"No, wait, Senior, you've come to the wrong place. How about going back first?" Wei Yuan babbled, momentarily at a loss for words.
Yu Zhizhuo naturally did not understand why Wei Yuan was acting so crazy toward his own artifact spirit. But when Qingtong's complete face emerged from the formation, Yu Zhizhuo—as a veteran grandmaster of artifact crafting who had seen countless artifact spirits—was instantly enthralled.
"This is simply a perfect artifact spirit! Powerful, beautiful, terrifying, bizarre, mysterious... It simply has no flaws!" Yu Zhizhuo did not stint on his limited vocabulary.
Wei Yuan had a terrible headache. Moreover, the spear had already forged a karmic tie with him; there was no returning it now.
Fortunately, after appearing, Qingtong vanished back into the spear, saying nothing and making no unusual movements, as if she truly were an artifact spirit. Wei Yuan felt increasingly that the situation was bizarre and sinister, yet he was utterly helpless.
In Yu Zhizhuo's words, the spear was not yet fully forged; fusing the artifact spirit with the weapon would take time. Furthermore, Yu Zhizhuo had employed an earth-binding refining method, so the spear's power would increase drastically within Qingming.
Yu Zhizhuo went on to explain the spear's properties to Wei Yuan. It looked like an unadorned, plain long spear, bare without a single array pattern on the shaft. But the spear's interior was hollow and could be loaded with physical gunpowder, or fitted with different Spirit Accumulation Arrays to slowly produce spiritual energy explosives through its own nurturing until it was full.
"Spiritual energy explosives?" This was yet another term Wei Yuan had never heard before.
Yu Zhizhuo explained that the principle of gunpowder was merely instantaneous high-speed expansion creating immense thrust—nothing more. Whatever gunpowder could achieve, Daoist arts could achieve just as well, and with even better results. Yu Zhizhuo then led Wei Yuan to another testing station and demonstrated how the Spirit Accumulation Array worked.
Sparks and specks of spiritual energy flowed into the Spirit Accumulation Array. Moments later, several peppercorn-sized pellets tumbled out from the array. Yu Zhizhuo picked one up in his palm, gave it a gentle crush, and it disintegrated into silver powder.
This was the gunpowder produced by spiritual energy filtering through the Spirit Accumulation Array—truly marvelous. Yu Zhizhuo then conjured an arc of lightning in his palm, striking the powder, which instantly burst into a massive fireball the size of a tabletop.
Yu Zhizhuo said, "Once it is filled with spiritual energy gunpowder, the Spirit Accumulation Array will cease operating. When you need to fire, just ignite it with lightning power. Its projectile is the spearhead itself. In terms of power, a single shot can wound a Scenery Command realm expert. I've forged ten spearheads for you. If that isn't enough, just ask for more, though there shouldn't be that many Scenery Command experts for you to shoot at. Oh, the artifact spirit's fusion is nearly done. Let's go back and take another look."
When the two returned to the spear, they saw ripples of azure light drifting within the refining array, undulating like water, with azure lotuses blooming and vanishing within it. The spear had unexpectedly already received a name bestowed by the Heavenly Dao, robbing Wei Yuan of the pleasure of naming it himself.
Seeing the spear's name, Wei Yuan and Yu Zhizhuo both wore odd expressions. The spear was called: Mercy.
Yu Zhizhuo laughed. "Anyone who didn't know better would think this was a Buddhist staff gifted to you by the Great Treasure Radiance Pure Land! Well, if the spearhead were a bit more bulging, it would look even more like one."
Wei Yuan's expression was naturally rather unsightly, because he noticed the spearhead seemed to have attempted to reshape itself, but since the overall form was already set, its effort had failed.
Regardless, the spear was undoubtedly a Scenery Command-grade spirit treasure; it was just far too plain and unadorned, making anyone holding it look like a peasant rebel.
Acquiring a treasure before a major war lifted Wei Yuan's spirits. By now, the Shaman army was closing in, and Qingming's war machine had already begun to rumble.
Wei Yuan already had a premonition that this battle would be anything but simple. With immortals stepping into the arena, it couldn't possibly be simple.
A hundred li beyond Qingming's defense line, the Shaman army camps were arrayed across a continuous stretch of over a hundred li. Another hundred li behind them, multiple lakes had been excavated, with altars erected inside them. These altars served not only as platforms to invoke grand curses and store sacrificial power, but also as mediums to offer sacrifices to Heaven for blessings, allowing immortals to strike across the void.
Liu Lan's vanguard legion alone had brought two million warriors and over ten million laborers and mighty warriors. The Shamans were thoroughly resolved and determined to win this battle; they intended to wipe Qingming off the map entirely.
The storm was approaching.
Early that morning, all the mortals of Qingming set down their work, stepped outside their homes, and looked up at the sky. They had all received notice that the Domain Lord would address the entire domain for a final pre-war mobilization.
The mortals were curious. They had never heard of an emperor making a mobilization speech to commoners before going to war; emperors only knew how to raise taxes, raise taxes, and raise taxes again.
As the hour arrived, Wei Yuan's figure appeared in the sky. The Zhou Tian Celestial Stars Array functioned at this moment to ensure Wei Yuan's voice would reach every corner of Qingming.
A bell chimed nine times.
Wei Yuan's image vanished, replaced by scenes of humans being slaughtered one by one by Shamans, villages burning, and columns of naked people being herded onto sacrificial altars.
"People of Qingming! Over the past several hundred thousand years, we have been bullied and slaughtered by the Shamans, raised like livestock, and butchered during every one of their major festivals to please Heaven. But the Shamans' Heaven is not the Azure Heavens, nor is it the Heavenly Dao—it is their own Old Ancestor!"
Countless mortals were profoundly shocked. Living and dying, falling ill and passing away, they had spent their lives in a muddle, knowing only that foreign races were brutal without knowing the gruesome extent of that brutality.
The projections shifted again, changing to Quliu Town, revealing stretches of shacks and people soaked in filthy runoff, their faces numb and vacant.
"...Just over a decade ago, this was the reality of the land beneath our feet. This was how humans lived. Many among you lived through it yourselves.
"And now, just when our lives have begun to improve, the Shamans have returned! Their army of millions stands right outside our domain!"
The mortals looked at one another. Some were afraid, but in many, fire ignited in their eyes and in their hearts.
Across the land of Qingming, tiny sparks sprang to life, threatening to become a prairie fire.
Wei Yuan's voice echoed between heaven and earth, swelling with power and wrath:
"...The Shamans want to raze our fields, tear down our homes, and turn our blue skies and clear waters back into foul, pitch-black sludge coursing with lethal poison! They want to slaughter our sick and weak, and drag our strong to their altars to be butchered, binding our souls to eternal enslavement under their ancestors!
"...What is hatred? Hatred is not merely taking back what was stolen from us and calling it done.
"Hatred means we will not only take back what was stolen, but take back even more! We will make them pay a grievous price—so grievous they will never forget, so grievous that the mere thought of us will fill their hearts with terror! That is hatred! That is vengeance!
"I, Wei Yuan, will never permit the nightmare of a decade ago to return! I will stand with you to defend this land until the final breath of my life. Having died once already, I care nothing about dying again. In the future, whether I am here or not, Qingming will fight to the very end, never to submit!
"Qingming can be destroyed, but it will never be conquered!!!"
Suddenly, dark clouds gathered across the sky. Layer upon layer of tribulation clouds converged from all directions, as if the entire vault of heaven were pressing down upon the tiny speck of Qingming. Flashes of lightning shook heaven and earth, casting the mortal realm in a ghastly pallor as massive pillars of lightning struck downward with apocalyptic fury.
Many among Qingming's mortals had received schooling and gained a degree of understanding. They knew this was a heavenly tribulation, the majesty of heaven and earth. Could it be that even heaven and earth could not tolerate Qingming, could not tolerate mortals living decent lives?
Among the crowd, an unnamed elder suddenly spoke up: "Years ago, a Heavenly Shaman of the Shamans once said that if every human were allowed to eat meat, the entire world could not bear it and would be destroyed. So, are mortals like us only fit to eat grass?"
The people around the old man were stunned, then seized with fury. No longer fearing the might of heaven and earth, they roared toward the sky. Though these roars were minuscule compared to the thunder, in the blink of an eye, even more people joined in the shouting. Millions upon millions of voices merged into an ocean of thunderous sound, faintly holding their own against the heavenly might!
At that moment, heaven and earth shook violently. The power Wei Yuan used to restrain the Yellow Springs Grotto-Heaven suddenly shattered. No longer constrained, the Yellow Springs Grotto-Heaven expanded rapidly, halted only at the borders of Qingming by the power of heaven and earth. Yet the whole of Qingming had already become an independent entity, severed from the domain of the Wu realm.
The heavens and earth grew even more enraged, nearly driven mad. The lightning fell incessantly, sheet after sheet smashing down, battering that solitary speck of azure light between heaven and earth until it swayed and dimmed, on the verge of being snuffed out at any moment.
Yet so long as it was not burned to ash, the azure light would endure endlessly, refusing to be extinguished.
Chapter 844