The young shaman fixed his gaze on Wei Yuan, fury blazing in his eyes. The eerie black blade hummed continuously, vibrating with a low whine that seemed both vigilant against a formidable foe and brimming with wild excitement and yearning.
Noticing the demon blade’s strange behavior, a look of surprise crossed the young shaman’s face. "I will see you on the battlefield tomorrow! I'll spare what little remains of your vanguard for one more day, and wait for you to come save them."
He melted into heaven and earth, as if he had never been there at all. Even Wei Yuan could not discern how he had departed. This unity with heaven and earth bore a passing resemblance to Su Xuejing’s state, yet was fundamentally different.
Su Xuejing had achieved it through her own cultivation, whereas this young shaman possessed such authority purely because he was blessed by heaven and earth.
Once the young shaman retreated, the assassins concealed in the darkness also withdrew swiftly, ebbing away like a tide.
Wei Yuan finally let out a sigh of relief and flew to Tianyu's side to examine his injuries. Tianyu had taken a direct hit from the colossal ballista; his lower body was completely gone, leaving only his upper half. Black qi roiled across the severed edge, where countless tiny sprouts of flesh were struggling to regrow, only to be instantly obliterated by the black qi the moment they formed.
It was a gruesome, living erosion of flesh and blood. Just watching it made Wei Yuan feel phantom aches. For Tianyu to endure it this long proved he was truly a man of iron.
Yet before Wei Yuan could utter a word of praise, Tianyu unleashed an earth-shattering howl of agony. The sound was extraordinarily concentrated; it could have easily shaken a hundred li, but he forcefully constricted it within a single li, rattling Wei Yuan so hard that golden stars danced before his eyes.
Looking at the wailing, thrashing Tianyu, Wei Yuan asked helplessly, "Why are you only screaming now?"
"Facing a great enemy, saving face matters most! Even if I die, I can't let out a peep! Now that it's just you here, it doesn't matter! It hurts like hell! Quick, think of something!"
The root of Tianyu's wound lay in the corrosive black qi that consumed his flesh. Wincing at the expense, Wei Yuan drew forth a wisp of Red Lotus Bodhi qi and sprinkled it across the injury. Sure enough, patches of black qi dispersed, showing immediate results.
However, once the black qi cleared, a faint layer of karmic fire flickered to life over the wound and began to burn.
That burn drew a sky-piercing shriek from Tianyu!
Fortunately, there was not much karmic fire, and fueled by the breath of the Red Lotus Bodhi, it soon burned itself out. Tianyu's torment finally came to an end, and his entire body slumped limp like a pile of mud. Though the black qi over the wound had completely vanished, his flesh now regrew at an agonizingly sluggish pace.
Wei Yuan hoisted Tianyu up and began retracing his steps.
Tianyu asked, "We're just letting that kid off like that?"
Wei Yuan retorted, "What else? You want to go after him?"
Tianyu immediately changed the subject. "I had no idea the Leize Tribe produced such a monster. Good thing we discovered him early. If we'd waited until he fully matured, it would've been a massive problem. Still, the bastard killed your people—can you really stomach that?"
"Didn't I set up a decisive battle with him tomorrow at noon?"
"And he actually agreed?"
Wei Yuan sighed. "You really are uncultured and ignorant. Over the past few centuries, while children of karmic destiny might not have been as common as ox hair, their numbers haven't been small either. Doesn't your tribe have any records about them at all?"
Tianyu replied, "Our tribe has never produced a child of karmic destiny."
Wei Yuan was struck speechless. "Just because you haven't produced one means you don't read records about them?"
"We don't have any, so why would we read about them?" Tianyu answered with righteous confidence.
This reminded Wei Yuan of his days in centralized instruction, when a classmate couldn't answer Feng Chutang's question and, accustomed to being spoiled, boldly declared on the spot, *That happened before I was born, so how could I possibly know?*
Naturally, Feng Chutang immediately used a rattan cane to make him understand the necessity of knowing what occurred before his birth.
Considering that his cooperation with the Desolate Ancestor Tribe would continue for a long time, Wei Yuan patiently explained, "Many children of karmic destiny were originally quite ordinary, having endured all manner of unusual suffering and torment.
"Yet they all share a common trait: no matter how much hardship they endure, they remain firmly convinced that a grand opportunity awaits them ahead, and that the world is waiting for them to change it..."
Tianyu remarked curiously, "Can that even be called a trait? Who wasn't like that in their youth? 'Do not bully the youth for being poor,' then 'do not bully the middle-aged for being poor,' and 'do not bully the elderly for being poor'..."
Wei Yuan snapped, "Shut your mouth first!"
Tianyu mumbled, "Shutting my mouth doesn't stop me from talking."
Forcibly suppressing the irritation in his chest, Wei Yuan continued, "Once karmic luck blesses them, they essentially encounter endless serendipity. Everything they do goes extraordinarily smoothly. Even if they run into a powerful enemy, some passing luminary will find the injustice unbearable, step in to lend a hand, and take an instant liking to them—things like that. If their karmic luck is even stronger, the luminary will be replaced by the luminary's young master or young lady."
Tianyu muttered in bewilderment, "That's not right. Why wasn't it like that when I was a kid? In my earliest memories, my older female cousin beat me every day. All I did was tell her once that she was ugly, and she beat me for over a decade."
"You aren't a child of karmic destiny."
"Was it like that for you when you were young?" Tianyu countered.
Wei Yuan replied deadpan, "When I entered the Palace of Grand Beginning, naturally everyone I met was an important figure. Then, on the day I completed my cultivation and descended the mountain, those important figures handed me an IOU for twenty million."
Tianyu was shocked. "You really *are* a child of karmic destiny?! I was wondering why you could achieve all this instead of me—turns out you're just lucky!"
Wei Yuan flared in fury. "I relied entirely on my own hard work!"
In the midst of his outrage, he suddenly noticed a corner of the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, where a dozen people were secretly conferring inside a hidden chamber, each filled with righteous indignation: "The world has suffered under the Creation Immortal Venerable for too long! Today, we shall uphold justice on behalf of heaven!"
"Indeed! The Creation Immortal Venerable sits idle in his post, neglects proper affairs day after day, and hoards the immortal plants! Today, we must replace him!"
"Move! Let's go bury the bronze man!"
Everyone exchanged glances. Not a single one could lift the bronze man.
And so, the crowd filed into an inner chamber and quietly burned a stick of incense before a spirit tablet. The tablet bore three words: "Fengyuzhong."
With that, another crime was added to the Creation Immortal Venerable's ledger.
Wei Yuan had no time to waste on this handful of fools who couldn't see reality and insisted on trying to shake a great tree like ants or stop a carriage like mantises. He continued instructing Tianyu:
"...So, once a child of karmic destiny rises, their favorite thing is showing off their strength before a crowd. If the audience is too small, they aren't even interested in fighting. Just now, in the pitch-black night with barely anyone around in ambush, the fight offered zero appeal. I challenged him to a decisive battle at noon tomorrow, deciding life and death before tens of thousands of troops. With so many eyes watching, he is guaranteed to accept!
"On top of that, children of karmic destiny love playing teacher, preaching grand life lessons to everyone around them. If you run into one in the future, make sure to listen carefully. It doesn't matter whether you understand or not. In their eyes, everyone around them is an ignorant fool anyway; they only lecture you because they need an outlet to vent, not because they genuinely expect you to grasp anything."
Tianyu was stunned. "Isn't that just sick in the head?"
Another wave of irritation surged within Wei Yuan. Barely keeping it in check, he said, "Can you just shut up!"
Tianyu raised a hand. "I didn't open my mouth. I'm talking with my hand."
Wei Yuan finally understood what it meant when people said rotten wood could not be carved. Tianyu was great in every way except for talking too much—and now he even had a hand that could 'talk.'
No longer beating around the bush, Wei Yuan laid out his plan plainly: fight an open, head-on battle tomorrow to crush the Leize army, while simultaneously stripping away his opponent's karmic luck.
This child of karmic destiny from the Leize Tribe had already taken a strike across realms from the three-eyed bird head, which had nearly shattered his karmic luck. Tomorrow, so long as the Leize army was defeated, his karmic luck would collapse on the spot, making him easy to slay.
Furthermore, with his karmic luck drastically diminished at this moment, Wei Yuan had no fear that he would skip tomorrow's battle.
If he flinched and retreated before the clash, losing the favor of his people and the mortal fortune tied to them, his karmic luck—even if it didn't shatter on the spot—would drain away completely over the next few years, reducing him back to an ordinary mortal. For a child of karmic destiny, that was a fate far worse than death.
This intricate chain of maneuvers regarding karmic luck was something Tianyu would never understand, and Wei Yuan was in no mood to explain. The underlying premise of it all was that the three-eyed bird head had severely wounded his opponent's karmic luck in the first place. But that, of course, was something Wei Yuan would never breathe a word of to Tianyu.
Chapter 620