When Wei Yuan regained consciousness, he found himself lying on an islet. Beside him stood the Jianmu sapling, now thirty zhang tall. Scars scorched by tribulation thunder still marked its trunk, yet its freshly sprouted branches already formed a lush canopy that shaded more than half the island.
The ground was no longer bare earth and stone. A soft, vibrant grass carpeted the soil, speckled here and there with clusters of wildflowers.
Wisps of vitality drifted down from the young Jianmu tree, absorbed steadily into Wei Yuan's origin soul. At the same time, an infusion of extremely high-order life aura poured into him. The sensation was intimately familiar—the very essence radiated by the fruit of life that had once saved his neck.
Wei Yuan turned his head and saw another small tree beside him bearing two fruits. A third branch had already extended from its trunk, wrapped in azure karmic luck, its tender bud on the verge of blooming.
Turning further, he saw Bao Yun kneeling at his side, looking down at him with concern.
"How did I get here?" Wei Yuan could not recall what had just happened. Querying the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World yielded no answers either, as if none of the immortal plants had witnessed the events.
Bao Yun replied, "I was training my spirituality here when I saw a young lady row over in a small boat. She brought you here, said the Jianmu could heal your wounds, and told me to look after you."
"A young lady? What did she look like?"
Between cultivators, there was no need for mere words. Bao Yun waved a hand, conjuring an image. It showed a young woman dressed in a simple, unadorned robe and skirt. Her features were ordinary, yet looking at her inspired an inexplicable sense of warmth and familiarity. She had arrived poling a skiff, cleaving wind and waves at astonishing speed.
Wei Yuan had no recollection of this maiden. Any mortal in the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World whom Wei Yuan had seen once would be etched into his memory, yet he had truly never encountered her. Still, with hundreds of thousands of mortals living within the Mortal World, the vast majority were people he had never laid eyes on.
He immediately conducted a search within the Mortal World, but turned up empty-handed. That suggested the maiden was likely the manifestation of some immortal plant. But which plant possessed such high spirituality? Could it be the Red Lotus Bodhi?
Setting aside his conjectures, Wei Yuan examined his origin soul. Under the dual healing of the Jianmu and the fruit of life from Bao Yun's Dao Foundation, the damage to his origin soul had already healed by nearly half and had begun self-repairing. On the surface, Wei Yuan showed no visible wounds, though he remained terribly languid and drained.
He then checked the items he had brought back, and this time found results. He had returned with a small jar of gray sand and seven or eight trinkets dropped by the monsters.
The gray sand had already been properly preserved. Going by its volume, it was enough to keep the light portal open for seven or eight days. By this calculation, the remains of one slain monster could keep the portal open for roughly half a day.
In those final moments of desperate slaughter, Wei Yuan had only remembered to gather spoils just as he was about to cut all the way through the horde. He had simply grabbed whatever he could reach. Most of the earlier monsters had only been wounded rather than slain, leaving no spoils behind anyway.
This was the first time Wei Yuan had seen monsters drop items upon being slain. None of the objects seemed particularly large, making it just plausible that they had been tucked away on their bodies. What Wei Yuan could not fathom was why monsters would carry trinkets around in the first place—to leave souvenirs for whoever killed them?
Presently, the Mortal World was analyzing the spoils Wei Yuan had brought back while simultaneously reviewing his combat logs. Dozens of tasks were running in parallel, with nearly thirty percent of the Mortal World's total resources poured into the projects.
Most of the remaining resources were dedicated to cracking the system carried by the black bird in order to upgrade the Mortal World itself. Preliminary findings were already in: this system could vastly improve the Mortal World's data storage capacity while making searches significantly faster and more efficient.
Seeing that everything in the Mortal World had run in perfect order during his coma, with everything he wanted done already handled by others, Wei Yuan felt both relieved and vaguely displaced.
Just as his thoughts wandered, a gentle touch grazed his skin. Bao Yun's hand stroked lightly across his body as she asked, "Great Domain Lord Wei, just what did you go off to do, getting yourself battered to pieces like this? Even your most vital part nearly snapped off; I had to reattach it for you."
Wei Yuan was startled. He distinctly remembered that in his origin soul state, he had long since dissolved that cumbersome appendage away.
Besides, an origin soul was an indivisible whole without distinct vitals. How could part of it snap off?
Even so, Wei Yuan reflexively sat up and looked down. Everything below was perfectly intact, still clad in trousers. Not a single extra piece was showing.
Seeing his flustered panic, a faint smile finally broke across Bao Yun's face. "That will teach you not to tell me when you're running into danger!"
Wei Yuan blushed, replying earnestly, "It's a shattered otherworldly realm, perhaps even a ruined grotto-heaven. It's exceptionally dangerous, and the monsters are unnervingly cunning. You can see how close I came to falling there. If you went in, you truly wouldn't be able to come back out."
"Take me to see the central city sometime."
"All right, but give it a day or two. My injuries are quite severe this time; I need to rest first." Wei Yuan nodded without suspicion.
"Go on, then. I'll come check on you in a bit."
Wei Yuan nodded and departed from the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. Returning to reality, a splitting headache hit him, accompanied by overwhelming exhaustion. He wanted nothing more than to collapse right where he was and sleep.
This origin soul injury was far too grave. Gritting his teeth against the searing pain in his head, Wei Yuan picked up a jet cylinder and flew straight to Sun Yu's clinic. Sun Yu assessed Wei Yuan's condition and dared not dawdle, immediately having two young, attractive female disciples carry him into a ward before performing a meticulous examination.
The ward spanned five zhang across, with a cold jade sickbed placed in the center. Sun jade embedded in the ceiling illuminated the entire room with bright, warm light. An array laid out in the chamber gathered Jianmu life-mystic power, condensing it into a pale-green spiritual mist that continuously drifted down over the bed from above.
Sun Yu's clinic was already an area of primary concern, and Wei Yuan had channeled a generous surplus of Jianmu life-mystic power here. Enhanced by Sun Yu's arrangements, so long as a patient's physical body retained a single thread of life, lying on this bed practically guaranteed they would not die.
Wei Yuan had never seen this room before; Sun Yu had likely built it piece by piece alongside his disciples over this past period. Only with a room like this did the place look the part, truly worthy of being called a clinic.
Otherwise, given Sun Yu's usual style, Wei Yuan felt it would have been better named a special operations research institute.
As Wei Yuan lay down, soaked in the Jianmu life-mystic power, a surge of vitality coursed through him, bringing considerable relief. The next moment, Sun Yu's dharma idol manifested overhead, and the poison scorpion spewed a mouthful of venomous mist squarely into Wei Yuan's face!
Wei Yuan felt an instant numbness spread across his face, which rapidly crept through his entire body until he could not move a muscle.
"What are you doing?"
Sun Yu said, "With your origin soul damaged, you're bound to have an agonizing headache. So I gave you a light dose of poison first. Its primary effect is pain relief."
"And the secondary effect?" Wei Yuan asked warily.
"The secondary effect—well, an ordinary Dao Foundation cultivator would probably be dead by now. But for you, it doesn't matter. A trace of poison will help temper your physical body."
Wei Yuan was thoroughly speechless. Still, every craft had its master, and Sun Yu's medical skill was genuinely reliable. Whether saving a life or taking one, the foremost requirement was an intimate understanding of the human body inside and out. As long as one thoroughly mastered the body's internal heaven and earth, their medicine could never be poor.
Sun Yu fetched a transparent jade bowl and poured in several drops of medicinal liquid. The liquid dissolved on contact with the bowl, transforming into mist. Sun Yu then inverted the jade bowl over Wei Yuan's face, saying, "Breathe naturally and inhale the medicinal vapors."
Wei Yuan projected his voice via divine sense: "What is this now?"
Sun Yu replied, "I was inspired by Brother Wenwu. The medical methods of mortals in the outer worlds are diverse and minutely detailed—truly breathtaking. It made me reflect: oral ingestion and topical application aren't the only ways to administer medicine. There are many other methods available. Inhaling medicinal vapors, for instance, is far more natural, acts with remarkable speed, and proves vastly more effective than traditional ingestion."
Wei Yuan drew in the vapor with a few breaths. Sure enough, a wave of relief washed over him as his origin soul, continuously nourished by the medicinal vapor, began recovering rapidly.
Sun Yu remarked, "Your origin soul is simply too powerful. An ordinary cultivator would be healed with a single dose, but you would need seventy. That said, the dosage I just gave you is twenty times that of a normal person. Lie here for twelve shichen and take two more doses, and you'll be mostly set. You can handle the rest of the recovery on your own. Any more medicine and your physical body won't be able to take it."
Wei Yuan asked, "The dosage you just gave me—how many cultivators could it poison to death?"
Sun Yu pondered for a moment. "Cui Yu would certainly die, and Henshui would be severely crippled."
"...Martial Uncle, you truly have that much faith in me?"
A wounded origin soul was no trivial matter. For Sun Yu to mend half of Wei Yuan's damage in a single day was already remarkable; the rest would have to heal slowly on its own. It was not for lack of trying, but because pills for treating the origin soul had run out.
Sun Yu urged Wei Yuan to speak with Xu Henshui once he recovered, to see if they could get a discount on pills used internally within Qingming.
Puzzled, Wei Yuan asked, "For such a small matter, Martial Uncle, couldn't you just ask him yourself?"
Sun Yu shook his head. "You don't understand. Those scruffy Daoists from the Monastery of Creation cling stubbornly to their profit margins. That fellow Xu Henshui refuses to drop below fifteen times cost, no matter what. He insists that making money is a small matter, but losing integrity is grave!"
Wei Yuan fell silent, then said, "Do you have the pill formulas? When I find some free time later, I'll brew a cauldron myself."
Sun Yu was mildly surprised. "You know alchemy too?"
Wei Yuan looked slightly sheepish. "I wouldn't say I've mastered it. I only tried my hand at a few formulas, managing roughly a twenty-fold standard."
Sun Yu gasped. "What? Isn't that even higher than Xu Henshui?"
Wei Yuan said, "Only for those few formulas."
"Oh. Falling short of him on the rest makes sense. But even that is no small feat."
Wei Yuan added, "I just haven't learned the other formulas yet."
Sun Yu: "..."
While Wei Yuan was resting, Bao Yun entered the ward holding an urgent dispatch. "A battle report from the Red Sand Oasis. The vanguard led by Xu Yi was ambushed, losing several hundred soldiers. They have fallen back a hundred li to await reinforcements. Cui Yu is currently leading the main army forward at full speed."
Wei Yuan was taken aback. The vanguard marching on Leize had actually been defeated? Even if the dispatch showed it was only a minor setback, it was still rather baffling.
Chapter 616