Beside him, Cui Yu asked, "What's wrong? You suddenly drifted off into thought."
With a turn of his divine sense, Wei Yuan realized that although he had chatted with Immortal Monarch Yanshi for quite a while, merely a single breath had elapsed here. An inward chill ran through him. The methods of an immortal were truly unfathomable. No matter how much he accomplished in Qingming, no matter how powerful his military grew, if he failed to ascend to immortality, it would all be an illusion in the end.
Wei Yuan said, "The Palace Master gave me a few instructions just now that I need to prepare for. We'll discuss military matters later. Oh, right—don't focus entirely on military affairs at the expense of your cultivation. Whatever pills you need, go to Martial Uncle Xu to have them concocted. Martial Uncle Chuhe has the medicinal herbs; charge it all to my account."
Cui Yu gave a distracted, perfunctory reply. The moment he saw Wei Yuan out of the great hall, he turned around and immediately summoned the generals to resume working on military affairs.
At present, besides the 500,000 heavy-armored elites, Qingming maintained 300,000 standing cuirassier infantry, making for a total of 800,000 troops. In addition, there were two million reservists guaranteed a set amount of training time each year, creating mountains of daily work. Cui Yu was by nature someone who fretted over every detail, so he could only push himself to do as much as possible.
Returning to the immortal city, Wei Yuan settled down in a meditation chamber and carefully examined the Dao art bestowed by Immortal Monarch Yanshi.
This Dao art was named the Xuanhuang Bell. It could gather the power of an entire world and condense it into an ancient xuanhuang bell capable of jolting the vital spiritual flame of all sentient beings. In the hands of an immortal, a single toll of the bell could render every living being across an entire world unconscious.
Though called a Dao art, the Xuanhuang Bell was in truth a fusion of formation arrays and Daoist arts. The original immortal art version required establishing 361 formation arrays across a minor world, each serving a distinct function. Once brought together, a qualitative transformation would occur, sending its power skyrocketing to thoroughly shake the heavens and earth of an entire golden minor world.
As the saying went: With a snap of an immortal's fingers, a world returns to silence.
During this period, Wei Yuan had crammed knowledge about immortals and finally understood why immortal minor worlds were labeled with colors like gold, silver, blue, and green. Thousands of years ago, the classifications for immortal minor worlds had been a chaotic mishmash, each having its own criteria. The names were each more bombastic than the last: Chaos was everywhere, Primordial Genesis was in the air, and going by names alone, one couldn't tell the high-grade from the low-grade at all.
Later, the founding ancestor of the Palace of Grand Beginning burst onto the scene. Back during his Scenery Command stage, when he first fought against an immortal, he picked out several minor worlds with the longest, most bombastic titles and cut them down one after another, only to discover each was weaker than the last—mere novice worlds. At the time, the ancestor's cultivation was not yet profound, and he lacked the endurance for a protracted battle. Having expended his lethal techniques on low-grade minor worlds, he let the immortal cut off his tail and escape.
Having suffered such a bitter loss, the ancestor of the Palace of Grand Beginning created the Delusion-Breaking Pupils, which could directly perceive the true grade of a minor world and mark it with different colors—clear at a glance, simple and direct.
Thereafter, the Delusion-Breaking Pupils were incorporated into the foundational arts of the Palace of Grand Beginning, so virtually everyone who attained Scenery Command naturally possessed them.
Because the Delusion-Breaking Pupils were exceedingly practical and had low barriers to entry, alien races secretly learned them as well, and they quickly spread far and wide. As a result, in the eyes of immortals today, all minor worlds inherently radiated their own colors. Whatever fancy names people gave them no longer mattered—no one bothered to read them anyway. Some immortals who couldn't be bothered with the trouble simply used numbers as designations: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, and so on.
A golden world was a minor world whose heaven and earth could already support a peak Scenery Command cultivator—and quite likely more than one.
The progression of an immortal's minor world generally stopped here. If it advanced any further, it would become a seven-colored immortal realm, equivalent to where the immortal's true body resided. At that point, the world would break free from the immortal's control and become a realm of its own.
In the eyes of immortals, that was equivalent to betraying one's sect and declaring independence, something that had to be eradicated at any cost.
Having been modified by Yanshi, the Xuanhuang Bell was drastically simplified. It was now composed of nine minor formation arrays corresponding to the Five Elements and the Four Symbols, each drawing a different aspect of world power, converging and fusing at Wei Yuan to form an ancient xuanhuang bell.
This Dao art drew upon the power of a mindscape world and could only be wielded by the master of a realm, making it an undeniable mid-to-late Scenery Command technique. The power of the Xuanhuang Bell depended entirely on how well developed the mindscape world was. The casting itself was not difficult; Wei Yuan took merely a single day to master all the arrays and replicate them within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World.
Casting the Xuanhuang Bell required simultaneously commanding nine types of Dao power along with nine additional strands of divine sense for coordination—a total of eighteen strands of divine sense operating at once, equivalent to processing eighteen tasks simultaneously.
This was far below Wei Yuan's true capabilities. Thus, Wei Yuan handed both the Scenery Command version and the original version of the Xuanhuang Bell to Maiden Yin-Yang for optimization, seeking to unleash his full potential.
After assigning the task, Wei Yuan felt a bit uneasy and specifically instructed her that there was no need for too many arrays—at most 256. At present, simultaneously handling 512 tasks was still somewhat strenuous for Wei Yuan.
Just a single Xuanhuang Bell was far from enough.
Withstanding the assault of a peak Scenery Command expert alongside a crowd of other Scenery Command cultivators, even for merely the duration of an incense stick, was no simple task. When Scenery Command experts struck, their power was earth-shattering, often deciding life and death in an instant. If one could hold out for an incense stick, one could essentially hold out for a day, or even several days.
Wei Yuan dared not be careless. Losing the battle himself was a minor matter, but if he implicated True Monarch Yanshi and caused trouble for his thickest golden thigh, the sky would truly fall.
Wei Yuan descended into Central City, landing in the western district this time. The west belonged to metal and governed slaughter and conflict, so many research institutes related to warfare and military matters had relocated here one after another. It was said that conducting research here caused inspiration to gush like a spring.
More than a year had passed since Wei Yuan had returned from absorbing the world fragment. Much of the knowledge he had brought back from the world beyond the heavens had gradually been absorbed and converted, drastically changing Central City's appearance. Although immortal mountain aesthetics remained the predominant style, numerous tall towers and edifices blending the visual aesthetics of both worlds had sprung up.
Wei Yuan was heading for the Creation of Heaven and Earth Research Institute, the oldest research institute within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World and also its largest comprehensive institute. Several institutes from the same period had declined in the face of competition, leaving only the Equality of All Beings Warfare Research Institute flourishing.
Although most of the old institutes had faded, new institutes were constantly springing up.
Glancing to the side, Wei Yuan saw a magnificent building rising into the sky. Its entire exterior was clad in glass that reflected the celestial light, with a curving plane spiraling up the body of the tower and converging at the top. Within stood an imposing steel framework forming a self-contained structure. Its design was exceptionally avant-garde—by the standards of this realm, it bordered on outright heresy.
That was the Skynet Research Institute, which had risen only in the past two years.
Back when Wei Yuan first entered the fragment of the world beyond the heavens, he had captured several black birds, from which Maiden Yin-Yang decoded data architectures far ahead of this realm. A group of people grew interested and began studying them in depth; that had been the embryonic form of the Skynet Research Institute.
Subsequently, these people continuously absorbed all kinds of knowledge Wei Yuan introduced into the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World—chiefly various treatises by Tinghai and Immortal Monarch Yanshi. Combined with Wei Yuan's continual capture of black birds and his scouring of knowledge across various realms, they gradually fused the knowledge of both worlds, built a comprehensive system, and began sprinting ahead along their own independent path.
The underlying architecture of every system Wei Yuan had rolled out recently was a masterpiece of the Skynet Research Institute.
However, the Skynet Research Institute's architectural style clashed sharply with the rest of the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. Even Wei Yuan found it jarring to look at, constantly sensing an inexplicable killing intent whose source he couldn't pinpoint. Yet when Wei Yuan repeatedly investigated inside and outside the institute, every living person was completely normal.
Pausing only briefly, Wei Yuan entered the Creation of Heaven and Earth Research Institute. The institute had now expanded into an enormous architectural complex, building after building connected end-to-end to form a tight ring. Wei Yuan headed straight for the Genetic Engineering Research Branch. The moment he entered the courtyard gates, he saw a crowd shouting and bickering.
"Our office space is too small! We need another building!"
"Allocate housing! Allocate housing!"
"Why do we only have three elders on the Academic Review Council of Elders while Agronomy gets seven?!"
"Exactly! What era is this? Without genetic engineering, what future does agronomy even have?!"
"Clinging to obsolete ways! Complacent and stagnant! Hopelessly antiquated! Drawing a salary while doing nothing!..."
In the center of the crowd stood an elderly man in formal attire, sweat beading on his forehead. Raising both hands, he was striving to explain and placate the complaints, but the young people around him refused to listen, squabbling as fiercely as ever.
Only when Wei Yuan arrived did the crowd cease their clamor. Wei Yuan stepped into the genetic research branch to inspect their recent achievements, particularly the virus research project he had commissioned.
Over the past year and more, most of the genetic knowledge Wei Yuan had memorized had been absorbed and converted, but cracking that mysterious gene fragment had made virtually no progress.
Using Wei Yuan's work experience at the Umbrella Corporation, the institute had now developed several bioparticle genetic weapons using native viruses of this realm as vectors. Yet no matter how they experimented, these weapons always lacked something, failing to rival even a single puff of toxic smoke from Sun Yu's dharma idol.
After racking their brains, the researchers finally came up with an explanation: humanity's own genes were too weak, leaving the weapons lacking a robust foundational genetic structure. Meanwhile, the status of immortal flora was far too elevated; analyzing their genes far exceeded the current capabilities of mortals, and any attempt to decode them would summon heavenly lightning.
Having heard their grievances and possessing his own background in genetic engineering, Wei Yuan pondered for a moment. With a flicker of his figure, he was already above the sea.
With a call, the shadow dragon flew out from the clouds and landed before Wei Yuan. Wagging its head and tail, it respectfully said, "What does the Realm Lord command?"
Wei Yuan looked it up and down, then asked, "Can you lay an egg?"
Chapter 798