In the Desolate Realm, Wei Yuan swung the whip in his hand, lashing it fiercely across the back of a Power Shaman!
The Power Shaman looked quite young, yet his cultivation was truly not low. After a roar of agony, he raised his head and glared at Wei Yuan, ferocity gleaming in his eyes.
"Still not yielding?" Wei Yuan raised the barbed steel whip again, delivering over a dozen consecutive strikes. Each crack of the whip drew a spray of blood. The young Power Shaman howled incessantly, but in the end, he endured it.
Wei Yuan put away the whip and addressed the surrounding Power Shamans who were watching in silence: "The Desolate Roar I'm teaching you right now is the best formula available! None of you try to get clever! Roar strictly according to the score, and you'll get steel! As I've said before, I don't need you to think."
With that, Wei Yuan turned back to the young Power Shaman. "Since you think you're so capable and clever, I'll give you a chance to challenge me."
Wei Yuan extended his left hand. "Strike right here with all your might. Let me see just how much strength you really have!"
The young Power Shaman stood up, wiped the fresh blood from his face, and bared his teeth with beastly savagery in his eyes. With a sudden roar, he drove a full-power punch directly into Wei Yuan's left hand!
The young Power Shaman had imagined various outcomes for this blow. Most involved blasting the scrawny, ugly Wei Yuan away; a smaller portion had him rebounding from the blow—after all, Wei Yuan's battle record spoke for itself, and no Power Shaman dared claim they could best Wei Yuan in spell combat. But this was not spell combat; it was a pure contest of physical flesh.
Hence, the young Power Shaman was overflowing with confidence. What he never could have anticipated was that when the fist landed, Wei Yuan didn't budge in the slightest!
Wei Yuan genuinely had not moved a fraction of an inch. Perhaps there had been an infinitesimal displacement, but it was beyond the eyesight of any Power Shaman present to detect. To the young Power Shaman, it felt as though he had struck with all his might against the hardest bedrock in the Desolate Realm: nothing would happen to the Desolate Realm, but he himself was in deep trouble.
The young Power Shaman stared at his completely mangled fist, and only after a beat did he begin to scream in agony.
Only then did Wei Yuan address the gathered Power Shamans: "Until you can defeat me, none of you are to get clever and tamper with the Desolate Roar—not a single note! This isn't work you're capable of doing. Once the Flame Storm has passed, I couldn't care less what you do, but right now, right here, absolutely not! This is not the time to showcase your individuality, and even less the time to flaunt brains that are barely sharper than rocks!
"Right now, all I want is desolate steel!"
"Understood..." a chorus of Power Shamans replied limply, their voices scattered and listless.
Wei Yuan could hardly demand more; this was already the best outcome. This batch of Power Shamans had been gathered by Jiumu from all over the Desolate Realm, bearing no deep ties to Fengmang, and many had simply been bought with money.
The injured young Power Shaman was the quintessential troublemaker. Whatever he was told to do, he stubbornly did the opposite, always full of his own ideas. He was utterly devoid of cleverness, yet he believed otherwise, and he was extraordinarily proactive, eager to single-handedly transform Fengmang, change the living conditions of the Power Shamans, and thereby revolutionize the entire Desolate Realm.
Only after encountering this young Power Shaman did Wei Yuan finally realize how destructive a hardworking, proactive fool with grand ambitions could be. Earlier, the young Power Shaman had abruptly altered the pitch of the Desolate Roar, adding several flourishes based on his own ideas and aesthetics, ruining two consecutive cauldrons of molten steel. Wei Yuan had been furious enough to resort to vigilante punishment, yet it was clear the young Power Shaman still saw nothing wrong with what he had done.
Looking at the stubborn glint in the youth's eyes, Wei Yuan finally decided against arguing with him further and simply sent him off to haul ore. Hauling ore couldn't possibly cause any trouble... right?
With that minor interlude settled, Wei Yuan returned to his quarters, threw himself into a chair, closed his eyes, and rested for about ten seconds. Then he popped right back up, spread out a sheet of jade paper, and resumed revising his doctrines.
Ronglong appeared in the room at some unknown point. Rather than disturbing Wei Yuan, he observed the scene with great interest.
Floating in the room were over a hundred projected images, all depicting battles between Power Shamans and flame demons. Each image showed different conditions, with varying natural talents and equipment for the Power Shamans. Their opponents ranged from desolate worms to flame demons and qinlong, numbering anywhere from one to dozens.
Whenever a Power Shaman fell in an image, the projection would restart. The Power Shaman in the new sequence would adjust according to the opponent's lethal moves, and the combat would begin anew. These hundred-plus images represented over a hundred ongoing deduction processes.
Wei Yuan worked on the doctrines for a bit, then modified the armor designs for the Power Shamans, alternating between the two tasks. When designing an armor component, he filled sheets with dense columns of numbers and sketched over a hundred diagrams. A slightly flatter or more convex curve made no difference in Ronglong's eyes, yet Wei Yuan spent several sheets of jade paper calculating it, realized he had taken a wrong turn, tore them up, and recalculated from scratch.
After watching quietly for a long while, Ronglong finally asked, "Is there any point in calculating all this?"
Wei Yuan looked up and saw Ronglong, not the least bit surprised. "Different curves absorb and deflect force differently, and their effectiveness against different types of dao arts varies as well. Only by calculating these can I know how to optimize them. In the end, the improvement might only be a little over ten percent, but as long as the defense over vital areas improves by ten percent, overall survival rates increase drastically. I haven't finished the exact figures yet, but it should roughly more than double."
Wei Yuan rubbed his brow and sighed. "The path of mathematics is truly too grueling. It seems it has no intention of making friends with me."
Ronglong picked up a sheet of jade paper, glanced at it, and set it down. He picked up another, then set it down again, and offered a wry smile. "It seems it wants to make friends with me even less."
With that, Wei Yuan and Ronglong shared a moment of mutual sympathy.
Ronglong's gaze shifted, and he noticed a stack of jade paper bound into a book at the edge of the desk. Picking it up casually, he saw the title written across the cover: *Principles of Desolate Steel Armor Refining*.
Ronglong opened it and read thoroughly. The book began with the smelting of desolate steel, moved on to various methods for crafting components, and then presented armor designs suited to several common cultivation sects of Power Shamans.
At the very end of the work, Wei Yuan had dedicated an entire chapter to how Power Shamans should trim their surplus limbs. The entire passage ultimately condensed into four words: *excess breeds as much fault as deficiency*.
Ronglong read through the entire book with meticulous care, rereading the final chapter three times in succession. His gaze lingered on those four words for a long time before he finally set the volume down and said, "The final chapter alone already borders on the Great Dao. Those four words will bring an unimaginable boost to our Power Shaman clan!"
Ronglong paused before sighing with emotion. "In ancient times, Power Shamans were austere to the point of returning to the origin. Their Dharma bodies were forged like steel, and their shamanic arts were simple and pure, yet capable of tearing apart heaven and earth. But at some point, an unhealthy trend swept across the entire Power Shaman world: having more limbs was deemed beautiful, being bizarre was deemed beautiful, and the ancient belief that ultimate strength and rigidity constituted ultimate beauty was lost.
"And anyone who spoke against it would be attacked by all. Chiefly, it was because the Heavenly Shamans above were the same way. So those below followed the example of their superiors, and things gradually turned into what we see today. To think that within my lifetime, I would see the words 'excess breeds as much fault as deficiency.' These four words alone are enough to open a whole new path."
Wei Yuan felt slightly embarrassed by the praise. "I hadn't thought that far ahead. I merely considered how to maximize the combat power of Power Shamans at minimal cost and maximum efficiency. Everything was planned around that theme."
Ronglong said, "There is one thing I do not understand, however. What you are doing now far exceeds the expectations of all shamans. The value of this book is in no way inferior to the cultivation paths I placed in the Library Hall. What are you doing this for? Just for a wisp of my karmic luck?"
Wei Yuan felt a wave of fatigue. He rubbed his eyes and sighed. "I didn't intend to get so involved at first. But after that massive battle with the flame demons, I realized that the real danger lies right here. If we're talking about the big picture, this is the true big picture—it concerns the very survival of the Native Realm."
"What did you discover?"
Wei Yuan said, "...The flame demons are not natural living creatures. They were manufactured."
"I thought you would never notice until the very end."
"During the Middle Ancient era, the Ancestral Shaman led the Heavenly Shamans to battle the flame demons. Were they fighting the flame demons, or the otherworldly demon race that created them?"
Ronglong hesitated before replying, "I do not know either. That ancient war left behind no written records whatsoever. Aside from the Ancestral Shaman, all the other Heavenly Shamans perished. So if one wishes to learn the truth, one would likely have to ask the Ancestral Shaman."
Wei Yuan's expression grew solemn. "What do you think?"
Ronglong smiled faintly and said, "Can't you tell just from the fact that I've remained pinned here without moving?"
"Yet this isn't your responsibility alone."
"Every Heavenly Shaman has their own ideas, and I cannot sway a single one of them. I can only do my own part. Besides, I have actually received enough benefits. Heaven and earth have their own justice." Ronglong pointed toward the ceiling.
Wei Yuan said, "If heaven and earth possess justice, then they ought to have their own desires as well."
Ronglong chuckled. "Forget that set of doctrines of yours. Still, if you wish to recruit a few disciples, you may do so as long as it's within Fengmang. Beyond here, I cannot protect you. Jiumu is thoroughly unreliable; you must never trust him."
"Spreading my teachings can happen in its own time; I won't force it. First, I'll finish formulating the smelting of desolate steel and the armor crafting techniques. Once the entire fortress is overhauled and every Power Shaman is fitted with armor, the defensive strength of these three thousand Power Shamans will rival what we had before the Flame Storm."
"Then I won't disturb you any longer." Ronglong rose and exited the room.
The moment he left, Wei Yuan returned to his battle with endless calculations.
Ronglong quietly pulled the door shut, glanced up at the vault of the sky, and spoke in a voice audible only to himself: "...Heaven and earth have their own justice."
Inside the room, Wei Yuan's brush suddenly stopped moving as he began pondering what Ronglong had just said. That phrase—"heaven and earth have their own justice"—seemed to carry an underlying meaning. Based on Wei Yuan's experiences in this realm, that statement was fundamentally untrue; at most, one could say that "heaven and earth have their own favoritism."
Could heaven and earth distinguish between things?
Wei Yuan pondered more deeply. After a long while, he finally wrote down a line of characters: *What is Heaven?*
Staring at those words, Wei Yuan thought of the disparities between different regions of the realm, then of the Nether Cold Realm and the fragments of the perished otherworldly realm, and finally of the three Heavenly Pillars erected in this realm by the flame demons.
A stir ran through Wei Yuan's heart. He felt as though he had drawn remarkably close to something, yet for now, he could not quite break through that final layer of parchment.
Chapter 927