With the harvest of the first batch of millet rice, the weight pressing down upon the domain lightened by thirty percent.
When cultivators forged their bodies, their appetites were far larger than those of ordinary men. Without spiritual food to supplement them, they could eat five or six times what a normal person consumed. If they did not eat their fill, not only would their Body Casting make no progress, but they would lack the strength even to go about their daily routines.
Thus, before every major battle, Wei Yuan had to urgently distribute a batch of provisions so those about to fight could fill their bellies. After the battle was over, the blessing of Ephemeral Multitude having nearly exhausted everyone's stamina, another batch had to be issued—otherwise, people truly would starve to death.
Those two meals alone, before and after, added up to three days' worth of rations for an ordinary person, and that was with Wei Yuan strictly holding them to the bare minimum.
With one hundred thousand jin of millet rice in their bellies, the cultivators could eat three hundred thousand jin less of regular grain, and their Body Casting would still see progress.
At this moment, Wei Yuan finally understood the true meaning of the saying that food was the sky to the people.
Within Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, after spewing spiritual qi for a full two hours, the spirit field corresponding to the one outside slowly grew quiet. As the mature millet rice was reaped and gathered, this field ceased to release spiritual qi.
As for selecting seeds and replanting, with the people from the Hall of Jianmu present, Wei Yuan did not need to trouble himself; the four disciples of the Perfected Person were all free labor. Having settled everything, Wei Yuan handed the two nether wheat seeds Xiao Nian had gifted him over to Perfected Chuhe, asking him to find a way to cultivate them on his behalf, and then headed to the herb garden to lay out the Nether Soil spirit fields.
Flying to the herb garden, Wei Yuan selected a site and entered his sea of consciousness to allocate the Nether Soil. The moment he stepped inside, he saw three figures standing atop that hill-like mound of Nether Soil.
The one in the middle was exceptionally tall and burly, standing a full head taller than Wei Yuan, holding a saber and shield with an imposing aura. The two on the left and right were more than a head shorter, barely reaching the shoulders of the central figure, their frames a size slimmer. Even so, among ordinary men they would still be counted as strapping bruisers, roughly the same height as Wei Yuan.
When had three more people appeared in his Dao Foundation?
The three figures stood stock-still, motionless. Not only could Wei Yuan's divine sense perceive them, but he could clearly feel that they were also a part of Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains.
Wei Yuan walked up to the three figures. They were clearly human, though their surfaces were somewhat indistinct, the style of their armor unrecognizable, and they possessed no facial features.
The central figure wielded a saber and shield. In Wei Yuan's perception, he actually bore several points of resemblance to Song Chao—though at most thirty percent. Moreover, he had no face, and his body held not a trace of spirit nature; he was merely a human-form Dao Foundation. Yet this human-form Dao Foundation inherently carried several trait abilities of the saber and shield. By Wei Yuan's appraisal, it could probably be ranked as Heaven Tier.
The figures on either side appeared to be soldiers, their Dao Foundations being ordinary horse-chopping sabers, both common Earth Tier Dao Foundations.
Although Wei Yuan had not noticed how these three figures had appeared, everything that occurred in his sea of consciousness was recorded within his nascent soul. Retracing the past, Wei Yuan saw the three figures emerge one after another from the black pool within the Jade Mountain, walk out of the mountain, and come to a halt before the Nether Soil.
Wei Yuan made a conjecture: could these three have been converted after the vengeful spirits were absorbed by the black pool?
The more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. The saber-and-shield bearer bore several points of resemblance to Song Chao, and his Dao Foundation traits were largely identical—that was proof enough.
A saber-and-shield Dao Foundation was quite rare; Wei Yuan had only ever seen it on Song Chao. The two soldiers flanking him were also common Western Jin foot soldiers. However, out of more than a hundred vengeful spirits, only two had ultimately been converted. Perhaps because of this, they had both ended up as Dao Foundations.
Since these three could be regarded as human-form Dao Foundations, Wei Yuan attempted to command one, and to his surprise, it actually moved!
Stunned, Wei Yuan ran over to the maiden Yin-Yang and tried to command her as well, but she remained steady as the earth, not budging in the least.
Yet after comparing them, Wei Yuan understood: it was not that the maiden could not move, but rather that his Dao power was too low to budge her at all. If Song Chao was a boulder and the two soldiers were gravel, then this maiden was a mountain itself.
Back in the domain, Wei Yuan stood in the herb garden and suddenly pointed a finger. Before him gradually materialized a burly fellow wielding a saber and shield. The man wore armor and held the weapons; without looking closely, one would hardly notice that the armor, saber, and shield had actually grown directly out of his body.
A human-form Dao Foundation was indeed still a Dao Foundation. As long as it was a Dao Foundation, it could be manifested, and the Dao power it consumed was acceptable. Moving with inspiration, Wei Yuan issued his first command:
Turn the soil.
The saber-and-shield brute squatted down and began digging up the earth with huffs and puffs.
It was just that digging with a long saber was rather awkward, and that enormous shield was an outright encumbrance. Wei Yuan watched for a while, then began to ponder whether he ought to fashion a shovel or a hoe for him. The Wei family came from farming roots, and Wei Yuan had been steeped in it since childhood, so the moment this train of thought surfaced, it branched out uncontrollably.
If there was a hoe, then scythes, pitchforks, and the like had to be arranged as well. To turn the soil, it was still best to use a plow. Speaking of plows, one would need an ox—and where would an ox come from?
Wei Yuan then remembered that he still had two soldiers in his Dao Foundation.
Just as he was pondering this, Wei Yuan's senses stirred. He saw Xu Wenwu carrying a watering pot, humming a tune as he strolled over, occasionally hopping three or four feet into the air.
Catching sight of Wei Yuan, Xu Wenwu beamed broadly and ran over at once, saying, "My lord, I've broken through!"
Without waiting for Wei Yuan to react, Xu Wenwu rolled up his sleeve to bare his arm, eager to show off. "Look, I've reached the... Great Perfection of Blood Merging!"
Xu Wenwu took out a knife and slashed forcefully across his arm. That arm looked fair and tender, but was actually as tough as old ox hide. With a heavy stroke of the blade, it only opened a wound the size of a little finger.
From the cut, thick black blood slowly seeped out.
"See? I told you it was Great Perfection of Blood Merging. Even the color of the blood has changed."
"Not bad." Wei Yuan offered a few words of encouragement, then asked, "Has Eldest Senior Sister tested your bone structure yet?"
Xu Wenwu's face instantly fell. "She only took one look at me, said she didn't have time, and kicked me out."
Wei Yuan knew then that Ji Liuli had obviously seen that Xu Wenwu's bone structure was lacking, merely refraining from saying so outright. However, bone structure being "lacking" in Ji Liuli's eyes differed from normal standards; Eldest Senior Sister believed anything below Heaven Tier was trash, with no point in cultivating it.
"She really has been very busy lately. It's fine, we can talk about it when she has time. I'll find a Foundation Casting art that suits you first, and you can practice that for now." Wei Yuan comforted him with a few remarks, and Xu Wenwu went off on his own to water the unsprouted Celestial Star Nightshade.
As he watered, he muttered incessantly, constantly describing to the Celestial Star Nightshade the glorious future of following Lord Xu—urging it to sprout and grow quickly, so that once it became a spirit, it could roam the four seas and sweep across the universe alongside Lord Xu. Of course, Lord Xu had his principles: no male spirits allowed.
Wei Yuan suddenly had a feeling that the reason the Celestial Star Nightshade had been so reluctant to sprout, growing increasingly gloomy and despondent, might have something to do with the incantations Xu Wenwu chanted every day.
Wei Yuan quietly bestowed his newly obtained otherworldly fortune upon that stalk of Celestial Star Nightshade. Then, after laying out the three plots of Nether Soil herb fields and informing Perfected Chuhe, he headed over to the Hall of Merits.
The laurel tree inside the Hall of Merits was bare at the moment, its fruit having already been used. Wei Yuan checked the records and saw that the last person to make an exchange was Feng Tingyu, who had traded for a large pouch of dried spiritual fruits. Such dried fruits could replenish spiritual power during battle and assist cultivation, so they were priced nearly as high as spirit pills.
Yet Wei Yuan somewhat suspected that Feng Tingyu had exchanged for the dried fruits not for cultivation, but simply because she wanted to eat them.
It did not matter that there were no fruits; Wei Yuan produced a handful of Nether Soil and scattered it across the sacrificial tray on the right incense altar, offering the power of Everlasting Silence within it. Sure enough, another fruit appeared upon the laurel tree.
Wei Yuan accessed the Hall of Merits system, skipped straight to the Dao Arts section, selected Advanced Dao Arts, and began perusing them carefully.
At present, Wei Yuan urgently needed to increase his combat prowess, and a cultivator's combat strength was made of only a few elements: Dao Foundations, dharma artifacts, physical body, Dao arts, spirit pets, friends, as well as relatives and sect elders.
Wei Yuan actually felt that he walked the world relying mostly on himself, though for some reason others always thought he was burning through his teachers.
With a great disaster looming, Wei Yuan had an urgent need to raise his fighting capability. One could not rush one's cultivation realm, but there was no need to worry on that front either; once the domain was covered with immortal trees, Wei Yuan would not be able to suppress his cultivation realm even if he tried. Among all his avenues of combat strength, the easiest to improve right now was Dao arts.
Dao arts were extraordinarily complex; within the Palace of Grand Beginning alone, there were three Heaven-Reaching Dao Paths dedicated purely to them. The arts Wei Yuan had learned before were all standard Dao arts. Although they showed some variations in his hands due to the distinct nature of his Dao power, the differences were limited, lacking any fundamental transformation.
By now, Wei Yuan was facing either Great Shamans with dharma idols or geniuses with Dao Foundations like the shamaness and Shengxin; these standard-template Dao arts were somewhat inadequate. However, over thousands of years, countless cultivators had developed numerous advanced Dao arts. Although many were derived from standard templates, their power multiplied drastically, completely beyond comparison to the originals.
All of these advanced Dao arts required merit points to exchange, and their cultivation requirements varied, far more rigorous than those of the standard templates.
Wei Yuan wanted to find a potent advanced Dao art with immense power that could fully consume his Dao power.
Just as he was browsing, Wei Yuan suddenly felt a surge of majestic Dao power erupt into the heavens within the domain, thick with vitality and brimming with boundless sword intent! Then, the voice of Perfected Chuhe echoed between heaven and earth:
"What scoundrel dares spy outside our domain? With cultivation like that, why skulk around hiding your head and showing your tail? Come, come, come! Let this old Daoist's eight immortal swords meet with you, and see what skill you truly possess!"
Even as the words rang out, that streak of sword intent charged straight out of the domain, far too fast for Wei Yuan to stop him.
Chapter 224