Three months had passed since Qingming was established, and Wei Yuan began taking stock of the surrounding situation.
To the northwest, Shaman City had suffered severe devastation: sixty to seventy percent of its residents were gone, and thirty to forty percent of the common soldiers had become casualties. It was currently undergoing an arduous reconstruction, with immense quantities of supplies and large numbers of civilian warriors arriving daily. The rebuilding would still take time, and Wei Yuan planned to leave them to it for now.
To the east and south, Western Jin had established a string of military redoubts, but they existed in name only.
Conditions here differed from the northern border. There, redoubts often formed mutually supporting wings with walled cities, whereas the lands surrounding Qingming had originally been desolate and abandoned. The redoubts were separated by substantial distances; when fighting broke out, each had to fight its own battle, making it easy to defeat them in detail one by one.
When Yuan Qingyan originally deployed this single-line snake formation, he had harbored his own calculations. He gambled that Wei Yuan would not dare openly attack imperial redoubts, as doing so would constitute open rebellion. Thus, he felt completely at ease garrisoning barely a thousand men in each, and had even feared Wei Yuan would refuse to take the bait.
Yet Yuan Qingyan never imagined Wei Yuan would be so audacious as to simply don the guise of horse bandits, openly raiding several redoubts and throwing the army into widespread panic. His own trusted confidant planted in the ranks, Li Shuangchen, had been slain outright in battle, and the bandits had put out word: whoever pledged diehard loyalty to Yuan Qingyan would be granted death.
After several such strikes, Wei Yuan was confident Yuan Qingyan had run out of tricks. As long as Yue Jinshan's main force stayed put, Yuan possessed no strength to harass the domain.
As for Western Jin mounting an all-out punitive campaign? After all, Wei Yuan now had friends at court!
With Qingming's perimeter stabilized, Wei Yuan mustered his forces, preparing to explore the grotto-heaven fragment. Over this period, he had already gathered all the relevant information he could find.
However, aristocratic grotto-heavens differed from sect grotto-heavens, as they were often shrouded in secrecy. Wei Yuan could find little documentation, knowing only that this grotto-heaven had once been held in great esteem and was vast in scale, linked to the mind-image worlds of three Scenery Command True Monarchs.
The Wuyu Clan seemed to have known something, shattering this grotto-heaven regardless of cost before calming down. Prior to its crash, the Xu family had likely evacuated all essential items, which was why they never bothered with the fragments afterward.
A shattered grotto-heaven was inherently perilous while offering pitifully few opportunities, so Wei Yuan had initially held little interest in them. Only destitute wandering rogue cultivators favored exploring such places, hoping to scavenge scraps slipped through the fingers of great sects.
Now, however, things were different. Whatever could catch the scent of Old Daoist Chuhe was undeniably of immense value.
The grotto-heaven fragment was not far from the domain. When a domain lord set out to explore, his retinue naturally looked nothing like a rogue cultivator's solitary trek. Wei Yuan first dispatched several hundred men to construct a pathway ahead, and only then did the expeditionary contingent officially depart.
To ensure total security for exploring the fragment, Wei Yuan brought a thousand warriors and a hundred Dao Foundation cultivators, intending to construct a base camp outside the grotto-heaven to serve as a rallying point, rest area, and supply base. According to records, this fragment was of no small size, potentially spanning a hundred li across.
Once all preparations were in place, Wei Yuan asked Ji Liuli to select an auspicious date and hour, and they set off for the grotto-heaven fragment.
The journey passed without incident, and they arrived smoothly at the grotto-heaven entrance.
The entrance lay within a small mountain valley. The moment Wei Yuan entered, an icy, eerie wind swept over him. The valley was gloomy and desolate, far colder than the lands outside. Outside, summer reigned year-round; inside the valley, it felt like late autumn.
The trees, flowers, and grasses within the valley exhibited obvious mutations. Many trees had withered leaves and twisted boughs studded with long spines like cacti. The flowers bloomed in dazzling yet uncanny hues, while the grasses grew thick and rank. Whenever small beasts like fawns or hares passed through, they were sliced until bloody, collapsing exhausted to the ground where blades of grass slowly curled over and enveloped them.
At the sight of such bizarre grass, Wei Yuan's curiosity was piqued, though he soon shook his head. Such grass might suffice against ordinary beasts, but elite Shaman warriors wore steel boots that would protect their feet completely.
Perfected Chuhe did possess several potent demonic flora in his grasp, but they were almost too potent—even the Daoist himself could not control them. Once planted, there was no telling what mutations they would undergo under Jia Wood Life-Mystic. Wei Yuan was not in dire straits yet and had no desire to take such a gamble.
While the weeds hunted small creatures, there were also rabbits whose bodies had swollen several times over, their fur dark gray and eyes blood-red, gnawing through blade-sharp giant grasses without the slightest effort. They carried quite the demeanor of rabbits blessed by Ephemeral Multitude.
Taking in the valley's environment, Wei Yuan ordered camp pitched at the entrance. The men unloaded pre-cut iron plates from the wagons, felled timber to erect palisades, and nailed the iron plates onto the wooden walls for defense.
While the camp was being erected, Wei Yuan accompanied the cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning deeper into the valley to scout the entrance.
Inside the valley lay a small lake, and the entrance to the grotto-heaven sat at the lakebed, appearing like a shimmering shadow. The party did not charge in heedlessly. Perfected Chuhe first sent his spirit serpent into the water to reconnoiter the grotto-heaven. A moment later, the spirit serpent returned, and the old Daoist said, "There is no real danger at the entrance, though certain spots are unstable and expose pockets of void. Caution is warranted."
Ji Liuli set up a formation on the spot to stabilize the threshold, while Wei Yuan summoned dozens of Dao Foundation cultivators to dig a canal right beside the lake, diverting the water into a neighboring depression.
An engineering feat that would have taken ordinary commoners months was completed by the Dao Foundation cultivators in a mere half day.
By the time all preparations were finished, it was already deep in the night. In no hurry, Wei Yuan ordered everyone to rest for the night so they would be fully rejuvenated at sunrise before proceeding with the exploration.
Apart from the standard preparations, Wei Yuan also casually arranged a karmic destiny angling formation fueled by the fragment's qi to see if he could hook anything.
Dawn had just broken, and Wei Yuan was leisurely finishing breakfast when a premonition struck him. Looking to the east, he saw a powerful aura flying rapidly toward them.
A fish actually took the bait?
Wei Yuan inwardly marveled at how effective the angling formation passed down by the Immortal Monarch was. Even though the array plate crafted by the Immortal Monarch had been drained of power, Wei Yuan currently held more than one kind of immortal spirit aura of comparable rank, making the effects of the deployed angling array just as extraordinary.
The newcomer was an elderly man in green scholar's robes. His features were refined, yet the slight droop at the corners of his eyes marked him as an austere, severe individual. From afar, he bellowed, "This is the domain of my Xu family! Who dares trespass?"
The shout reverberated into the distance, shaking the heavens and earth. In terms of sheer magical power, he was even superior to Perfected Chuhe. However, when Chuhe fought, one had to factor in his serpent and cat, leaving him with few rivals.
In the blink of an eye, the elder flew over the valley. Glancing down at the base camp already erected at the entrance, he froze, evidently surprised that they had mounted such a massive operation.
In the camp below, Wei Yuan gave Cui Yu a nudge. Cui Yu stepped forward and called out loudly, "Old sir, seeing as your cultivation is quite ordinary and you're well up in years, it must have been exhausting rushing all this way, wasn't it?"
The elder paused, his face turning an angry shade of livid. Forcing down his fury, he began, "This old man is Xu—"
Cui Yu cut him off: "We know your surname is Xu; that's plenty. Nobody cares what your name is. Oh, did you want to say something? Go on then, keep it brief."
The elder's brows bristled in wrath. "Ignorant brat, relying on petty verbal barbs! This old man—"
Wei Yuan interrupted him, turning around to call out, "Time's up, let's move out!"
The elder surnamed Xu exploded in rage, blocking their path directly ahead as he said grimly, "This is where my Xu family's grotto-heaven crashed! Every last item here belongs to our Xu family! It is not for scoundrels like you to touch! Scram, all of you!"
That final "scram" burst forth like thunder from his tongue, jolting those with weaker cultivation until their heads spun.
Wei Yuan sneered. "Your Xu family couldn't defend this place and abandoned it to the Shamans ages ago. Do you really have the nerve to call it Xu family land?"
The elder's expression darkened. "Once this place bore the name Xu, it belongs to the Xu family for ten thousand generations! Even if our Xu family couldn't hold it for a time, none of you may touch it! What, are you unconvinced?"
Wei Yuan broke into a sudden smile. "Convinced, of course I am. How could I not be?" Yet in his palm, a ring of light was slowly brightening and expanding.
The elder's gaze hardened, instantly drawn to the ring of light in Wei Yuan's hand. He never imagined that a mere Dao Foundation cultivator could cast a Dao art capable of striking trepidation into his heart.
With his attention entirely fixed on Wei Yuan, he failed to notice a bed crossbow being wheeled out within the camp. Cui Yu manned it personally, aiming at the elder and slamming down the trigger mechanism!
The massive bolt flew like lightning, arriving right before the elder in an instant!
The elder surnamed Xu was startled, shifting sideways with a light step to evade the bolt. Moving like the wind, he was clearly a man of formidable skill.
Yet the very moment the great bolt brushed past him, Cui Yu clenched his fist, and the bolt violently detonated. Caught completely off guard, the elder was blasted backward, riddled and bloodied by countless slicing fragments.
Shocked and enraged, he caught sight of Wei Yuan having already retreated far away. Just as an ominous dread struck him, an excruciating pang tore through his divine sense, nearly causing him to plunge headfirst to the ground. He had no choice but to trigger his life-saving technique. His figure flickered continuously, each flash covering several li, vanishing a thousand li away in the blink of an eye—so fast that even Wei Yuan could not pursue him.
Cui Yu beamed with joy. Five heavenly merits might not be much, but it was a start.
Chapter 276