The matter of the Heavenly Merits Poetry Gathering weighed heavily on Wei Yuan's mind. Everyone had different needs. These young masters and mistresses of aristocratic clans lacked neither money nor cultivation methods; deep down, what they craved was their family's recognition and the praise of their peers from their former social circles—in other words, returning home in glory and bringing honor to their ancestors.
Furthermore, a favorable marriage alliance was a powerful guarantee for their futures, one that could even pave a smoother path for their descendants' advancement.
Wei Yuan noted the matter down. After laying out the arrangements for the military campaign, he sent word to the Desolate Ancestor Tribe, and the army soon departed in secret. Xu Yi led an advance force of five thousand light cavalry, followed by one thousand baggage train soldiers escorting several dozen freight wagons.
The wagons were built in the traditional style used by merchant firms, capable of navigating rugged roads and crossing mountains and ridges. As Qingming had no dedicated military wagons, they had simply purchased merchant wagons directly.
However, Qingming's wagons differed somewhat from ordinary merchant stock: their bodies were clad in a thin sheet of steel. While incapable of stopping heavy arrows, it provided an added degree of defense against light poisoned arrows. The windows of the wagons were thrown wide open, with gun barrels jutting out through the apertures.
Once the army set off, Wei Yuan entered the Nether Cold Realm to continue studying the function of the Patriarch's boundary stone fragment. By this time in the Nether Cold Realm, Zhang Sheng and the others had just completed a round of cutting and were resting to recover their breath.
Seeing Wei Yuan arrive, Zhang Sheng manifested another immortal sword in her hand. Its blade was a deep emerald green—another Earth Tier immortal sword. This was already the seventh immortal sword she had advanced.
"If all five hundred and twelve immortal swords could be elevated to the Earth Tier," Wei Yuan said, "your Dao Foundation would reach an unimaginable realm!"
Zhang Sheng rolled her eyes at him and said, "I have about ten or so yin-cold immortal swords left that can be tempered here. Where would I find another place like the Nether Cold Realm after that? Even if I found one, it might not offer an environment like Nether Iron Mountain. Elevating every single immortal sword to the Earth Tier would certainly be wonderful, but when a cup is full to the brim, it spills. Having restarted my cultivation, I've already spent far too much time at the Dao Foundation stage. Now is the time to push forward boldly. No matter how invincible a Dao Foundation may be, it is still only a Dao Foundation."
Wei Yuan found Zhang Sheng's reasoning sound. In truth, as long as it came from Zhang Sheng, he thought it sounded reasonable anyway.
Seeing the hesitation on Wei Yuan's face, Zhang Sheng asked, "Still can't make up your mind?"
Wei Yuan nodded. "We know next to nothing about the Nether Cold Realm. It's truly difficult to weigh the pros and cons, and I don't know whether I should use the fragment here."
"That's true," Zhang Sheng agreed. "A treasure of this caliber is too precious to make hasty decisions over. In my opinion, we might as well wait until we dig our way out. From the vibrations reverberating back as we dig, I feel we aren't far from the mountain face now. Perhaps in a few more months we'll bore straight through this mountain. When that time comes, I'm afraid a major battle will be upon us."
"If you can come across, the others should be able to as well," Wei Yuan said. "Should we summon them to join us?"
Zhang Sheng pondered for a moment, then said, "This place is frigid yin and an environment of extreme metal; the suppression on Chuhe would be too severe, and he would likely suffer severe injuries the moment he arrived. Xu Henshui would be the most suitable. The immortal orchids he gave you are thriving here, and his natal Dharma Idol should perform even better. Perhaps this is his ideal cultivation environment."
"What about Feng Tingyu?"
Zhang Sheng frowned slightly. "Her... I don't know. Call her in to test it out; I can't say what will happen. But keep a close eye on her. While people from the Hall of the Bright King aren't easy to kill, that only applies as long as their primordial spirit remains intact. So long as their primordial spirit doesn't disperse, even if only a toe remains, they can regenerate. Here, without a physical body, is precisely when disciples of the Hall of the Bright King are at their weakest. Still, now that you mention it, I think she really ought to come in and get some discipline. Ever since arriving in Qingming, that girl has been growing increasingly brainless."
After leaving the Nether Cold Realm, Wei Yuan heard that Xu Henshui had returned from the ancestral mountain. He went to find him and broached the idea of entering the Nether Cold Realm to investigate. Xu Henshui gladly agreed, and after falling asleep, he followed Wei Yuan into the Nether Cold Realm.
The moment Xu Henshui entered the Nether Cold Realm, an immortal orchid materialized atop his head. The orchid blossomed, and Fairy Linglan flew out from within. She fluttered to and fro through the space, looking overjoyed.
Xu Henshui remarked, "This place truly is naturally suited to my cultivation! If I could use this as a model to form my mindscape world, it would be even more effective than my family's ancestral 'Nether Spring Floating Goblet' minor world! Everything here is wonderful; it's just a bit ugly..."
"Think before you speak," Zhang Sheng said, startling Xu Henshui so badly he nearly jumped out of his skin.
He stammered, "Y-You... why are you here too?"
"If you can be here, why can't I?"
Composing himself, Xu Henshui caught sight of Zhang Sheng's immortal sword and said, "Oh, you're here to cultivate too. Wait, why does this place feel familiar?"
Following his intuition, he walked a few paces and spotted two immortal orchids planted in a corner.
Xu Henshui was taken aback, then said, "Indeed. I had always wondered about the origin of this mutant orchid breed, and it seems it hails from this realm. But they're still growing a bit too slowly. Allow me to lend a hand!"
Fairy Linglan flew over the two immortal orchids and waved her hand, sprinkling a mist of water. The vitality of both immortal orchids visibly surged, and the area they covered expanded significantly.
Wei Yuan soon discovered that Xu Henshui's Dharma Idol resonated with the two immortal orchids, amplifying the orchids' domain power and broadening its reach. Xu Henshui, for his part, found himself reluctant to take a single step away after entering the Nether Cold Realm. He simply found a spot, sat cross-legged in meditation, and began meticulously contemplating this world topped with boundless Nether Mountains and floored with Nether Soil and nether crystals.
Before sinking into meditation, however, Xu Henshui recalled something and thrust a jade tablet bearing an alchemy recipe to Wei Yuan, saying, "I originally came back intending to refine a few cauldrons of cultivation pills for the Dao Foundation stage. Now I doubt I'll have the time, so I'll leave these three cauldrons to you. The medicinal herbs are all prepared and stored in the Monastery's herbal dispensary. The Palace's requirement is fifty pills per cauldron, and whatever extra you produce is yours to keep."
Taking the jade tablet, Wei Yuan swept it with his divine sense and discovered that it was another ancient recipe, covered with insights and reflections left by successive generations of the Monastery of Creation's patriarchs. Tucked into a small corner was the pill recipe that could boost cultivation at the Dao Foundation stage: the Mystic Breath Pill.
Wei Yuan couldn't help thinking the Monastery of Creation was truly peculiar—why did such a minor pill recipe have to be recorded amidst ancient formulas and ancestral ruminations?
A single Mystic Breath Pill could match a month of bitter cultivation for a Mortal Tier cultivator, priced at five hundred taels apiece. For disciples of middling families, this was their final lifeline in pursuing a sliver of hope on the path of Dao, often requiring them to consume them until their families were ruined financially.
Wei Yuan himself naturally had never partaken of cultivation pills like the Mystic Breath Pill after reaching Dao Foundation. However, having devoured several dragonkin—the equivalent of swallowing Great Heaven-Mending Pills whole—his advancement during the Dao Foundation stage was practically unmatched.
Refining the Mystic Breath Pill was simple, two full grades easier than the Great Sun Morning Splendor Pill. Wei Yuan took the jade tablet and said he needed a few days to study it. Xu Henshui harbored no doubts and handed it over.
With Xu Henshui present, Wei Yuan did not have to worry about Han Li or Long Wushuang. He therefore departed the Nether Cold Realm to complete this minor task of the Mystic Breath Pills.
This commission method for pills like the Mystic Breath Pill was the most common form of remuneration for alchemists of the Palace of Grand Beginning. Extra medicinal ingredients were provided, and any surplus pills refined belonged to the alchemist. In this way, the alchemists were motivated to hone their craft.
Furthermore, if an alchemist researched and developed a new pill formula, a portion of the revenue generated by that new formula would belong to the alchemist for a period of time. Because of this, although medicines sold by the Monastery of Creation of the Palace of Grand Beginning were exorbitant, their efficacy was truly exceptional, and they offered many kinds of pills that simply could not be purchased outside.
Other immortal sects purchased vast quantities of pills from the Palace of Grand Beginning every year. This had once been the Palace's greatest source of income, only recently supplanted by geomantic formation plates that enhanced financial fortune, dropping to second place.
Wei Yuan spent a full seven days studying the Mystic Breath Pill's jade tablet, primarily conferring with the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World on how to improve the pill-refining process. A cauldron of Mystic Breath Pills had a standard yield worth twenty-five thousand, against five thousand in medicinal costs. This adhered to the standard of the Monastery of Creation—a fivefold return was the benchmark; failing to achieve fivefold meant undertaking the task at a loss.
Having examined pill formulas continuously for months, Wei Yuan had long discovered that the processing methods for many medicinal herbs could actually be generalized, and the processing methods for certain herbs seemed capable of improvement. Now, the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was assigned another long-term task: studying the underlying principles behind the refining and processing methods of various medicinal herbs.
For example, with nine steamings and nine sun-dryings, what precisely was being steamed away, and what was left behind? Was sun-drying meant for preservation, or to alter the inherent physical properties, and so forth? Many half-baked alchemists had no desire to delve deeply and could not fathom it anyway; they would simply claim that these were ancestral formulas left by the ancestors, and could the ancestors ever be wrong? Little did they know whether the ancestors, if aware in the netherworld, would even acknowledge such ignorant, degenerate descendants.
This was an immensely vast undertaking. Merely gathering the physical properties of all kinds of herbs and replicating them flawlessly within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World required a staggering amount of work.
Having relegated the arduous, heavy task to the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, Wei Yuan carried the medicinal ingredients and entered the alchemy chamber. His procurement of herbs had caused quite a stir, and the alchemists all knew Wei Yuan was about to refine pills again. One after another, they set aside their work and gathered before the doors of his alchemy chamber, ready to witness a miracle. Mystic Breath Pills did not take much time; waiting half a day would be more than enough.
Meanwhile, at the Northern Mountain Gate, two elders from the Monastery of Creation rushed to True Monarch Danming's secluded cultivation retreat and struck the bell, rousing him from seclusion.
True Monarch Danming emerged with a face full of displeasure. "I was on the verge of an insight when you interrupted me. Unless this is an earth-shattering matter, you will certainly face punishment—"
"Monastery Master, please look at this," an elder said, presenting a sheet of jade paper.
True Monarch Danming took it and glanced down, seeing the title: *Optimization of the Refining Process for the Great Sun Morning Splendor Pill*. At the sight of the title, he snorted coldly. "Sensationalist claptrap!"
Essays of this kind proposing improvements to pill recipes appeared eighty if not a hundred times a year. Most were penned by minor alchemists who, having attained a modicum of initial success, fancied they understood everything and hurried to write treatises pontificating on grand matters. Such essays rarely held up to scrutiny.
In fact, if pill formulas were so easy to revise, with True Monarch Danming's penchant for publishing under his name and collecting royalties, he would have done so hundreds of years ago—why would he leave it for today? In terms of the volume of papers and the height of royalties, True Monarch Danming ranked second only to Immortal Monarch Tinghai. At present, the most cited treatises with the highest royalties in the Palace still belonged to the Palace Master; although the Palace Master had not penned an essay in nearly a century, that record remained unmatched.
Yet upon reading it, True Monarch Danming's expression changed. The more he read, the more violently his expression shifted, alternating between joy and distress, until suddenly, with a thunderous boom, his pill qi erupted. Everything within several tens of zhang was tainted by the pill qi, mutating in an instant before condensing into pills of diverse colors and shapes.
One elder, unable to dodge in time, watched as half the sleeve of his Daoist robe was transformed into a pill.
That robe was capable of resisting Scenery Command Dao techniques, yet True Monarch Danming's pill qi had directly refined it into a pill! Both elders were terrified in their hearts, secretly marveling that their Monastery Master's cultivation had grown increasingly unfathomable.
At this moment, tempestuous waves surged in True Monarch Danming's heart as well. Divine light flashed in his eyes, and he demanded, "Where is that old thief Xuanyue? Bring him before me at once!"
Chapter 610