A Dreamlike Drama

"Your Majesty! Catch me, Your Majesty! I'm over here!" "Look this way, Your Majesty! Does my leg please Your Majesty's fancy? Catch me, and it's all yours." ... Wei Yuan shook his head vigorously, snapping out of that fleeting daze. Yet he had distinctly heard those voices—unmistakably real—even if he could not remember for the life of him where he had heard them before. Once he collected himself, Wei Yuan reconnected his divine sense to the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World and resumed his search for the inner demon. The efficiency of the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was staggering. By now, more than sixty-seven thousand village heads had been selected, tasked with overseeing nearly two million mortals in total. Every single village head was linked directly to the immortal plants, able to report any anomaly in real time. In merely a quarter of an hour, over three thousand instances of suspicious behavior had been detected. A swift investigation unearthed thirty-one Imperial Seals of the Realm across nine varieties, sixteen bronze statues, over sixty stone steles, and more than six hundred seditious poems—penned by over two thousand supposed authors. Many of the mortals did not even know how to write poetry, so they had simply plagiarized others, changed a word or two, and claimed it as their own. Pressed for time, Wei Yuan had no leeway to scrutinize each case. He sent them all off to the Yellow Springs Grotto-Heaven for reincarnation. Yet, to his dismay, the inner demon was nowhere among them. In a single stroke, the rebel factions within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World suffered unprecedented devastation, cleansing the entire realm. But the inner demon remained utterly untraceable. Out of options, Wei Yuan decided to shift his primary focus back to the battle in the skies, minimizing further damage to the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World while continuing to root out the demon. At that moment, Wei Yuan sat cross-legged in the plaza of the immortal city. Grand arrays had already been laid out all around him to prevent the inner demon from escaping. Zhang Sheng, Ji Liuli, Bao Yun, and the others took turns standing guard, conferring day and night to devise a strategy. Feng Chutang had made a special trip back to the Palace of Grand Beginning to comb through the records. As expected, he discovered that no one had ever heard of encountering an inner demon tribulation while advancing to Scenery Command. During a breakthrough to Scenery Command, the heavenly tribulation was of paramount importance. Typically, the more powerful it was—within the threshold of endurance without dying—the better. The stronger the tribulation, the greater the tempering of the physical frame. Without a formidable dharma body, the very instant the mindscape world formed, it would crush and rupture the sea of consciousness, causing the cultivator to explode and perish. This was the most common cause of death when ascending to Scenery Command. Yet for Wei Yuan to face an inner demon tribulation was truly unheard of. Genuine inner demons hailed from beyond the heavens. Typically, only after ascending to immortality might one encounter them during the tribulations that struck every millennium. Fortunately, although the Palace of Grand Beginning had not been established long, it boasted a considerable number of immortals. They possessed every manner of insight on ascending to immortality, and their records on inner demons were remarkably comprehensive—rivaling any ancient lineage or prominent clan, standing comfortably among the top three under heaven. Without hesitation, Feng Chutang redeemed a complete set of all relevant materials and transmitted them to Qingming via the Merit Sub-Hall. Zhang Sheng then led the cultivators in poring over them to conceive a solution, while Wei Yuan resisted the extraterrestrial corruption with one part of his mind and studied the texts with the other. In the blink of an eye, more than a month slipped by. Wei Yuan had absorbed the bulk of the materials and committed them all to the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. Throughout this month, the battle in the skies ground to a stalemate. This was largely because the vanguard—Han Li and Jun Weizhi, together with Fuyao and Lei Ling—proved extraordinarily sharp. Bolstered by the immortal plants, they were virtually invincible, slaying more than a dozen behemoths and countless lesser monsters. Ji Liuli, Zhang Sheng, and the others repeatedly entered the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World through dream-entry, observing the purple sores in the sky and even venturing close to the battlefield to test what they had learned. After a month of intensive research, the cultivators finally devised several plans to test one by one. Of the three mature proposals, two had been put forward by Zhang Sheng and Ji Liuli respectively, while the third had been drafted by Feng Tingyu and the academicians of the academy. When evaluated for thoroughness and feasibility, it was Feng Tingyu's plan that proved most practical, catching Wei Yuan entirely by surprise. With the situation dire, Wei Yuan dared not delay. He immediately set about implementing it within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. The efficiency of the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was breathtaking. In less than half a day, all the mortals were partitioned into cohorts of one hundred thousand, isolated, and assembled cohort by cohort to sit for an examination. Upon assembling, paper and brush materialized before each person, bearing questions they were required to answer within a quarter of an hour, strictly meeting a minimum word count. The questions were straightforward, totaling only three: 1. Briefly explain the methods of invading a mindscape world; 2. Describe the potential modes of resistance encountered during an invasion and countermeasures against them; 3. Discuss the inevitability of an inner demon's defeat. The mortals were long accustomed to obeying orders, and the troublemakers among them had already been sent off to reincarnation. Thus, the people quietly worked on their exams, answering to the best of their ability. Once completed, the papers were automatically collected by the immortal plants. The moment one cohort of a hundred thousand finished, the next cohort took their places. Those who had tested and those who had not were kept strictly apart. The examination proceeded at a blazing pace. At this rate, the entire populace would finish in under a day. Those awaiting their turn fought the extraterrestrial foes as usual, while those who had finished had designated combat zones, ensuring no overlap. Just as the fifth cohort finished their tests, an immensely terrifying, searing divine sense swept across the entire Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World! Immediately afterward, the chilling laughter of the Creation Immortal Venerable resounded between heaven and earth: "Ahahaha! Showing your cloven hoof at last, are you?" Numerous terrifying auras surged simultaneously, swooping toward a certain spot in the city. An exceedingly ordinary middle-aged man suddenly straightened his spine, his presence abruptly swelling as grand and imposing as renowned peaks and great rivers! A cold sneer played on his lips, and he spoke in a peculiar cadence: "To resort to such petty tricks—what kind of heroes do you call yourselves? I feel ashamed on your behalf! Today is merely death, what of it?" His words rang like cast iron. Facing the incoming torrent of dread auras, he showed not the slightest trace of fear. He bounded into the air, charging straight into the surging immortal light, rushing up against the tide! Wei Yuan, striking in concert with the immortal plants, unleashed an attack of unimaginable ferocity. Within the immortal light, the middle-aged man's flesh and bones dissolved in an instant, reduced to ash. A wisp of black vapor emerged, only to be refined into nothingness by the immortal radiance amid piercing shrieks. In the immortal city, Wei Yuan opened his eyes and threw his head back in three resounding laughs, brimming with joy. The surrounding cultivators glanced over, and Xiaoyu asked, "Did you get the inner demon?" "A mere inner demon, nothing to write home about! Wrapped around my finger!" Wei Yuan made a throttling gesture with his hand. Xiaoyu, however, was reluctant to believe it. "It actually worked?" When Feng Tingyu first proposed the idea and had the academicians refine it, Xiaoyu—being one of those academicians—had fiercely opposed it, finding it utterly absurd. Unfortunately, his standing among the academicians was near the bottom, and the two who truly anchored the very bottom backed Feng Tingyu unreservedly. In the end, Feng Tingyu's proposal passed by a wide margin. After two more days of polishing, it culminated in that questionnaire of only three questions. Wei Yuan manifested an exam paper and floated it before Xiaoyu. Xiaoyu unfolded it to look. Beneath the third question, there was only a single, curt line: *Bull-fucking-shit!* Xiaoyu never would have guessed that an inner demon could possess such unyielding pride. Of course, the true plan went far deeper. The mortals in the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World were not real human beings; most of their memories and knowledge were acquired directly from the realm itself. Furthermore, they knew nothing about inner demons. No matter how an inner demon tried to disguise itself, as long as it wrote enough words, its answers would inevitably display subtle discrepancies. The Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World could compare all the answers in an instant, analyzing them down to the finest detail to filter out any that stood apart. Even if it could not pinpoint the inner demon directly, it would narrow the field dramatically. At that point, face-to-face scrutiny would leave the demon nowhere to hide. Perhaps the inner demon had realized this very fact. Rather than keeping up the pretense, it flipped the table and embraced death with open arms. Staring at the exam paper in his hands, Xiaoyu felt a bizarrely complicated sensation in his chest. Wei Yuan naturally caught Xiaoyu's awkwardness, which lifted his spirits even higher. He chuckled and said, "You've all worked hard. Now that the inner demon is dealt with, go get some rest!" The cultivators marveled in amazement and gradually dispersed. Encountering an inner demon tribulation at Scenery Command was unprecedented, but Wei Yuan's method of handling it was a stroke of absolute genius. Deceptively simple on the surface, its execution was astronomically difficult. To partition two million mortals without error, cycle through cohorts seamlessly, conclude all testing in under a day, and simultaneously analyze and cross-reference every response in real time to isolate anomalies—the sheer volume of information to process would strain even an immortal. A moment's hesitation, and the inner demon would have found a way to copy someone else's answers or slip into another vessel to hide. Having dispatched the inner demon with flying colors, Wei Yuan felt thoroughly pleased with himself. All that remained was to quietly await his breakthrough to Scenery Command. From here on, he would formally step onto the stage of senior cultivators; ordinary cultivators throughout the world would have to address him respectfully as "Senior." ... Great Tang, the Imperial Palace. The palace was vast as an ocean. Deep within the inner quarters, cheerful laughter and banter echoed. Behind a cluster of flowering shrubs, a fair hand waved a handkerchief like a fluttering butterfly, stirring a light breeze as a coquettish voice called out, "Your Majesty! Catch me, Your Majesty! I'm over here!" And amidst the peonies, a rounded, porcelain-pale leg slipped out. Its slender ankle was light enough to encircle with a single hand, its smooth instep white as jade, toes painted with dabs of rouge. A diaphanous pink robe drifted up and down, teasing against that shapely leg, while a pair of amorous eyes peeked out from behind the blossoms from time to time, every glance laden with sheer seduction. "Look this way, Your Majesty! Does my leg please Your Majesty's fancy? Catch me, and it's all yours." A young man was stripped bare, a strip of thin gauze bound across his eyes. Through the fabric, he could discern only the faint outlines of his surroundings, unable to make out faces or attire. With a loud shout, feigning in one direction while striking another, he suddenly pounced into the peonies, seizing that shapely leg in a firm grip. The beauty among the flowers let out a cry of surprise, her body turning limp, before she was pressed down firmly. Her startled cry swiftly turned to breathless pants and pleas for mercy. Having just launched his conquest, how could the man show mercy? The more his adversary pleaded, the harsher her treatment became. Right in the midst of his triumphant vigor, his entire body suddenly froze. A bizarre expression surfaced on his face, and he slowly slumped forward. The playful giggles vanished, replaced instantly by shrill screams! In the fourteenth year of Tianqi, Emperor Xuan of Tang suffered a relapse of his hidden ailment and passed away. ... In Qingming, bells suddenly tolled. The cultivators gathered once more in the immortal city from all directions. When everyone had arrived, Wei Yuan walked into the grand array on his own and sat down. His face was terribly grim as he spoke: "The inner demon isn't finished. Another one has come!"