In the blink of an eye, another two months passed in peace and calm, and harvest season arrived once again. By this time, Qingming had cultivated three million mu of farmland, home to a population of 1.2 million, and had opened up fifty thousand mu of spirit fields, which produced ten million jin of spirit rice every six months.
This season's grain harvest reached six hundred million jin. Such a colossal figure posed a heavy logistical burden on all of Qingming, so Wei Yuan mobilized early; apart from the ten thousand elites who trained as usual, all soldiers were called up to reap the harvest.
As the crops continuously ripened, spiritual energy surged incessantly throughout the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, and spiritual rain in the sky hardly ever ceased. Although the various immortal plants did not receive the bestowal of heaven and earth, the increasingly dense origin qi of heaven and earth accelerated their growth day by day.
Meanwhile, the celestial laurel tree and the Bingli Immortal Wood had severed ties completely. In merely a month or two, their followers had gone from ignoring one another to trading open insults.
The Langya Divine Wood quietly shifted its position and gathered a flock of believers of its own, eyeing both the laurel and Bingli like a tiger watching its prey.
The Red Lotus Bodhi and the four orchids looked on coldly, intending to take no part in the three-way dispute. As for the aquatic immortal plant, it still had not sprouted and remained in gestation, so while it had followers, they were few.
With the immortal plants acting on their own, the three mutually opposed plants in particular brought about an unexpected state of affairs.
To prevent its followers from being brainwashed and poached by its rival, the Bingli Divine Wood took the initiative to link the consciousness of all its believers to itself, before proceeding to brainwash the laurel's followers.
Whether it was an order from Wei Yuan or instructions and information distributed by the Yin-Yang Maiden, Bingli would process everything first before doling out tasks to its believers. Once the believers finished their tasks, they would likewise report and compile everything with her first before the results were submitted to Wei Yuan or the Yin-Yang Maiden.
Having lost several followers in succession, the celestial laurel tree also tried to poach believers from the Bingli Divine Wood, only to find that it could not reach their consciousness at all. Only then did it belatedly realize that the Bingli Divine Wood had linked all its believers to itself.
This was hardly an enviable chore. Not only did the workload vastly increase, but during normal times when there were no tasks, it also had to curate and feed study materials to the believers to clarify their development trajectories and paths to advancement. Only when an immortal plant's believers grew more numerous and powerful could the plant itself grow stronger.
The celestial laurel tree was not diligent by nature, but to settle the score, it gritted its teeth and linked its believers to itself as well, keeping itself so busy all day that its head spun. Only now did it begin to wonder whether tormenting itself like this over the loss of a handful of believers was truly worth it, seeing as it still had several thousand believers remaining.
The Langya Divine Wood, for its part, quietly linked its own followers without a peep.
Aside from the immortal plants that lacked any appetite for conflict, the other objects of worship—such as Jade Mountain, Wei Yuan's statue, the Jade Toad statue, the full moon in the sky, and even the vault of heaven and the Sea-Calming Pearl—took a laissez-faire stance toward their devotees.
In a world so teeming with gods and immortals, a small group of people stood out as distinctly different—one might even say entirely out of place with the rest of the realm.
Centered around the small initial cohort who had taken up martial arts, this group gathered those who wished to ascend the immortal path by their own strength alone.
By now, their training hall had been built. Unable to resolve their fierce debate over what to name it, they were forced to hold a martial arts tournament, allowing the final three victors to each contribute a few characters to decide the hall's name.
The cultivators unanimously agreed to name the competition the "Number One Under Heaven Martial Arts Tournament." It ended up catching Wei Yuan's attention, and he watched it from beginning to end with great interest.
Several extraordinarily gifted cultivators caught Wei Yuan's eye; behind one of them, he even seemed to glimpse a tail, though when he looked more closely, it was gone.
The first to break into the tournament finals was, without question, the genius who was only a single step away from achieving his breakthrough. Competition on the other side was far more fierce, with most cultivators fairly evenly matched. Stumbling his way into the finals in the end was, surprisingly, the one with the poorest talent among the three in the cultivation hall that day.
When the final showdown began, the genius naturally pressed the mediocre man hard, keeping him completely on the defensive. Yet the mediocre fellow had an endless bag of tricks, resorting to bizarre, unthinkable maneuvers and a chaotic assortment of magic treasures. What was more, his movement technique was exceptionally swift. Darting and sprinting all across the arena, he fled almost from the very beginning of the fight to the bitter end, ultimately running his opponent into sheer exhaustion.
Wei Yuan watched this decisive match in utter shock and found himself deeply enlightened. He felt that in his past battles, he had simply been far too honest and fought with far too much pedantry. Compared to this mediocre man's antics, his own directional flying sword landmines were veritable models of good conscience.
In the end, the top three finishers of the martial arts tournament contributed three, two, and one character respectively, piecing together the name for the hall: Nine Heavens and Ten Earths Battle Saint Hall.
The moment the hall's name was decided, a storm abruptly swept across the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains. Spiritual energy and intangible karmic luck converged upon the hall, and riding this momentum, that fellow of mediocre talent actually experienced an epiphany and cast his Dao Foundation!
At the moment the Dao Foundation formed, a bolt of thunder descended from beyond the vault of heaven—it was a heavenly tribulation!
Could someone forging a Dao Foundation within the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains truly draw down a heavenly tribulation?
Wei Yuan naturally could not stand idly by and watch him die, and he prepared on the spot to step in and intercept the heavenly tribulation. Right at that moment, the shadow within the moon suddenly spewed forth a plume of faint black mist that resembled karmic luck, yet was not karmic luck.
Passing through this plume of black mist, the tribulation lightning was instantly weakened by ninety percent, bringing it within survivable limits. Even so, the fellow of mediocre talent barely clung to life; in the end, it was only because Wei Yuan infused him with vitality that he was saved.
Having endured the lightning tribulation by the skin of his teeth, he finally forged a newborn morning sun. Normally, a great sun would constitute an immortal foundation, but this morning sun of his was crimson, lacked brilliance, and fluctuated erratically. Resembling the early sun on a winter day with little discernible heat, it could only barely count as a Heaven Foundation.
Wei Yuan grew pensive.
Had the standards by which humanity classified Dao Foundations for so long truly been correct? This winter morning sun was indeed barely a Heaven Foundation, yet the tribulation lightning it drew down was potent enough to strike an immortal foundation dead. Could heaven and earth itself make a mistake?
The deeper Wei Yuan's thoughts went, the more he felt as though he had touched upon something—perhaps the fundamental truth hidden behind the world. Yet as the heavenly tribulation concluded, that sensation vanished with it, leaving Wei Yuan with a lingering sense of loss.
Just as Wei Yuan was preparing to leave, he suddenly heard the sound of voices.
"The madam has been pregnant for so long, and she's finally about to give birth!"
"It's already been two shichen! Why hasn't the baby arrived yet?"
"The mistress carried the pregnancy for three whole months. Could it be... could she be carrying a demon?"
"Keep your voice down! If the master hears that, he'll flay you alive!"
"That isn't even the scariest part. What's truly terrifying is if the baby in the mistress's belly hears you! Tell me, do you think it might be listening right now...?"
Wei Yuan focused his divine sense upon that courtyard, only to see the young mistress screaming incessantly inside the room, while several midwives paced around in frantic agitation, the child refusing to come out no matter what they tried.
Wei Yuan gave a slight frown and sent over several strands of azure karmic luck, but unexpectedly, the woman could not absorb them at all. Seeing that the very first infant of Qingming was about to die before birth, Wei Yuan sent over a strand of otherworldly fortune instead.
This time, the otherworldly fortune entered the woman's body smoothly. Her cries grew a bit louder, and the fetus's vitality began to rebound. Decisive as ever, Wei Yuan immediately poured in strand after strand of otherworldly fortune. After he had channeled nearly twenty strands of otherworldly fortune into her, a loud, clear infant cry finally rang out from the room.
Chapter 408