In the Nether Cold Realm, Wei Yuan pondered for a brief breath.
With all this shuttling back and forth, only a single day had actually passed. During the previous round, Wei Yuan had excavated a three-foot-square section of Nether Crystal, finally leaving himself enough room to turn around freely.
Yet watching the nether iron overhead pressing down inch by inch, Wei Yuan had no time to catch his breath. He swiftly manifested four hammers of differing sizes and began tapping against the Nether Crystal.
After his previous experiments, Wei Yuan now had a general grasp of the Nether Crystal's resonance range. The four hammers, distinct in size and weight, struck in turns. Crisp clangs overlapped in rhythm. After a single pass of all four hammers, a web of fractures spread across the Nether Crystal. Two more cycles of tapping, and with a clattering crash, Nether Crystal shattered across the ground.
After gathering the chipped-off Nether Crystal, Wei Yuan gained an additional tabletop-sized area of space to maneuver. He continued hammering, and moments later carved out another large block of Nether Crystal. Looking at this relatively intact column of crystal, Wei Yuan had a sudden stroke of inspiration. He carefully stood the segment upright, propping it against the downward-pressing nether iron above.
Wei Yuan excavated for two more rounds, chiseling away several hundred jin of Nether Crystal in total—roughly a zhang square. Glancing back, he saw that the crystal pillar was indeed arresting the sinking of the nether iron. Only then did he feel slightly relieved and resume digging.
Before his Dao power ran out, Wei Yuan had excavated nearly two thousand jin of Nether Crystal, totaling about two zhang square, before returning to Qingming.
Upon returning to Qingming, the first thing Wei Yuan did was seek out Perfected Chuhe and Sun Yu, giving each a tabletop-sized block of Nether Crystal. The old Daoist Chuhe grinned from ear to ear and led Wei Yuan over to see the Nethersea Shaman-Devouring Flower.
The Shaman-Devouring Flower was entirely a somber, eerie violet. Its petals were slender, transitioning in a gradient from white to purple, with slightly curled tips where dense amethyst crystals had congealed. Though delicate in appearance, not a single living creature lingered within a zhang of it; even cats and snakes gave it a wide berth. Only the flying sable dared to approach a little, yet it too stayed outside a three-foot perimeter.
Perfected Chuhe produced an ordinary dharma artifact longsword and tossed it over. Instantly, the flower spewed a puff of pale purple mist, latching onto the sword. A wisp of vapor drifted out from the blade and was inhaled by the Shaman-Devouring Flower. Moments later, the sword abruptly crumbled into a pile of spiritless slag.
Perfected Chuhe then tossed over a small piece of Nether Crystal. This time, the Shaman-Devouring Flower grew so excited that it tore out of the soil and flew into the air, wrapping its leaves around the crystal mid-flight! It then flew back to its original spot, taking root in the earth once more as it dragged the Nether Crystal down with it.
Wei Yuan was taken aback. He hadn't expected the Shaman-Devouring Flower could move freely! Rooting itself in the earth had merely been a disguise!
Its pounce just now had been swift as lightning—ordinary Dao Foundation cultivators wouldn't have stood a chance of dodging it. Even someone of Cui Yu's caliber before forming a dharma idol would have had a hard time escaping unscathed.
"Where did this flower come from?"
Old Daoist Chuhe made no secret of it: "Brother Sable found the seed deep underground. Using the skeletal remains of a Great Shaman as soil and the corpse qi of countless Shamans as fertilizer, I finally managed to nurture it. In ancient times, this flower must have been a natural enemy to the Shamans, which is why I named it the Shaman-Devouring Flower.
"Now that I have enough Nether Crystal, I'm confident I can nurture it into a Scenery Command-grade demonic flower. When the time comes, my dharma idol will gain another sea of fiendish flowers, advancing me another step in the Myriad Transformations Realm. The Heart Aspect Realm will be well within reach!"
Wei Yuan looked at the Shaman-Devouring Flower, then recalled the seaweed in the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. It seemed the world of the Wu domain teemed with natural enemies, all exceptionally vicious. If even plants and flora were like this, one could only imagine how terrifying the ferocious beasts and birds of prey were. Yet they all shared a single trait: they preyed on Shamans.
From the look of things, the Shamans had lived rather wretched lives since ancient times.
Leaving the Medicine Garden, Wei Yuan went to the infirmary.
Sun Yu was not greedy in the slightest, remarking that he couldn't possibly use so much Nether Crystal. The portion Wei Yuan gave him was enough to brew thousands of jin of poison—enough to kill half the population of Ningzhou.
However, Wei Yuan currently had so much Nether Crystal he had nowhere to store it, so he shoved it into Sun Yu's hands anyway. Sun Yu chuckled and accepted it, saying he could exchange it for heavenly merits whenever he ran short of funds.
Wei Yuan said nothing in reply, turning and walking away.
After distributing the materials, Wei Yuan donated several dozen more jin of Nether Crystal to the Palace of Grand Beginning, causing the Hall of Merits to close this contribution channel—no longer accepting Nether Crystal for the time being.
Before True Monarch Xuanyue returned to the Northern Mountain Gate, Wei Yuan used the Shadow-Reflecting Wall to contact his ancestral master and inquire about the Hall of Merits' exchange mechanism.
At the Palace of Grand Beginning, items priced in heavenly merits were all Scenery Command-grade materials. However, there were only so many True Monarchs in the entire sect, and their numbers rarely fluctuated more than once every few decades. Many Scenery Command-grade materials were only useful to three to five True Monarchs, or even fewer; once quantities exceeded a certain threshold, they simply could not be consumed.
Such was the case with both Nether Soil and Nether Crystal.
Scenery Command-grade spiritual treasures required a sentient core material, which was crucial in determining the quantity and quality of treasures. Materials like cold iron and Nether Crystal were merely supplementary; without a primary core material, no amount of supplementary materials was of any use.
Having grasped the inner workings of the Palace of Grand Beginning's merit exchange system, Wei Yuan realized that neither nether iron nor Nether Crystal could be traded away in the short term. The same was likely true for other materials.
Yet just because the Palace of Grand Beginning wasn't accepting nether iron didn't mean it had no other uses. In truth, nether iron had an extremely wide range of applications; it was just so prohibitively expensive that, aside from forging Scenery Command spiritual treasures, no one could bear to squander it on anything else.
This time, Wei Yuan was in no rush to return to the Nether Cold Realm. By his calculations, supported by that pillar of Nether Crystal, the underground hollow could hold out for at least a day. However, to truly stabilize a space, he would still need nether iron as support pillars.
Around this time, another report appeared within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. It was an intriguing report, co-authored by the Creation of Heaven and Earth Research Institute and the All Living Beings Are Equal War Equipment Research Institute, possessing quite the flair of an otherworldly realm.
Accompanying this report was a development plan for the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World in the near future. It placed heavy emphasis on raising a new island out of the ocean fifty li away from the central city to accommodate future growth. The plan demanded that Wei Yuan complete this task within three days, with no delays permitted.
Seeing this development plan, Wei Yuan felt thoroughly put out.
In the past, the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World had been like a little girl he could dress up however he pleased: if he felt like giving her a golden hairpin, he gave her a golden hairpin; if he wanted to add a dress, he gave her a pleated gown with golden tassels. But now, she actually wanted to dress herself? And she had even assigned Wei Yuan a task?
Wei Yuan possessed limited Dao power. He had a war to fight, dirt to dig in the Nether Cold Realm, and now land to raise for the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World—his reserves were stretched far too thin. Crucially, the development plan had specified the exact location, size, and shape of the island, yet hadn't bothered to inform Wei Yuan what it was actually intended for!
Wei Yuan's fury was no small matter; this was practically bordering on rebellion. The problem was that upon careful investigation, he couldn't figure out whose idea this plan had been. It was as though some crouching dragon had drunk too much water and taken leave of his senses, suddenly conceived the notion, broken it down into assigned tasks, and ultimately produced this document.
The little crouching dragon at the root of it all was a researcher at the Creation of Heaven and Earth Research Institute. What was more, he was a newcomer who had only appeared in the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World after the war with the Land of Rain, with an actual age of merely one month.
Furthermore, although he worked at the institute, he had not been formally hired. Which meant that if Wei Yuan flew into a rage and insisted on holding someone accountable for this plan, the ultimate outcome would likely just be firing a temporary worker.
How could such petty tricks fool Wei Yuan? Wei Yuan merely sneered and went ahead with raising the small island strictly according to the plan. He wanted to see what those lurking behind the scenes were actually up to.
Well-versed in history, Wei Yuan was already on guard. If those fellows weren't up to no good, why hide themselves away and push out a temporary worker to take the blame?
Yet such tactics could only deceive fools, and even the attempt at deceit was entirely half-hearted.
This plan mobilized thousands of mortals and two celestial plants; how could a temporary worker possibly make the call on a project of this scale?
Wei Yuan figured that if they had put forward a director or vice-director to take the fall, it might have looked somewhat convincing—perhaps it might have even fooled him.
Although he was displeased with the development plan, the other report gave Wei Yuan serious food for thought. The moment he laid eyes on it, his anger vanished, and he began reading with rapt attention. Even after going over it several times, he still couldn't get enough.
The report was divided into two sections: a main report and an appendix. The title of the main report was: *On Protracted War*.
Chapter 542