Longzang

Chapter 608 Unstoppable
The cultivators who had visited Xu Lanshan's Imperial Ceremony did not immediately return to their hometown, but instead turned around and came to Qingming.

Qingming is less than 20,000 li from the Xu family's ancestral land, and it would only take cultivators half a month to arrive. After admiring the Golden Palace Jade Tower Immortal Heaven Primordial Tribulation, Wei Yuan felt particularly clear-headed and returned to Qingming, intending to use this opportunity to gain some enlightenment.

He had only been back for two days when he heard that a large number of cultivators had poured in. It took him a while to figure out where these cultivators came from.

By this time, nearly three months had passed since Hanyang Pass opened. Wei Yuan's own caravan had brought back 100,000 refugees, and another 100,000 or so had arrived spontaneously. In addition, various large and small forces had openly and secretly sold over 200,000 refugees over.

Clearly, many refugees were abducted along the way and then sent to Qingming to be exchanged for money. Wei Yuan was well aware of this, but turned a blind eye. Cui Yu had wanted to lead troops out to crack down on the arrest and trafficking of refugees, but Wei Yuan stopped him.

For refugees to make it to Qingming alive is actually quite difficult.

Therefore, Wei Yuan needed to set up transit stations to transport them by caravans. These large and small factions, having captured refugees, had to ensure, in order to make money, that the refugees weren't seriously ill or missing limbs when they were sent to Qingming; they had to be whole people.

Therefore, the existence of these forces, large and small, actually allows more refugees to reach Qingming alive.

Transporting refugees was essentially a risk-free business, but the various factions undercut each other, eventually driving the price down to one or two taels of silver per refugee. At this price, everyone was barely making a profit, so it was a pleasant surprise.

After calculating the transportation costs and expenses along the way, Wei Yuan announced that all refugees would be purchased at two taels of silver each, with no further price reductions. This delighted various factions, and many even went to remote villages to arrest people, causing immediate suffering to ordinary people in the border regions of Jin.

However, they were barely surviving before, but after arriving in Qingming, at least they could have a full meal.

With the continuous influx of refugees from the states of Jin and Zhao, the population of Qingming has exceeded two million, and is now two million one hundred thousand.

Because of stable living conditions and abundant food, many commoners formed families, and approximately tens of thousands became pregnant. Meanwhile, in the new city, the Xu family's young women experienced another convergence of souls, ultimately resulting in a ratio of nearly three to one, giving birth to a total of five thousand children.

The people who were originally sacrificial offerings reproduced in accordance with the command, and gradually gave birth to four or five thousand offspring.

The number of newborns in the new city suddenly increased by tens of thousands, and their parents were not very suitable to be parents, at least not the young men and women of the Xu family. So Wei Yuan built a charitable hall in the new city to raise and care for all the children together.

When the ancestral hall was completed, Wei Yuan took a look and then discovered that the growth rate of the sacrificial children's descendants and the Xu family children was completely different. The sacrificial children were several months older, but they were not even as big as the Xu family babies who had grown for two months.

These newborn babies were quite robust, with slender figures, clearly showing good potential. After looking at them, Wei Yuan was about to leave when suddenly a large child rushed towards him, carrying a small child like a cat.

The two children, one big and one small, ran so fast it shook the heavens and the earth, like a little elephant galloping by.

"Stop!" Wei Yuan shouted, and the two unruly little ones obediently stopped. The older one was Xu Shiba, and the younger one was the reincarnation of their junior sister.

What are you doing here? Where is your father?

Xu Shiba snorted and said, "That guy is always idle and doesn't cultivate properly. He just spends his time tending to flowers and plants with the old man who hoes the fields. He looks like he's seventy or eighty years old. The yin energy in that herb garden is too heavy. I don't like it, and neither does Xiao Ying."

Wei Yuan looked at his junior sister's reincarnation, who could already stand on her own and run around on her little legs, and felt like he was seeing things. The last time he saw her was when she was just born. It hasn't been that long, and she can already run around everywhere; even bamboo shoots don't grow that fast.

"What did you say her name was?"

Xu Shiba said to the little girl, "You tell her yourself."

“Infant, Guardian Infant”.

Wei Yuan felt a headache coming on, realizing what Xu Wenwu had felt before: "Who told you your surname is Wei? You can also have the surname Dai, just change your name."

"My name is Wei Ying." The little girl was incredibly stubborn, and no matter how Wei Yuan tried to persuade her, it was no use. Wei Yuan couldn't argue with a baby who was only a few months old, so he had no choice but to give up.

Wei Yuan summoned a few cultivators who worked there and asked them what was going on. He learned that the two little ones were having a great time in the Yitang Hall. When they were hungry, they would go to the dining hall with the cultivators to eat. When they were tired, they would find a room to sleep in. This had been going on for some time now.

The cultivator in charge of the Righteous Hall came from the Xuanming Palace and was considered Sun Yu's senior brother. The two little ones often came to him to ask for tips on body training, and sometimes Feng Tingyu would come over and teach them for half a day.

Feng Tingyu? Wei Yuan suddenly realized that he hadn't heard from her in a long time; it was as if she had vanished from the world. Wei Yuan had been refining pills for almost three months, while Feng Tingyu had been missing for at least two months.

Normally, someone who has just broken through to the Dharma Aspect stage needs to go into seclusion and recuperate for a period of time. Wei Yuan himself was engrossed in alchemy and didn't pay attention to it, only now realizing that something was wrong.

Wei Yuan immediately went to Feng Tingyu's residence, only to find the courtyard gate tightly closed, with a sign at the entrance that read: "No unauthorized personnel allowed. Throw food directly into the yard, the more the better."

Wei Yuan called out twice but received no response. He then leaped into the courtyard, fully alert, and cautiously crept towards the main house.

The closer Wei Yuan got to the main house, the more he felt as if he were approaching a sleeping tiger. A chill ran down his spine, and the hairs on his body stood on end. He raised his guard to the highest level, restrained his aura to the extreme, and moved slowly.

Feng Tingyu is completely different from ordinary cultivators. He usually seems carefree and always a bit bewildered, but once a battle starts, he becomes a completely different person. He can naturally come up with the best response, defending against what the enemy must attack and attacking what the enemy must defend.

Back when she was just a lowly Dao Foundation cultivator, she dared to chase after a powerful shaman whose strength far surpassed hers, and that shaman could never do anything to her.

Now that Feng Tingyu has achieved the Dharma form, Wei Yuan feels he must also be careful.

The room was utterly silent; not a single sound could be heard. Given Wei Yuan's keen senses, it was impossible for him to be completely silent. Even without wind or insects crawling, the wooden pillars and bed, over time, would constantly emit subtle movements that a person might not hear, but Wei Yuan could. Yet now, not even the faintest sound could be heard; to Wei Yuan, the room was utterly dark and completely silent.

At the last moment, his instinct for danger led Wei Yuan to abandon his plan to sneak into the room and instead knock on the door.

Before his hand even touched the door, the wooden door suddenly melted like ice and snow.

It melted, and melted extremely quickly, so quickly that Wei Yuan didn't even have time to react. Then, a small, snow-white hand reached out from where it had melted, grabbed Wei Yuan's wrist, and swiftly pulled him into the room, as if Wei Yuan had never been there at all.

……

At first, Wei Yuan was not flustered by the sudden attack, but he panicked when he realized that Feng Tingyu had not opened her eyes.

Then, the surroundings suddenly changed, and Wei Yuan was plunged into absolute darkness. The light that came in from the window seemed to be sucked away by some unknown monster, and he could not hear a sound. Whatever he bumped into scattered like sand.

In absolute darkness and absolute silence, that small body, yet possessing incredible power, clung to him.

……

A moment, or perhaps a long time, in any case, a period of time has passed.

Time is a mysterious thing; it can transform the world into a vast expanse of land, and it can also turn a perfectly good house into ruins.

Wei Yuan sat leaning against a broken wall, gazing up at the azure night sky, pondering why he had been defeated by a bunch of muscles. If he couldn't figure this out, his ambition to be invincible would be thwarted.

Just then, a carefree sigh sounded from the side. Feng Tingyu stretched and finally woke up, only to find that his house was gone.

She turned her head blankly and saw Wei Yuan. Her face immediately lit up with joy, and she asked, "You demolished my house?"

"You're still so happy after they demolished her house?" Wei Yuan knew she wasn't fully awake yet, and said irritably, "Wake up before you talk to me."

"I've been awake for a while! Did I sleep? I haven't slept at all!" Feng Tingyu looked confused, but her eyes moved in different directions.

Its mouth was talking to itself, and its hands were adjusting its clothes. One hand wanted to take them off, and the other wanted to put them on. Then they had a small fight. The fierceness of their fight and the high level of their combat skills made Wei Yuan break out in a cold sweat.

Wei Yuan quietly moved a little further away, trying to soften his tone as much as possible, and asked, "Have you completed your Dharma form cultivation? What is it?"

"This is it..."

In an instant, everything went black before Wei Yuan's eyes. He could see and hear nothing. He instinctively sprang to his feet, but a small hand grabbed his foot and pulled him back to the ground.

In the darkness, Wei Yuan tried to call a halt, but couldn't utter a sound.

……

A moment later.

Wei Yuan gasped for breath, his chest burning as if on fire, every bone groaning. Even his magical body, crafted from twenty million taels of immortal silver, was proving unusable. Ultimately, in a fight in the dark, those who need to use their brains to think simply cannot defeat those whose hands and feet can think for themselves.

Now Wei Yuan finally understood that the darkness was Feng Tingyu's avatar. He had been fighting inside her avatar, so naturally he couldn't defeat her. Moreover, Wei Yuan was certain that Feng Tingyu hadn't woken up yet, because when she was engaged in close combat, she was extremely unsportsmanlike, and Wei Yuan was still gasping in shock.

Fortunately, Feng Tingyu stretched and opened her eyes again, her large eyes filled with confusion, before letting out a gentle sigh. Seeing that both her eyes were looking in the same direction, Wei Yuan cautiously asked, "Are you really awake this time?"

"Yes, I just fell asleep when something woke me up. But why am I getting more and more tired, and my body feels a bit strange..." Feng Tingyu said, while unbuttoning her clothes to check. As she looked, her expression changed, and she said to Wei Yuan, "What did you do to me?"

Wei Yuan looked up at the sky, not wanting to answer her question, and said irritably, "Before you came, didn't your palace master mention to you that there was anything wrong with the cultivation technique you were practicing?"

"Huh? I didn't say that. The Palace Master is very lazy and often secretly sleeps in, then lets his body handle things on its own. His body divides its duty hours, sometimes it's his face, sometimes his neck, sometimes his chest or buttocks."

"Your butt can think?" Wei Yuan was genuinely shocked.

"Of course! It has a lot of muscles in its butt, and it's very smart. Let me tell you, when the temple master is thinking with his lower body, he's not easy to fool!"

Wei Yuan tried hard to recall the Lord of the Ming King Palace. In his memory, he was a man of elegant demeanor, who did not appear particularly strong but was rather refined. He also spoke softly and gently, which left a very good impression on young Wei Yuan.

Wei Yuan remembered that True Monarch Xuan Yue had taken him to see the Lord of the Bright King Palace several times. Each time, the purpose of the meeting was to borrow money, and each time he successfully borrowed money. Now, thinking back on it, Wei Yuan had a vague feeling that something was wrong.

The state of the Mingwang Palace Master is probably no secret among the True Lords. It is unknown whether the Xuan Yue Ancestor has become close to a certain part of the body or discovered that a certain part of the body is particularly easy to deceive. Therefore, he specifically chooses to borrow money when that part of the body is on duty, which is why he is always successful.

(End of this chapter)