Call Her Out to Confront Me

"I really didn't do anything to you..." Wei Yuan patiently explained, but Feng Tingyu refused to listen. "You think just because I fell asleep, I don't remember anything, do you? Only my head was asleep; everywhere else was wide awake. My thigh says you did everything!" Wei Yuan said in outrage, "Slander! Call her out to confront me!" Immediately, a glowing-white thigh thrust right in front of Wei Yuan, nearly pressing against his face. Then Feng Tingyu suddenly seemed to realize something. Glaring at Wei Yuan, she said, "You scoundrel! If you wanted to look, just say so! It's not like I wouldn't let you!" "I... that's not what I meant..." Wei Yuan wanted to weep, but had no tears. Then Feng Tingyu yawned and said, "My dharma idol hasn't... stabilized yet... I need to... sleep... a bit more..." Wei Yuan hurriedly said, "Then I'll take my leave!" Without waiting for Feng Tingyu to reply, Wei Yuan vanished in a flash. In the blink of an eye, he returned, set down a large pile of food along with a bottle of qi-replenishing pills, and only then departed. Clutching the heap of snacks, Feng Tingyu drifted off to sleep with a smile. Once she fell asleep, her mouth began to eat on its own. Wei Yuan fetched a military tent to cover Feng Tingyu's house before leaving. After this incident, he no longer had to worry about her safety. As facts had proven, an asleep Feng Tingyu was far more dangerous than an awake one. Moreover, looking at Feng Tingyu's bizarre dharma idol, no matter how Wei Yuan looked at it, it seemed like some kind of demonic art. Yet her dharma idol coordinated impeccably with her physical body. The dharma idol severed all five senses while binding the opponent; with both parties rendered deaf and blind, they could only fight relying on physical instinct. In that state, who could possibly beat someone from the Hall of the Bright King? However, Wei Yuan now felt that the conduct of the Hall of the Bright King did not resemble a great immortal sect in the slightest. Their arts were utterly grotesque, likely ranking among the top three even in a demonic sect. But upon careful reflection, the other branches of the Palace of Grand Beginning did not seem much better. Haotian View specialized in combat, yet the one Wei Yuan interacted with most was Zhu Yuanjin—a founding patriarch who was a bona fide assassin by trade, completely oblivious to concepts like martial virtue or a moral bottom line, and remained so to this day. In addition, the Monastery of Creation was a generational den of unscrupulous merchants, yet they still could not out-swindle the Hall of Heavenly Secrets. Perhaps True Monarch Yanshi diverted wealth luck to himself whenever he had free time. As for the Hall of Jianmu, producing an Old Daoist Chuhe was bad enough, yet the old daoist happened to be deeply favored by the hall master and enjoyed great prestige throughout the hall. Now it seemed that Tianqing and Shuiyue were the most normal, yet they ended up faring the worst. Thinking it over and over, Wei Yuan began to suspect that the Palace of Grand Beginning itself was flawed. The legacies of many of its monasteries and halls simply could not bear close scrutiny. Regardless, now that he didn't need to worry about Feng Tingyu, one weight fell off Wei Yuan's mind—only for another to take its place. From now on, he would have to worry about himself. With the Three-Veined Mysterious Pill in hand, Bao Yun was also no cause for concern. Her opportunity for achieving the Dao lay in the reconstruction of Ding'an City. On the day of its completion, human karmic luck would reach its peak; breaking through to the Dharma Idol Realm then would replenish all her damaged foundations and might even grant her further gains. Zhang Sheng had remained in the Nether Cold Realm the entire time. Fortunately, everything over there was formed of Wei Yuan's dharma idol, and Wei Yuan would look in on her from time to time. Though all of them were creations of his dharma idol, significant differences existed among them. Wei Yuan could track the movements of the various warriors at any time, and the same applied to the enlightened ones—he could even perceive every thought currently in their minds. The Wen and Wu Dragon Guards were much the same; they could be manipulated just like parts of his body. Longying, however, possessed far greater autonomy; Wei Yuan could only exercise limited control and perceive some of his vague thoughts. If Wei Yuan wanted him to do something, he had to issue orders rather than directly manipulate him. The final category consisted of figures like Han Li, Long Wushuang, and Dugu Cangqiong. He could give them orders, but could not directly manipulate them. At most, he could shift them around through something akin to teleportation, and he had no way of knowing what they were thinking. As for whether they obeyed the orders, that depended on the prestige of the Creation Immortal Venerable. On that front, Wei Yuan was quite confident. Purely for these reasons, Wei Yuan would occasionally look through the eyes of a dharma idol warrior or a dragon guard to confirm whether his teacher was safe, with no intention of spying on anyone else. Once Zhang Sheng began cultivating, she worked almost without rest or sleep. Several months had passed by now, and the array she laid down had changed from the Three Talents Array to a Six Paths Boundless Array with six positions. The three hall masters of the Battle Saint Hall, along with the Wen and Wu Dragon Guards and Longying, occupied the six array cores. Each controlled an immortal sword, continuously rotating and excavating ahead. The rotating excavation area was already the size of a tabletop, progressing several times faster than before. No wonder Longying had given up digging on his own and instead served as an assistant to Zhang Sheng. Zhang Sheng sat cross-legged in the center of the array, serving as the array pivot to coordinate its operation. At this point, all six immortal swords exuded a bone-chilling, nether-cold aura, each having advanced to the Earth Tier. During the three months Wei Yuan spent refining pills, Zhang Sheng had advanced five more immortal swords, drastically increasing her strength at an astonishing pace. With seven of them forming the array, for some reason, the sight was far more pleasing to Wei Yuan's eyes. What surprised him, however, was that the fellow Dugu Cangqiong was also sitting within the array and had already become the vice hall master of the Battle Saint Hall. Wei Yuan quietly checked his past records. Every action of mortals was recorded within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. The length of time records were kept depended first on the individual's importance, and second on Maiden Yin-Yang's spirituality. The higher her spirituality, the more records she could retain. Currently, she could store ten days of records, while key mortals or locations could be recorded for thirty days. Dugu Cangqiong had been classified as a key individual after awakening a Dao Body. Wei Yuan checked and discovered that the Dao Body this fellow had awakened was an overbearing type known as the Yellow Heaven Indestructible Body. It pulled his cultivation talent directly to Long Wushuang's level, further enhanced by the Dao Body itself. Added to his silver tongue, he persuaded many hall members who were unaware of the truth to support him, successfully becoming a vice hall master and sitting on equal footing with Long Wushuang from then on. However, when he attempted to overthrow Han Li, someone secretly exposed a great deal of his dirty laundry, causing the bid to fail. Another thing that surprised Wei Yuan was that such a Dao Body as the Yellow Heaven Indestructible Body actually existed, and its information was already stored in the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. Maiden Yin-Yang had stripped the Dao Body's data directly from Dugu Cangqiong without his knowledge. After reading through the information carefully, Wei Yuan sighed inwardly. The Yellow Heaven Indestructible Body was indeed overbearing and lived up to its name. Unfortunately, it was a Dao Body; no matter how well he understood it, it was useless if he couldn't awaken it. It would only serve to let him know his enemy and know himself if he faced someone with the same Dao Body in the future. At this thought, the two words "Yellow Heaven" struck Wei Yuan as strangely grating. Thinking carefully, he recalled a sentence from Xu Wenwu's records: The Azure Heaven is dead; the Yellow Heaven shall rise. At this moment, Yin-Yang transmitted another batch of cultivation technique records. Wei Yuan inspected them one by one. Among them were over a hundred Body Casting techniques of uneven quality, along with over a dozen Dao Foundation techniques, also ranging from good to bad. The best among them was already close to the heritage of the Palace of Grand Beginning. However, none of the techniques currently included a Dharma Idol chapter. These techniques were all devised by the mortals within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. Many of them forged their own path or were even wildly imaginative, yet achieved through uncanny natural genius, providing Wei Yuan with genuine inspiration. Piqued, Wei Yuan continued searching for related materials. Maiden Yin-Yang sent over another hundred or so essays, all of which were studies dissecting various arts of the Palace of Grand Beginning. These hundred-odd essays had clearly been filtered; they possessed considerable depth and insight, repeatedly drawing sighs of admiration from Wei Yuan. Though the mortals who wrote these essays possessed mediocre cultivation, their insights were remarkably profound and unique. Wei Yuan grew interested in them and checked their past records one by one. There were just over a dozen authors in total, all of whom had experienced some degree of awakening when the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World advanced. Wei Yuan split off a dozen strands of divine sense to examine their pasts and current activities, and before he realized it, an entire day had slipped by. Startled by the passage of time, Wei Yuan finally realized what immense fun lay in hiding in a shadowy corner to peek at the lives of mortals. No wonder those immortals often spent hundreds of years without leaving their grotto-heavens. With so many people inside a grotto-heaven, there was boundless amusement to be found.