Longzang

Chapter 1200 The Primordial Secrets
The city below the mountain finally fell silent; even the most vibrant fireworks eventually come to an end. The two people on the mountainside suddenly felt a profound sense of desolation after the hustle and bustle had faded. One couldn't get drunk, the other couldn't hold his liquor; each had their own worries.

As the city grew quiet and the lights became sparse, Xu Wenwu finally swayed as he stood up and said, "I have to... go! I had a very... enjoyable chat with you tonight..."

Wei Yuan looked helpless. The two remained silent for the rest of the night, each lost in their own thoughts, barely exchanging a few words. How could they call that a good chat?

Xu Wenwu waved to Wei Yuan and flew up. With a loud bang, he crashed into the invisible barrier and bounced back to the ground!
Wei Yuan couldn't bear to look. His courtyard had a Royal View level defensive formation, and everyone except him had to go through the courtyard gate to enter or leave—that was common sense. Fortunately, Xu Wenwu hadn't drunk too much. After bumping into the south wall, he finally remembered to use the gate, so he walked out of the courtyard, waving goodbye to Wei Yuan before leaving.

He had just stepped out when he vanished. Then, a loud crash echoed from the distant mountainside, leaving a large crater. A figure then soared into the sky, tracing a strange arc in the air before accelerating towards the ground with another boom, sending up clouds of dust, as if a heavy cannon had landed.

Wei Yuan shook his head helplessly. In any case, the physical bodies of Dharma Aspect cultivators were strong, and such ordinary collisions could not damage their bodies, so he ignored it.

Then came a series of booming sounds as it drove away into the distance.

After seeing Xu Wenwu off, Wei Yuan sat alone in the courtyard and began to review official documents. However, he couldn't settle down and kept thinking about that completely destroyed world.

Thinking of what that world looks like now, Wei Yuan felt a faint sense of melancholy. Tonight was a bit special, so he indulged himself and let this wisp of sorrow flow slowly.

According to the woman in black who was actually a three-headed bird, that place was Wei Yuan's father. At that moment, he felt as if he were standing on his father's withered bones, completely lost.

Deep down, Wei Yuan still considered Wei Youcai his father. But after arriving in that realm, he realized that what the woman in black said was true; it was the truth without any explanation.

Faced with such a world, is all I can do, like Xu Wenwu, drink a few cups of wine on important days and drown my sorrows alone?
However, Wei Yuan was never like that. He let his melancholy run rampant for a while, then composed himself and found a batch of research reports from the various worlds' prosperity, and began to read them carefully.

These reports were all from a small stone he brought back from the place where he was born. The stone was very strange, composed of hundreds of fragments that never touched each other, but also never strayed too far apart, always maintaining this magical state.

Unable to figure it out himself, Wei Yuan placed the stone with the Academy of Sciences for study by numerous cultivators. For a while afterward, he put the matter aside, but today he discovered that the project had already produced several thousand articles!

Articles that can be registered in the bustling world of all realms must at least be well-reasoned and supported by evidence, with all data having sources, all conclusions verified, and the entire body reviewed by researchers at a higher level. The fact that thousands of articles could be produced under such a rigorous process deeply impressed Wei Yuan; he truly wondered how these articles were written.

This matter was of great importance, so Wei Yuan devoted himself to reading, and before he knew it, a night had passed, and he had already read ninety percent of it. The vast majority of articles only verified a very small topic, sometimes even one that seemed somewhat ridiculous. However, many of the verified topics became the basis for arguments in new articles, which were then expanded and verified by later researchers.

Wei Yuan seemed to see thousands of research cultivators starting with a stone, studying it bit by bit, and gradually expanding the known field, without any leaps, only extending it step by step.

However, with thousands of articles added together, the field has become extremely broad. The cultivators have even invented several theoretical formulas to describe the mutually binding yet absolutely repelling forces between the fragments.

This line of thinking greatly shocked Wei Yuan. After looking at it carefully again, he realized that he really couldn't understand it.

It's okay if you don't understand the process, as long as you can understand the conclusion. The final conclusion of many articles actually verifies Wei Yuan's conjecture: the basic structure of that world is the ashes of calamity.

Calamity ashes are not uncommon in the cultivation world. For example, if Wei Yuan fails to survive a heavenly tribulation, he will turn into two things: a mangled body and calamity ashes.

If there are many impurities in the body, a few shiny stones or something can still be left.

There's not much to study about the ashes of calamity. Their nature is simply to return to nothingness. They are completely destroyed at the tiny mustard seed level, devoid of any vitality or activity. They are just a handful of ashes, which cannot even be refined with immortal power.

The fact that it could turn the entire world into ashes shows just how terrifying the cataclysmic disaster must have been! Wei Yuan was even reluctant to think about it too deeply, lest his Dao heart waver.

but!

Wei Yuan's spirits lifted, and he presented several articles. These articles mentioned that if the strange power of the stone Wei Yuan brought back were removed, its properties would be slightly different from pure calamity ash.

Of course, to verify this difference, the author specifically encouraged a Dharma Avatar to undergo a Heavenly Tribulation. The Dharma Avatar was left half-crippled, but he still managed to obtain fresh ashes from the tribulation...

Based on this extremely rigorous research spirit, this article concludes that even ashes from a catastrophe can be changed!
At the very end of the article, he wrote the following: "The immortals of the past have said that the ashes after a calamity are the end of existence and will inevitably return to nothingness. Even the immortals cannot change this..."

Wei Yuan had seen this statement before; it came from a book by the third-generation Palace Master, Immortal Venerable Su Chan. Similar statements exist in various schools and sects, dating back to 100,000 years ago. However, the version from the Taichu Palace was compiled and re-edited by Immortal Venerable Su Chan. When Immortal Venerable Su Chan became the Palace Master of the Taichu Palace with undisputed authority, he was immediately shocked when he entered the Zhongxuan Hall, where the palace's scriptures were stored, for the first time.

At that time, the Supreme Immortal Treasure Hall of Merit had not yet been completed. The so-called Hall of Mysteries was a floating peak in the sky, which contained the Daoist treatises written by previous palace masters, as well as the Daoist writings of various Imperial Realm cultivators.

At that time, Su Chan's title was still Demon Lord; the title of Immortal Lord came a year later, and he forced all the Daoists in the world to change it. What shocked Su Chan at that time was how rare and rudimentary the Tai Chu Palace's collection was!
The patriarch left behind very few Taoist writings, and they were scattered here and there. Many were only half-written, and then a sentence was added: "I suddenly had a new idea. This book on Taoist arts should be very clear by now. Later generations can understand it on their own..."

Countless paths to heaven and divine skills to immortality were ultimately only half-finished when the patriarch suddenly shifted his interest...

This is still considered good. In some Taoist texts, the patriarchs wrote: "Upon reaching this point in cultivation, one or two heavenly tribulations should be overcome by going outside, thus avoiding damage to the cave dwelling..."

Then, the Demon Lord Su Chan calculated that the intensity of this heavenly tribulation would probably kill an ordinary immortal half to death. Even he himself would have to make some preparations in advance, otherwise he would easily end up covered in dust. The problem was that, according to the patriarch, what he had written were several Daoist manuals on the Imperial Realm.

Su Chan had studied all of the patriarch's manuscripts and then compared them with various historical materials he could find, and he roughly understood how the patriarch cultivated himself.

The patriarch felt that he was weak in some aspect;
The patriarch sensed something and felt that a certain method might be feasible;

The patriarch went into seclusion.

The patriarch survived a tribulation;

This method is indeed feasible...

The patriarch mastered the secret technique, went out and did something big, and then felt that he was weak.

...and so on.

Until one day, the patriarch suddenly discovered the earth-shattering scheme laid out by the ancestral witch, at which time the human race was facing a life-or-death crisis! The patriarch had no time to think, and hurriedly created several immortal techniques and several sword techniques, and went west alone, did a big thing in the City of Heaven, and also stabbed the ancestral witch in the process.

Upon returning to the Taichu Palace, the Patriarch selected three disciples from among his nominal followers to inherit his mantle. However, in the Patriarch's own words, the three were incredibly stupid and could not be taught at all.

After the patriarch passed away, his three incredibly stupid disciples successively crossed the celestial gate, then joined hands to leave the mountain and conquer Yunzhou.

The Demon Lord Su Chan reorganized these primordial events, but did not store them in his archives. Instead, he kept them in his divine sense and eventually passed them on to Wei Yuan.

Afterwards, the Demon Lord Su Chan felt that he might perish at any moment if he went out of the palace and wreaked havoc everywhere. At that time, the Tai Chu Palace was in a period of transition and he deeply sympathized with the plight of the second generation of three immortals. So he devoted himself to organizing the classics and Taoist canons left by his predecessors and rewriting them to make the Great Dao clear and to leave behind as much insight and true meaning as possible.

Therefore, Su Chan Demon Lord has made great contributions to the lineage of Tai Chu Palace. As for the Calamity Ashes, he wrote about them in a book called "Comprehensive Survey of Immortal Materials," which teaches Tai Chu Palace disciples to identify common spiritual objects. It was originally brought by Yu Zhizhuo to Qingming.

Now, the author of this article in Wei Yuan's hands has this conclusion about the Toad Demon Lord: "If you can't do it yourself, you think others can't either. Where does your confidence come from?" Although I'm just copying this, I don't agree!

Upon seeing this, Wei Yuan had a bad feeling. He then checked the author's information and, sure enough, it was three big characters: Wen Guantian!
Feeling incredulous, Wei Yuan suddenly realized that the previous generations of palace masters had all paved the way for future generations with the demeanor of immortals. From the first patriarch to the second generation of three immortals, apart from their worldviews and the path of cultivation, most of their other writings were unsystematic and not rigorous enough, with each person having their own interpretation.

For example, in order to make it easier to see the fortune, the patriarch directly marked his favorite color on a specific fortune, and the disciples of the Taichu Palace in later generations all saw the same color as him.

It was with Su Chan that the Tai Chu Palace began to establish a complete cultivation system, clearly defining its Three Views and Seven Halls. Later, the fourth Palace Master, Xi He, with her unparalleled swordsmanship, seized many rare immortal materials, refining them into the rough form of the Hall of Merit. The fifth Immortal Master, Qing Kong, later completed the refinement based on this, thus ensuring the Tai Chu Palace's orderly succession, effective rewards and punishments, and gradual prosperity.

At that time, the writings of immortals held supreme authority. The worlds seen by immortals and mortals were different, and those whose cultivation level was not high enough could not question the right or wrong of immortals.

Wei Yuan never expected that among the template Dao Foundations he had personally developed and nurtured, there would already be a great talent capable of pointing out the mistakes of immortals!
He looked at the remaining articles and discovered that Wen Guantian was not the only talented person.

Wei Yuan thought for a moment, then suddenly smiled, feeling that this wasn't bad at all. Perhaps, this was the foundation for prosperity.

(End of this chapter)