Longzang

Chapter 291 A common man is innocent
Thus, the secrets of the Xu family in the cave have been revealed, and Wei Yuan also learned some secrets from Xu Shiqi's perspective.

Back then, the grotto was shattered, and this place was deep underground, making it difficult to relocate. After the birth of that infant with the innate Thousand Autumns Sword Body, the value of this place dropped drastically. The tens of thousands of young men and women were nothing more than living dead, and the Great Treasure Bottle's Undying Pure Land Reincarnation Array was irreversible; reversing it would mean the souls would be scattered. Therefore, they could not be moved either.

A mere tens of thousands of people are easily discarded by the Xu family.

Afterwards, the girl's resentment inexplicably transformed into a monster, and Xu Shiqi's physical body certainly wasn't originally within the Star Array. Judging from the various arrangements left behind by the swordsman in plain clothes, he could at least recall some of his past events, and at the same time, he possessed independent consciousness, making it impossible for him to continue serving the Xu family.

The monster that the little girl had transformed into was together with Xu Shiqi's sword-wielding body. Even a True Monarch would have to retreat. Moreover, when the cave was shattered and the void was exposed, a True Monarch could attract those extremely powerful monsters from the depths of the void if he stayed here for too long. This place was not a place to linger.

All of these factors forced the Xu family to retreat hastily, leaving them no time to destroy the underground altar.

One of the little girl's obsessions before her death was the house she lived in with her mother, the mud house that Wei Yuan had inspected. The second was her final burial place. These vengeful spirits, born from such obsessions and resentment, could not stray too far from the place of their obsessions and thus could not leave their grotto.

However, perhaps she absorbed the power of the void, or for some other reason, her power was exceptionally strong; ordinary Dharma Aspects would hardly escape death when they encountered her. Afterwards, the Xu family sent people into the fragmented cave, perhaps to check the progress of the cave's destruction, but they were all killed by the girl.

The old man from the Xu family outside probably thought that there was a deadly trap in the fragment of the cave, which is why he tried to provoke Wei Yuan into coming in.

Although some details are still unclear, the basic facts are now largely clear.

The most precious fragment of the grotto-heaven is the Impure Earth White Lotus. Although it has only just begun to grow, it can already extend one's lifespan by a hundred years. However, extending lifespan is only a minor part of its function.

This thing cannot leave that pool of filthy spring water. If you want to take it out, you need to use a treasure of the celestial level to collect it. But the usual practice is to leave it in place and build a new sealed medicinal garden on the spot to accommodate its growth.

Generally speaking, if they know that there is a White Lotus of Impure Earth here, many sects and families will choose to rescue this fragment of the cave heaven. The common practice is to connect the mental world of a True Monarch with this fragment and rebuild the cave heaven.

However, there is an additional option at this moment: to transplant this white lotus into the vast land of Weiyuan, just like the laurel tree and the red lotus bodhi.

Wei Yuan needed to create a yin and desolate land within the vast landscape for the white lotus to continue growing. This was easy enough; the venom the girl spewed when she transformed into a monster was an extremely yin and desolate substance, and there were still several scorched areas in Wei Yuan's Dao Foundation. They could be moved to one place and put to good use.

Transplanting such a precious plant requires utmost care. Wei Yuan also stated that this white lotus is considered a shared resource, and its distribution would be discussed when they leave. Moreover, it has only bloomed once and is far from being fully grown; dividing it now would be a waste of its preciousness.

Wei Yuan only had a rudimentary understanding of pharmacology, so Sun Yu and Master Chuhe joined forces to give him a crash course in pharmacology and array formations, enabling Wei Yuan to set up arrays across the vast land and rivers to restrain the power of Yin Jue.

After being thoroughly lectured on the subject, Wei Yuan realized that lifespan extension also had many limitations; extending lifespan by a hundred years was merely its theoretical effect at this moment. For example, a cultivator whose original lifespan was a thousand years might have consumed various lifespan-burning elixirs to break through to a breakthrough, leaving them with only three hundred years of lifespan remaining. Therefore, consuming this medicine again would only extend their lifespan by thirty years, not one hundred.

After a flurry of activity, Wei Yuan finally managed to store the Impure Earth White Lotus into his Dao Foundation and settle it properly. The place where it was planted was several hundred miles away from Jade Mountain, and a complete magic array had been set up around it. The array was intricate and detailed, with flowing light, and its quality was extraordinary.

This was arguably Wei Yuan's most cherished immortal plant. When the laurel tree arrived, he'd just casually stuck it in the ground and would often pull it up to check if it had sprouted; the red lotus bodhi tree arrived with a slightly more elaborate ceremony, but not much, and nothing compared to this one. Wei Yuan was reflecting on whether he'd neglected his immortal plants before, and whether he should treat them better in the future.

At this moment, Sun Yu had already roughly scanned all the boys and girls with his divine sense and said, "A total of 47,000 people, ranging in age from twelve to fifteen. However, there will be plenty to teach them in the future."

Sun Yu asked several young men and women, who had lived together since childhood. In the first few years, they learned to read and cultivate, and after the initial physical training, they were sent underground. After that, they knew nothing.

They were naive and lacked any sense of shame, finding nudity perfectly normal and instead showing great curiosity about everyone else's clothing. Furthermore, they possessed an instinctive dependence on and obedience to Wei Yuan. In the years before losing their memories, they had long since learned absolute obedience; any companion who dared to resist was severely punished and beaten, and would even suddenly disappear.

They sensed a terrifying power emanating from Wei Yuan, making them completely unable to muster any will to resist.

Looking at the tens of thousands of young men and women, Wei Yuan felt a lot of pressure. He decided that after returning, he would exchange for a batch of books related to karma to understand what karma he had borne, what he could and could not do, and it would be best to cultivate one or two secret techniques of karma, just in case.

All the boys and girls were reincarnations of Wei Yuan, and Wei Yuan knew their souls very well. He immediately selected forty-seven people with obviously strong souls, each in charge of a hundred-person squad. Wei Yuan didn't have time to name them, so he simply named them with numbers, from Wei Yi to Wei Siqi.

After initially dividing into teams, their first task was to dismantle and dig, removing everything that could be dismantled from the plaza. The plaza floor was made of cyan jade ice stone, a mid-grade array material. Since there were many people, Wei Yuan had them pry up all the cyan jade ice bricks and transport them out piece by piece.

Fortunately, Wei Yuan brought a thousand cultivators and prepared a large number of tools. He originally came with the idea of ​​dismantling the cave again, and now that the magic array built by the Xu family at least a hundred years ago is intact, it comes in handy.

After leaving the fragment of the cave, Wei Yuan set up several more ambushes around the entrance. Sure enough, there were quite a few Xu family spies. He killed more than a dozen and captured five or six, and the valley was quiet.

The changes in the environment within the valley all stemmed from the leakage of energy from the cave. Now that the yin energy has been exhausted, it will slowly return to its original state.

The demolition of the cave was a huge undertaking, so Wei Yuan urgently mobilized 10,000 people to first widen the roads and then dig waterways to connect the various ponds and lakes so that flat-bottomed boats could travel.

These boats have a draft of only three feet and can carry a considerable amount. However, each jade ice brick weighs three to four hundred pounds, so a boat can only carry a few. It would probably take several months to transport them all back to the realm.

Nearly 50,000 young men and women worked tirelessly for seven or eight days to remove all the bricks from the square; transporting them out would still be a massive undertaking. After discussing it, Wei Yuan and Yu Zhizhuo decided to use several thousand civilians to replace the new students, while he himself led them back to the realm first. Yu Zhizhuo left a junior brother behind to oversee the work. Next, they needed to lay tracks and install mine carts in the inclined shaft, which couldn't be done without the supervision of a disciple from the Heavenly Crafts Hall.

Using mine carts to transport jade ice bricks will greatly increase efficiency, making it dozens of times more efficient than simply carrying them by hand.

So, on the ninth day after entering the fragment of the cave, Wei Yuanfang led tens of thousands of young men and women back to the realm.

It was the first time they had seen the world outside the cave, and they were curious about everything. However, obedience was still the top priority; no one spoke during the journey, and everyone walked quickly.

After walking for a while, Wei Yuan suddenly turned back and looked at the still gloomy valley.

There once lived a family there who could have lived a peaceful and happy life, but they were struck by misfortune and suffered a lifetime of misery.

If Xu Shiqi hadn't possessed innate wisdom and wasn't a reincarnation of someone, perhaps he wouldn't have experienced these things. As we often see in history books, "A common man is innocent, but possessing a treasure is a crime."

But thinking about this, Wei Yuan felt that the historians were talking nonsense. Why should the guilty party be the commoner who possessed the jade, or those who wanted to take it? It's just that those people had the right to write history, so they reversed right and wrong in their writing, always trying to make people think that it was the commoner's fault, whether openly or secretly.

Looking back at the long procession that had followed him all the way, Wei Yuan suddenly felt that only when ordinary people possessed treasures that they could openly display, trade, and exchange for what they needed, without having to worry about being bullied or robbed by powerful forces, could that be a truly prosperous and beautiful era!
In the valley, within the grotto-heaven, the little girl had been reburied. Xu Shiqi's physical body was destroyed, leaving only a few fragments of the giant sword and its hilt. The demon's corpse on the lotus pillar was also removed and melted into ashes by the True Man of the Hoeing Field with true fire, and buried together with Xu Shiqi's belongings and the girl's corpse.

When the demon's corpse was removed, its body, which had been indestructible through countless tribulations, suddenly melted upon contact with fire, and all its obsessions and resentment dissipated. At that moment, Wei Yuan felt a sense of relief in both his body and spirit, as some karmic ties were resolved.

The family was finally reunited. After some time, the fragments of the cave would collapse, and they would disappear forever.

Wei Yuan only wished that they would never be reincarnated again.

The newly born boys and girls all possessed fully developed muscular abilities, and they covered more than a hundred miles in just half a day before entering the realm.

Wei Yuan has already chosen a location near the north of the main peak to build a city specifically for them. Wei Yuan estimates that it will take at least one or two years for them to acquire enough knowledge to interact with outsiders, at which point they will gradually integrate into human life.

Over the course of several days, Wei Yuan was so busy that he felt like he had shed a layer of skin.

With tens of thousands of people eating, drinking, and using the toilet, even the smallest things become big issues when there are many of them. Wei Yuan was so busy that he didn't get any sleep. Although Dao Foundation cultivators no longer need sleep, they still need to meditate to replenish their energy, but Wei Yuan didn't even have time to meditate.

After all the busy work, Wei Yuan now sees at least one outer robe for every young man and woman walking through the new city, a canteen every so often, and at least two toilets in every block.

We should thank Xiaoyu for the toilet issue. In the city planning regulations he left behind, there was a special section on toilets, detailing where they should be built, how they should be built, and how many people should be accommodated in each one.

There were no houses built in the city yet; all the buildings were wooden sheds with shared sleeping areas inside. Some of the young men and women who were already resting were lying down in neat rows, and even in their sleep, they looked like they were in military formation.

At this moment, the evening glow hangs high in the sky, the afterglow of the setting sun painting the world red, and smoke rises everywhere in the city, simple yet full of life.

Tomorrow, this city will be better, and the Azure Netherworld will be better too.

Wei Yuan breathed a sigh of relief, his tense mind finally relaxing.

Just then, the Impure Earth White Lotus stirred, unfolding another petal, and a wisp of pure energy rose upwards.

Suddenly, the Azure Netherworld Realm trembled, thunder roared in the clear sky, and a fierce wind arose. All the spiritual energy of heaven and earth within hundreds of miles was revealed and converged towards the center of the realm. In the blink of an eye, a storm was formed in the sky above the Azure Netherworld Realm!
The vast land trembled, and centered on Jade Mountain, the ground surged and churned, revealing vast tracts of fertile soil that stretched outwards. The former wasteland had been transformed into a fertile field teeming with life. No spiritual plants were needed; the fertile field itself generated wisps of spiritual energy, and all spiritual plants grew to varying degrees.

On the summit of Jade Mountain, new buds sprouted branches and leaves, already beginning to resemble a small sapling. However, all the branches and leaves were the same, still a wondrous tree.

The laurel tree remained unmoved by the storm, but after only a moment, its bark cracked, forcing a new branch to sprout. A faint red sword aura flickered among the leaves.

The Red Lotus Bodhi, on the other hand, remains calm and steady, only replacing the fallen leaf and not taking any more.

As the vast land continuously absorbed the vital energy of heaven and earth, Wei Yuan's primordial spirit gradually became clear and complete. After experiencing so much, Wei Yuan finally achieved perfect foundation consolidation and became a mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator.

Inside Jade Mountain, above the Black Water Pool, the withered trees had grown back, and the gate had become even larger. Wei Yuan suddenly understood the meaning of the words on the gate:
Rebirth in all realms.

(End of this chapter)