The first batch of Origin-Nourishing Lesser Pills came out of the furnaces. Wei Yuan inspected their quality and found it quite respectable. He waited another half-month until he had a stockpile of fifty thousand pills on hand, then drafted a public notice and ordered it copied and posted on the noticeboards of every major city.
The content of the notice was simple: starting immediately, military merits could be redeemed for Lesser Origin-Nourishing Pills by the commoner class of Qingming and above. At this point, Wei Yuan decided that "Lesser Origin-Nourishing Pill" sounded slightly better after all, and chose it as the official name.
Redemption was limited to one pill per person each month, accompanied by an explanation that those in early Body Casting should ideally take only one pill per month, as an excess would do more harm than good.
As soon as the notice went up, Qingming's mortal inhabitants were thrown into a fervor. This meant the threshold to Body Casting was now open to them. Moreover, the notice placed no restriction on total redemptions. Among Qingming's million commoners and hundreds of thousands of households, nearly every family had accumulated enough military merits to exchange for several pills.
Because there was no overall limit on total quantity, yet the rules mandated that redeemed pills had to be consumed on the spot, the commoners, with their streetwise intuition, quickly realized the true value of military merits and became cautious and deliberate instead.
With no warfare underway at the moment, accumulating military merits was no longer as easy as before. Many households thought it over carefully and reserved these opportunities for children under the age of ten, hoping they might take further strides along the path of cultivation.
The major merchant guilds stationed in Qingming naturally caught wind of the business opportunity and immediately purchased a batch of Lesser Origin-Nourishing Pills at high prices. After testing and trial ingestion, they discovered the pills were of remarkably good quality—consistent and uniform, with virtually no fluctuations from pill to pill.
At first, the merchant caravans had not thought much of the Lesser Origin-Nourishing Pills themselves, but through them they recognized Qingming's profound alchemy proficiency. Upon inquiring, they learned that Xu Henshui, the next master of the Monastery of Creation, was now residing long-term in Qingming. Enlightenment dawned on everyone; they assumed they had uncovered the secret behind Qingming's high-quality pills.
Wei Yuan kept the Pill Workshops, Weaponsmith Workshops, and Brocade Weaving Workshops under strictest secrecy, strictly forbidding unauthorized personnel from approaching. If anyone drew near, regardless of identity, they were immediately seized and imprisoned, their fate unknown thereafter. No one's intercession would help.
Inside the pill workshops, the workers were all Wei Yuan's Dao Foundation warriors. That alone had consumed over five hundred Dao Foundations, leaving Wei Yuan with only a hundred-odd to spare as mobile forces. Thus, there was no possibility of leaks.
The only others who knew the inside truth were the disciples of the Monastery of Creation. But these grand master alchemists were all immensely wealthy and had eccentric temperaments; attempting to bribe them was simply asking for trouble.
As the Domain Lord of Qingming, Wei Yuan was unquestionably the foremost Dao Foundation of the younger generation and the foremost in heavenly merits. His Dao Foundation was Unrivaled Under Heaven, a continent bearing an entire galaxy, yet even this had failed to win over those master alchemists. Only when Wei Yuan refined a three-stripe Great Sun Morning Splendor Pill and bested Xu Henshui did he truly win their favor.
The merchant caravans naturally had their own valuation methods. Based on previous cases where Qingming military merits had been spent and the conversion ratios for other provisions, they ultimately calculated that Qingming's redemption price was thirty percent of the current market rate.
Like sharks scenting blood, they swarmed forward at once, racking their brains to seek out opportunities.
Having arranged the pill redemption, Wei Yuan felt there was nothing pressing, so he headed into the Void Sky to harvest primal chaos qi, blade by blade. Yet the adage of practice making perfect had no effect on Wei Yuan.
With the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World monitoring the process throughout, Wei Yuan's technique for constructing arrays and drawing out Chaos Blades had neared perfection after only a few attempts, leaving no further room for improvement.
After harvesting qi like this for a month, Wei Yuan felt he had taken another firm, tiny step forward on the long, two-thousand-three-hundred-year road of immortal cultivation. But before he could even rejoice, he saw several streams of immortal spirit qi soar upward from within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, accompanied by an extremely searing burst of fire qi that rose and flushed nearly half the sky crimson!
Bolstered by these streams of immortal spirit qi, the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World expanded slowly, growing noticeably larger, and promptly delivered a new estimate: Wei Yuan's cultivation path had jumped directly from twenty-three hundred years to twenty-seven hundred years. After deducting his remaining lifespan, Wei Yuan was in the red by more than two thousand years.
This sudden turn of events made Wei Yuan's heart sink. He hurriedly inspected things, only to discover that the nine new immortal orchids Xu Henshui had given him had sprouted at the exact same moment, formally taking root in the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. The instant immortal flora birthed spiritual awareness and took root, the spiritual mechanisms of heaven and earth converged, granting the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World a terrifying amount of origin qi of heaven and earth.
The fire-attribute immortal spirit qi came from the Flame God Flower Tianyu had brought from the Desolate Realm. It had been half-dead and bereft of vitality all along, leading Wei Yuan to think he had been swindled once again. Who could have guessed it would hit Wei Yuan with such a massive surprise at this exact moment!
Wei Yuan stood frozen for a long time before shaking his head with a bitter smile. He resolved to exercise restraint: until he resolved his cultivation problem, he absolutely could not raise any more immortal plants!
Whenever Wei Yuan thought about how his lifespan would run out before he could finish cultivating the next realm, he repeatedly warned himself that he had to cure his itchy fingers, swearing numerous venomous oaths.
Just as he made up his mind, a thought reached him from Maiden Yin-Yang: the stone Tianyu had delivered, supposedly containing a primeval profound plant, was stirring. A glimmer of life seemed to be gestating within, but it was exceedingly weak and liable to extinguish at any moment.
With a flash of his silhouette, Wei Yuan instantly arrived beside Maiden Yin-Yang from outside the Void Sky. At this moment, the seed of the primeval profound plant lay quietly in the center of the Yin-Yang Blast Furnace Array. Sensing it carefully, Wei Yuan found that a tiny spark of life was indeed gestating inside, but this flame of vitality was so faint that it could go out at any second.
At that moment, struck by sudden inspiration—his hand moving faster than his brain—Wei Yuan drew out that strand of Mystic Heaven Purple Qi and flicked it onto the profound plant seed!
Like kindling catching fire, that spark of life immediately burned steadily and grew stronger, visibly gestating and sprouting.
Before Wei Yuan could even celebrate, a cry of dismay rang out in his mind: *Disaster!*
Fissures spread across the stone sphere as boundless light erupted from the cracks. The entire Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, along with the surrounding Void Sky, trembled violently, and faint resonance of the Great Dao echoed from beyond the heavens.
A stream of primeval profound qi surged forth and shot straight into the vault of heaven, while endless origin qi of heaven and earth showered from the Void Sky to nourish the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. Thus, in mere moments, after expanding through one cycle, the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World embarked on yet another round of growth.
Wei Yuan's cultivation path had skyrocketed to four thousand years.
Tribulation clouds suddenly formed in the sky, an ominous, churning black mass, and in the blink of an eye, bolts of heavenly lightning came rolling down. The tribulation cloud had formed above the primeval profound plant, so Wei Yuan had assumed the immortal object was undergoing a tribulation. To his shock, every single bolt of heavenly lightning struck him instead!
In an instant, Wei Yuan was blasted charred black from head to toe, and his original soul received quite a tempering.
Only after the barrage of heavenly lightning subsided did Wei Yuan remember the venomous oaths he had just sworn. Fortunately, the Heavenly Dao seemed somewhat merciful this time and had not escalated the severity of his tribulation lightning.
Maiden Yin-Yang looked at Wei Yuan suspiciously. She did not understand why he had been struck by lightning, but she knew it could not be anything good.
Wei Yuan lacked the strength to explain. He gazed weakly at the slowly cracking seed of the primeval profound plant, praying only that this thing would be worth the extra thirteen hundred years of bitter cultivation it had cost him.
Meanwhile, at the edge of the Wu domain, Shengxin said to Huixin, "This is the Eastern Desolation. It looks utterly barren, and in truth it is utterly barren. And the child of karmic destiny we are looking for is hiding right here."
Huixin sighed. "Is that true? We've already been searching for months."
Shengxin felt rather embarrassed and tried to cover for himself: "I definitely won't make a mistake this time! If you don't believe me, I can..."
Before he could even swear the oath, a shiver shot through his heart. He looked up, only to see a bolt of grayish-white tribulation lightning falling straight toward his head. Shengxin was scared out of his wits!
Chapter 660