Wrong Door

Wei Yuan's mind was in utter turmoil; he truly could not fathom how matters had arrived at this point. Ever since he planted the Qingming boundary stone, even though he harbored no grand ambitions, Wei Yuan had known that sooner or later he would have to deal with the King of Jin. Yet never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined that his relationship with the King of Jin would unfold in such a fashion. Fortunately, this was only a primordial soul world. At this moment, Wei Yuan was in a peculiar state. His primordial soul was full and his Dao force was brimming, yet his physical body was frail to the extreme—incapable of wringing out even a single drop of strength. Just lifting his eyelids exhausted him to the point of panting. Only now did he realize that there was always someone better, a heaven beyond heaven—even a physical body forged with twenty million immortal silver had times when it was unfit for use. By now, the heat had gradually receded; the Vaidurya Pure Fire could not burn forever either. In the darkness, sensing the woman getting dressed, Wei Yuan finally let down his guard and fell into a deep sleep. After sleeping for merely a single quarter of an hour, Wei Yuan woke again. His spirits were fully restored, and his physical strength began to recover bit by bit. She lightly patted Wei Yuan—in a rather awkward spot, giving him an inexplicable surge of alarm. Yet the formidable strength of his physical body was no empty boast; after just a brief nap, under that pat, his flesh felt ready to go again. "We have to find a way out of here. If we die at the hands of the Demon King, we can still reincarnate, but this guardian vajra is using Vaidurya Pure Fire—he clearly intends to burn our future lives away along with us." "There's an exit here?" Wei Yuan's spirits lifted. "The exit is that gate leading to the Pure Land we saw earlier. Only, it's closed right now. We have to find a way to reach it." "Let's fly up and take a look first to see if we can push it open." "Fly?" Wei Yuan said as if it were obvious, "Right now, we are merely primordial souls. Flying is simple. Even someone who hasn't cultivated can fly, in fact." "So that's how it is... But moving in this world feels almost identical to the Native Realm. We should be careful when flying." "There should still be many mighty warriors out there. I'm afraid we'll have to fight our way through. Let me make some preparations first." Consort Yuan waited a moment, but seeing no movement from Wei Yuan, she flicked a finger and chuckled softly. "Still want more? How about we keep going?" Wei Yuan shuddered all over and gasped, "That's not what I meant... Er, could you help me up first?" A moment later, Wei Yuan moved aside the boulders sealing the cave entrance and looked out. Roiling heat still filled the deep trench, its every surface glazed in a layer of vaidurya sheen. A puddle of vaidurya liquid had pooled at the bottom of the trench, still feeling slightly soft underfoot. Consort Yuan also crawled out of the cave, having resumed the appearance of the village girl. Yet whenever Wei Yuan looked over, her features melted away like water to reveal her true countenance. The moment his gaze shifted away, she reverted to the rustic maiden. Even though they had fooled around for an entire night, Wei Yuan still did not dare look at her too much. He climbed up the trench first and peered outside. The sky was a dark crimson, and the colossal sun hung frozen halfway up the heavens, completely motionless. The earth was a wasteland of scorched soil everywhere, devoid of trees and flowers, birds, fish, or insects. Everything had been reduced to ashes. Standing here felt like being cast into an infernal purgatory. In the distance, the guardian vajra's Phenomenal Heaven and Earth frame was exceptionally conspicuous. At this moment, he stood motionless, the cobwebs on his body long since gone. Occasionally, he would unleash a swathe of Vaidurya Pure Fire to burn continuously in some spot, though what he was incinerating remained unknown. Wei Yuan found it hard to believe. An entire minor world, countless living beings, scorched to ash just like that? He still remembered the lesson on living beings during centralized instruction at the Palace of Grand Beginning. Sentient beings were rooted in their spirit. What distinguished Wei Yuan from Zhang Sheng was not the physical body, but the primordial soul. Just like the great demons in the Nether Cold Realm, they were living beings even without physical bodies; when Wei Yuan's primordial soul traversed the Nether Cold Realm, he was a living being in the Nether Cold Realm, but his physical body left behind was not. By this standard, even if this minor world was a mental projection world, it still contained countless living beings. Had they all been incinerated just like that? High cultivators had a prettier term for it: refinement. Across the barren scorched earth, countless mighty warriors wandered aimlessly, occasionally prodding the soil with their weapons to pass as searching. In the absence of enemies, they all appeared dull and lethargic, lacking even the spiritual awareness of wild beasts. According to what Wei Yuan had learned, these mighty warriors had not materialized out of nothing; they were believers who had willingly entered the Buddhist kingdom to be transformed, all to ascend to ultimate bliss and eternal life. Yet seeing how dull and lifeless these warriors were now, and recalling their explosive fury when he first encountered them, it seemed they possessed only these two states. There were gates in the sky, but not just one—there were three. The three gates differed from one another. One was pitch-black, inscribed with mysterious symbols and exuding a chilling, eerie yin aura. The central gate was grand and majestic, framed in vaidurya and crafted from gold and jade; held slightly ajar, it spilled boundless golden light that illuminated the scorched world with an aura of great compassion. To the right stood an utterly ordinary door—it was just plain, neither gold nor jade, nor woven from brushwood, but simply an ordinary wooden door. At this moment, several nearby mighty warriors flew into the sky, looked around, and then dropped back down to the ground. Wei Yuan's heart tightened. They could fly now? But on second thought, it made sense. The entire Pure Land had been burned into an inferno; the restrictions left behind by the young monk had naturally been broken long ago. Those mighty warriors flew at roughly the same speed as Wei Yuan. If they wanted to escape, they would have to be careful not to get overtaken. Wei Yuan asked Consort Yuan, "How fast can you fly?" "I can't fly. I can only jump." Wei Yuan was rendered utterly speechless. In a low whisper, he asked, "How can you not know how to fly?" The girl Consort Yuan had turned into retorted, "Why should I know how to fly?" Her counterquestion left Wei Yuan at a loss for words. Judging by her performance last night, if Consort Yuan claimed she wasn't at least in the dharma idol realm, he wouldn't believe it for a second; even if she claimed to be in Scenery Command, he might well have believed her. And yet she couldn't fly? Could she be some once-in-a-ten-thousand-years Earth-Traveling True Monarch? "Then what cultivation realm is Your Ladyship in right now?" The girl pulled a long face and snapped petulantly, "What, the moment you leave the room you start addressing me with honorifics? Planning to disown what you've done, aren't you? Truly, not a single man is any good!" "I have to figure out how to escape to those gates. Of course I need to know your cultivation realm. If anything slips up, neither of us will make it out," Wei Yuan explained patiently, his tone remarkably gentle. Consort Yuan wasn't just throwing a tantrum for no reason. Whenever she threw a petty fit, she deliberately revealed her true face; that puffed-up, breathtakingly gorgeous little face would daze anyone who laid eyes on it, leaving Wei Yuan entirely incapable of anger. Seeing that Wei Yuan was serious, Consort Yuan said, "The karma tied to me here is too heavy, putting me in a peculiar state. Well, put it this way: you can only treat me as an ordinary person. But these mighty warriors can't hurt me; you just need to keep me away from the vajra's pure fire. I'm especially terrified of that." Wei Yuan understood and began setting up a firing position, assembling one complex contraption after another. "What are you doing?" the girl asked. "I can't outfly these mighty warriors while carrying you. I need to draw them together and wipe out a batch first, so we can slip away in the chaos." With a major battle looming, Wei Yuan became focused and murderous. The girl crouched beside him, resting her chin on her hands as she watched Wei Yuan work. After watching for a while, she said, "A man who works seriously truly is the most charming." Caught between laughter and tears, Wei Yuan turned to glare at her. The moment his gaze met hers, Consort Yuan revealed her true face and stuck out her tongue. It was such an adorable gesture, yet it made a fiery heat surge within Wei Yuan. For at the very end of that cuteness, the tip of her little tongue lightly brushed across her lips. Wei Yuan dared not look again and concentrated on his work. Right now, it was broad daylight, ten thousand li of scorched earth stretching to the horizon—how could they... Oh, if this were a storybook world, this place would actually be quite fitting. Tossing those wild thoughts aside, Wei Yuan hastened his battle preparations. A moment later, the position was ready. Wei Yuan raised a slender steel tube, aimed at a mighty warrior taking flight in the distant sky, and impaled him with a single sword. This was like poking a hornet's nest. Mighty warriors across the entire world came charging forward. Wei Yuan remained completely unfazed. One Green Silk Armor-Piercer after another shot out trailing faint red light, mowing down the charging warriors in swathes. The few flying in the sky were not spared either, all shot down one by one. The first warrior to fall still struggled, crawling toward Wei Yuan. He could not feel pain at all and thus knew no fear; only fury remained on his face. Yet as he crawled, platinum flames tinged with faint red suddenly erupted from within his body! Panic and agony finally appeared on the warrior's face. He reached out toward Wei Yuan, as if pleading for help, or perhaps trying to grab hold of something. But in the blink of an eye, platinum flames spouted from his nose and mouth as well, and his head slowly drooped. A brilliant ball of platinum fire formed, drifted into the air, and gradually dispersed, while the warrior on the ground turned into a shriveled, empty husk. Immediately after, ball after ball of platinum fire erupted. The mighty warriors pierced by the Green Silk Armor-Piercers began to burn one after another. Panic finally broke out among the warriors, and the distant, motionless guardian vajra stirred as well, slowly turning his head. Wei Yuan made a split-second decision, taking Consort Yuan and soaring straight into the sky. Holding a spray tube in each hand that spewed long trails of flame, he was still somewhat faster than the flying warriors even while carrying an extra person as he shot toward the three gates in the heavens. Relying on instinct, Wei Yuan dashed straight for the black gate. And that gate actually opened! Stepping through the gate, what met his eyes was a black ocean. Waves rose without wind, countless vengeful souls surging amid the billows. Jade barriers enclosed the ocean from around and above, as though this entire realm were sealed within something. Wei Yuan took a single look and said, "Wrong door." Then, expressionless, he took Consort Yuan and stepped right back out of the gate.