As a divine art that had established his footing in the early days, All Living Beings in a Flash was now revealing its limitations. Ultimately, the absolute boost it offered was quite limited, and it drew upon the nurturing power of Qingming. If overused, the domain would regress. Furthermore, at Wei Yuan's current capability, the absolute limit was casting All Living Beings in a Flash on only a hundred thousand people.
Therefore, once Qingming's population surpassed two million, troop reserves grew plentiful, and equipment became increasingly refined, Wei Yuan ceased using All Living Beings in a Flash on the battlefield. Instead, he repurposed it solely as a means to stimulate cultivators' Dao Foundations.
From this perspective, Qingming had taken a massive stride forward, no longer relying on methods that sent mortals to fight in brutal melee.
Now, if the Shamans wanted to take Qingming, their only path was to crush Wei Yuan on the open battlefield.
Wei Yuan set aside thoughts of Shaman stratagems, returned to the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, and began contemplating what else he could do that had not yet crossed his mind.
This time, Xiaoyu's illumination of Yong'an City had yielded three hundred thousand units of karmic luck in one go—a tremendous harvest. Of that three hundred thousand, Wei Yuan received two hundred thousand, while Xiaoyu obtained barely one hundred thousand.
The further things progressed, the more karmic luck gravitated toward Wei Yuan. Evidently, quite a few insightful people recognized that their current wonderful lives were truly owed to Wei Yuan.
Many others acted out of pragmatism: even when expressing gratitude to immortal masters, they chose to thank the supreme figure. The end result was that Wei Yuan reaped far more karmic luck than Xiaoyu, the one who actually carried out the deeds.
Still, Wei Yuan had placed Xiaoyu, Bao Yun, and the others into the roles of city lords precisely so they could gather karmic luck and constantly remain blessed by its favor. This offered immense benefits for their advancement, potentially triggering breakthroughs when constructing their mindscape worlds, generating portions of their mindscapes naturally and smoothing their paths toward Scenery Command.
By now, Wei Yuan had read over three thousand books on the mindscape world. Looking across all the dharma idol cultivators under heaven, few could match his understanding of the subject.
The Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World played a crucial role here; after all, with more than two hundred Wei Yuans reading simultaneously, the breadth of his erudition would inevitably become peerless under heaven sooner or later.
Yet erudite as he was, an invisible ceiling hovered above him—seemingly within reach, yet impossible to breach.
Immortal Monarch Tinghai had left behind more than eight hundred writings, thirty-seven of which were truly profound works that Wei Yuan could not understand in the least.
He could not understand them when there was one Wei Yuan, and he still could not understand them with over two hundred Wei Yuans.
Immortal Monarch Yanshi had authored over one hundred forty works, twelve of which Wei Yuan could not comprehend. Even after consulting him in person, Wei Yuan remained unable to grasp them. Not only did he fail to understand, but Yanshi could not teach it into him either.
Thus Wei Yuan realized that something called wisdom could not simply be multiplied by numbers.
Yet even Yanshi himself had remarked that understanding these intricacies had no bearing on ascending to immortality. True Monarch Xuanyue could not even grasp half of them, yet hadn't he stepped one foot through the immortal gate all the same? Moreover, Xuanyue possessed a talent for battle and magical combat rare in the world, so much so that even Yanshi looked forward to the day Xuanyue ascended.
And so Wei Yuan continued methodically accumulating knowledge. Once knowledge amassed to a certain threshold, one naturally seemed to grow a little wiser.
Still, the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was too vast and complex. It was a world unto itself, far larger than the mindscape worlds of many Scenery Command experts. Now Wei Yuan had to use it as a dharma idol to construct a mindscape world; one could easily imagine how arduous a feat that would be. Relying on two hundred-odd Wei Yuans seemed almost impossible.
Yet Wei Yuan was in no hurry. He learned bit by bit, refining it step by step. Even if he only made a tiny step forward each day, as long as he was moving forward, that was enough.
In this manner, Wei Yuan felt himself gradually settling, growing ever more profound and composed. Whenever those around him looked upon him, the reverence on their faces grew deeper and deeper.
Perhaps this was... maturity?
***
Qingming, New City.
A middle-aged man carrying a food container leaped upward. Tapping his foot lightly against a protruding foothold on the apartment building's exterior wall, he rose several more zhang and landed on the top floor's landing.
The landing had three doors, leading to three households. The middle-aged man fished out a key, unlocked the middle door, entered, and pulled it shut behind him.
Inside, the home was tranquil and warm. Though darkness had fallen long ago, a burning Dao oil lamp bathed the room in bright yellow light, cozy, peaceful, and gentle.
Two girls who looked to be in their early teens rushed over, gleefully taking the food container. Opening it, both let out a cheer. The man watched his two daughters dotingly as they arranged the exquisite dishes from the container onto the dining table one by one.
As a possessor of a template Dao Foundation, he spent most of his modest income on food, but he considered it well worth it. After all, during his previous muddled existence, all he had eaten every day was a pig-slop-like gruel with an exceptionally pungent smell.
The two little girls then sat beside the table, staring eagerly as they waited for the man to join them. Setting down his toolbox, the man said, "Go ahead and eat. Don't wait for me. I need to take a bath first."
"No, we're waiting!" the two young girls chimed in unison.
Shaking his head helplessly, the man picked up a change of clothes, hurried to this floor's shared bathroom for a quick wash, and returned home to take his seat at the table.
The two girls dug in at once, eating as politely as possible, though still wolfing it down.
The man asked, "How did your Body Casting class go today? Did you have an exam?"
"We passed! Elder Sister was a bit slower than me—the teacher said she won't reach peak Blood Merging until next month. I've already reached peak Blood Merging, and if I take a medicinal pill, I can begin cultivating Jade Bone! But the teacher said this pill has to be deducted from our family's merit points. Or I don't have to take a pill, but I'd need to stay at the Blood Merging realm for three months to stabilize my foundation."
The man's face lit up with pleasant surprise. "Such rapid progress? Good, that's wonderful! Don't worry about the pill—take it tomorrow. Your dad is a Dao Foundation cultivator, after all; I can afford the medicine. You two are at a critical stage of cultivation right now. You can't afford to waste three months."
The elder sister put down her chopsticks and said, "Today, the teacher brought in a very kindly old Daoist priest. He looked at Little Sister and me and said both of us have the potential to form Heaven Foundations.
"Then he gave us a contract, saying it would waive all our future cultivation expenses and provide the necessary pills, on the condition that after casting our Dao Foundations, we serve Qingming for thirty years."
"This... let me see the contract first."
The sisters handed the contract to the man. He read it intently, though with some difficulty; he had only learned to read after arriving in Qingming, not much earlier than his daughters.
The younger daughter suddenly asked, "Today a classmate said we didn't used to live in Qingming, that we came from somewhere else. He said we used to be sacrifices, meant to be slaughtered as offerings to Heaven. Dad, how come I don't remember any of that?"
The man shuddered, an uncontrollable terror surfacing on his face. Then, forcing himself to stay calm, he said, "Back then, our family ate drugged food every day, so we couldn't remember anything. Fortunately, we were later sold to Qingming. Dad doesn't remember much of the past either. Don't overthink it; just focus on your cultivation for now."
The elder sister said, "But that boy is so annoying! He's clearly stupid, yet he insisted his family were graded sacrifices and looked down on us. Dad, I remember that we are all Heaven Offerings!
"Yet he didn't believe it. He said if Heaven Tier offerings cultivated, they would start at a Heaven Foundation at the very least, and an immortal foundation was even possible. But he said you only have a template Dao Foundation, so we must be lying and couldn't possibly be Heaven Offerings."
The middle-aged man had regained his composure by now. Smiling, he said, "There's nothing wrong with a template Dao Foundation. It makes finding work easy, and you can pick whichever template you like. Dad took too much medicine in the past and my head doesn't work too well, so I wanted stability above all else. I don't need profound cultivation, as long as I can watch you both grow up safely.
"Aren't you going to eat a bit more? Wait... what's on your plates?!"
His voice suddenly began to tremble. Both sisters' plates were now filled with a dark green gruel that gave off a distinct, pungent medicinal stench—the very slop they had eaten for every meal back when they were sacrifices in the Wu domain!
The two girls wore vacant expressions, unsettling smiles plastered across their faces. They stared at the middle-aged man together, their pupils steadily dilating.
Indescribable dread and a freezing chill swept over the man, nearly petrifying him. He was paralyzed, unable to utter a single word.
Just then, his hands rose on their own. Grasping empty air, a flaming longsword materialized in his grip—the False Sun.
Sheer horror filled the man's face. This was not his doing! His body was no longer under his control; it had manifested his Dao Foundation on its own and laid it upon the table.
The younger sister's pupils had completely dilated, turning her eyes milky white. Bearing a stiff, eerie grin, she spoke in an unnatural cadence: "You are a Heaven Offering! In the human realm, you could have reached the dharma idol realm at the very least. Yet you cultivated such a piece of garbage for a Dao Foundation?"
"Wh-who are you?" The man barely managed to overcome his overwhelming terror, though his teeth still chattered uncontrollably.
The girl's smile twisted grotesquely as she said, "Human? Heh, how could I possibly be human?"
"Wh-what... what do you want? What have you done to my daughter?!"
The young girl's mouth stretched wide into a bizarre grin. It seemed inhuman; the corners of her mouth slowly tore open, blood trickling down, yet she remained utterly oblivious to it.
"You are a Heaven Offering. Barely a handful exist in an entire nation. Without my permission, how could your family have mingled among ordinary sacrifices and been sold to the human domain? Yet not even I expected you to cultivate such a trash Dao Foundation—it nearly prevented me from traversing across.
"Fortunately, this daughter of yours possesses even greater talent than you. Though she is still young and her cultivation is lacking, what I need to do is only a minor task. With your other daughter added in, it will be enough."
The young girl reached toward her elder sister. Her small hand plunged directly into the sister's forehead, pulling out a translucent miniature figure from within!
She rolled and rubbed the translucent figure repeatedly between her hands, slowly stretching it into a thread.
The miniature figure's face contorted in exquisite agony, but eventually even its head was rolled thin, becoming part of the thread. Yet that agony found nowhere to disperse, coalescing into a wisp of mingled red-and-black qi that wrapped around the thread.
"I'll kill you!"
Drawing strength from who knew where, the man's body suddenly swelled, shattering the constraints binding him. Seizing the False Sun from the table, he slashed at the girl. Yet as the blade neared her head, he stopped himself, trembling all over, torn between striking and holding back.
In that instant, the freezing chill descended once more. His body slipped from his control again. Reversing the longsword, he drove it into his own chest, inch by inch.
Blood gushed forth, yet the moment it spilled from the wound, it froze into ice. The elder sister lay slumped over the table as though asleep, while the younger sister had vanished without a trace.
No smell of blood lingered in the room—only a pungent medicinal stench.
Chapter 861