By now, the secrets of the Xu family in this grotto-heaven were laid bare. Through the eyes of Xu Shiqi, Wei Yuan had also learned several hidden matters from the past.
When the grotto-heaven shattered all those years ago, this place had been buried deep underground, making relocation difficult. Once they had the infant born with a natural Thousand-Autumn Sword Body, the value of this site plummeted. The tens of thousands of boys and girls were merely living dead, and the Great Treasure Vase Undying Pure Land Reincarnation Array could not be reversed—reversal meant their souls would scatter to the winds—so the family could not move them either.
To the Xu family, a mere tens of thousands of lives were naturally expendable at any moment.
Later, for reasons unknown, the little girl's resentment manifested into a monster. Xu Shiqi's dharma remnant certainly had not been stationed within the stellar array from the start. Judging from the various arrangements the cloth-robed swordsman had left behind, he had at least recalled portions of his past life and possessed an autonomous intellect; there was no way he would continue throwing his life away for the Xu family.
With the monster born of the girl and Xu Shiqi's sword-wielding dharma remnant joined together, even a True Monarch would have had to retreat. What was more, with the grotto-heaven shattered and the void exposed, staying for any length of time risked attracting the terrifying horrors dwelling deep within the void, meaning a True Monarch could not linger here anyway.
Faced with all of this, the Xu family had no choice but to beat a hasty retreat, lacking even the time to destroy the subterranean altar.
One of the girl's lingering obsessions from her mortal life was the home she had shared with her mother—the very earthen house Wei Yuan had inspected earlier. The other was her final resting place. A yin spirit or ghostly creature born of obsessive resentment could not stray far from the site of its obsession, and thus she could not leave the grotto-heaven.
Yet whether from absorbing the power of the void or for some other reason, her strength was extraordinarily immense. An ordinary dharma idol who crossed her path would find death all but certain. Later, the Xu family had sent more people into the grotto-heaven fragment, perhaps seeking to check on the progress of its collapse, but the girl had slaughtered them all.
It was likely for this reason that the old man of the Xu family outside believed the fragment harbored a certain death trap, prompting him to find a way to goad Wei Yuan into entering.
Though a few details remained unclear, the fundamental truth was broadly understood.
The most precious treasure within the grotto-heaven fragment was the White Lotus of the Defiled Earth. Although it had only just begun to grow, it was already capable of extending one's lifespan by a century. And extending life was actually among its lesser functions.
This item could not be separated from that pool of foul, murky spring water. To take it out would require a vessel of immortal treasure grade. The customary approach was to leave it where it grew, constructing a new sealed medicinal garden on the spot to nurture its development.
Generally speaking, if a sect or great clan learned of a White Lotus of the Defiled Earth here, many would choose to salvage the grotto-heaven fragment. The common practice was to have a True Monarch link their inner mental realm with it, mending the grotto-heaven anew.
At this moment, however, there was an additional choice: transplanting the white lotus into Wei Yuan's Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, just like the celestial laurel tree and the Red Lotus Bodhi.
Wei Yuan would need to set aside a land of absolute yin within his Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains for the white lotus to continue growing. That was easy enough; the venom the girl had spewed in her monster form was of the utmost yin and absolute foulness, and several scorched patches of earth still remained in Wei Yuan's Dao Foundation. It was the perfect opportunity to shift them together and put them to use.
Transplanting an immortal plant demanded the utmost care. Wei Yuan also made clear that this white lotus belonged to everyone, and how to divide it could be discussed once they left. Furthermore, it had bloomed only once and was still far from full maturity. Splitting it now would be a reckless waste of heaven's gifts.
Wei Yuan possessed only a rudimentary grasp of medicinal theory, so Sun Yu and Perfected Chuhe joined hands to give him a crash course in medicine and array theory, allowing him to lay out an array within the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains to constrain the absolute yin power.
After having an ocean of knowledge crammed into his head, Wei Yuan learned that extending lifespan came with numerous caveats; a century was merely its theoretical efficacy. For instance, if a cultivator originally had a lifespan of a thousand years, but had consumed various longevity-burning immortal pills to force a breakthrough until only three hundred years remained, then taking this medicine would extend their life by only thirty years, not a hundred.
After a flurry of effort, Wei Yuan finally drew the White Lotus of the Defiled Earth into his Dao Foundation and settled it securely. The spot where it was planted lay hundreds of li from Jade Mountain, surrounded by a fully completed array. The formation was intricate and meticulous, light rippling across it in an extraordinary display of quality.
This was the immortal plant Wei Yuan had lavished the most care upon. Thinking back, when the celestial laurel tree had arrived, he had casually stuck it into the ground, even pulling it up from time to time to see if it had sprouted. When the Red Lotus Bodhi arrived, there had been a bit of ceremony, but not much; neither compared to the painstaking care given to this lotus. Wei Yuan could not help but reflect on whether he had treated his immortal plants too dismissively in the past. Perhaps he ought to treat them better from now on?
By this point, Sun Yu had swept his divine sense over all the youths and said, "A total of forty-seven thousand people, with physical ages ranging from twelve to fifteen. Still, there will be plenty to teach them in the days ahead."
Sun Yu had questioned several of the boys and girls. They had lived together since childhood, spending their first few years learning to read and cultivating, before being sent underground after rudimentary Body Tempering. From that point on, they knew nothing.
They were utterly ignorant of worldly affairs and had no sense of modesty, viewing complete nudity as entirely natural, while showing immense curiosity toward everyone else's clothing. Aside from that, they felt an instinctive dependence on and obedience toward Wei Yuan. In the years before losing their memories, they had long since learned absolute submission; any peer who dared resist had been severely punished, beaten, or had vanished without a trace.
In Wei Yuan, they sensed a trembling, terrifying power that left them utterly incapable of harboring thoughts of defiance.
Looking upon these tens of thousands of youths, Wei Yuan felt immense pressure. He decided that once he returned, he would exchange for a batch of books regarding karma to understand precisely what karmic ties he was shouldering, what he could and could not do, and ideally cultivate a secret karmic art or two just in case.
Every single boy and girl had been reincarnated through Wei Yuan's Dao Foundation, giving him an intimate knowledge of their soul bodies. He promptly picked out forty-seven whose soul bodies were distinctly powerful, placing each in charge of a hundred-person cohort. Lacking the time to name them, Wei Yuan assigned them numbers, from Wei One to Wei Forty-Seven.
Once the teams were roughly organized, their first task was dismantling and excavating. Everything on the plaza that could be taken was to be stripped away. The plaza floor was paved with cyan jade ice stone, a mid-grade array material. With so many hands available, Wei Yuan had them pry up every last cyan jade ice brick and haul them out piece by piece.
Fortunately, Wei Yuan had brought a thousand cultivators and prepared vast stores of tools. He had intended from the start to strip the grotto-heaven bare; now, the array that the Xu family had spent at least a century constructing lay completely intact, ready to be repurposed.
Upon emerging from the grotto-heaven fragment, Wei Yuan set several ambushes around the entrance. Sure enough, there were quite a few Xu family scouts. After killing over a dozen and capturing five or six, the mountain valley was quieted.
The environmental anomalies within the small valley had all stemmed from the aura leaking out of the grotto-heaven. Now that the yin qi was cut off, the valley would naturally return to its original state over time.
Dismantling the grotto-heaven was a gargantuan undertaking. Wei Yuan urgently mobilized ten thousand people to widen the roads first, then dig waterways to connect the scattered pools and lakes so that flat-bottomed boats could navigate them.
These boats drew only three feet of water and could carry a substantial load. Even so, a single cyan jade ice brick weighed three to four hundred jin, so a boat could hold only a few. Transporting everything back to the domain would likely take months.
For seven or eight full days, the nearly fifty thousand youths toiled before prying up every brick on the plaza, though hauling them out remained a massive project.
After conferring with Yu Zhizhuo, Wei Yuan substituted several thousand commoners for the reborn youths and prepared to lead them back to the domain first. Yu Zhizhuo left a junior brother behind to oversee the site. Tracks would next need to be laid in the inclined shafts and mine carts installed; without disciples from the Hall of Heavenly Craft directing the work, it could not be done.
Using mine carts to transport the cyan jade ice bricks would dramatically increase efficiency, exceeding pure manual labor by dozens of times.
Thus, on the ninth day after entering the grotto-heaven fragment, Wei Yuan set out with the tens of thousands of youths, heading back toward the domain.
This was their first time seeing the world outside the grotto-heaven, and they were intensely curious about everything. Yet obedience remained paramount; not a word was spoken as they hurried along.
After walking a distance, Wei Yuan suddenly looked back at the still gloomy valley.
A family had once lived there. They could have lived in harmony, enjoying a plain, peaceful life, yet they had met with disaster and suffered a lifetime of bitterness.
If Xu Shiqi had not been born with innate wisdom, if he had not been the reincarnation of some great figure, perhaps he would never have experienced any of this. Just as the history books often said: A commoner is guiltless, but treasuring jade becomes his crime.
Yet thinking up to this point, Wei Yuan felt that the historians were talking utter nonsense. Why was the commoner who held the jade guilty? Shouldn't the guilty ones be those who sought to steal his jade? It was only because those thieves held the power to write history that they inverted right and wrong, always seeking, overtly and subtly, to make it seem like the commoner's fault.
Looking back at the long column of people following him, Wei Yuan suddenly felt that only when an ordinary man could hold a precious jade and openly display it, trade it, and exchange it for what he needed without fear of tyranny and rapacious plunder—only then would the world truly be a flourishing age of beauty!
In the valley, within the grotto-heaven, the little girl had been laid to rest once more. Xu Shiqi's physical body was destroyed, leaving only a few remains upon the greatsword and its hilt. The demon corpse upon the lotus pillar had also been taken down, melted to ash by Perfected Chuhe's true fire, and buried alongside Xu Shiqi's relics and the girl's remains.
When the demon corpse was taken down, that body—once indestructible through countless tribulations—suddenly dissolved upon touching the fire, all obsessive resentment dispersing completely. At that moment, Wei Yuan's body and primordial spirit had both felt a weight lift, resolving a portion of the karmic burden.
The family was finally reunited. In a few more days, the grotto-heaven fragment would collapse, and they would be gone forever.
Wei Yuan wished only that they would never enter the cycle of reincarnation again.
Every one of the reborn youths possessed a cultivation at the perfection of Muscle and Sinew Tempering. In just half a day, they covered over a hundred li and entered the domain.
Wei Yuan had already selected a site near the northern flank of the main peak, intending to build a new city exclusively for them to inhabit. By Wei Yuan's estimate, it would take at least a year or two for them to acquire enough knowledge to interact with outsiders, at which point they could slowly integrate into human society.
Over the next few days, Wei Yuan worked so relentlessly it felt as though a layer of his skin had been stripped away.
Tending to the food, drink, and daily needs of tens of thousands of people meant that even the smallest matter became immense when multiplied by such numbers. Wei Yuan worked without closing his eyes once. Though a Dao Foundation cultivator had no need for sleep, meditation was still necessary to replenish mental vigor, and Wei Yuan did not even have time to meditate.
Yet after all that toil, as Wei Yuan walked through the new city, he saw that every youth now had at least an outer robe to wear, a dining hall stood every short distance, and every neighborhood block had at least two latrines.
For the latrines, he had Xiaoyu to thank. The city planning guidelines Xiaoyu had left behind devoted an entire chapter to latrines: where to build them, how to construct them, and how many people each should serve, all laid out in meticulous detail.
There had not been time to erect proper houses in the city; everything consisted of wooden sheds housing communal bunks. The youths who had already gone to rest lay in neat, orderly rows, sleeping as though arranged in military formation.
At this moment, the evening glow filled the sky, the dying light of the sunset painting the world in crimson. Smoke from cooking fires rose everywhere in the city; though rustic, it brimmed with vibrant life.
Tomorrow, this city would be better, and the Qingming Domain would be better still.
Wei Yuan let out a long breath, his taut nerves finally relaxing.
Right at that moment, the White Lotus of the Defiled Earth stirred, unfurling another petal as a wisp of clear qi soared upward.
The Qingming Domain suddenly trembled. Thunder rolled out of a clear sky, and wild winds surged. The origin qi of heaven and earth across several hundred li materialized, converging toward the heart of the domain. In the blink of an eye, a tempest formed in the skies above Qingming!
The Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains shook. Centered around Jade Mountain, the earth surged and churned, vast expanses of fertile soil emerging and rolling outward. The former barren wastelands transformed into fertile plains teeming with boundless vitality. Even without spiritual plants, threads of spiritual energy arose naturally from the rich soil, and every spiritual plant experienced varying degrees of growth.
The young shoot atop Jade Mountain sprouted new branches and leaves, beginning to take on the appearance of a small sapling. Yet all its branches and leaves were identical; it remained a One-Wondrous Treasure Tree.
The celestial laurel tree stood unmoved in the tempest, but after holding out for only a moment, its bark split open, and it was forced to send forth a new branch. A wisp of pale red sword qi drifted between its leaves.
The Red Lotus Bodhi remained calm and steady, merely replacing its fallen leaf without drawing in anything more.
As the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains continually absorbed the origin qi of heaven and earth, Wei Yuan's primordial spirit gradually grew translucent and complete. After weathering so much, Wei Yuan finally achieved Foundation Solidification perfection, stepping into the middle stage of the Dao Foundation.
Within Jade Mountain, above the black pool, the withered tree grew slightly more, and the door grew larger. At that moment, Wei Yuan suddenly understood the meaning of the words inscribed upon the door:
Transmigration Across the Myriad Realms.
Chapter 290