The swift fall of a Great Shaman struck terror into the hearts of the remaining Great Shamans, leaving them holding nothing back.
A mist of blood erupted from one Great Shaman, instantly engulfing Perfected Chuhe and corroding him until he wailed in pain. The snake clashed head-on with its opponent; both dharma bodies suffered damage, and that Great Shaman seized the opening to break away.
The cat moved like lightning, dodging its foe's all-out blow while retaliating with two swift swipes of its claws, scratching that Great Shaman right back to where it had started.
Wei Yuan, having driven off Shui, suddenly doubled back. Shui instantly sensed disaster and moved to turn and fight, but Wei Yuan was already back within his domain, his flight speed spiking dramatically.
Guided by combat instinct, Wei Yuan paid no heed to Perfected Chuhe, whose aura was plummeting, and pounced instead upon the Great Shaman locked in combat with the cat.
That Great Shaman was already at a disadvantage. It possessed an enormous frame and was neither particularly fast nor agile. Seeing Wei Yuan charge in, it panicked. Yet just as it tried to flee, four immortal swords descended around it. Without coordinating, Zhang Sheng and Wei Yuan had both chosen to eliminate the weakest first.
Heavy insect-like chitin covered this Great Shaman from head to toe, granting it formidable defense and tremendous vitality. Even when Zhang Sheng's four swords struck together, they only sheared away half its life force.
The cat's all-out claw strikes had barely managed to tear open the carapace.
Wei Yuan drew the Crimson Night Immortal-Slaying Sword, the slender immortal blade suddenly feeling as heavy as ten thousand jun in his grip! Gripping the sword in a reverse hold, Wei Yuan plunged it into the empty void before him like thrusting down a mountain peak.
Alarm blared in the Great Shaman's mind as if about to explode. It tried desperately to flee, yet as Wei Yuan's immortal sword descended, its body grew heavier and heavier, feeling in the blink of an eye as though bearing a boulder weighing hundreds of thousands of jin upon its back.
The Crimson Night Immortal-Slaying Sword was finally thrust squarely into the void. Wei Yuan flicked the blade with a finger, unleashing End of Ten Thousand Generations for the very first time.
An invisible sword intent engulfed the Great Shaman, instantly spider-webbing its entire carapace with fine fissures. And this was not merely on the surface—its interior was likewise riddled with cracks, shattered into utter ruin!
Having heavily battered the Great Shaman with merely a superficial grasp of End of Ten Thousand Generations, Wei Yuan brought forth Spotless Pure Land. With a blast from the spear-gun, he blasted straight through the Great Shaman, tearing a gaping hole through its midsection.
Seeing the Great Shaman on the verge of death, Wei Yuan grabbed it and hurled it with all his might toward the Cui family crowd.
However, midway through the air, the Great Shaman's body convulsed violently, shifting its trajectory slightly so that it crashed squarely into the midst of the Cui family group. Terrified, the dandies scurried about like frightened chickens and panicked hogs, every scrap of Daoist magic thrown completely to the wind.
Yet after taking blow after crushing blow, the Great Shaman's life had already been a candle in the wind, and the killing power of End of Ten Thousand Generations was beyond imagination; before even hitting the ground, it had breathed its last.
Having no time to regret the unsold heavenly merits, Wei Yuan flew at full speed toward the rear of Shaman City, ordering two elite divisions of ten thousand men on the left and right flanks to swing around behind the city and cut off the Shamans' retreat.
Wei Yuan flew above their rendezvous point, Spotless Pure Land in hand, facing off against the three Great Shamans. Though it was one against three, Wei Yuan showed not the slightest fear. He simply stayed within the domain, and the three Great Shamans did not dare step inside.
With no Great Shamans left in Shaman City, the defenders were leaderless. Thus, the array railguns resumed their barrage, now loaded entirely with canisters packed full of gunpowder.
Explosions rocked Shaman City without end. Bricks, timber, and the corpses of Shamans flew in all directions, as if the end of the world had arrived.
This round of shelling focused on the city walls. Every small steel canister was controlled by a cultivator, landing with pinpoint accuracy, detonating wherever the crowds were thickest. The bombardments pounded the Shamans atop the walls so relentlessly they could not even raise their heads, leaving casualties scattered everywhere.
Amid the fierce bombardment, three elite human forces of ten thousand men each began to approach the city walls. The Shamans on the walls were blown to pieces, and few arrows fell in return.
In the blink of an eye, the domain troops closed to within a dozen zhang. First they traded fire with any Shamans daring to show their heads atop the wall, blasting away all the archers. Then numerous warriors leapt into the air, vaulting straight onto the multi-zhang-high battlements!
Now that Shaman City was also within the domain, all the besieging warriors could be empowered by Ephemeral Multitude. In an instant, their strength skyrocketed, each resembling a divine fiend.
Among the warriors scaling the walls were numerous Dao Foundation cultivators. Empowered by Ephemeral Multitude, even those who had only cultivated the Immortal Sword · False Sun slaughtered the Body Casting Shamans with absolute ease.
Without any Great Shamans to hold the line, the moment Perfected Chuhe flew above the battlements and unleashed the unbridled pressure of a True Person of the Dharma Idol realm, the Shamans' morale finally collapsed. They broke into a chaotic rout. Many fled toward the west gate, while physically robust Shamans simply leaped from the walls, escaping into the wilderness.
Soon, the three besieging armies seized their respective gates and began clearing out the Shamans inside the city.
Meanwhile, the retreat route of the Shamans fleeing through the west gate had already been cut off by the twenty thousand elites led personally by Wei Yuan.
The bloody battle raged from midday until dusk, finally concluding with a massive number of Shamans escaping into the wilderness.
In this battle, over sixty thousand Shamans were slain, more than half cut down by the saturation shelling; fewer than half truly died beneath blades, spears, and Daoist arts.
In addition, one hundred and ten thousand Shamans were captured, mostly civilians. Regrettably, over a hundred thousand Shamans still managed to flee into the wilds. Wei Yuan pursued them only to the edge of the domain before breaking off. Beyond the domain lay the Wu domain, where Ephemeral Multitude could not be used. With one side diminished and the other bolstered, the humans would become the disadvantaged party; pursuing further would be exceedingly hazardous.
The three Great Shamans, seeing that the situation was unsalvageable, had long since retreated.
Wei Yuan led his forces back into Shaman City, ordering the troops to mop up the remaining enemy within while he climbed atop the great altar at the heart of the city.
Having been built up over several months, the city's great altar was of considerable scale—a hundred zhang across and fifty zhang high. Directly north of the altar stood an imposing grand temple. Combat inside the temple had not yet ended; quite a few Shaman Scholars and their personal deathsworn guards were holed up within.
Almost all the disciples of Sky Azure Hall were fighting in the temple at this moment. Leading hundreds of Dao Foundation cultivators, they fought room by room, driving the remnants to the back of the temple and wiping them out entirely.
When it came to slaughter, the disciples of Sky Azure Hall were formidable indeed, naturally inclined toward battle. Assaulting the temple was genuinely perilous; by the time the fighting concluded, nearly every disciple of Sky Azure Hall bore wounds, and one of them had even had an arm incinerated by Shaman magic.
A limb destroyed by Shaman magic was truly ruined; even if regenerated later through Daoist arts, it would have to be cultivated anew.
With only sporadic skirmishes remaining in the city, Wei Yuan stood at the center of the altar. Before him lay a massive formation array whose lines were cast from metal. In the center of the array was a hole, embedded with a segment of flesh resembling a lizard's tail that squirmed incessantly, struggling to crawl out.
"Aowu!" The mountain-sized giant cat descended from the heavens and expressed its opinion: braised.
The snake appeared immediately after, insisting on slicing it to eat raw with dipping sauce, offering sound justification: good ingredients ought to be savored in their original flavor.
Landing beside them, Perfected Chuhe suggested eating half raw and braising the other half, as indecisive as ever.
This segment of flesh was a severed piece left behind by Great Shaman Shui, a full half-zhang in diameter, with no telling how much more remained inside the altar. Great Shaman Shui's dharma body was like a colossal serpent; upon seeing Wei Yuan earlier, it had desperately pulled out over a dozen zhang, but finding itself out of time to escape, it had ruthlessly severed the remainder and fled.
Wei Yuan summoned several cultivators who hooked into the flesh with massive gaffs and hauled it out bit by bit—it was five zhang long!
When it came to processing the flesh of a Great Shaman, none could surpass Old Daoist Chuhe and Sun Yu of the Hall of Xuanming. Wei Yuan handed the segment over to Chuhe, then gripped the cast-bronze ring set into the formation patterns on the ground. Taking a deep breath and shouting with exertion, he hoisted up the ten-thousand-jin array core, revealing an entrance leading downward.
The altar was the most sacred sanctum of the Shamans, forbidden to commoners. Only Great Shamans and a handful of Shaman Scholars of noble lineage were permitted entry into its interior.
Wei Yuan stepped into the entrance and followed the stairs downward. This was the first time he had captured a large altar intact.
The altar's interior was hollow. Along its walls hung numerous sconces lit by magic power, bathing the interior in bright light. Vertical array lines ran along the four walls, matching the patterns etched into the floor. This cagelike three-dimensional formation structure was unique to the Shamans. The human race had long tried to imitate it without success, capable only of fashioning crude three-dimensional formations.
Multiple grooves were carved into the floor, channeling blood into a central pool of blood. In the center of the blood pool grew a blood lotus, which had already sprouted several lotus leaves.
Rows of sacrificial tables lined the altar's walls. These tables automatically drew blood from the blood pool, constantly transforming and dispersing it into heaven and earth, which then repaid sacrificial power to be stored within the altar's formation array.
Flicking his fingers, Wei Yuan shot out water-blade orbs one after another, destroying the sacrificial tables. The entire altar let out a low drone and finally ground to a halt.
As the altar stopped, countless human bones floated up from the blood pool, and the surging blood aura was so dense it seemed almost tangible. A tremendous deluge of resentful qi emerged, gradually dissipating into heaven and earth.
Having disposed of the sacrificial tables, Wei Yuan invited Perfected Chuhe inside to ask what the blood lotus in the pool was.
The moment Perfected Chuhe laid eyes on the blood lotus, his feet froze in place.
He walked a circle around the blood pool and said, "This should be a Mara Blood Lotus. It grows where evil and wickedness run deepest, where murderous intent breeds, yet it can absorb and release the purest origin qi of heaven and earth. Look!"
Perfected Chuhe patted the bloody water with his hand, immediately stirring a ring of ripples. As the pool rippled, a vicious aura erupted from the water, only to be completely absorbed by the blood lotus's leaves, which then exuded wisps of origin qi.
"In the past, whenever we obtained a blood lotus, we would often place it in perilous lands and barren dead zones. After several hundred years, the dead zone could slowly transform into a blessed land or treasure ground. Aside from that, the Great Treasure Radiance Pure Land has a Merit Lotus Pond where this sort of blood lotus can be planted to accumulate blessing and turn misfortune into good luck. This Mara Blood Lotus is truly a rare treasure for transmuting karmic luck!"
"Why do the Shamans plant it?" Wei Yuan asked. From its effects, the Mara Blood Lotus seemed beneficial only to humans.
"The Shamans sacrifice humans to heaven, generating resentful qi of no small order. Over time, the Great Shamans presiding over the sacrifices become laden with karma, encountering extra perils whenever attempting to break through bottlenecks. The blood lotus can convert resentful qi and blood qi into origin qi of heaven and earth, making it indispensable for any great Shaman altar. Hehe, this is a top-grade spiritual plant; after five hundred years of cultivation, it will have a chance to advance into an immortal plant. I shall harvest it shortly and transplant it to Qingming. I think that plot of land between Sun Yu's courtyard and the mortuary ground looks quite suitable—plenty of resentful qi. It only requires a small amount of Nether Soil, so keep an eye out for that, Martial Nephew."
"Then I shall trouble you, Perfected."
With the altar destroyed, the Shamans throughout the city instantly weakened by a whole grade, making the mop-up operations proceed very smoothly. Just then, Ren Suxing hurried over. Hesitating for a moment upon seeing Wei Yuan, he still bowed and said, "We have discovered a camp holding sacrificial offerings. We request the Domain Lord come and decide their fate."
Although Ren Suxing's bow was still stiff and reluctant, it was already worlds apart from when he first arrived. Wei Yuan followed him to a camp in the city's northwestern corner. The camp had stone walls, and inside were imprisoned over ten thousand people!
All of them were quite young, yet tall and robust. They looked like siblings born of the same parents, their appearances bearing striking resemblances to one another.
At a glance, Wei Yuan knew these were sacrificial offerings bred by the Shamans themselves. This batch was of remarkably high quality, every one of them possessing the strength of Blood Merging perfection, a full tier higher in overall capability than the youths Wei Yuan had recruited from the grotto-heavens.
When Wei Yuan walked into the courtyard, all the human sacrifices turned their heads to look at him, their expressions placid. They seemed oblivious to fear or terror, nor did they show any curiosity; they simply stayed there in silence.
"Martial Uncle Sun, can these people be saved?" Wei Yuan asked.
Sun Yu pulled over a tall boy, examined him all over, then produced a strip of paper, having him hold it in his mouth before taking it out a moment later.
Checking the color on the paper slip, Sun Yu said, "Just as I thought. Though they look tall, they are actually not even ten years old, right when their vitality and soul power are at their peak. This batch is composed of top-grade sacrifices, so the Shamans fed them high-grade medicines. Their souls and intellect suffered no damage; with a period of recuperation, their emotions can be restored."
"Can they fight?" Wei Yuan asked.
"Not right now. They have no emotions, no sense of fear, not even basic instincts. If sent to battle, casualties would be catastrophic, far outweighing the gains. But doing labor won't be an issue."
"That's good," Wei Yuan nodded.
Shaman City had been constructed to accommodate six hundred thousand civilians. A metropolis of such size had already taken shape, and clearing remnants, cataloging supplies, and the like would take several days. Whether to preserve or raze the city also demanded careful deliberation.
Leaving behind forces to handle the aftermath, Wei Yuan returned to the domain first.
Just as he flew out of Shaman City, Wei Yuan's sea of consciousness suddenly shuddered. Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains gushed with a wave of clear qi that merged into the dark red firmament!
A fine drizzle of spiritual rain then fell from the sky. Life stirred across the earth as countless green sprouts poked through, sprouts that had no counterpart in the physical domain. As the spiritual rain fell continuously, the color of the firmament lightened slightly, shifting from dark red to pale red.
Capturing a city of three hundred thousand Shamans and destroying the central altar was a tremendous victory even by the standards of all Western Jin, allowing a portion of the state fortune to be refined.
After refining the state fortune, Wei Yuan felt the rate at which Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains cycled origin qi quicken once more. Originally, his progress had been four slots per year; after first acquiring state fortune, it had risen to five slots, and now it stood at five and a half. Factoring in the spiritual qi contributed by various spiritual plants as they matured, Wei Yuan now needed only ten years to finish cultivating the middle stage of the Dao Foundation.
Chapter 330