Inside a newly built hall in Qingming Immortal City, Wei Yuan sat opposite True Monarch Xuanyue, listening to the teachings of the Great Dao.
"Though paths to immortality number in the myriad, they all converge in the end upon the same destination, returning to the One. This is Unity. The so-called 'One' is heaven and earth; it is the Great Dao. Ascending to immortality means merging with the Great Dao of heaven and earth, aligning one's mindscape world with the true cosmos. In doing so, one enters the Dao in the flesh, takes hold of the authority of heaven and earth, and steps through the immortal gates."
Wei Yuan listened with rapt attention, not daring to miss a single word.
By now, True Monarch Xuanyue's voice had grown ethereal and boundless. Layer upon layer of true meaning echoed within every word, unfolding the profound subtleties and grand import of his teachings from every angle.
Since Wei Yuan's cultivation was still far from Unity, Xuanyue did not dwell on how a mindscape world ought to merge with heaven and earth. Instead, he focused on the relationship between the Great Dao of heaven and earth and immortals.
The foremost requirement for ascending to immortality was mastering a Great Dao of heaven and earth and securing a portion of its authority. With that authority, one would reshape one's mindscape world, ultimately achieving the goal of merging oneself with the Heavenly Dao.
Thus, upon ascending to immortality, immortals were by no means entirely free and untrammeled; rather, they had to exercise the authority of the Great Dao on its behalf. The Dao chosen upon attaining enlightenment varied from immortal to immortal, as did their corresponding duties. Some were quite leisurely, while others were kept exceedingly busy.
The specific authorities held by each immortal were their most fundamental secrets. If discovered by other immortals, it was tantamount to having their fatal weakness grasped, leaving them disadvantaged at every turn.
Yet the Great Daos were manifold. The Dao of Fire alone, for instance, could be subdivided into dozens or even hundreds of paths. It was here that the value of legacy became evident: the more immortal paths a sect or clan possessed, the stronger its overall power, and the more options younger generations had to attain immortality, making ascension correspondingly easier.
Although the Palace of Grand Beginning had been founded most recently among the Four Great Immortal Sects, it commanded the greatest number of immortal paths. At present, it possessed fully sixteen Great Dao pathways and controlled more than sixty immortal seats.
Xuanyue had explained all this to Wei Yuan to illustrate that the Heavenly Shamans of the Shamans were no different. Their immortal power was finite, making it impossible for them to personally intervene against Wei Yuan at every moment. Furthermore, the Shattered Lands were still far from fully restored; bypassing the gaze of monsters beyond the heavens to strike would incur a tremendous cost.
Meanwhile, the task True Monarch Yanshi had assigned to Wei Yuan was to observe the movements of the Heavenly Shamans during the great battle, continuously gathering data to analyze their true immortal seats.
Xuanyue's sermon lasted three days in total. Wei Yuan had originally wanted Zhang Sheng to listen in as well, but True Monarch Xuanyue remarked that Zhang Sheng's Dao path was supremely righteous and pure, completely different from Wei Yuan's path of embracing heaven and earth. Telling her too much about the immortal realm now would only disturb her Dao heart.
In that regard, she was not like Wei Yuan, into whom any knowledge could be stuffed.
Once his instruction concluded, True Monarch Xuanyue departed on his own. As a powerful Scenery Command cultivator, remaining in the Shattered Lands was nothing short of suffering. Although the domain's power within Qingming offered protection and made things somewhat more bearable, Wei Yuan's own cultivation remained insufficient, so True Monarch Xuanyue still could not avoid the discomfort.
Having clarified his present task, Wei Yuan began to take karmic destiny angling seriously.
Angling was originally a method reserved for late Scenery Command or even immortals, but Wei Yuan's karmic luck was unique, allowing him to barely manage it. Angling comprised three main components: the fishing ground, the tackle, and the bait.
When an immortal angled, the fishing ground was relatively less important; so long as their foundation was solid and their karmic luck abundant, an immortal's cast could naturally reach beyond the clouds and skies.
In this respect, Qingming had originally been an immortal stone domain, and its vast territory now far exceeded ordinary boundary stones. Furthermore, Qingming housed a huge population of mortals, inherently providing a massive reservoir of karmic luck. Thus, regarding the fishing ground alone, Wei Yuan was not in the least inferior to some immortals.
Even so, Wei Yuan planned to invest further in the fishing ground. He intended to clear out the main peak, converting most of it into a fishing ground and constructing a grand karmic destiny angling array to maximize the ground's advantages through array formations.
As for the tackle, Wei Yuan was completely at a loss. Angling tackle had to be forged by oneself; only then could karmic causality be established between the gear and the catch to reel it back.
Therefore, once the fishing ground was completed, Wei Yuan would have to cram and study artifact crafting intensively.
Lastly was the bait, which ideally was something prone to generating causality and endowed with karmic luck. Stronger bait was not necessarily better; overly potent bait would instead scare away precious fish.
When Wei Yuan first attempted angling, he had used a feather from the little rooster. That was done so that whatever took the hook would form causality with both himself and the little rooster simultaneously—effectively having the immortal chicken help him fish, thereby preventing a big fish from dragging him into the water.
Now that everything was properly prepared, he could no longer use the immortal chicken's feather, or else he risked coming up empty-handed.
What karmic destiny angling could yield was, to a certain degree, entirely up to heaven's will. It could be a person, an opportunity, a magic treasure, or a clue leading to a great fortune. It was even possible to hook something from beyond the heavens, though the probability was extraordinarily low, and even if hooked, pulling it up was usually impossible.
Only after studying all the knowledge regarding karmic destiny angling in depth did Wei Yuan realize that the three-eyed bird head's offhand angling of an entire world fragment was truly a heaven-defying feat.
The Palace of Grand Beginning already had established templates for grand karmic destiny angling arrays across various specifications and grades, so Wei Yuan did not need to research one from scratch. Having more heavenly merits than he could spend, Wei Yuan had long since used them to pay off his debts to the Palace of Grand Beginning.
However, there was still a substantial amount borrowed when True Monarch Xuanyue had dragged Wei Yuan from door to door; that money had essentially all been poured into the new Tianqing Main Hall. True Monarch Xuanyue was in no rush to repay it, nor were the lenders in any rush to demand it back.
Now rolling in wealth, Wei Yuan exchanged for five or six templates in one go for reference. Of course, he wasn't squandering money recklessly; his selection of templates was carried out under Ji Liuli's guidance.
Before exchanging for the templates, Ji Liuli specifically asked Wei Yuan whether he intended to submit the completed angling array design to the Palace of Grand Beginning. If submitted, it could offset a large portion of the expenses incurred from exchanging for templates.
Wei Yuan had initially felt that such expenses didn't matter much, but at Ji Liuli's reminder, he learned that this was also part of how the Palace of Grand Beginning enriched its array repository and accumulated resources for future generations. The dozens of array templates he had browsed for different circumstances had all originated this way.
All the templates, in fact, stemmed from a single array casually designed by the founding patriarch back then. Passed down through generations, each Immortal Monarch contributed at least one new template. Through such continual refinement and renewal, the Palace of Grand Beginning's angling arrays had evolved from an initial crude, modest array into supreme grand formations unmatched across the cultivation world.
Speaking up to this point, Ji Liuli did not forget to take a sarcastic jab at the aristocratic clans and prominent families. Many families still adhered to ancient master-disciple traditions where masters insisted on withholding a secret trick no matter what, while disciples resorted to every trick to surreptitiously learn. In the end, many individuals refused to pass on their signature techniques even on their deathbeds, resulting in generational decline—and this was precisely how many small sects had perished.
Clans with blood ties fared slightly better, but only marginally so. They were bound by rotten customs like passing knowledge only to the primary branch and not concubine branches, or to sons and not daughters. Consequently, across a thousand years, those aristocratic families remained the same old families, marching in place, while the Palace of Grand Beginning surged forward by leaps and bounds. Generation upon generation of like-minded individuals gathered here, opening more and more Dao paths until the immortal seats under their command eventually surpassed all others in the present age.
Hearing this, Wei Yuan agreed that once Qingming's angling grand array was perfected and operating stably, he would submit it to the Palace of Grand Beginning to make his own contribution. For a newly minted angling array deployed in such a vital stronghold as Qingming, special restrictions could be attached so that only the True Monarchs of the various halls could review it. Lifting the restrictions would depend on circumstances—it could be set to thirty, fifty, or even a hundred years.
Upon receiving the templates, Ji Liuli threw herself into the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World and began designing an angling grand array tailored specifically for Qingming. Wei Yuan, meanwhile, went about gathering array materials from all quarters.
According to Ji Liuli's design, there were over four hundred types of materials required. Among them were five immortal-grade materials. For four of these, Wei Yuan managed to find substitutes, including a wingtip feather from the little rooster and the branches and leaves of three immortal plants. The final material could only be exchanged from the Palace of Grand Beginning, costing Wei Yuan fifty-seven thousand heavenly merits.
This was the first time Wei Yuan had exchanged for an immortal-grade material, and only then did he realize that many materials had previously not been open to him for exchange. A genuine treasure material for an immortal artifact averaged fifty thousand heavenly merits. Wei Yuan had originally thought his heavenly merits were inexhaustible, but once it came to an immortal-grade array, he immediately discovered that they could hardly buy more than a few items.
Fishing grounds were also categorized into grades based on the potential catch: Barren, Common, Superior, and Abundant. Originally, Qingming could only qualify as Barren, but Ji Liuli utilized multiple immortal items to set up the array, resulting in the fishing ground being elevated by two grades straight to Superior. At this level, immortal items had a chance of appearing.
If Wei Yuan invested more karmic luck, he could reach the Abundant grade in an individual angling attempt. Yet this was not necessarily a good thing. A fishing ground being 'abundant' was not because more fish gathered in that small patch of water, but because the waters had expanded. Karmic destiny angling cared little for physical distance; a higher-grade fishing ground was equivalent to becoming more conspicuous across all realms, thereby attracting the attention of bigger fish.
Man seeks to fish for fish, but fish also fish for men.
If the fishing ground's grade were too high and Wei Yuan's cultivation insufficient, it would be like a small child fishing in a pond teeming with sharks—he could very well be pulled straight into the water and devoured.
The grand array for the fishing ground was a fixed investment; taking the long view, it was best to make it as good as possible. The solution Ji Liuli proposed was to adjust the tackle: it shouldn't be crafted too well, only barely adequate. That way, if uncontrollable danger arose, the tackle would snap first, severing the karmic ties between both sides.
In truth, this was an exceedingly costly solution: even the flimsiest tackle was equivalent to a Scenery Command spirit treasure, which meant that encountering danger even once meant destroying an item of that caliber.
Nonetheless, Wei Yuan was rolling in wealth at the moment, so he accepted the proposal.
Day and night, Wei Yuan and Ji Liuli set up the array while the other cultivators assisted. At last, after a full month of effort, the grand array was finished. Tested by True Monarch Xuanyue, the fishing ground was confirmed to have reached the Superior grade.
Afterward, Wei Yuan sought out Yu Zhizhuo to forge the angling tackle. There was only one method for forging angling tackle: karmic destiny artifact crafting. After feeding the requisite materials into the furnace until they reached a state of chaos, Wei Yuan would drop in a bit of his own vital blood to complete the process. As for what kind of tackle would emerge and how effective it would be, that was entirely up to heaven's will.
For Yu Zhizhuo, this was a rather simple task. In less than two days, he brought it to the critical threshold of chaos, awaiting only Wei Yuan's infusion of vital blood.
Before dropping in his vital blood, Wei Yuan couldn't help but ponder what sort of tackle he truly needed. Would it be a thunder rod capable of unleashing mighty lightning, a fishing net that could sweep along the seabed, or an elixir vial capable of drugging an entire pond of big fish?
Chapter 832