Project, aimed at studying how to transition from the illusory to the corporeal through technological methods.
Previously, when immortals ascended, they used their own Dao power to furnish their mindscape worlds, first sketching out a skeletal framework. Using this as a foundation, once elevated into Immortal Heaven, they relied on absorbing primal chaos qi to temper and refine the mindscape world bit by bit into a solid entity, ultimately transforming it into a grotto-heaven realm within Immortal Heaven. The traditional process prioritized ambiguity and intuition, described in Daoist terminology as "mysterious and more mysterious still."
Yet in the eyes of research cultivators like Wen Guantian, no ambiguous process could not be demystified. Back then, Wei Yuan had unleashed the Mirage Demons into the Buddhist realm, forcibly seizing Shanle's Heaven of Joy and Bliss and accumulating a massive trove of data. Relying on this data, Qingming's research cultivators guided the Mirage Demons underground. Supported by formations, ley lines, alchemy, and medicine, they successfully caused the Mirage Demons to transition from illusory to corporeal. The creatures mined their very first piece of ore and replenished themselves with ore qi, finally becoming completely solid entities.
From then on, Qingming used ley line qi instead of primal chaos qi to continuously materialize the Mirage Demons, amassing a colossal mining army beneath the earth.
Mirage Demons were natural earth-phase spiritual bodies and did not rely on the human domain to survive. Thus, they thrived in both the Mountain Domain and the Liao domain; only in the Shaman Domain did the five phases clash, making the Mirage Demons reluctant to venture there.
Once the Mirage Demons gained physical form, they possessed a foundation to grow stronger and began generating karmic luck. Wei Yuan had refrained from drawing upon this luck, wishing to see what the Mirage Demons might ultimately become. In the end, Houtu had arrived and hoisted Xutu up in ascension to Immortal Heaven. The influx of countless Mirage Demons laden with karmic luck into Immortal Heaven immediately gave the gathered immortals pause, making them afraid to intervene lest they break the vase to catch the rat.
At this moment, on the surface of the Xutu Grotto-Heaven's celestial body, there were twelve Mirage Demons entirely composed of colored crystal. Having survived the Ascension Tribulation and been tempered by the heavenly tribulation, their entire bodies had transformed into immortal forms. However, lacking mindscape worlds and true souls, they possessed the outer guise of immortals without the true substance—they could only be called half-immortals.
After ascending into Immortal Heaven, the Xutu Grotto-Heaven began solidifying, thereby separating from the Splendor of the Many Realms. Every moment, it generated immense amounts of data, which was automatically transmitted to Wei Yuan's true body and then fed by his true body into the Splendor of the Many Realms.
By now, Wei Yuan's own divine thoughts were formidable. He gave all the data an initial processing and categorization, then broke it down into separate research topics. Some were dispatched directly to researchers, while others were posted to the Academy of Sciences and other institutions, awaiting assigned personnel.
Once certain simple topics were completed, Wei Yuan analyzed the feedback, generated follow-up topics, and continued distributing them.
Thus, ten days after the Xutu Grotto-Heaven ascended into Immortal Heaven, dozens of major categories, thousands of subcategories, and over a hundred thousand specific research projects were newly opened under the overarching subject of "Immortal Heaven Research" within the Splendor of the Many Realms—and the numbers were still rapidly multiplying.
The first batch of data yielded bountiful results: several hundred previous research projects concerning Immortal Heaven were answered outright, propelling the overall progress of "Immortal Heaven Research" forward by five percentage points.
Qingming's researchers keenly sensed the shifting research winds, and throngs of young researchers eager to prove themselves switched fields, diving into Immortal Heaven research.
On the surface of the Xutu planetoid, the twelve colored-crystal Mirage Demons endured the pain, allowing ordinary Mirage Demons to excise pieces of tissue from their bodies to send back to their home world for study. They also generated massive amounts of data at every moment, and in terms of absorbing and converting primal chaos, they functioned like amplifiers, dramatically accelerating conversion efficiency.
With the first grotto-heaven's ascension into Immortal Heaven, the veil of mystery surrounding Immortal Heaven was being peeled away by Wei Yuan bit by bit, probing the secrets buried deep in its shadows.
In the eyes of the immortals, it held a different meaning altogether. Around the Xutu Grotto-Heaven, millions of Mirage Demons now circled at every moment, and more and more of them were maturing.
Each of these Mirage Demons was equivalent to Wei Yuan's eyes. Together, they wove an immense net blanketing the Immortal Heaven above Qingming and its vast surroundings.
Anyone wishing to launch a sneak attack on Qingming could no longer do so via Immortal Heaven. No immortal was confident they could slip past such dense surveillance.
The ascension of the Xutu Grotto-Heaven brought myriad benefits, but there was one downside: the egg of Wei Yuan's true body that had been immortalized shone with radiant brilliance, so bright his flesh could not conceal it. Furthermore, data flowed through it in a boundless torrent, causing the entire egg to emit astonishing heat and increasingly show signs of transforming into a blazing sun.
Three months later, once the Xutu Grotto-Heaven had basically stabilized, Houtu took a leap from above and jumped back down to their home world.
Once back in Qingming, Wei Yuan was already waiting for her in the Immortal City.
When Houtu stepped into the council hall, she found the atmosphere unusually solemn. The cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning were gathered in full, and even Bai Kaishui, Feng Hanzhou, and Old Madame Bao of the Bao family had arrived.
Seated at the head was Wei Yuan in green robes and graying hair; for the coming period, this would be his primary active avatar in Qingming. His strongest avatar was actually the body of Yin-Yang, but if she appeared, she could not take the seat of honor—she would at least have to share seating with Zhang Sheng. Such a shift in seating would reveal clues to many observers.
Wei Yuan's survival instincts had always been through the roof. Ever since suppressing Houtu, he had never let Yin-Yang out again. Naturally, doing so came with a cost: a modest continuous drain on his divine thoughts.
The green robe and graying hair drew upon the power of the Azure Dragon Grotto-Heaven, inherently bearing the authority over time. In the past, it had served as Wei Yuan's primary bait to lure the Venerable Master, which showed just how lofty its status and how precious its authority were.
Seeing that Houtu had arrived, Wei Yuan said, "My grotto-heaven's ascension has stirred the karmic threads across the heavens. Just now, I felt an intuition and realized that the World Beyond will soon face a new strike. In our last battle, I damaged that being's dharma body, causing her attainment of the Dao to fall short at the final hurdle. In this return, she will surely seek frenzied vengeance, so we cannot afford any carelessness."
Houtu suddenly interjected, "How do you know she failed to attain the Dao?"
Reminded by Houtu, the cultivators finally realized: the process of attaining a fruit of the Dao was exceptionally secretive. Many immortals of insufficient status could not even sense it, let alone Wei Yuan, who had yet to ascend to immortality. How could he possess the skill to pry into the secrets of such a supreme being?
This question silenced Wei Yuan for a moment. Unable to maintain his omniscient and omnipotent persona, he could only admit, "She told me herself."
The immortals had a sudden realization: so the enemy had issued a challenge.
Still, everyone was long accustomed to Wei Yuan's manner of speaking and took it in stride; only the newcomer, Houtu, liked to nitpick.
Houtu added, "Attaining a Dao fruit is hardly that simple. If it's a unique fruit in all the heavens, contending for it can easily take hundreds of thousands, millions of years, or even several epochs. Who ever heard of fighting for a fruit for merely a few years? Don't listen to her boasting—she probably wasn't confident of succeeding in the first place and just conveniently pinned the blame for her failure on you."
Wei Yuan sighed. "I would like to think so too, but I have seen her true form; it spanned at least ten thousand li. Facing such a formidable enemy, we may scarcely be able to resist. We can only go all out."
Houtu suddenly asked, "How big is your true body?"
Wei Yuan paused. His true body of two hundred thousand zhang seemed to span over a thousand li as well. At the very least, if she snapped off another finger, it wouldn't terrify him anymore.
Wei Yuan hedged, "In the World Beyond, the Heavenly Dao is not yet established, and the Great Dao has not solidified. Size is illusory."
"Isn't that obvious, then? Size in the Sea of Chaos is even more illusory. Hurry up and say it—what do you need us to do?"
Wei Yuan said, "Right now, the Venerable Master has gone into hiding, the Mountain Folk are heavily battered, the Liao clans of the Shaman Sea have their hands full, and the surrounding alien races can stir no waves. This is the perfect moment for us to face the World Beyond with all our might. In this battle, the enemy may bring more than one Immortal Lord. Therefore, everyone should take this time to settle their final affairs; for the period ahead, I fear none of us will be able to pull away."
Wei Yuan then looked toward the two Palace Masters of the Sword Palace and Old Madame Bao, saying, "This battle is essentially my personal war and fraught with extreme peril. You three seniors need not risk your lives. It will suffice if you can dispatch some juniors to pilot dharma body puppets."
The two Palace Masters of the Sword Palace wore solemn expressions, falling into silent contemplation. Old Madame Bao spoke up suddenly, "That world-opening merit of yours—could you spare an old woman a little?"
Wei Yuan replied, "Of course! However, this merit likely requires my personal blessing to take effect, and the method of bestowing it is quite intricate. May I ask what Old Madame intends to do, and how much merit is needed?"
Old Madame Bao said slowly, "You know that our Bao family has another child who is also an immortal. Only, when he ascended to immortality back then, he lacked that last bit of seasoning, which damaged his foundation and severely depleted his lifespan. If his foundation can be mended and his life extended by three hundred years, then even if this decrepit body of mine is left behind in the World Beyond, I will have no complaints!"
Hearing this, Bai Kaishui and the immortals of the Palace of Grand Beginning understood clearly: that young immortal of the Bao family likely had little lifespan remaining and was on the verge of perishing soon.
Old Madame Bao herself still had some remaining years, but she was far too advanced in age—the oldest living immortal, older even than the Venerable Master. Her immortal body had grown decrepit; she could no longer strike with full might, for doing so would rapidly burn through her lifespan.
Old Madame Bao was willing to pay with her own life to restore a junior immortal of her clan to peak condition. Even with Wei Yuan's merit extending his life by only three hundred years, as long as he could strike with full power at any time, he could keep the Bao family safe. Furthermore, it wouldn't be long before Baoyun could ascend to immortality, and she had also borne a child of dragon lineage with a Natural Dao Foundation. Tallying it all together, the Bao family was assured thousands of years of prosperity.
The gathered immortals all felt a wave of poignant sympathy. With Old Madame Bao at the end of her days, this was the moment to wage a desperate gamble and fight for her descendants.
Over tens of thousands of years in the human race, immortals from sects often met peaceful ends, whereas immortals from aristocratic clans mostly faced harsh, tragic twilight years, and many even suffered violent deaths—all because they sought to fight for their juniors.
Wei Yuan had also met that reticent young immortal of the Bao family, whose data was already stored within the Splendor of the Many Realms. Pulling up the data, he arrived at a conclusion a moment later and said, "At least four hundred years. For three hundred years, he may unleash his full might; after three hundred years, he will need to rest and recuperate."
The wrinkles around Old Madame Bao's brow and eyes smoothed out, and she smiled. "Then I have nothing left to worry about."
The immortals shuddered once more.
Those words of Old Madame Bao seemed to stir something in the unseen realm of karma—hardly an auspicious sign.
Yet when facing enemies from beyond the world—and a formidable foe that had once destroyed that very realm—how could no immortal fall? In saying this, Old Madame Bao was shouldering that karmic fate onto herself.
Wei Yuan hurriedly said, "Old Madame, do not rush to such conclusions. I have prepared for this battle for many years; it has long departed from the mold of ordinary immortal warfare. If everyone unites with one heart and mind, perhaps no one will have to fall."
Yet not even Houtu believed that statement.
When the meeting concluded, the immortals and cultivators departed to attend to their personal affairs. Although the battle in the World Beyond would utilize dharma body puppets, after suffering a loss last time, the enemy would certainly possess means to extinguish divine souls and true souls. For a cultivator, having their divine soul obliterated was tantamount to perishing; and while immortals could deploy their true souls, if a true soul was destroyed, their cultivation and Dao attainment would suffer a catastrophic collapse.
With such enormous risk, there was naturally no reason for anyone to help for nothing.
At this time, in Zhang Sheng's Dao sanctuary within the Immortal City, Bai Kaishui and Feng Hanzhou sat before Zhang Sheng with solemn expressions. Standing behind them were more than a dozen young disciples who had yet to reach the Dao Foundation stage.
Zhang Sheng brushed her hand across the table before her, and an immortal sword brimming with azure light appeared—none other than her Qingping Sword.
Zhang Sheng said slowly, "This sword is the culmination of my sword Dao in recent years. I have specially invited the two seniors to view it."
Feng Hanzhou stared unblinkingly, sword light nearly overflowing from his eyes. Bai Kaishui turned back and asked, "What do all of you see?"
The vast majority of the young disciples wore blank looks. Only one thin, dark-skinned little girl tremblingly raised her hand and said, "It's a blue-green sword... It can sing."
Bai Kaishui was greatly surprised, and a surge of wild joy welled in his eyes. Zhang Sheng's sword could not even be seen by immortals whose sword Dao cultivation was slightly lacking—by the time they could see it, the sword qi would already be upon them. Yet a little girl who hadn't even achieved a Dao Foundation could see it! Bai Kaishui naturally understood that she was fated with this sword!
Zhang Sheng glanced at the little girl and said, "My Dao walks alone. Since someone can see this sword, that is enough. Have them all withdraw."
A Sword Palace disciple led the children outside. At that moment, a boy suddenly turned back and strained to look at the table before Zhang Sheng—and surprisingly, he actually caught a glint of azure light!
He instantly shouted and clamored, desperate for another look. Yet Zhang Sheng waved her hand lightly, sweeping him out of the courtyard, and said placidly, "What is missed is missed; there is no second chance."
Once only Bai Kaishui and Feng Hanzhou remained in the courtyard, Zhang Sheng said solemnly, "As long as the two seniors lend your full support, then after the battle in the World Beyond—regardless of victory or defeat—this Qingping Sword of mine will remain with the Sword Palace, opening a new Dao path for the sect."
Resoluteness showed on Bai Kaishui's face as he said slowly, "If I can add a brick and tile to the foundation passed down by the Patriarch, what does it matter if I sacrifice this mortal body?"
Chapter 1508