The perfection of the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was an unexpected joy, yet joy mingled with concern. After plundering the origin soul power of a Scenery Command cultivator, the result had merely been kindling the spiritual flame within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, making the realm rudimentarily complete from that point on.
Yet taking closer stock, the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was still far from truly complete. Merely enfolding it in primal chaos qi was still half unfinished, and the firmament was marked by numerous festering dark-red lesions. These were signs of the decaying state fortune as Western Jin suffered pincer attacks from Zhao and the Liao Clan from north and south—a decline that had also rubbed off on Wei Yuan.
However, the matter of state fortune was something Wei Yuan had orchestrated by design. Since the Xu family refused to surrender the two commanderies and Wei Yuan could not openly attack them, he had let the Zhao forces enter and sweep through the commanderies. Thus, Li Chengfeng gained fame and military merit, while Wei Yuan gained people.
As for the remaining three commanderies in the southwest, they were already firmly in Wei Yuan's grasp. As the food blockade continued, refugees had begun streaming out in an endless tide; it was only a matter of when Wei Yuan chose to tighten the noose.
Wei Yuan waited until Han Li and Jun Weizhi finished crossing their tribulations, then left the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World and headed for the mountain behind Ding'an City to inspect the newly constructed Turtle-Snake Immortal Refining Array Diagram.
Seen from a distance, the small valley appeared quite ordinary. Had he not exercised his realm lord authority, even Wei Yuan would not have noticed anything out of the ordinary. Yet as he flew closer, the scenery before him shifted, revealing a grand formation a hundred zhang across.
Built to match the mountain's contours, the grand formation formed an irregular oval. At the formation core in the center sat a small white jade pool three zhang square. Beside the pool was a colossal black stone serpent coiled around a white jade spiritual turtle.
Beside the pool stretched ground paved with cyan jade, upon which lay corpses covered with white cloths.
The formation in the small valley was semi-natural, sustained by the spiritual qi of the colossal trees and the surrounding spirit grove. It was extraordinarily ingenious; anyone who lacked insider knowledge would never be able to find the valley.
When Wei Yuan arrived, only a single dharma idol and several Dao Foundation warriors were sitting in cross-legged cultivation. All were Wei Yuan's warriors, stationed here to stand guard. The Turtle-Snake Immortal Refining Array Diagram was of immense consequence and exceedingly sensitive; if word leaked, Wei Yuan's reputation would likely take a heavy hit. Therefore, no one knew of this place except for Bao Yun and a select few of his closest intimates.
At this moment, eight complete corpses of Liao Clan dharma idols lay laid out upon the cyan-jade-paved Heaven-Severing Spirit-Locking Formation. These dharma bodies had been preserved up to the present.
Wei Yuan lifted a white cloth, telekinetically raised a naked corpse, and set it into the white jade pool. As the body entered the water, the turtle and serpent statues immediately exhaled wisps of invisible breath, and the corpse slowly melted like ice. Two hours later, the corpse had vanished completely, leaving behind a layer of clear water at the bottom of the pool.
The water was crystalline, without a speck of impurity.
Wei Yuan placed the corpses in one by one. After a day and a night, all of them had dissolved into clear water, filling the pool to a depth of about a chi.
With water in the white jade pool, a wisp of primal chaos qi would be produced every half-day, while the pool water barely diminished. Wei Yuan calculated that the eight Liao Clan dharma idols could roughly increase the primal chaos qi's coverage by ten percent, sparing him nearly a century of painstaking cultivation. However, this process seemed likely to take several years.
Finally, Wei Yuan pulled over the dharma body of the Worthy Prince of the Left's youngest son and placed it into the white jade pool. The moment the dharma body touched the water, the pool began to boil. A hoarse, guttural roar burst from the corpse as it sat straight up in the pool, trying to flee!
Wei Yuan had not expected that an immortal will or similar trump card would still be concealed within the corpse. It was very similar to the hidden measure True Monarch Huangyun had left behind, only far more ingenious. The corpse had been in Wei Yuan's possession for an entire year and moved across multiple locations without the contingency ever triggering, remaining perfectly concealed. Only today, when Wei Yuan prepared to refine it with the array diagram, had it been activated in a bid to escape.
Yet within Qingming, how could Wei Yuan possibly let it escape? He immediately mobilized the power of the Peerless Dao Domain, completely suppressing and sealing it firmly within the pool.
The turtle and serpent seemed to come alive, drawing upon the surrounding world origin qi and turning it into invisible corroding mist, exhaling breath after breath onto the corpse.
The voice went from furious rage to empty threats, and then to pitiful pleas, but Wei Yuan turned a deaf ear to all of it, refusing to heed a single word.
This was no laughing matter. Once a conversation began, karmic ties might take root, and one could fall prey to some scheme without even knowing when it happened.
Wei Yuan had no desire to take risks; better to pocket the immediate benefits first.
At last, amidst venomous curses and hysterical shrieks, that wisp of immortal will was finally eroded into nothingness. The corpse collapsed once more and began to dissolve.
A wisp of primal chaos qi formed, merging into the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World.
As this wisp of qi entered his body, Wei Yuan suddenly felt as though he were thoroughly drunk; his head spun violently, and he collapsed face-first to the ground. Immediately, within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, the sea surged, churning up waves dozens of feet high. The earth quaked, cracks opened across the ground, and many buildings in Central City collapsed one after another. Yet the immortal flora felt no panic; instead, they cheered and danced with joy.
At the very core of the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, that spark of spiritual flame grew considerably larger, stabilizing into a steady, constant burn.
With the spiritual flame stabilized, the tremors in the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World gradually died down. The myriad living beings within had no idea what had happened, but they all felt their bodies grow light and found themselves inexplicably in high spirits. Thus, a joyful mood washed across the entire realm, and the mortals moved a third faster no matter what task they were doing.
Wei Yuan was shaken. Seeing such an enormous transformation, he naturally realized that the wisp of breath obtained from refining the Worthy Prince of the Left's youngest son could never have been ordinary primal chaos qi. Unfortunately, the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World had devoured it too quickly; before he even had a chance to examine it closely, it had already been swallowed and digested whole.
In retrospect, this youngest son of the Worthy Prince of the Left was definitely no ordinary scion of an immortal. His dharma idol had aided Feng Chutang's dharma idol in undergoing a metamorphosis, allowing an immortal idol to advance yet another step; as for his dharma body, it had yielded who knew what to propel the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World forward by another half-step.
The Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was no ordinary dharma idol. Anything that could push it forward even a little would likely have propelled a standard dharma idol straight to Scenery Command.
It seemed the Worthy Prince of the Left had invested a fortune in this youngest son. No wonder he had been so enraged by his death, refusing to let up even after fighting the northern mountain sects for over a year.
Having dealt with the Turtle-Snake Immortal Refining Array Diagram, Wei Yuan returned to the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, preparing to organize a new offensive into the World Shard. This World Shard was exceptionally rich; both the wraith origin souls and the Dao profound qi it produced were priceless treasures. But what Wei Yuan valued even more were the surviving wraiths' memories of the other world beyond the heavens.
The wraith hiding in the supermarket was clearly an academic slacker. Back in his day, his memories had been filled only with things that poor students noticed; the library had been virtually empty, and most of the books were just decorative props.
Yet just as the fellow had said, wherever there was someone ranked first in the grade, there would also be someone ranked last; he had merely happened to be dead last. Viewed in reverse, if there was someone dead last, there had to be someone ranked first. Wei Yuan did not expect the top student in the grade to have become a wraith as well; having just one from the top ten would suffice.
Wei Yuan was in no hurry to strike. Instead, he gathered the Dao Foundation cultivators among the mortals and began mass-producing special lanterns fueled by karmic luck. These lanterns cast light that repelled monsters; as long as they remained lit, ordinary monsters would hesitate to draw near.
Han Li and Jun Weizhi's ascension to the dharma idol realm meant that another layer of the Heaven and Earth Lock had been undone, causing the number of Dao Foundation cultivators within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World to skyrocket. People were breaking through to the Dao Foundation with every passing moment, quickly surpassing a thousand. Wei Yuan enlisted all the newly minted Dao Foundation cultivators to manufacture karmic luck lanterns, and soon he ventured into the World Shard with five hundred finished lanterns.
Inside the World Shard, six dharma idols and a hundred Dao Foundation cultivators were currently on watch. Wei Yuan had originally possessed several hundred Dao Foundation warriors, but after two months of bloody fighting, fewer than a hundred remained.
Of the Dao Foundation cultivators currently on guard, half were Wei Yuan's warriors and the other half were cultivators from the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. After two months of bloody battle, every one of these cultivators had seen a massive improvement in both cultivation and state of mind, their Dao Foundation qualities undergoing transformations. Out of several dozen cultivators, fully a third had attained Heaven Foundations, while the rest possessed powerful Earth Tier Dao Foundations; not a single Mortal Tier remained among them.
Wei Yuan ordered the newly arrived Dao Foundation cultivators to begin laying a road, carving out a path that led straight to the foremost fortress. Every ten zhang along the roadside, they erected a pole hung with a cyan karmic luck lantern. Before long, a lantern-lit road stretched deep into the darkness, eventually reaching the supermarket.
The entire road was illuminated by lantern light. Many shadows emerged in the darkness on either side, yet none dared step within the reach of the light, remaining parted on either side by a single path of light.
Chapter 767