Once the iron ring's memories had been absorbed, it lost all its mystical nature and turned into an ordinary iron hoop.
Wei Yuan set the matter aside for the moment, picking up the shattered fragments of the idol one by one and storing them into Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains.
Even if the memories inside the ring were real, they had taken place an immense amount of time ago; there was no telling how much had changed since then. That young Liao man had claimed everything was surely reduced to dust and ashes. What was more likely was that the so-called memories were merely an illusion, perhaps even a deception.
Without any further clues, Wei Yuan had no intention of getting bogged down in speculation. For now, it was better to collect the idol. The blood clay from which it was sculpted held astonishing spirituality. The Red Lotus Bodhi, the Bingli Divine Wood, and the aquatic immortal plant were all stirring with renewed vitality. In turn, his Dao Foundation's spirituality had strengthened, multiplying the Dao power at his disposal.
Wei Yuan had already expended the majority of his flying swords, and acquiring the idol was a massive gain in itself for this expedition. Standing where he was, he could already perceive a faint, terrifying presence lurking deeper below—one far surpassing the level of a dharma idol.
Unwilling to take unnecessary risks, he prepared to return to the surface, deciding his next move only after replenishing his store of flying swords. The presence deep underground was nowhere near something he could contend with right now. His sole plan was to sweep the surrounding area, harvesting more ordinary undead monsters to elevate his Dao Foundation's spirituality.
The Revival of spirituality followed clear standards. If the newly awakened spirituality remained merely at the level of a Dao Foundation, one stood little hope of manifesting a dharma idol. Only when spirituality reached the level of a dharma idol could a true dharma idol be smoothly nurtured and born. Just as a chicken egg could never hatch a phoenix, lacking either the quality or quantity of spirituality made it difficult to birth a dharma idol.
In truth, only a rare few immortal foundations could generate spirituality at the dharma idol level. The vast majority of cultivators fell somewhere between Dao Foundation and dharma idol, and whether one could ultimately achieve a dharma idol depended heavily on karmic luck and fortune.
Wei Yuan's three Dao Foundation warriors would normally have been classified as spirituality at the Dao Foundation level. However, there were three of them rather than one, and more would surely follow in the future. The sheer quantity of spirituality was a critical factor as well. Generally, the Palace of Grand Beginning held that ten Dao Foundation-level spiritualities could roughly equate to the baseline threshold of a dharma idol. Nevertheless, throughout history, cultivators who managed to attain a dharma idol purely by stacking Dao Foundation spiritualities were exceedingly rare.
Moreover, Wei Yuan's Dao Foundation warriors were no ordinary spiritualities—they had already gained sentience. With no precedents to draw upon, there was simply no telling how to calculate their true worth.
Having obtained the idol's blood clay and revived his immortal plants, Wei Yuan's capacity to regenerate Dao power had increased dramatically, allowing him to stockpile five hundred flying swords each day. Adding the three awakened Dao Foundation puppets, he effectively commanded four points of concentrated firepower at once, causing his combat strength to skyrocket. Even so, that strength currently hinged on his stockpile of flying swords; the moment they ran out, his combat effectiveness would be cut straight in half.
Emerging from the temple, Wei Yuan immediately sensed something amiss in the village. This time there was no billowing smoke, but residual, immense dharmic power lingered in the air above, and the very laws of heaven and earth were slightly disordered. Everything pointed to a battle between dharma idol cultivators having taken place moments before.
Wei Yuan dispatched one of his warriors to sneak up to high ground and survey the village, while he slowly made his way back. Blessed with the concealing abilities of the treasure tree, and lacking the physiological reactions typical of flesh-and-blood creatures, the Dao Foundation warrior's stealth was formidable, surpassing even Wei Yuan himself.
Through the warrior's eyes, he saw villagers hauling stones to rebuild collapsed houses. At this rate, it would not take long before everything was restored to its original state.
Returning to his quarters, Wei Yuan found the woman whittling wooden shafts to craft more crossbow bolts. The moment she caught sight of him, her body stiffened, falling into a posture ready for combat. Wei Yuan made no move against her, instead asking, "Do you have anything to pack? We need to flee."
"You already know?" the woman asked.
"I'm not... ah, what I mean is, the traces of battle are obvious enough; naturally I can sense them. What I don't understand is why the Liao Clan only ever shows up when I go into the temple."
"Because the mountains are only safe during that single two-hour window around noon. At other times, terrifying monsters wander the hills, and even the Liao Clan wants no part of crossing paths with them."
"How did the Liao Clan suddenly appear?"
"Most likely because of you."
Wei Yuan nodded; that was his guess as well. The woman had spoken of the Sky Sorrow shedding blood—an omen of such magnitude would inevitably draw the Liao Clan's attention. Furthermore, the Great Shamans of the northern lands possessed all manner of uncanny arts, and in the fields of divination and reading heavenly secrets, they had once been far ahead of humanity, a lead human cultivators had only gradually closed over the past ten thousand years.
Just then, a voice called from outside the stone house, "Young Master, the village elder requests your presence."
Wei Yuan stepped out. This time, the woman did not follow. He accompanied the messenger through the village.
Upon Wei Yuan's arrival, the old woman said, "The Liao Clan has discovered your whereabouts. They sent a chiliarch today. This village has remained hidden for thousands of years, but it seems our concealment has finally run its course. Within a few days, the Liao Clan will dispatch more powerful figures here. You must leave."
"And what about all of you?"
The old woman smiled faintly. "In our current state, living is merely dragging out an agonizing survival, and even in death there is no peace. An early death means an earlier chance at rebirth. Come with me; I will take you to see the village's ancestral shrine."
With that, she walked out of the house and made her way slowly up the mountain. Wei Yuan followed behind her for several li before they stopped in front of a massive boulder.
The old woman extended a finger and tapped the rock. The stone dissolved like rippling water, revealing a deep, shadowy passage. She stepped inside, and lanterns along the walls flared to life one by one, illuminating the way.
Passing through the passage led into a stone hall. Inside, tiered platforms formed a high altar, every step packed tightly with ancestral tablets. On the offering table rested a small, exquisite censer of translucent, glaze-like jade, within which swirled a vapor of seven colors.
The shrine was suffused with an eerie, freezing gloom that pierced to the bone. Patches of mold grew across the walls, with innumerable tiny white grubs squirming incessantly within them. Many of the tablets had sprouted purplish-red flesh that was rotting away, oozing yellow pus and blood from time to time. Only a small fraction of the tablets remained relatively clean.
Wei Yuan traced the spiritual veins of the shrine with his divine sense and discovered that the layout formed a soul-restraining formation, bearing a seventy-to-eighty-percent resemblance to the array once used to imprison the Xu family boy's soul.
"The ancestors of our clan are enshrined here. You have likely noticed that their state is not entirely right," the old woman said.
Wei Yuan nodded.
Every tablet was crafted from a specialized material that served as an integral component of the Soul-Restraining Formation. So long as the formation remained intact, the tablets functioned as an extension of the souls and flesh of those inscribed upon them. The condition of their physical bodies was mirrored on the tablets, and through the tablets, their physical bodies could in turn be influenced.
The more Wei Yuan looked at the formation, the more sinister it seemed. It was not merely restraining souls; it was exerting control. This formation allowed someone to manipulate every individual named on those tablets, even after they were dead!
Sensing Wei Yuan's shock, the old woman said, "It seems you have figured it out. The temple's underground reaches are vast beyond measure, but they are equally steeped in yin qi and malignant energy. Even if one enters at noon, one cannot endure for more than the time it takes an incense stick to burn. Later, our ancestors devised a method: they refined the corpses of deceased clansmen into puppet corpses and commanded them to explore deep underground. Through generations of probing, they finally made a breakthrough and discovered a temple buried far beneath the earth.
"However, every puppet corpse that drew close to the idol lost control. Yet the area around the idol was where the yin qi was purest, so our ancestors constructed tombs surrounding it, placing the bodies of clansmen inside in the hope of creating stronger puppet corpses to push further down. To gather enough strength, some ancestors even entered the tombs before their natural lifespans had ended.
"Yet at that very moment, all the puppet corpses broke free of control at once, turning into puppets of the idol itself. From then on, we were never able to reach the tombs again."
The old woman sighed and continued, "In truth, using such a method severely damages karmic merit. None who became puppet corpses could enter the cycle of reincarnation. Their souls are all housed within this Bipartite Yellow Springs Cauldron."
The miniature cauldron churned with surging soul power, holding an untold number of yin souls. Just like that plaza in the Xu family's grotto-heaven, it was a vessel for storing captured souls.
"I would like you to take this Yellow Springs Cauldron with you," the old woman said. "Once you return to the human domain, unseal it and release the souls inside so they may scatter back to heaven and earth and re-enter the cycle of reincarnation. Only then can they find true release. This cauldron has the power to sever yin from yang and open a realm of its own; it can serve as a foundational treasure for a True Monarch to manifest their mindscape world into a grotto-heaven. It will be your recompense."
For a True Monarch to manifest their mindscape world externally, a foundational keystone was necessary, and treasures capable of serving that purpose were exceptionally rare. This Yellow Springs Cauldron was indeed a priceless artifact.
Wei Yuan asked, "What lies further below the temple? Why did your ancestors go to such extreme lengths, paying so steep a price, just to explore deeper?"
"Our ancestors believed that every karmic luck node across the earth calculated by the Grand Heavenly Master was an entrance leading to another world—just like the Nether Cold Realm and the Great Wilderness Realm of the Shamans, or the Golden Feather Realm of the Liao Clan. Your exploration has not gone deep enough yet. If you had reached the tombs our ancestors built, you would have sensed the terrifying beings lurking in the depths below.
"Our ancestors believed those beings seeped in from another realm entirely. If the day comes when you have the strength to venture deep into the tombs, remember this above all: never look upon the idol."
Wei Yuan nodded solemnly, acknowledging her warning. He did not mention that he had already been to the tombs, nor that the idol in question had already been absorbed into his Dao Foundation, reduced to nourishment for his immortal plants.
Before the old woman could say anything more, a sudden crack of thunder tore through the night sky. Terrifying dharmic power erupted in the distance; even through the shrine's defensive formation, Wei Yuan felt the concussive tremor of dharmic power.
The magical explosion was hundreds of li away, yet its shockwave reached all the way here—unquestionably a battle between True Monarchs! The old woman's gaze pierced the layers of obstruction toward the horizon, and her expression changed abruptly.
She shoved the Yellow Springs Cauldron into Wei Yuan's hands, then drew out a bone belonging to an unknown creature from beneath the offering table, pressing it into his grip as well. She spoke in a rapid rush: "A Liao Clan Great Shaman has arrived. The wandering monsters in the mountains will not hold him for long. The spiritual energy accumulated in our ancestral grounds can buy only a single day. Leave through the temple entrance at once. There is a secret passage there leading out of the mountains. Once you go inside, I will seal the entrance behind you."
With urgency pressing upon them, the old woman grabbed Wei Yuan, arriving in the stone house where he and the woman lived in a single blink. Sweeping up the woman as well, she vanished and reappeared at the entrance of the temple in the next instant. She thrust a roll of leather parchment into the woman's hands, saying, "This is the map of the passage..."
*Boom!* Another burst of dharmic power exploded in the distance, tens of li closer this time.
The woman was exceedingly decisive. Lighting a torch, she took a swift glance at the map, then grabbed Wei Yuan and bolted toward a concealed passage. A rumble thundered behind them as the tunnel they had entered from collapsed into rubble. After a few running strides, Wei Yuan scooped the woman up into his arms and sprinted forward in great strides, his pace accelerating dramatically.
Chapter 364