Following his breakthrough, the foremost task before Wei Yuan was to refine the Hall of Merits sub-hall and raise its grade. Once advanced, the sub-hall would allow transactions involving all materials and supplies at the dharma idol level.
The refinement process was relatively simple, as Wei Yuan had already accumulated a considerable foundation beforehand.
Every time someone completed an exchange or made a contribution through the sub-hall, it produced a subtle refining effect upon it. Although the progress from any single transaction was modest, the growing strength of Qingming drew ever more disciples from the Palace of Grand Beginning to trade there. Moreover, the local cultivators of Qingming had numerous exchange needs that also had to be conducted through disciples of the Palace of Grand Beginning. Accumulated over days and months, this refining progress had grown quite substantial.
Years of intense warfare had elevated the total merit points accumulated by Qingming to a staggering sum.
In their battles against the Shamans, Qingming had slain over four million foes in total. Among them, more than five thousand were at the Dao Foundation level, nearly a hundred Great Shamans and dharma-idol-level Shamans had fallen, and there were even instances where Nether Shamans had perished in battle.
Because of this, every bit had added up. The sub-hall had already undergone an upgrade once before, and its current accumulation had nearly reached saturation once more. All it required now was the infusion of a certain amount of Scenery Command materials to complete the refinement.
As for Scenery Command materials, Wei Yuan did not possess many—merely several hundred million jin.
Thus, although it pained him slightly, Wei Yuan produced five hundred jin of nether iron to complete the upgrade of the Hall of Merits sub-hall. In a flash of immortal radiance, the sub-hall before his eyes was thoroughly transformed.
After the upgrade, the sub-hall expanded from its original single story to two stories, rising to ten zhang in height and covering an area twenty zhang square. The exchange counters on the ground floor increased to ten, and the sacrificial altars grew to three.
Beneath the laurel tree, a spirit pool now appeared, bordered with jade balustrades, its waters green and crystal clear. From then on, whenever large items were exchanged, they would manifest from these pool waters.
On the second floor of the Hall of Merits, three new rooms were added: the Hall of Quiet Contemplation, the Dao Comprehension Chamber, and the Heavenly Secret Pavilion. The Hall of Quiet Contemplation was designated for reading records and materials; while within, a cultivator's spiritual sense would expand by twenty percent, and their reading speed would vastly increase.
The Dao Comprehension Chamber was tailored specifically for Scenery Command cultivation records and arts. If one wished to study Scenery Command daoist scriptures, the chamber was an absolute necessity.
As for the Heavenly Secret Pavilion, it allowed direct communication with the duty elders of the main Hall of Merits to deliberate over merit-related matters.
Wei Yuan was thoroughly intrigued by the Dao Comprehension Chamber. By now, the total volume of his dao force had long surpassed the threshold for Scenery Command. Although the intrinsic quality of his dao force still lagged behind that of Hongye or Su Xuejing, it held the advantage of sheer quantity, enabling him to wield a limited number of Scenery Command dao arts.
Scenery Command cultivators, particularly those in the middle and late stages, possessed a vast and fundamental advantage over dharma idol cultivators. Many Scenery Command dao arts existed only as base templates, requiring Scenery Command cultivators to adapt them according to the distinct characteristics of their own mindscape worlds before they could be turned into their personal arts.
Merely modifying a dao art template was enough to confound ninety percent of dharma idol cultivators. Naturally, that ninety percent had practically no chance of reaching Scenery Command anyway.
The foundation of a Scenery Command dao art lay in the mindscape world. Even a newly formed mindscape world possessed world power sufficient to overwhelm the vast majority of dharma idols, so dao arts grounded upon such a foundation were inherently formidable.
The Dao Comprehension Chamber was not large, measuring merely a zhang square, yet it was of vital importance, serving as one of the central cores of the entire treasure. Here, one could remotely perceive the insights left behind by senior cultivators, which provided immense assistance to one's cultivation.
Wei Yuan first browsed through several Scenery Command dao art templates before finally narrowing his choices to a few relatively accessible ones: Falling Fiery Rain, Thunder Prison Forest, Mountain Shifting Art, and Five Elements Dao Soldiers.
The first three arts all had corresponding dharma-idol-level versions, making them relatively familiar to Wei Yuan, and their Scenery Command templates were exceedingly potent. Yet Wei Yuan did not reach beyond his grasp; instead, he selected the Five Elements Dao Soldiers, whose difficulty could be modulated, for his comprehension.
Scenery Command dao arts consumed tremendous amounts of energy. His Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, after all, was not yet a true mindscape world, having not undergone the tempering of a heavenly tribulation... Wait, hadn't it just endured two heavenly tribulations?
Typically, after entering the Heart Aspect Realm, a dharma idol would give rise to true spirituality through the tempering of heavenly lightning, thereby completing the metamorphosis from a dharma idol to a mindscape world. Yet Wei Yuan himself was not entirely sure what state the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was currently in.
Regardless, the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was still quite tender and delicate. Wei Yuan did not want to damage its foundation by draining its energy excessively to unleash a massively destructive Scenery Command art, so he chose the most fundamental art with manageable consumption—the Five Elements Dao Soldiers—as his point of entry.
Jade paper could no longer carry Scenery Command daoist scriptures, so spell exchanges were all conducted within the Dao Comprehension Chamber. Wei Yuan used his spiritual sense to communicate with the core of the Hall of Merits and chose to exchange for the Five Elements Dao Soldiers art. In the blink of an eye, two hundred heavenly merits vanished, slightly shifting the trailing digits of his tens of thousands of heavenly merits.
Looking back, a full day had passed after he blasted Hongye with that shot before Wei Yuan was finally awarded thirty thousand heavenly merits.
Evidently, the elders had debated the matter fiercely, but judging by the final award of heavenly merits, it had not only been granted according to Scenery Command standards, but by the standards reserved for late-stage geniuses.
Wei Yuan felt somewhat unworthy of these heavenly merits. Hongye, after all, had come seeking his own death; even if Wei Yuan had laid no scheme, Hongye would have shot himself anyway.
Though he felt a twinge of guilt, Wei Yuan had no intention whatsoever of returning the heavenly merits. At present, Qingming urgently required all kinds of high-grade supplies, and Patriarch Xuanyue lacked a fine daoist robe. Heavenly merits were never enough.
Once the exchange was complete, a dense immortal radiance immediately lit up the Dao Comprehension Chamber. Countless tiny talismans surfaced upon the four walls, while wisps of dao rhythms formed and continually washed over Wei Yuan's sea of consciousness.
These were all dao talismans capable of bearing dao rhythms. A single talisman had no fixed meaning on its own; it shifted according to the dao rhythm it carried. The method of comprehending a Scenery Command dao art was rather unique: one had to use an entire expanse of spiritual sense to perceive the talismans, grasp their true meaning, and then piece together the complete essence.
It was much like tearing a sheet of written text into numerous tiny fragments and then assembling them anew. The more fragments one could see clearly and commit to memory at a single glance, the faster the reassembly would be.
The general outline of the Five Elements Dao Soldiers art alone was voluminous enough to fill dozens of sheets of jade paper, and it contained tens of thousands of dao rhythms—far beyond what jade paper could ever hold.
By now, this general outline of the Five Elements Dao Soldiers had been inscribed into the Dao Comprehension Chamber, allowing Wei Yuan to return and study it at any time. However, until his comprehension was complete, the chamber could not accommodate any other Scenery Command dao art.
With quick wits and agile thoughts, Wei Yuan absorbed large swathes of the surrounding dao rhythms. He grasped their meaning on his own while simultaneously copying an imprint into the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. While the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was not yet accustomed to this novel method of dao comprehension, it could record and preserve the information first. The dao rhythms could be kept with Maiden Yin-Yang, to be contemplated slowly later on.
Maiden Yin-Yang possessed an extraordinarily high intrinsic nature, so maintaining the dao rhythms was no difficulty for her.
Gradually, a void unfolded before Wei Yuan's eyes. The outline of a Dao soldier slowly emerged, its details filling in step by step.
The Dao soldier before him carried a persistent sense of familiarity. Searching his memories, Wei Yuan suddenly realized that this Dao soldier bore a striking resemblance to the Seven Stars Reincarnation Body. The Seven Stars Reincarnation Body relied on precious materials to replace certain functions of a Dao soldier's physical frame, enabling it to endure for ages.
If the scripture of the Seven Stars Reincarnation Body truly had been authored by Yun Xihe, the founding patriarch of Lanshen Palace, then it had very likely been derived from the art of the Five Elements Dao Soldiers. Back then, Yun Xihe was merely a minor dharma idol cultivator, said to possess ordinary aptitude. How could he have possibly altered and refined a Scenery Command dao art on his own?
Wei Yuan realized that Lanshen Palace, the predecessor of Qingming, might not have been as simple as it appeared on the surface. Perhaps even that nameless immortal's decision to leave behind the Qingming Immortal Stone here had not been entirely a coincidence.
Chapter 595