Wei Yuan was not one to carry things to extremes. Having his brothers taste the bitter hardships he had endured was enough; he certainly wouldn't torment Cui Yu the way Ronglong had tormented him. Once he roughly explained the principles, they drifted through the void for a day or two before heading back to Qingming.
Upon returning to Qingming, the first thing Wei Yuan did was go to the Hall of Merits to store the Patriarch Boundary Stone fragment. Due to a formation Ji Liuli had laid down years ago, one had to correctly calculate the trajectories of moving celestial bodies to reach it, making it the safest place in Qingming—something that sheer cultivation alone could not breach at will.
This time, Wei Yuan had also brought back several dozen blocks of refined desolate iron. Though modest in size, together they weighed tens of thousands of jin. Conserved carefully, they were enough to forge two Scenery Command numinous treasures. Naturally treating them like priceless treasures, Yu Zhizhuo kicked Wei Yuan out of the Weaponsmith Workshop the second he took possession, lest Wei Yuan linger nearby with endless chatter getting in the way.
Returning to his quarters and changing into a fresh robe, Wei Yuan was just preparing to attend to Qingming's administrative affairs when he suddenly sensed a faint tremor in Qingming's space. With a shift of divine sense, he discovered that Cui Yu, trailing slightly behind, had successfully returned to this realm as well.
After bringing Cui Yu to the realm's edge, Wei Yuan had left him to experience the process of crossing into their native realm on his own, while he himself returned first.
For a Dharma Idol cultivator to walk through the void was virtually impossible. Thus, even though Wei Yuan had guided him the entire way, Cui Yu would still have plenty to brag about once he went home.
Wei Yuan smiled faintly. Cui Yu had enjoyed quite a streak of good fortune lately—his dharma idol had advanced, and his experiences were legendary. It was high time to let him visit the Cui family to temper his Dao heart. As for the painstaking arrangements Wei Yuan had made on his behalf, Wei Yuan felt they weren't worth mentioning, nor did they require any special thanks.
Even as Wei Yuan was pondering this, Qingming suddenly stirred with a commotion. Pricking up his ears, Wei Yuan heard several beautiful female disciples screaming in the clinic. Sweeping his divine sense across the area, he understood at once what had happened and clearly heard their shouts:
"A pervert!!"
"Ah, the pervert is in my bath tub!—He ran off again!"
"Catch him! Don't let him get away!"
"Hmm, this rascal is quite striking. Could there be more to this? Everyone, put your backs into it! Once we take him down, we'll interrogate him thoroughly together!"
Chaos reigned in the clinic. Covering his face with one hand and clutching his crotch with the other, Cui Yu dashed about in a frenzy. But his movements feinted east and struck west, utterly bizarre and unpredictable; neither the pursuers nor the fleeing man had any clue where he would pop up next.
Wei Yuan buried his face in his hands. How could he have forgotten about this? It really hadn't been intentional!
A faint shimmer of sunlight appeared over the clinic, dazzling everyone's eyes. Then Xiaoyu appeared, using Dao power to seize Cui Yu and vanishing within the sunlight. In a few flashes, he returned him to Cui Yu's residence in the immortal city.
Cui Yu finally exhaled in relief. Aside from feeling deeply grateful, he wished the earth would open up and swallow him whole. Fortunately, he had reacted quickly enough: sensing something was amiss, he had covered his face first, keeping his identity concealed—truly a blessing amid misfortune.
Xiaoyu, expressionless, said, "To walk in the void, you warped your divine sense, which is why you failed to adjust to our native realm. It isn't difficult; you simply need to calibrate it back. Remember the difference before and after adjustment, and you won't have this problem next time."
Shamefaced, Cui Yu was also thoroughly shocked. "How do you even know this?"
Xiaoyu stood with his hands clasped behind his back, face impassive as ever. "Nothing more than having read extensively."
Star Lord Shaoyang: "..."
And Cui Yu actually believed him. After he offered profuse thanks, Xiaoyu asked faintly out of nowhere, "What were you two doing that left you no time even to put on clothes?"
Cui Yu sighed. "That realm is extraordinary. Three suns hang in the sky—a true holy land for body tempering, though it's quite an ordeal. But despite all the suffering, it truly improves the quality of one's dharma idol. The results are miraculous."
Xiaoyu's interest was finally piqued. "Really? Summon it and let me see. If it works, I'll go too! My dharma idol is due for an upgrade."
Star Lord Shaoyang: "..."
Cui Yu summoned his Twelve Heavenly Soldiers. Seeing the soldiers gleaming with a lustrous black sheen, Xiaoyu was also impressed—and then he rubbed his eyes. Cui Yu rubbed his eyes as well.
Their eyes hadn't deceived them. One of the Heavenly Soldiers indeed had an extra arm growing behind its shoulder.
The first major project Wei Yuan personally oversaw was the construction of grand halls known as Immortal Wisdom Centers across the various cities.
The core function of the Immortal Wisdom Centers was to connect with the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, altering the current reality where only three to five city lord estates in the major cities could link into it. Although cultivators could once again enter the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World through dream-entry after Wei Yuan's return, having experienced a total ban on dharma idols once, Wei Yuan had no desire to repeat that disaster. Building physical formations capable of connecting to the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was far more reliable.
Another reason was that Qingming now housed a vast number of cultivators, inevitably creating a mixed bag of good and bad. Wei Yuan intended to reconfigure access privileges: aside from cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning and the core cultivators Qingming had trained itself, other cultivators entering the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World via dream-entry could only accept quests. To execute and process quests, they had to go through an Immortal Wisdom Center.
This would effectively prevent ill-intentioned individuals from secretly releasing inner demons into the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. While Wei Yuan didn't believe any inner demon could survive for long in his Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, one could never be too cautious against demonic corruption.
The interior of an Immortal Wisdom Hall was divided into premium and standard sections. The standard section consisted of a single sprawling hall with simple dividers between workstations. The premium section was composed of fully enclosed cubicles, neatly arranged like a honeycomb, along with a few special rooms featuring customized decor.
This was not an innovation of Wei Yuan's; he had simply copied the layout of the Umbrella Company's office floor. However, the footprint of each workstation was considerably larger than Umbrella's, as cultivators were burly figures, and by the standards of that otherworld, men over seven feet tall were everywhere.
Each Immortal Wisdom Center was equipped with five hundred workstations and one hundred premium rooms—a respectable scale. Yet this was merely the first phase of Wei Yuan's plan, aimed primarily at meeting the demand for the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World during this transitional period. Moving forward, Wei Yuan intended to build even more branch halls, each offering around a hundred access terminals, allowing for widespread construction across every corner of Qingming.
By now, the efficiency of the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World in handling a single high-priority task rivaled that of an immortal. The instant Wei Yuan entered his concepts, a detailed, immediately executable plan materialized before him.
Once Wei Yuan approved it, the plan was broken down into individual tasks with precise deadlines and requirements, transmitted directly to the relevant departments or cities, and distributed to personnel by the cultivators stationed there.
Within a quarter-hour of Wei Yuan approving the plan, people across Qingming were already springing into action. An hour later, the designated plots had been marked off, and cultivators had begun excavating foundations.
With that matter resolved, Wei Yuan turned his attention back to the Dao paths of his companions.
The body-tempering effects of the Desolate Realm were astonishing. Although it did not directly upgrade the quality of a dharma idol, once physical refinement reached a certain threshold, it would naturally propel the idol to advance.
This was not, in fact, the Dao path of the Hall of the Bright King. The Hall of the Bright King regarded every infinitesimal particle of flesh as a sentient being endowed with spirit, aiming to temper individual spirituality within each one. Ultimately, tens of thousands of separate spiritualities would be cultivated throughout the entire body, and upon ascending to immortality, these spirits would unite into one—achieving perfection.
The immortal who originally founded the Hall of the Bright King's Dao path had once been a demon cultivator famed across the realm. When facing danger, he could instantly divide into hundreds of tiny versions of himself and scatter in flight. As long as a single crumb of his flesh survived, he could regenerate from it.
Furthermore, this senior had buried portions of his flesh in desolate, far-flung corners across the world—snowy mountains, vast deserts, and untrodden wastes. Highly pleased with himself, he styled himself the Undying Old Immortal, vowing to live until his natural lifespan expired.
In those days, everyone in the martial world feared and avoided offending him, for none were confident they could wipe him out completely. To fail to kill him was to invite endless retribution.
However, after establishing the lineage of the Hall of the Bright King within the Palace of Grand Beginning, he turned to cultivating a heart of invincibility. As his cultivation progressed, he sought to emulate the deeds of the founding patriarch and eagerly charged into the Wu domain looking for trouble. But after wreaking bloody havoc in all directions, he thoroughly provoked an Ancestral Shaman and was struck with a karmic curse.
This predecessor possessed poor social standing and had few friends. Unlike Wei Yuan, who was entangled with countless karmic ties, no one was willing or able to share the burden of such a grand curse. In the end, he was cursed to death, and the countless flesh-seeds he had sown across land and sea withered away simultaneously.
Setting past history aside, the formidable nature of the Hall of the Bright King's Dao path was evident from this alone. Their Dao path cultivated both nature and life—a true orthodox path. The Strength Shaman method Wei Yuan had obtained tempered only the physical body, which already veered onto a heterodox path.
Naturally, Wei Yuan did not see it that way. Leveraging the Desolate Realm's unique environment and Ronglong's Five Sounds of the Desolate Roar that could mobilize the Great Dao of heaven and earth, this method offered astonishing body tempering with virtually no drawbacks, so giving it up was out of the question.
Yet data was sorely lacking, and Wei Yuan needed more cultivators to test it. Moreover, traveling to and from the Desolate Realm was not only exceedingly costly, but the realm itself was not a place just anyone could visit. Cui Yu was roughly the lower limit of endurance; even Xiaoyu would struggle greatly inside.
After reviewing the roster and the ongoing tasks of the various cultivators, Wei Yuan decided to seize the remaining time before returning to the main mountain to make another trip to the Desolate Realm. The person he chose to take along this time was Feng Tingyu, focusing on comparing the differences between the Strength Shaman path and the Hall of the Bright King's Dao path.
Delighted at the prospect of traveling to an otherworldly realm, Feng Tingyu unsuspectingly followed Wei Yuan straight into the teleportation portal.
The two appeared in a remote, desolate corner of the realm devoid of humans and shamans alike. But the moment they arrived, Feng Tingyu only had time to gasp, "So hot!" before flames abruptly erupted across her body, burning her robes to cinders.
Wei Yuan buried his face in his hands. He had forgotten once again that the last thing cultivators of the Hall of the Bright King ever spent money on was enchanted clothing.
Feng Tingyu paused in shock for a second, then couldn't have cared less. Seeing no one around, she flashed a sly smile, and suddenly, a shroud of darkness enveloped Wei Yuan!
With his five senses severed, Wei Yuan realized just how formidable Feng Tingyu's dharma idol was: even the Desolate Realm sunlight that could pierce his own dharma body could not penetrate this darkness.
Once their cultivation concluded and Wei Yuan gathered sufficient data, the two prepared to return to Qingming.
Although they lacked Jiumu's assistance on the return trip, heaven and earth in the Desolate Realm felt remarkably soft and fragile before Wei Yuan now; he easily tore open a rift into the void.
Before departing, however, several strands of Strength Shaman karmic luck suddenly attached themselves to Wei Yuan. He was instantly thrilled—he hadn't expected that even after being gone for so long, legends of him would still echo through the Desolate Realm!
Unable to hold the rift into the void open for long, Wei Yuan didn't have time to trace the origin of the Strength Shaman karmic luck and brought Feng Tingyu into the void.
In the void, a calm, gentle, and infinitely patient voice sounded: "Do you see that point of light? That is our native realm. All you have to do is fly toward it. Give it a try first."
"Mm, all right."
Feng Tingyu flew forward, tracing a graceful arc, and vanished into their native realm.
Wei Yuan stood in the void, unable to wrap his head around it for the longest time.
Yet Wei Yuan was the sort of person who grew bolder with every setback. Taking advantage of the last bit of time before returning to the Palace of Grand Beginning, he took Wang Hu to the Desolate Realm.
As the Eldest Senior Brother of the Hall of the Bright King, the Desolate Realm's sunlight merely seeped into Wang Hu's skin and flesh, unable to touch his internal organs at all; the body-tempering effect was negligible. The Dao path of the Hall of the Bright King was truly extraordinary.
Afterward, the two stepped into the void, retracing the route back to Qingming. Once in the void, Wei Yuan pointed ahead and said in a deep, gentle, patient voice, "That over there is our native realm. All we need to do is fly across, and we'll be home."
Wang Hu nodded. "All right, I understand."
Then, the square-jawed, strapping giant picked Wei Yuan up by the collar and carried him straight into their native realm.
Chapter 944