As an array passed down by an immortal, the Xuan Tian Yin-Yang Great Furnace held other marvelous uses.
The eyes of the yin-yang fish were actually artifact-crafting furnaces, one for Yin Refining and the other for Yang Refining. However, as there were currently no corresponding spiritual suppressing objects, only Water Refining and Fire Refining—two grades lower—could be employed.
Maiden Yin-Yang beckoned Wei Yuan over to the fish eyes. Resting within each was a butterfly short blade. Naturally endowed with spirituality and capable of traversing the void, these two short blades were truly rare spirit treasures. Years ago, Wei Yuan's knowledge had been lacking, leading him to mistake them for magic treasures used by the Dharma Idol realm; only later did he realize they were actually spirit treasures suited for the Scenery Command realm.
Originally, they ought to have belonged to a Nether Shaman, but somehow they had ended up in Huixin's possession.
Ever since obtaining this pair of spirit treasures, Wei Yuan had left them sitting in Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains because he lacked the means to handle them. He had not expected that with the Xuan Tian Yin-Yang Great Furnace, he would finally be able to refine this pair of spirit treasures.
Maiden Yin-Yang transmitted an intention, asking Wei Yuan to decide how to refine the pair.
There were two available directions. The first was to re-refine them into spirit treasures exclusive to Wei Yuan. Although their power would rank in the lower tier of spirit treasures, the benefit was that he could use them immediately, providing a tangible boost to his combat strength.
The other choice was far more extreme: completely remelt and reforge them into a pair of single-use spirit treasures. The downside went without saying—once used, they would be gone. The upside was overwhelming power, potent enough that even Nether Shamans would have to avoid their edge.
Without a second thought, Wei Yuan chose the second option. What he lacked right now was a lethal trump card for desperate battles.
Though from a value perspective a normal spirit treasure was worth far more than a disposable one, formidable foes surrounded them. Who knew who stood behind Hongye? On Wei Yuan's side, aside from their own Patriarch Xuanyue and Zhu Yuanjin, the other Scenery Command cultivators would only stay for a short while before departing. Even Bao Manshan could not linger.
With a grand battle looming, Wei Yuan could not afford to think so far ahead; he had to attend to the present first. Just as a quote from Xu Wenwu's notes put it: "In the long run, we are all dead."
Maiden Yin-Yang transmitted another thought, asking Wei Yuan to place an item of his own into the Yin-Yang furnace eyes to fuse with the treasures and enhance their might. The item placed inside could be a magic treasure, Dao power, cultivation base, or something similar. The more precious the fused offering, the greater the treasures' power.
A sudden impulse stirred in Wei Yuan's heart, and for some reason, he chose to place a hundred years of lifespan into each.
The moment the thought formed, he felt as if something had vanished from his body, leaving it strangely hollow and tinged with an air of weathered age. Wei Yuan suddenly realized that in the eyes of heaven and earth, he was now two hundred and eighteen years old.
There was no other way. To resist powerful enemies, Wei Yuan had to offer up his most precious possession. He never wanted to experience again the helplessness of watching Zhang Sheng lie critically wounded and dying before his eyes. During those days at the Northern Mountain Gate, watching Zhang Sheng grow weaker day by day, Wei Yuan had felt as if several blades were slowly carving into his heart.
So this time, now that he had an opportunity, Wei Yuan would go all out from the start.
The Xuan Tian Yin-Yang Great Furnace was truly worthy of being an immortal array, drawing away two hundred years of Wei Yuan's lifespan out of thin air. Such a method bordered on the Grand Dao; ordinary immortals likely could not pull it off.
As the lifespan entered the furnace, the two furnace eyes abruptly transformed, erupting with black and white pillars of light that shot a hundred fathoms into the sky! Because the offering Wei Yuan fused was so extraordinarily precious, the furnace eyes spontaneously resonated with the Dao, turning into proper Yin-Yang refining furnaces.
The two butterfly blades wailed and struggled in the furnace eyes, yet they were no match for the mighty power of heaven and earth. Bit by bit, they were refined away, their spirituality completely erased, before fusing with Wei Yuan's lifespan.
For the first time, Wei Yuan felt a connection of flesh and blood, a shared consciousness, with the two short blades.
The Grand Dao is the utmost simplicity. Refining the short blades did not take long, finishing after just a brief moment. As the black and white pillars of light receded, the two butterfly short blades had transformed according to Wei Yuan's will into two bullets, perfectly suited for Brutality.
The two bullets carried no flashy tricks, possessing only two properties:
1. Infallible hit.
2. Yang Bullet: shears three thousand years of lifespan.
Yin Bullet: shears ten thousand years of lifespan, shaved off evenly over twenty years.
To be frank, when Wei Yuan saw these two properties, he was so shocked he nearly jumped out of his skin.
These two Yin-Yang bullets were unreasonably domineering to the absolute extreme. Moreover, their rank was exceedingly high. Even an immortal, so long as their status in heaven and earth was no higher than the immortal who founded Qingming, would almost certainly fail to escape the lifespan reduction, with only a thirty percent chance of halving the effect.
If the target was at Scenery Command, combined with Brutality's special effects, the lifespan reduction would be amplified considerably.
Such might completely exceeded Wei Yuan's imagination. In all likelihood, the material of those two butterfly short blades was extraordinary—perhaps even immortal treasure embryos—which, combined with Wei Yuan's own two hundred years of lifespan and the working of the Xuan Tian Yin-Yang Great Furnace, yielded this pair of Yin-Yang bullets.
All three factors were crucial, but perhaps the most vital was Wei Yuan's lifespan. Lifespan was something whose value differed entirely depending on whose body it belonged to.
Ten thousand years of lifespan accumulated from thousands upon thousands of ordinary men could not match a single breath of an immortal's time.
Such was this heaven and earth; such was this world.
Overjoyed, Wei Yuan pulled Maiden Yin-Yang into his arms and hugged her with all his might.
Maiden Yin-Yang looked up with a puzzled little face, not understanding what he was doing. But suddenly, the clothes on her body dropped piece by piece, pooling at her feet.
Unfortunately, Wei Yuan failed to notice the change. Sensing someone summoning him—and with ill intent—he exited the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World.
The moment he returned to reality, Wei Yuan felt chilly gusts blowing against the back of his neck, as if a ghost were puffing air against him. At the same time, the crown of his head felt waves of heat, as though someone were continuously casting a curse on him.
Wei Yuan spun around abruptly and saw two shiny bald heads.
Both bald heads were familiar faces: one was the Peacock Buddha Mother, and the other was the young monk Honglian.
Wei Yuan immediately felt a throbbing ache in his temples, wondering whether he should show Peacock Buddha Mother the recorded image from the Eastern Sea secret realm back then.
However, given Wei Yuan's understanding of the Great Precious Flower Pure Land, the monks produced there held all four elements to be empty and didn't care about things like face at all. If he showed them the recordings too much, they might instead assume he had a predestined affinity with Buddhism—why else record such things?
Before Wei Yuan could speak, Peacock Buddha Mother beamed and said, "Benefactor truly has an affinity with our Buddha."
The young monk chimed in as well, "Quite so, quite so!"
Wei Yuan's face turned as dark as the bottom of a pot, and he fumed, "I'll say it again: I do not!"
Not in the least annoyed, Peacock Buddha Mother said, "Why must Benefactor cling so to forms? In truth, even if Benefactor had a hundred or eighty sweethearts, it would not hinder you from entering our Buddhist gate. Right now in the Pure Land, that dharma idol of the Great Joy King Buddha still awaits Benefactor. The King Buddha's dharma is boundless and can assume all manner of worldly forms; a thousand hands and a thousand arms are merely commonplace. When the time comes, however many Benefactor wishes to embrace, that is how many you may embrace."
The more Wei Yuan listened, the more absurd it sounded. He quickly cut in, "Master jokes! How would I ever dare entertain such delusions? In this life, to find a single soulmate is already enough—"
Peacock Buddha Mother smiled faintly. "Benefactor should think carefully before uttering such words. Benefactor possesses great fortune and profound past wisdom; the words you speak can easily come true if you are not careful. Truly only one soulmate? Then through various coincidences and turns of fate, the others might all slip away—the kind you couldn't stop even if you tried."
"Uh???" Wei Yuan was dumbfounded. He had never expected to be caught off guard by a monk on this front. It seemed that in the future when dealing with monks, he would have to think carefully before telling lies, lest the monks use some secret technique to make the falsehoods come true—that would be no laughing matter.
Had it been a sword cultivator like Su Xuejing, she would surely have snapped, "I said it, so what can you do about it?" But Wei Yuan was no sword cultivator after all; he had always been flexible and pragmatic, knowing when to yield and when to stand tall. When unable to discern truth from falsehood, he would never stubbornly talk back.
Immediately, Wei Yuan assumed an earnest expression and said, "I was only joking just now. How about Master goes back and speaks to the Great Joy King Buddha again? Tell it that my aptitude is dull and clumsy, and I come from humble beginnings, utterly unworthy of its venerable self. Why don't we just call it off?"
Who could have known that Peacock Buddha Mother would reply, "This humble monk already spoke with the Great Joy King Buddha after returning. Yet the Great Joy King Buddha said that in your past life, you were it, and it was you. In this life, you are its reincarnated form. Had it remained ignorant of your existence, that would have been one thing, but now that it knows, this is karmic predestination before the Buddha and cannot be altered.
"The King Buddha will wait for your sudden enlightenment. If you remain unenlightened for your entire life, it will wait for you your entire life."
Wei Yuan was left dumbstruck, feeling as though the Great Joy King Buddha had picked up the wrong romance script.
He still intended to struggle a bit more and said seriously, "My aptitude is dull, and I have never read Buddhist scriptures. I do not understand the subtle words and profound meanings of senior eminent monks, and there is not a shred of Buddha-nature in me. If I were to enter the Pure Land, I fear I would become the laughingstock of a generation."
Peacock Buddha Mother said, "Benefactor's words are amiss. Buddha-nature resides naturally in the human heart; it cannot be gained merely through chanting sutras or meditating. With Benefactor's past wisdom, all that is required is sudden enlightenment—in fact, whether you achieve enlightenment or not does not even matter. Once you gaze upon the King Buddha's dharma body, you will naturally understand past lives and future rebirths, a millennium of karma.
"Furthermore, Benefactor's Universal Deliverance True Words from the other day were exquisite and deafeningly profound. Upon hearing them, this humble monk's cultivation advanced considerably, granting new insights into many Buddhist scriptures. If Benefactor has no Buddha-nature, then who else would dare claim to possess it?"
Only then did Wei Yuan recall that when he had been imparted the Red Lotus Universal Deliverance True Words back then, the Arhat had said the mantra's power depended on one's own Buddha-nature and the growth of the Red Lotus Bodhi. Right now, the Red Lotus Bodhi had only been growing for a little over a year, having grown from a sapling to a small tree at most, and that was already the result of Wei Yuan being entangled in karmic debt, which provided ample nourishment. If the growth of the Red Lotus Bodhi was only modest, then the remaining power of the mantra must have originated from Buddha-nature.
At this thought, Wei Yuan instantly felt as if he had fallen into a trap. He knew himself all too well: where would he get Buddha-nature from? Nine times out of ten, the Buddha-nature driving the Red Lotus Universal Deliverance True Words came from the Arhat; Wei Yuan simply didn't know how he had managed it.
Yet amidst his vexation, the two monks' lavish praise still stirred a peculiar sensation in Wei Yuan, making him unconsciously want to hear a few more compliments.
Such a bizarre sensation immediately put Wei Yuan on guard. He silently cursed the bald donkeys for their cunning, making him fall under their sway without even realizing it. He would definitely listen closely this time to see what other conspiracies and schemes they had in store.
"You were there at the time as well?" Wei Yuan asked. If Peacock Buddha Mother had also been present during the grand battle and hadn't lifted a hand, the nature of the matter would be entirely different.
In Wei Yuan's eyes, the war against alien races was paramount, a matter of great righteousness for the mortal world. Hundreds of thousands had perished in that grand battle, forcing Wei Yuan to use mortals to wear down the strength of the Shamans. If human cultivators were present and refused to act, regardless of the reason or excuse, Wei Yuan felt there was nothing left to say—their paths simply did not cross.
Peacock Buddha Mother said, "At that time, this humble monk was meditating in the Pure Land to purify my mind. When Benefactor unleashed the Universal Deliverance True Words, the Pure Land quaked, Sanskrit chants rained from the heavens, and golden lotuses surged from the earth—it was a magnificent event for the Buddhist path. With the King Buddha's aid, this humble monk had the fortune of witnessing Benefactor's imposing presence as you unleashed the mantra. Only then did I learn a grand battle was underway here, so I rushed over in haste, intending to lend Benefactor a helping hand."
Wei Yuan parted his lips, struck speechless by Peacock Buddha Mother's impeccable attitude.
Besides, all he had done was chant a mantra and blast out some karmic debt—how had it caused such an immense commotion?
Sanskrit sounds raining from the heavens, golden lotuses welling up from the earth—if such an anomaly were viewed in Daoist terms, it meant harmonizing with the Grand Dao of heaven and earth to evoke a response from the Dao itself, also known as the resonant decree of the Grand Dao.
However, Wei Yuan noticed that Peacock Buddha Mother consistently referred to it as the Universal Deliverance True Words, whereas what the Arhat had imparted to him was the Red Lotus Universal Deliverance True Words.
Wei Yuan reluctantly accepted Peacock Buddha Mother's offer of assistance, but he pointed at the young monk and asked, "And what is his deal?"
"He is the disciple of Eldest Senior Brother Pingfan. Speaking of which, he hails from Fengyuan Commandery just like Benefactor and was in the same batch, so you share some measure of destiny. Thus, when coming out to temper myself this time, I brought him along as well. A battlefield against the alien race will aid my martial nephew's growth."
The young monk pressed his palms together in a bow and spoke in a soft, delicate voice: "Having failed to deliver Benefactor the previous two times, this humble monk went into secluded contemplation upon returning and attained a realization, understanding that it was all because my hand-to-hand combat was lacking.
"To subdue demons and vanquish evil... no, to deliver Benefactor, having only a rudimentary grasp of fists and kicks is insufficient. Therefore, this humble monk intends to train diligently here. Once my martial skills improve, I will come again to sub... no, to have a good talk with Benefactor."
Chapter 500