Attitude

Wei Yuan circled a weathered stone platform several times without finding a patch of shade. He calculated that even after several more shichen, none would appear here. He looked up at the platform, its surface marked by unmistakable signs of weathering, and struck it with his fist. With a low hum, the entire stone platform vibrated at a peculiar frequency, rebounding the blow with double the force Wei Yuan had put into it. A sharp pang shot through his hand; the bones in his knuckles had actually cracked! The resilience of Wei Yuan's dharma body was extraordinary by now. He could knead steel like soft clay, and anything devoid of spiritual energy was little different from flour in his grasp. Yet when he struck what seemed to be an ordinary rock in this Great Wilderness Realm, he could not even chip off a fleck of stone dust. It defied all reason. Wei Yuan refused to give up. Only after trying dozens of times, bringing to bear everything he had learned in his life, did he finally accept that these stone platforms were beyond his power to alter for the time being. The ground possessed equally bizarre physical properties. The soil was loose and composed of distinct grains, yet astonishingly heavy. When Wei Yuan thrust his spear into it, he managed to pierce only a few inches, leaving a small depression. The edges promptly disintegrated into sand, filling the hole in the blink of an eye as if nothing had ever touched it. Compassion's spearhead was shaped like a triangular pyramid, making it practically useless for digging. Lacking any suitable tools, Wei Yuan abandoned the notion of digging a hole in the ground. He glanced around. The next stone platform stood several li away. Judging by its shape and the trajectory of the suns, Wei Yuan deduced that its front was bound to lack shade; as for the back, there might perhaps be a protruding ledge if he were lucky. Yet judging purely by the weathering on these platforms, he knew the odds were slim. By now, his internal body temperature had far surpassed the boiling point of water. By the standards of the otherworldly realm, he estimated his core had reached one hundred and fifty degrees. While still within tolerable limits, the inability to dissipate heat posed a lethal danger. Sooner or later, he would perish beneath this bizarre sunlight. Wei Yuan pointed a finger, and then another. The fingertip remained empty. Whether he invoked the Rainmaking Art, the Torrent Incantation, or the Creation Method, not a single droplet of water materialized. He knitted his brows slightly. As long as he had Dao power, he ought to have been able to generate water. It seemed the Great Dao of this world differed vastly from that of the Native Realm, rendering Dao arts ineffective. This was exceedingly troublesome. Before he could test and decipher the Great Dao of this heaven and earth, he would undoubtedly have been reduced to a human torch. "Stay cool..." Wei Yuan looked up at the sky. There was no staying cool right now; he could only stay calm. He sat down with his back against the stone platform, ensuring that his rear, at least, was sheltered from the blaze, and began to contemplate his options. The most pressing matter was to halt the absorption of heat—or perhaps... dissipate it? Wei Yuan felt his thoughts clear at once. Armed with memories of the otherworldly realm, he knew that even in a world where Dao arts were useless, there remained countless ways to work wonders and produce effects akin to them. He engaged his intellect, launching five hundred and twelve lines of inquiry simultaneously. He refrained from going full bore only because doing so would generate vast amounts of waste heat, and any additional warmth right now could prove fatal. Fortunately, just over five hundred tasks were more than enough. In the blink of an eye, Wei Yuan devised several cooling methods. He opened his mouth and abruptly sprayed out a mouthful of fresh blood. He intended to use his blood as a medium to transfer heat out of his body, since the ambient environment was far cooler than his internal temperature. Yet the moment that sphere of blood hit the sunlight, it condensed into a perfectly round pink orb. Its temperature continued to climb without releasing a fraction of its heat into the surroundings. Wei Yuan frowned in contemplation and instantly identified the problem: was the surface area for heat dissipation too small? He opened his mouth to recall the blood, then spat out a thin wafer of blood that unfolded on its own after leaving his body, resembling an opening umbrella. Still it failed. In fact, because its exposure to the sunlight had expanded, its temperature surged in an instant. Wei Yuan pondered for a moment, then spat out blood in all manner of bizarre configurations—lattices, mists, tapered needles, crystalline grains—none of which worked. His attempts to reflect the sunlight met with equal failure. The sunlight here was no ordinary light; it merely looked like light. At that moment, one of his mental tasks offered an idea: could it be that heat exchange was impossible because the ambient materials of this environment simply could not absorb heat? Following this train of thought, Wei Yuan finally found a solution. He spat out another mouthful of blood, and a blistering pillar of flame suddenly erupted from it. The flame vanished in a flash, but the blood had turned ice-cold. Wei Yuan drew the blood back into his mouth, letting it circulate through his body, and his temperature finally fell a fraction. Regardless of whether the surroundings could absorb heat, Wei Yuan would simply force it out, venting heat directly in the form of flame. The price was losing a trace of blood, but that tiny loss carried away immense amounts of heat. Having cracked the problem, Wei Yuan felt his spirits lift. What followed was a continual process of tuning and optimizing his heat-venting technique. After several rounds of refinement, he snorted, and two plumes of dense white mist drifted gently from his nostrils, slowly dispersing. This white mist was, in truth, high-grade Dao fire, though Wei Yuan had masked it with a minor illusion so it resembled immortal vapor—far more pleasing to the eye than spewing open flame. The temperature of Dao fire was far greater than that of mortal fire; these two plumes of white vapor were nearly on par with the True Fire of the Sun, carrying away vastly more heat than mortal flames ever could. Even so, snorting out vapor looked somewhat odd. Wei Yuan began to wonder whether he should construct a few exhaust pipes on his back solely to vent fire, which might even propel him forward in flight. With a means of releasing heat secured, Wei Yuan regained his mobility. Moving swiftly, he checked over a dozen stone platforms across more than a hundred li without finding a suitable shelter. Fortunately, the suns in the sky shifted. Judging by the trajectory of one of them, it was about to be eclipsed by the giant celestial body, which ought to bring some relief. Wei Yuan scanned his body with divine sense. In the brief time since falling into this realm, he had already dropped a full jin of weight. At this rate of expenditure, he would soon need to find something to eat. He picked up a pebble from the ground and tossed it into his mouth. With a faint crunch, a tooth cracked; the stone was unscathed. Wei Yuan scooped up a handful of earth and swallowed it. Once in his stomach, the dirt was blasted with fire, bathed in acid, crushed, and vibrated through resonance—every technique he had was brought to bear, yet the dirt remained dirt, unchanged in the slightest. Helpless, Wei Yuan could only spit it back out. That mouthful of soil had not even carried away any heat. This realm was truly impossible—completely impervious to every trick! Wei Yuan now deeply doubted how Tianyu had ever survived here. With Tianyu's physical resilience, he should have turned into a fireball within an hour. The only explanation was that Tianyu had lied. Yet Tianyu never lied in front of someone smarter than himself, so Wei Yuan felt certain he had not spoken falsely. That meant the Great Wilderness Realm possessed more than just this type of terrain; there had to be places capable of sustaining life. As Wei Yuan was pondering this, he suddenly felt the ground tremble. Far in the distance, a beast had appeared, charging directly toward him—even ducking behind the stone platform was of no use. From dozens of li away, it had locked onto him. The monster resembled an ox, its body mottled teal and crimson. Its eyes were tiny, nearly impossible to spot unless one leaned in for a close look. It stood roughly a zhang tall, and as it galloped, roaring flames erupted intermittently from its flanks with thunderous momentum! The giant ox raced like the wind, closing the distance to Wei Yuan in the blink of an eye before lowering its head to charge. Wei Yuan, keen to test its mettle, threw himself forward to meet it head-on. The collision felt as though heaven and earth were tearing apart. The giant ox staggered backward repeatedly, each step gouging a deep pit into the earth. Wei Yuan strode forward after it, raised his hand, and thrust his spear through the beast's head. A flash of teal light flared on the spear as its innate ability took effect, reducing everything inside the ox's head and body to powder in an instant. Before the beast could even let out a dying shriek, it collapsed to the ground, dead. That the giant ox died so cleanly caught Wei Yuan completely by surprise. He took a closer look at the spear in his hands. Since its forging, he had not had the chance to study this spirit treasure properly. The weapon now bore two distinct traces of immortal power—Protect Master and Void Piercer—as well as an innate ability capable of erupting with catastrophic damage the moment an enemy was struck, scaling higher the harder the target was. Against this innate ability, anyone whose physique fell short would likely suffer instant death. To perish so painlessly could truly be called great mercy and compassion. No wonder the Heavenly Dao had bestowed upon it the name Compassion. Looking at the carcass on the ground, Wei Yuan felt a surge of delight. A beast this enormous should provide food for days. Had his nourishment not arrived just in time? Just as he was about to use the spear as a blade to butcher the beef, a roar like rolling thunder erupted behind him: "Get your paws off my ox!" Wei Yuan turned expressionlessly to see a three-armed, four-legged shaman sprinting toward him. The shaman was not shouting in the shamanic tongue; instead, he transmitted his voice directly through true intent. Even without a shared language, basic communication was effortless. Rushing up to Wei Yuan and looking down at him—Wei Yuan barely reached his waist—the shaman barked furiously, "Can't understand your grandpa's voice of the Great Dao, can you? Fine, now Grandpa will teach you what 'attitude' means!" He swung a fist the size of a water vat, slamming it down mercilessly toward Wei Yuan! After a round of earth-shaking, mountain-quaking violence... The shaman lay prostrate before Wei Yuan, knocking his head against the ground. "Grandpa, I was wrong!"