After three prostrations, the world before Wei Yuan shifted. He suddenly found himself standing in midair, gazing down at boundless mountains, rivers, and earth. Multitudes of people toiled across the land, smaller than ants—mere speckles barely distinguishable to the naked eye, perceptible only through divine sense.
Before Wei Yuan stood a youthful cultivator overlooking the world below. Just from the silhouette of his back, Wei Yuan instinctively knew this was the Patriarch.
When the young cultivator turned around, his features indeed matched the Patriarch's. Wei Yuan immediately understood: just as suspected, a wisp of divine intent left behind by the Patriarch was concealed within the statue.
Curious, Wei Yuan glanced around, only to find the surroundings completely empty. There were no palaces, no thrones, no immortal peaks—nothing befitting the Patriarch's exalted status.
Though only a wisp of divine intent remained, the Palace of Grand Beginning's Patriarch had been powerful enough at his peak to overwhelm the entire world. Even a single strand of divine intent could have gradually evolved into a small grotto-heaven. A barren expanse like this was truly beneath him.
As if discerning Wei Yuan's thoughts, the Patriarch's divine intent pointed a finger. A serene little courtyard materialized before them, consisting of merely a main hall and two wing rooms. A deep spring pool inside served as modest embellishment.
"This is the place where I passed away in meditation," the Patriarch said. "I still hold some fond memories of it."
Seeing this courtyard, Wei Yuan finally understood why both Immortal Monarch Yanshi and Immortal Monarch Tinghai had such a penchant for building little courtyards.
Later, however, as the Palace of Grand Beginning grew ever more prosperous and drew in countless cultivators, their Dao paths multiplied, and their styles flourished in every direction. True Monarch Xuanyue, for instance, was obsessed with expanding the Azure Great Hall—the more grand and imposing, the better—straying completely from the Patriarch's ways.
Take the Monastery of Creation, whose main temple was built with utterly ostentatious materials. Or the Hall of Heavenly Secrets, which went so far as to refine its entire hall into a magic treasure.
Compared to the Patriarch's final resting place, a single meditation chamber in Wei Yuan's residence within the immortal city was larger than this entire courtyard. The courtyard, along with its surrounding ground, could fit entirely inside his council hall.
Looking at this, Wei Yuan felt somewhat guilty, though only slightly.
After all, such accommodations were standard in the immortal city; everyone had a compound like that, and whenever they had leisure time, they would decorate and maintain them personally. The residences of Cui Yu, Bao Yun, Xiaoyu, and Xu Henshui were each ablaze with radiant treasure light.
At that moment, the young cultivator formed from the divine intent spoke: "What is cultivating immortality? Some say that to be a sovereign is to have the world serve one person. But to become an immortal is to have heaven and earth serve one person, making immortals truly thieves of heaven and earth. When one becomes an immortal, a domain is depleted. When many become immortals, a realm returns to desolation. Do you agree?"
The question caught Wei Yuan somewhat off guard. After pondering, he replied, "Heaven and earth are supremely impartial, while all living beings possess spirit. The so-called supreme impartiality simply means the Great Dao operates as it must. For instance, plants and trees will grow upon fertile soil. As they grow, the land naturally becomes depleted; this is simply the Great Dao at work. Yet the vegetation commits no fault, and one cannot condemn the vegetation for it.
"Furthermore, we are ourselves living beings endowed with spirit, so we must view this matter from the standpoint of spirited beings. More specifically, having been born human, we must speak on behalf of humanity. Even now, countless mortals across the world suffer from cold and hunger, and not one in ten thousand can step onto the path of cultivation. Even among those who manage to forge a Dao Foundation, nine out of ten lack sufficient resources; their progress is agonizingly slow, and they can only watch helplessly as their lifespans drain away, unable to take another step forward.
"In many small regions, a Dao Foundation cultivator can already claim the mantle of sect founder and ancestor. That may seem absurd, but in truth, it is tragic.
"In this world, the overwhelming majority of mortals have yet to be properly fed and clothed, and the overwhelming majority of cultivators can only drift with the tide, struggling bitterly to survive! With so many pressing matters in plain sight, to instead fret on behalf of heaven and earth—isn't this cultivator you speak of simply far too idle? Has their cultivation left them with too much free time? With the time spent making such hollow laments, wouldn't it be better to advance mathematics, or lower the threshold for establishing a Dao Foundation?"
The young cultivator looked stunned, utterly unprepared for such an answer.
Still not finished, Wei Yuan added, "When those immortals summon wind and rain, pluck the stars and seize the moon, roam the four seas, and feast on precious medicines, they don't share a shred of benefit with the world. Now that heaven and earth have grown barren, they expect us mortals and minor cultivators to share the burden? If I were heaven and earth, I'd strike them dead with heavenly tribulations first!"
The young cultivator parted his lips, momentarily at a loss for words.
Noticing he had spoken too much, Wei Yuan hastily tried to make amends: "Of course, I don't mean you! You established the sect and laid down the unshakeable foundation of the Palace of Grand Beginning for ten thousand generations—that is a truly immense merit! Without you, how could any of us be here today?"
As he spoke, Wei Yuan secretly watched the Patriarch's expression. If the Patriarch genuinely took offense, wouldn't the benefits he was about to receive vanish into thin air? That could never do!
Furthermore, the more Wei Yuan thought about it, the more he felt something was off. Could that fellow immortal the Patriarch mentioned actually be himself? But upon second thought, it seemed unlikely. The core of the Patriarch's past deeds could be summed up in two words: ferocious and relentless. When had he ever been so sentimental and indecisive?
The young cultivator finally composed himself and gave Wei Yuan a profound look. "Throughout my past life, my slaughter was exceedingly heavy. One could say my entire life was spent battling heaven and earth, battling foreign races. My four immortal swords were all forged from the souls and dharma bodies of alien races. To those foreign races, I was truly no different from a demon. And toward heaven and earth, I can hardly claim any merit."
"That's completely wrong—" Wei Yuan blurted out, only realizing his slip after the words left his mouth, and promptly clamped his mouth shut.
The young cultivator gave a faint smile. "I am merely a strand of divine intent and possess no reward for you. I am only here to help you sort out your own Dao heart. Say whatever you wish."
Wei Yuan froze. "No reward?"
The young cultivator spread his hands. "Do you see anything left here? Even if I had left behind a few things back then, several thousand years have passed; the later generations dug them up and used them long ago. How could anything remain until now?"
Wei Yuan remained half-skeptical. "Then what about the Patriarch's Gift back then?"
"Back then, you had just entered the sect and possessed no cultivation. Enhancing your aptitude took very little effort. The gift bestowed once every five years draws entirely on the sect's own accumulated reserves—just a bit of spiritual energy."
"So that's how it is!" Wei Yuan wasn't really disappointed. He now commanded Qingming and didn't care for ordinary immortal items anyway. Hearing there was no reward, having nothing to covet gave him bold resolve, and his demeanor relaxed completely. "In that case, I'll speak the honest truth!"
With a hint of a smile at the corner of his lips, the young cultivator said, "Speak freely."
Now without reservations, Wei Yuan said, "The foreign races oppressed humanity for hundreds of thousands of years. Before we had immortals, they slaughtered us at will and devoured us at whim! Only recently has humanity begun to grow strong, yet looking across the world, the vast majority of mortals are still far from fed and clothed, and cultivators struggle bitterly. We humans are still far from being well off, so where would we find the spare time to care about what foreign races think, let alone pity their plight? Isn't that just having too much food and too much free time?
"Right now, all four realms are waging war against foreign races. Such idle folk ought to be sent to the battlefield first! Or banished to the foreign races—if they'd even take them!"
The young cultivator laughed. "Aren't you afraid that the friend I spoke of was myself? Wouldn't that mean you're scolding me as well?"
Wei Yuan said decisively, "Those were definitely your friends, not you!"
"Oh? Why do you say that?"
Wei Yuan replied, "I've read all of our sect's historical records. If you were that sort of person, you wouldn't have brought back the head and spirit core of the First Heavenly Shaman back then to bury beneath our sect grounds. That yielded eight thousand li of treasure land right from the start! How could any immortal of our human race be so lavishly endowed?
"Of course, in your later years you might have uttered a few words of sympathy for the foreign races, but I believe that was definitely shedding crocodile tears..."
Wei Yuan clamped his hand over his mouth again! For some reason, in front of the Patriarch's divine intent, his tongue was particularly eager to put on a show today.
The young cultivator could no longer contain himself and burst into hearty laughter. His laughter was so exuberant that it shook heaven and earth... and left Wei Yuan feeling thoroughly unsettled.
After laughing for a long while, the young cultivator finally spoke: "Then returning to our initial topic: in your view, what should cultivating immortality be like?"
At that moment, scenes from Wei Yuan's childhood at the Wei family compound flashed before his eyes—refugees driven to exchange their children for food. He thought of the numb-faced destitute of Quliu Town in the Western Regions, submerged in foul water day in and day out. He thought of the tens of millions of displaced refugees he had gathered over the years. Though they had different faces, they all shared the same expression: despair.
And though the otherworldly realm was destroyed, that fleeting glimpse in the illusion—the sheer abundance enjoyed by ordinary people—had deeply shocked Wei Yuan. How could a world without immortals be so affluent, while mortals in this world, blessed with numerous immortals, lived in such dire misery that even a bowl of porridge was an extravagant wish?
Wei Yuan asked, "If I attain immortality, will I also possess an Immortal Heaven?"
"Naturally. When your mindscape world is elevated into the heavens, it becomes an Immortal Heaven."
Wei Yuan nodded and said, "If I attain immortality, I will either pull the Immortal Heaven down to turn the mortal realm into an Immortal Heaven, or I will lift all the mortals under my rule up into the Immortal Heaven. Therefore, my purpose in cultivating immortality is: when one man attains the Dao, even his chickens and dogs ascend to heaven!"
The moment those words were spoken, Wei Yuan felt his surroundings brighten. A beam of light descended from an unknown origin upon the earth below, coating the mountains and rivers in a layer of golden radiance.
Witnessing such an anomaly in heaven and earth, Wei Yuan grew alarmed and hastily peered toward the sky, searching for any sign of tribulation clouds. Based on past experience, a heavenly tribulation was bound to be on its way by now—the bizarre kind designed specifically to target his weaknesses.
Yet the beam of light gradually vanished, while the glow across the earth remained; no heavenly tribulation arrived. Wei Yuan gazed suspiciously at the sky, refusing to believe heaven had suddenly turned benevolent.
Seeing Wei Yuan's expression, the young cultivator couldn't help bursting into laughter again. "I haven't laughed as much in the past few hundred years as I have today. To tell you the truth, maybe a million years ago, 'heaven and earth are supremely impartial' had some truth to it. But as generations of mighty figures continually merged their bodies with the Dao, the Great Dao of heaven and earth you see today definitely has a temper. You can't just speak recklessly, or you're bound to get struck by lightning, hahahaha!"
The young cultivator laughed for a good while before stopping, devoid of any aloof reserve, causing the Patriarch's halo in Wei Yuan's mind to fade considerably.
Having had his fill of laughter, the young cultivator asked again, "Your Dao path is naturally endowed with immense karmic luck. How do you intend to use it?"
Wei Yuan replied, "The path of karmic luck carries profound karma and must not be squandered recklessly. This disciple believes it should be taken from the people, and used for the people."
With a resounding boom, the thunder that had long been brewing finally crashed down, and a streak of lightning stretching ten thousand li illuminated the entire vault of heaven!
The young cultivator said, "Only with that sentence is it complete. Very well, go and choose your grotto-heaven. Judging by the great vow you just swore, there happens to be something extraordinarily suited for you."
"Wait—this disciple just made a great vow?" Wei Yuan suddenly felt a sense of foreboding.
With a mere wave of the young cultivator's sleeve, the scenery before Wei Yuan shifted, and he found himself back in the grand hall. At this moment, he had just finished his final kowtow and had not even fully stood up. All those words spoken had transpired in but a single instant in reality.
A middle-aged Daoist of the dharma idol realm, carrying an immortal, transcendent air, approached Wei Yuan's side and said, "Junior Brother, please follow me. The sect vault is open."
The sect vault of the Palace of Grand Beginning stood atop a floating mountain, magnificent and majestic. As Wei Yuan landed on the plaza, the grand hall doors swung open automatically. The middle-aged Daoist stepped back, gesturing for Wei Yuan to enter and choose on his own.
Both filled with anticipation and feeling uneasy, Wei Yuan entered the treasure vault. Inside lay a world of its own—an actual grotto-heaven. Countless jade pedestals and crystal shelves were arranged in orderly fashion, scattered across the immortal mountain, each a picturesque sight.
Hundreds of jade pedestals and display shelves should have held treasures, yet at this moment, the vault was completely empty. Every single shelf and pedestal was bare, save for an archaic Lotus Lamp floating quietly in the center of the treasure vault.
Chapter 946