They're All Pregnant!

It happened all at once. For most of the past dozen days the boys and girls had faced one another naked, and had even slept all jumbled together, yet there had not been the slightest stir. Wei Yuan had thought that they not only lacked any notion of the proper distance between men and women, but felt nothing toward yin-yang matters either. Otherwise, among mortals, plenty married and had children at fourteen or fifteen. These boys and girls needed no knowledge. So long as their bodies still had instinct, there ought to have been a response. What with so much else to deal with, even now each of the boys and girls still had only a single short robe, without so much as an undergarment. Even those clothes had been scraped together however they could. Otherwise, for tens of thousands of garments, where would the cloth have come from? And so Wei Yuan had not thought anything would come of it. But he was careless for a moment, and that night something suddenly happened. The origins of these boys and girls were uncanny. The four-character judgment Sun Yu had spoken—"same kind, same origin"—now echoed again and again in Wei Yuan's mind, growing ever louder, booming like thunder. At this, Wei Yuan instead grew calm. He rapidly inspected the sheds one by one, letting not a single one slip past. He had to grasp the situation first. Only then could he know what ought to be done. Some of the boys and girls still bore clear traces of activity on their bodies. Fortunately, those who bore such traces were actually not many. What was uncanny was that, though they were in the very same great shed, some of the boys and girls had already finished, while most of the others sharing the room remained utterly unmoved. They neither joined in nor started anything of their own, as if what the companions beside them were doing had nothing at all to do with themselves. Wei Yuan moved like lightning. For each shed he needed only to step inside and look once. A sweep of his divine sense took in the whole of it, and then he was on to the next. According to the secret manuals he had only just exchanged for, heaven and earth cared nothing for human ethical relations. So-called human ethics were nothing more than what came after the sages fixed the rites and established virtue. In high antiquity there had been no such things as rites and laws at all, and the human race had flourished all the same. This account in the classics was fundamentally at odds with Confucianism, but the Palace of Grand Beginning would never care what Confucian scholars said, which was why its relations with the Four Sages Academy had never been very good. Even if these boys and girls truly were the closest of blood kin, whatever they did among themselves, heaven and earth would make no response. But the cultivation world had long known that if bloodlines were too close, a child born of them might be a genius, yet in all likelihood would come out with all manner of problems. Among hereditary houses great and small, quite a few advocated marrying within the clan, so that blood would not flow outward—especially certain small families that claimed their ancestors had produced immortals or True Monarchs. They gambled on that faint, illusory chance, hoping to reclaim their forebears' glory. Such people were actually not few. But this was not a choice Wei Yuan could make. If a genius were born, so be it. But those children who came out flawed would most likely grow resentful in time, and that would be Wei Yuan's karmic sin. Besides, nothing had happened through all that long stretch of time, only to happen on this very night. Wei Yuan also suspected that the Xu family might have planted some other hidden measure on these people. He had to get to the bottom of it. By now the cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning had been alarmed as well, and every one of them had come. Once they learned what had happened, their faces were grave, and they swiftly counted and investigated the condition of all the people. Off in the distance, Ren Suxing and the others had also sensed something and wanted to come see, but the domain guards stopped them. At first they even quarreled a little with the guards. As Domain Lord, Wei Yuan naturally perceived the disturbance over there. But his mood was foul just then, and he wanted no one else adding to the mess, so he ordered the guards not to let them take a single step out of the small town, and not to shrink from force if it came to that. When he had finished inspecting the whole city, Wei Yuan's face was already livid. That some yin-yang contact had occurred among the boys and girls was not the worst of it. When the change struck, some of the guards, not knowing what was happening, saw the boys and girls before them embracing. Lust surged in them all at once, and they tried to lay hands on the girls nearby. The girls were muddled and unknowing. They did not understand how to refuse or resist, and the men had their way. Wei Yuan moved extremely fast. The guards had hurriedly set their clothes to rights, but they had no time to clear away the traces. Wei Yuan also probed the girls' primordial spirits directly, and so knew the matter with perfect clarity. In the blink of an eye he had seized all eleven guards who had used the chaos to rape. These guards were mostly locals of the Western Regions. The trust they held had been won battle by battle. But in their bones they were still wild and intractable, with little self-command. Temptation before them, they cast military discipline and Wei Yuan's orders entirely behind them. By now the city was bright with lamplight, and every boy and girl stood where they were, unmoving, like figures of clay and carvings of wood. There was not the slightest ripple in Wei Yuan's heart as he turned over every possible consequence of the whole affair. These boys and girls were very likely blood descendants of Xu Shiqi, and Xu Wangu's blood flowed in them as well—typical descendants of an Immortal Monarch. The girls the guards had defiled were ignorant now, but a day would come when they understood what had happened. To dishonor the descendants of an Immortal Monarch, when that Immortal Monarch had not fallen, was a great crime throughout the world of immortal cultivation. An Immortal Monarch was an Immortal Monarch. His very being had already merged with heavenly principle and the Great Dao. Whatever Xu Wangu's reputation, whatever he had done, so long as he still occupied an immortal's seat, he was in part the Heavenly Dao incarnate. If his descendants were dishonored like this and Xu Wangu came to know of it, even should he split Qingming with a single bolt of lightning, the Palace of Grand Beginning would have nothing it could say. On the personal side, Wei Yuan had fought the cloth-robed swordsman Xu Shiqi with all his strength in a battle to the death, had seen the course of his life, and had received his sword transmission. Deep down, he already regarded the man as half a friend. And now daughters of his friend's line had been dishonored right under his eyes. However deep Wei Yuan's reserve, he found it hard at this moment to press his anger down. While Wei Yuan was thinking with a cold face, the guard commander came over, hemming and hawing, and paid his respects. Wei Yuan remembered this commander. He had been among the first people Yun Feifei recruited back, and that he had lived until now was no easy thing. Of the cultivators who had entered Qingming at the same time as he, only two or three in ten remained. After battle upon bloody battle, his cultivation had also risen to the late stage of Dao Foundation. He counted as a mainstay of the domain. The commander came before Wei Yuan and said quietly, "Domain Lord, they were only muddled for a moment. They made a small mistake. Please calm your anger. When we go back, I will certainly punish them severely!" "Oh?" Wei Yuan looked at him without expression, and looked until cold sweat slowly broke out on the man and he dared not meet Wei Yuan's eyes. Wei Yuan said slowly, "You'll punish them when you go back?" The cultivator said in a rush, "Yes, yes, I'll punish them harshly! Twenty lashes at the least—no, fifty! I'll see to it they can't get out of bed for seven days!" Wei Yuan's face did not change. "What are they to you?" "We only met when we entered Qingming. Brothers who've fought shoulder to shoulder all along. This time they were just muddled for a moment..." Wei Yuan cut him off. "Is this guard company yours?" Cold sweat came over the commander at once. He hurried to say, "Of course not. We only share a little fellowship from the battlefield." Wei Yuan did not press him further. He said, "The military code is written plain and clear: he who abandons his post is beheaded; he who rapes or abuses civilians is beheaded. The two crimes are punished together. Is there any question?" The commander said hastily, "My lord! These are all brothers who have risked life and death for you!" Wei Yuan suddenly seized him and hauled him up, snarling, "If you had put a little more care into watching them, they would not have broken military law, and they would not have to die!" With a bang, Wei Yuan slammed the commander to the ground, then said, "The facts are certain. The evidence is ironclad. Behead them!" The cultivators standing behind the eleven guards brought their long blades down, and the heads fell. A light flashed in Ji Liuli's hand as she quietly drew the souls of the eleven into the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda. Her movements were quick and light. Aside from Zhang Sheng and Wei Yuan, almost no one noticed. Wei Yuan looked at the eleven corpses, closed his eyes, and after a moment opened them again. "Bury them. Compensate their families according to precedent. Furthermore, if anyone dares leak what happened tonight, execute him on the spot, with no pardon! In addition, every commander who failed to restrain his men and let discipline go slack is stripped of office, assigned to the cavalry, and will start over as a common soldier. Only after they have earned sufficient military merit may they resume their former posts." This string of thunderous measures left everyone too afraid to make a sound. More than ten commanders, high and low, took off their helmets, left with their heads hanging, and went to report at the cavalry camp. From then on, from the highest to the lowest, everyone understood that these boys and girls were Wei Yuan's forbidden ground. No one was permitted to reach so much as a claw toward them. After that, Wei Yuan separated male from female and housed the boys and girls apart. At the same time he set a prohibition in each of their primordial spirits: without permission, they were not to engage in yin-yang matters again. By the time everything had settled, the sky was already bright. Wei Yuan called Cui Yu aside and said, "In a little while it will be half a year. When the time comes, keep an eye out. Anyone who has led the same unit for half a year, move him to a different post. The commanders removed tonight, if they later earn military merit and are restored to their offices, must also be given a different unit." Cui Yu nodded and made a note of it. Once all had been arranged, the cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning gathered again to discuss the incident. Before everyone, eleven points of light appeared in Ji Liuli's hand. "I've bound these souls," she said. "Whoever isn't afraid of karmic sin, erase them." Wei Yuan did not quite understand, and looked to Ji Liuli inquiringly. Ji Liuli shot him a glare. "The descendants of an immortal are bound to you by karma. These men dishonored them. That is an extremely strong karmic tie. Not even reincarnation can erase it. You think killing them ends the matter? The moment some high cultivator hooks them out of the cycle of reincarnation, first, he can use this to convict you; second, he can lay any number of curses through this karma. You yourself are not afraid, but the people around you are the ones who will suffer." Wei Yuan had not expected so many further entanglements. But karma, karmic luck, and reincarnation were all uncanny and unfathomable, with no telling how many arts lay hidden in them. In such things he was naturally no match for Ji Liuli. Then Sun Yu said with perfect calm, "I'll do it. A bit of karma like this—I need only save a few more people, and it will cancel out." Yu Zhizhuo was rather taken aback. "That can be offset?" "Others can't. But my Hall of Xuanming has its own secret art for offsetting it." Sun Yu reached out, drew the eleven souls over, and took them into his pill furnace. A wisp of blue smoke spurted from the small hole in the lid. Then Wei Yuan sensed a shadow appear at the center of Sun Yu's brow. But wave after wave of faint, clear light immediately welled up over Sun Yu, washing through him again and again. All the shadows gradually faded, and he was clean and bright once more, righteousness in his every bearing. For several days after, all was as usual, yet a faint unease never quite left Wei Yuan. That afternoon, Sun Yu came hurrying in, found Wei Yuan, and said, "Something's wrong! I just checked and found that every girl who had intercourse a few days ago—every one of them is pregnant!" "What?" Wei Yuan was badly startled. Sun Yu's face was grave. "A little over a thousand coupled that night. Aside from those who were with the eleven guards, every one of the rest is with child!"