With the boundary stone erected, heaven and earth began to slowly shift. The fortress was essentially complete, and transporting mortals could now be put on the agenda.
After placing the boundary stone, Wei Yuan waited by the teleportation array for a short while. Several Dao Foundation warriors soon stepped out of the formation escorting Hule Gaon, bringing him before Wei Yuan.
Wei Yuan personally untied the Immortal Binding Rope from Hule Gaon's wrists and said, "Your cultivation is too high; we had no choice but to inconvenience you."
Hule Gaon expressed his understanding. Following Wei Yuan out of the hall doors, he was suddenly greeted by the sight of a fully equipped fortress city. For a moment, he was struck speechless with shock, finally asking, "This is a human city? How long have you been building this?"
Wei Yuan naturally would not tell him that the fortress had only taken two months to construct; he simply said it had been in the works for a long time. Wei Yuan then led Hule Gaon outside the fortress and handed him a map, saying, "This is a map of the surrounding area to help you find your bearings. Have you made up your mind?"
A flash of resolve crossed Hule Gaon's eyes. He took out a sheet of jade paper and said, "This contains the history of my people. Read it after I depart. If I succeed in rescuing my kin, I will naturally return to repay this kindness. If I fail, my divine soul upon death will return on its own to merge with the essence-blood I leave behind. When that time comes, you can find an ordinary boundary stone as a seed and nurture it with my heart's blood. In three years, it will advance in grade, which can serve as my recompense."
Wei Yuan reached out to pat his shoulder, but an unpleasant memory instantly flared up, making him draw his hand back. He said, "Then you'd better come back alive. Merely advancing one boundary stone in grade isn't enough of a reward."
Hule Gaon remarked helplessly, "Your greed truly knows no bounds!"
Wei Yuan gave a hearty laugh. "I know how to weigh value. Go with peace of mind. Everything should go smoothly on this journey."
Hule Gaon nodded and walked off into the depths of the great mountains.
Having seen Hule Gaon off, Wei Yuan returned to the fortress and opened the records Hule Gaon had left, reading through them in detail.
In the history of the Mountain Folk, there had been a glorious past that saw the birth of countless great city-states and nations. Yet the tribes had waged endless wars against one another, conquering each other with casualties beyond measure.
At that time, a young Mountain Folk appeared out of nowhere.
From birth, he was capable of cultivating on his own. At the age of ten, he manifested a dharma idol, said to be a terrifying three-headed giant. By twenty, he had already reached Scenery Command.
His mindscape world was an exceptionally bountiful rocky mountain where all manner of scarce resources could be found, even giving birth to rare ores that had long since been depleted in the world. He was instantly hailed as the ultimate hope by countless master artisans of the Mountain Folk.
He did not indulge in his personal cultivation alone. Seeing how the Mountain Folk were scattered like loose sand, he traveled far and wide to preach his doctrine, calling upon all Mountain Folk to unite and expand outward together.
At thirty, he ascended to immortality, astonishing the entire Mountain Folk. Even the ancient giants, known for their unruly and arrogant nature, had to acknowledge that he was truly blessed by heaven and earth, and they converted to his cause.
The Mountain Folk had originally worshipped the Primordial Full Moon, but under his new doctrine, he was the sole true god in heaven and earth, revered as the Stone Ancestor.
Leading his sixteen ancient giants, the Stone Ancestor traversed the hundred thousand great mountains, bringing tribe after tribe of Mountain Folk into his faith. Those tribes that refused to convert were ruthlessly wiped out.
After unifying the realm of the Mountain Folk, the Stone Ancestor formally established the new religion. Its totem was also the moon, but to distinguish it from the Primordial Full Moon, it was named the Crescent Religion, also known simply as the New Religion.
During the unification of the Mountain Folk, the Stone Ancestor encountered numerous terrifying foes and suffered internal injuries, eventually falling at the age of ten thousand. Before his passing, he descended his mindscape world into the mortal realm, scattering countless gems and minerals across the earth, making the Mountain Folk lands incomparably rich in ores. As for the Stone Ancestor himself, he dissolved into the Heavenly Dao.
Yet not long after the Stone Ancestor's death, his chosen successor, the new Pope Puge, died under mysterious circumstances. The massive Crescent Religion was instantly plunged into turmoil. One faction supported the Stone Ancestor's most outstanding disciple, Su Mei, while the other faction backed Long Ji, a direct bloodline descendant of the Stone Ancestor. The struggle between the two factions grew increasingly fierce, neither willing to compromise.
Not long afterward, Su Mei also met a mysterious end. His death ignited the fury of all the Mountain Folk in his faction, and Su Mei's disciple, Khalid, inherited the seat of the Pope. But Khalid was merely an ordinary Mountain Folk, not a giant. The Bloodline Faction took this as a grave insult, and the two factions suffered a complete rift. A protracted and bloody war ensued, dragging in more than twenty ancient giants.
Following this war, the New Religion splintered into the Bloodline Faction and the True Knowledge Faction. They warred against each other for over a million years, each viewing the other as their sole and eternal arch-nemesis, frequently staging scenes of total extermination.
A million years later, Hule Gaon was born into the Golden Hammer Tribe of the True Knowledge Faction.
From the moment of his birth, he carried a special mission. But before young Hule Gaon could grow up, his tribe was encircled by their hereditary enemies. Several powerful Bloodline Faction tribes in the vicinity had long coveted the Golden Hammer Tribe's exclusive craft of forging Realm Pillars, and so they had meticulously plotted this surprise attack.
In the chaotic battle, the warriors of the Golden Hammer Tribe were far outnumbered. Every strong male warrior was slaughtered, not even sparing the young boys, and all their giants were brought down and slain. It was total annihilation; only the female Mountain Folk were spared, to be absorbed into the other tribes as breeding tools.
At the final moment, the young Hule Gaon was thrown into a smelting furnace by the enemy.
Yet secret arts had already been placed upon him. A wisp of his true soul, bearing the tribe's secrets, took flight into the void and ultimately landed in a boy from a small tribe of the northern Liao Clan. Years later, the boy grew up to become a prominent powerhouse, earning the title Scourge of the North. He was thought to possess a sliver of hope to attain immortality, and had even caught the eye of the Worthy Prince of the Left, who intended to turn him into a seed.
Retaining his memories as a Mountain Folk, Hule Gaon saw through the Worthy Prince of the Left's scheme and steadfastly refused the infusion of immortal power.
After that, the Scourge of the North caught sight of Wei Yuan at the Northern Mountain Gate. But the Mountain Folk secret arts of the Golden Hammer Tribe gave him an acute instinct for danger. With a single distant glance at Wei Yuan, his hair stood on end. From then on, he steered well clear, unwilling even to set foot on the same battlefield as Wei Yuan.
This was the very reason Wei Yuan had never managed to capture him back then.
Later, the Worthy Prince of the Left was gravely wounded, and the campaign at the Northern Mountain Gate came to an end. Hule Gaon was dispatched to the battlefield against the Shamans, where he was defeated and captured.
Powerful though the Golden Hammer Tribe's secret arts were, on a battlefield where both sides had deployed multiple True Immortals, the art's fortune-seeking and danger-averting instincts were clearly out of their depth. After being captured, Hule Gaon was escorted to the City of Heaven as a top-grade sacrifice for a ritual offering to the heavens.
Yet once away from the True Immortal battlefield, Hule Gaon's Golden Hammer secret arts began working again. Pretending to be utterly helpless, he secretly unraveled the Shamans' soul-locking technique, restored his sea of consciousness, and broke out.
However, Hule Gaon never anticipated that immediately upon escaping his cage, he would run into two utterly bizarre, incomprehensible Shamans. In the ensuing chain of mishaps, he ended up falling into Bao Yun's heavenly tribulation and landing right in Qingming.
The moment he entered Qingming, Hule Gaon realized something was off. In particular, when facing that green-robed cultivator, he could not sense the slightest hint of danger from her; his secret art did not even bother to sound an alarm.
Only after being turned into a hedgehog of needles did Hule Gaon realize that a single glance from her had suppressed his sea of consciousness, nullifying all his secret arts.
The entire chain of events was crystal clear, yet even now, Hule Gaon could not fathom how he had taken such an enormous detour—borrowing passage through the Shamans' lands only to end up right back in Wei Yuan's hands.
Wei Yuan had a general idea of why, but he kept it to himself.
Recalling the bait he had cast back when he practiced karmic destiny angling, Wei Yuan figured that if Hule Gaon failed to return, he would only suffer a minor loss. But if the man truly managed to come back alive with the Golden Hammer Tribe's secret heritage techniques, that would be a tremendous windfall.
Realm Pillars were the boundary stones of the Mountain Folk. In the future, Qingming could draw upon the design of Realm Pillars and begin forging its own boundary stones.
This was the true prize—a truly massive catch.
It was just that Wei Yuan had never expected that after throwing in such heavy bait during his karmic destiny angling, it would take this long to finally see the results.
Chapter 961