Chapter 1027: Severing Time to Forge Treasure

Extracting an object from the trunk of the bronze divine tree, Qian Chen reached back and donned the bronze mask.

The mask, carved with a *taotie* pattern, covered his entire face...

Inlaid within the eye sockets were thin, polished slices of jade, and the vortex patterns etched by water-jet were mysterious and profound.

Qian Chen stood before the bronze divine tree and suddenly turned his head. Nine strings of tooth carvings hanging from the edges of the mask swirled, each crown engraved with strange beasts and demon gods.

The bronze, mottled with green rust from a millennium of blood-soaking, saw the thunder patterns on the sides of the nose flare and dim with his breathing, as if it were a living creature exhaling clouds.

Qian Chen unfastened the tooth crowns from the mask and tied them to his hands and feet—around his ankles and wrists. As he moved his limbs, the bone carvings struck one another, emitting a *da-da* sound like wind chimes. As Qian Chen stomped his bare feet, mysterious tattoos emerged from his skin, undulating with the flexing of his muscles, as if an ancient beast were awakening.

The withered body of yellow clay, having exhausted its divine radiance and spiritual energy, danced wildly amidst a mysterious atmosphere!

A monk's robe, thick with filth, suddenly lifted, revealing the tattoos gradually crawling across his torso...

The crowd of Liuzhen bumpkins watched, dumbstruck. Tan Wuchen, in particular, suddenly lost his Buddhist ability for debate, his tongue, which could bloom with lotuses, suddenly becoming wooden.

Cao Xuanwei was, after all, of imperial descent.

In the rituals inherited from the Immortal Han, the great Confucian scholars had preserved many sacrificial rites from the Heavenly Zhou and Heavenly Shang.

He was no stranger to shamanic dances, but seeing Qian Chen's agile yet eerie wild dance, even he, with all his extensive knowledge, couldn't help but sigh—the Master was indeed multi-talented!

His arms stretched out like a phoenix in flight, his torso twisted like a dragon or snake emerging from hibernation, as if the sun and moon were revolving with his movements.

Qian Chen curled the knuckles of his left hand into the shape of a bird's beak, carving a series of hexagrams into the air; his right palm held a jade *cong*, which nested together with the bronze divine tree through the *cong*'s aperture.

The bronze divine tree suddenly began to tremble. The bronze leaves covering the sky fell one after another, and the massive bronze trunk slid about like a giant dragon or python.

It coiled, turned, and circled them, setting the entire world into rotation.

Like a giant snake circling the world, biting its own tail as it spun and spun, until the entire world dissolved into chaos...

The giant snake formed by the ancient bronze tree grew smaller and smaller, finally condensing into a seed that fell into the chaos. Instantly, heaven and earth were cleaved, yin and yang were separated, and in an instant, time accelerated to a point where the others' spiritual senses could not perceive it.

Finally, the rapidly changing time around them stabilized.

Everyone appeared in a primitive tribe of about two thousand people. At the center of the tribe, a sapling of the bronze divine tree had just sprouted. Qian Chen stood with them before the seedling of the bronze divine tree. An old man, also dressed in shamanic robes and styled as a Great Shaman, hurried over with several tribal warriors, knelt before Qian Chen and the others, and said, "Respectfully welcome the descent of the Divine Envoy!"

"Isn't this the treasury of the Western Wang Mu's kingdom?"

He Basheng looked at everything that had suddenly appeared around them; even as a practitioner, he found it hard to accept.

"What did you think the Western Wang Mu's treasury was?" Qian Chen pointed the shamanic script he had carved in his hand at the Great Shaman's brow and answered casually, "This is the treasure hidden by the Western Wang Mu's kingdom, and it is the most precious, most valuable, yet most difficult-to-measure treasure in the world!"

He waved his sleeve, and the countless bronze leaves flew up from the ground, then, like swallows returning to their nest, fell into everyone's arms.

"There are a total of eighteen thousand leaves here, and each one represents sixty years of time!"

"Time?" Cao Xuanwei suddenly raised his head, hot divine radiance erupting in his eyes.

"That's right! The so-called treasure of the Western Wang Mu's kingdom is a segment of 'time' sealed by the Kunlun Mirror in the past. They melted the time of a piece of heaven and earth and the tribes living within it into an ancient bronze tree, invested excellent human seeds into it, and chose the superior bloodline seeds of the kingdom to seal within the bronze divine tree. People, time, and heaven and earth—these constituted 'wealth' in the eyes of the people of the Western Wang Mu's kingdom!"

"If you want spiritual medicine, you hand the seeds to them, then crush the bronze tree leaf in your hand to travel sixty years into the future to harvest those various spiritual medicines."

"If you want magic treasures, you hand the seals and materials to them, then arrive sixty years later to harvest everything."

"The treasure hidden by the people of the Western Wang Mu's kingdom is human labor, plus time!"

"Casting a segment of time as treasure!" The Liuzhen military leaders present, having heard only a glimpse of the truth, extinguished all the arrogance in their hearts: "Eighteen thousand bronze leaves, each sixty years—that is one million and eighty thousand years of time!"

"This vast change of the world, this shifting of stars, this long time of countless imperial dynasty changes—is it merely one treasury hidden by the Western Wang Mu's kingdom?"

He Basheng was completely shocked.

"The ancient Western Wang Mu's kingdom was truly a kingdom near to immortals, to have such great power!"

"This must be the vision of immortals! Mortals like us might find it hard to imagine that military supplies and spiritual materials could manifest in this form." Cao Xuanwei also smiled bitterly: "By comparison, the Great Wei can only collect taxes and conscript labor. A method like this, turning a million years of time into a tree to be plucked at will and create immeasurable wealth—if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have been able to imagine it!"

"This time, the taxes have really been collected a million years into the future!"

Li Zhong opened his mouth, somewhat out of control, and said: "What exactly did they treat people as? And what did they treat time as?"

"It's not that exaggerated..."

Qian Chen waved his hand and said: "The bronze divine tree used a portion of the Immortal Divine Tree's Dao rhyme. It refined the souls of the Western Wang Mu's kingdom's shamanic people after their death into shamanic spirits, making them half-human, half-god, with long lifespans. There are two thousand shamanic spirits here, the lowest of which has the cultivation of the lower three ranks of Core Formation, plus twenty shamanic spirits at the Yin Spirit level, and one who was a Nascent Soul in life but fell to a Great Shaman of the Yang Spirit level after becoming a spirit. A total of two thousand shamanic spirits bear that one million and eighty thousand years of time together; each person only has five hundred and forty years of labor!"

"Besides sealing time, the bronze divine tree also has the function of restraining the shamanic spirits, making them obey your arrangements."

"But..." Cao Xuanwei frowned slightly, looking at those shamanic people; he couldn't feel that they were some kind of gods.

"That's right!" Qian Chen stood with his hands behind his back and said indifferently: "The original shamanic sacrifice was only to open the bronze divine tree and unfold that segment of severed time..."

"But I made a small change!"

"Originally, you could use the bronze tree leaves in your hands to order those shamanic spirits to labor according to your commands, to plow fields and plant medicine for you, to refine pills and make medicine, to forge magic treasures. But my previous shamanic dance, carving hexagrams and evolving the *Yi*, unlocked the bronze divine tree's restraint on the shamanic spirits."

"And..."

Qian Chen tossed the jade *cong* in his hand: "Sacrificing to the earth with a *cong*! This Earth-Yellow Jade *Cong* was buried in *xirang* for ten thousand years and offered before the Goddess Wa, already becoming a treasure of creation. I used this treasure to sacrifice to the bronze divine tree, shaping physical bodies for these two thousand shamanic spirits, allowing them to return to being living beings."

"Therefore, although the bronze tree leaves can still shift sixty years of time, whether they are willing to labor for you is something you will have to ask them yourselves!"

The Great Shaman respectfully kowtowed to Qian Chen and said: "The Venerable God unlocked our chains and reshaped our true bodies; this is a great kindness and virtue of rebirth! We are naturally willing to serve the Venerable God!"

"No, no, no..."

Qian Chen shook his head: "I am the one who shaped your bodies and unlocked your restraints, but I have no demands of you. They are the ones who want to ask you to do things; do not transfer my kindness to them."

Wuchuan Town General Lu Yan frowned slightly, cupped his hands, and asked: "What does the Master mean?"

"My Buddha is compassionate and saves all living beings."

Qian Chen finally remembered that he was still a monk who had taken vows, chanted a promise, and said: "This poor monk is a decent person! It means—you have to pay!"

When Cao Xuanwei heard this, his brows relaxed!

He nodded immediately and said: "That is only natural!"

He looked at Qian Chen, his expression even more admiring, and said to the Liuzhen generals behind him: "Well, can't you even afford this little bit of money?"

The Liuzhen military leaders looked at each other.

Soldiers had spent their whole lives eating, drinking, and playing; when had they ever paid money?

Cao Xuanwei looked around; this world where time was imprisoned was about a hundred *li* in circumference, enough to open ten thousand *mu* of spiritual fields, with several small rivers flowing through it, and the light of the sun, moon, and stars, and the spiritual energy of heaven and earth were all complete, as if a piece had been carved out of a great world.

The methods of the Western Wang Mu's kingdom were truly astonishing; they were like circling off a piece of land in the Kunlun Great World, then severing about a thousand years of time, plus two thousand shamanic spirits, to refine this bronze divine tree.

The original usage of the bronze divine tree should have been to divide this place into two thousand regions, placing one shamanic spirit in each region, with each shamanic spirit severing five hundred and forty years of time.

Then, a total of one million and eighty thousand years, divided into eighteen thousand bronze leaves, each severing sixty years of time.

After opening the bronze tree, each leaf could order one shamanic spirit to labor for sixty years.

And these shamanic spirits, through a certain shamanic method—the Immortal Divine Tree Method—merged into one, allowing them to possess Core Formation magic power most of the time, elevating to Yin Spirit when necessary, and at their peak, they could use the magic power of a Yang Spirit to balance efficiency, creating a shamanic spirit equivalent to a Yang Spirit for labor.

But Qian Chen had crumbled and spread everything out!

Cao Xuanwei sighed, turned his head, cupped his hands respectfully, and asked Qian Chen: "May I ask, Senior, since they have become human, can they cultivate?"

The Great Shaman looked at Qian Chen with infinite reverence, and seeing him nod, he spoke: "The Venerable God shaped and refined us, preserving our magic power, and at the same time, we can continue to cultivate. Moreover, the Venerable God taught us many shamanic methods and supernatural powers; this is truly a kindness of rebirth!"

Cao Xuanwei saw that those military practitioners had reacted a little, and continued to ask: "Then can you unite yin and yang and multiply?"

The Great Shaman was somewhat troubled: "This... among us shamanic people, there are only ten or so women; we were just about to ask the Venerable God for mercy..."

Tan Wuchen gasped, bowed to Qian Chen, and said: "Senior Brother, please allow me to pass down the *Great Nirvana Sutra* to continue the Dao lineage."

Lu Yan also came to his senses and said to the Great Shaman: "I will send each of you a woman, as long as you work for my Liuzhen for ten years!"

Qian Chen frowned slightly: "It must be voluntary!"

Lu Yan said: "It must be voluntary. The Liuzhen have plundered many *Hu Ren*; it is hard to be a slave or a maid. Letting them come here to live—how could they not be willing?"

The shamanic people became restless, whispering to each other. After a while, someone spoke up: "We shamanic spirits have become human; it is impossible for us not to sleep or rest. We can work at most six hours a day!"

Lu Yan did not hesitate: "That is acceptable!"

The shamanic person hesitated for a moment and said coyly: "Ten years for one woman is not bad, but why limit it to one per person? We have a total of sixty years to sell!"

Lu Yan opened his mouth and hesitated: "Then how many do you want?"

The shamanic person turned his head and whispered to the others again. After a while, the same shamanic person stood out and said loudly: "Six per person!"

"Six?"

Qian Chen opened his mouth; this Western Wang Mu's kingdom matrilineal clan tribe shamanic person was damnably un-simple!

It looked like they were going to sell their first sixty years entirely in exchange for women!

Having been imprisoned as shamanic spirits for so many years, were they really that thirsty?

But the shamanic people also had a good plan: they could give birth, and the more they gave birth, wouldn't they be able to divide more work?

After selling themselves, they could still sell their children and grandchildren!

"Six is acceptable!"

He Ba Du also reacted and asked: "Senior! If we pass down cultivation methods, I wonder how much labor money that can offset?"

The shamanic people looked at each other and laughed loudly: "We don't covet your cultivation methods. Do you know how profound the spells and supernatural powers the Venerable God taught us are? In the past, our souls were extracted and refined into spirits, and our souls were already incomplete. After being shaped and refined by the Venerable God, our souls and flesh are united, which is very different from ordinary human races! You should keep your cultivation methods for yourselves!"

Cao Xuanwei suddenly spoke: "I will pass you spells, not requiring you to labor to offset the debt, but instead, I will give you money."

Immediately, he cast various hexagrams from the *Cantong Qi*, which intersected and transformed into seeds of supernatural powers.

"You can take them and cultivate them. In the future, when you have nurtured the supernatural powers, spend some effort to condense the seeds and pass them back to me!"

At this moment, everyone understood.

The treasure of the Western Wang Mu's kingdom, after Qian Chen's shaping and refining, was more than just earth-shattering?

From the original ignorant, mechanically laboring shamanic spirits, and wealth calculated by labor time, it had become a small world with accelerated time, with infinite possibilities!

"Several great *fangshi* of the Immortal Qin joined forces in the past to build a similar treasury, which was to open a small world with a *Luotian* immortal treasure and use countless puppets built by the Mohist *Yan Shi* to operate within it."

"Then several great *fangshi* used their own Dao fruits to limitedly distort time, finally creating a workshop that could refine countless magic treasures, puppets, and mechanisms in an instant, named a Workshop!"

"In the past, they attacked the Western Wang Mu's kingdom, mostly to seize the Kunlun Mirror, so they could create an Immortal Qin Workshop that could shift time at will."

Qian Chen sighed: "The Western Wang Mu's kingdom used people to refine shamanic spirits, thinking it was wealth, and finally met retribution, being broken by the Immortal Qin."

Tan Wuchen also sighed: "Every drink and every peck is predestined!"

The Liuzhen military leaders, holding the bronze leaves that could shift time, immediately had someone take off their battle armor, empty their *qiankun* bags, and hand over many precious materials to the shamanic people, then crush the bronze leaves.

In the next instant, he appeared in the pagoda, wearing a set of extremely fine purple copper chainmail.

In his *qiankun* bag, there were not only hundreds of *shi* of spiritual medicine, but also dozens of forged magic treasures!

The military leader looked back suddenly, only to see an unimaginable bronze divine tree standing in the pagoda.

This giant tree cast of bronze was like a living thing.

Its body swayed, its leaves shook, just like it was breathing!

At this moment, the bronze tree suddenly split open. Lu Yan and the others stepped out with solemn expressions. Seeing the military leader, they scolded: "What are you in such a hurry for?"

"This Western Wang Mu's treasury, with a million years of time, was lent to my Liuzhen military family by the Senior! It is not your private property. Are you satisfied with just forging these magic treasures and harvesting this little bit of spiritual medicine?"

Cao Xuanwei also said: "Nine bronze leaves make a set. Each person's first use is the first sixty years of the time severed by the bronze tree. The second use will retreat another sixty years. And so on, until the ninth leaf, a total of five hundred and forty years!"

"The seals of this Western Wang Mu's kingdom treasury were dismantled by the Senior, and the two thousand shamanic spirits were reshaped into human form, not for us to use so crudely."

"The first three bronze leaves should focus on passing down the various secret methods of the four arts of cultivation to the shamanic people, and some of the management secret techniques we have inherited, and even dual cultivation secret methods, and secret methods for giving birth to boys."

"We need to build various workshops for smelting, planting, weaving, and alchemy, configure cauldrons, open spiritual fields, and send in more women. To build a prosperous shamanic kingdom! Only by bestowing such grace upon those shamanic people can we teach them to manage resources for us."

"The middle three bronze leaves are for sending in a large amount of resources to build war materials!"

"If the early stage is managed well, the materials produced by this one treasury of the Western Wang Mu's kingdom will probably be enough for us to fight this battle!"

"The last three bronze leaves are for sharing with the shamanic people! The resources that can grow naturally from the investment of the first three bronze leaves can be shared fifty-fifty with the shamanic people at this time."

"And the evolution of various secret methods, and even the fruits of the shamanic people cultivating our supernatural powers and spells, are also no small harvest."

"And these are by no means things that one person can complete, so the eighteen thousand bronze leaves need to be used by everyone in a coordinated manner..."

Town General Lu Yan nodded and said: "The Crown Prince is absolutely right. The secret treasury of the Western Wang Mu's kingdom is beyond our imagination. The spiritual grain, spiritual medicine seeds, and management secret methods of the Liuzhen, and the array flags and weapons that need long-term sacrifice and refining, all need to be collected and invested in it together!"

"Don't be in a hurry!" Cao Xuanwei said: "Just one treasury of the Western Wang Mu's kingdom is so beyond our expectations."

"Condensing a million years of time into a tree, refining practitioners into shamanic slaves, their cultivation becoming tools, multiplied by time, is wealth, is treasure!"

"What kind of wealth are the remaining five treasuries?"

"It truly makes me curious."

"Open the remaining secret treasuries first. If there are still surprises, investing them into the Western Wang Mu's kingdom secret treasury, I don't know what kind of astonishing output it can produce!"

Lu Yan also came to his senses and nodded: "Exactly, exactly!"

"There are still five secret treasuries unopened. The 'time' hidden by the Western Wang Mu's kingdom can be pushed at any time, but we must first see what is behind."

Li Zhong also suppressed the shock in his heart and followed Qian Chen out of the bronze divine tree.

He couldn't help but look back at the divine tree that seemed illusory and condensed from time, and said solemnly: "The Western Wang Mu's kingdom secret treasury... is truly terrifying!"

Li Zhong couldn't have imagined even in death that this Western Wang Mu's kingdom secret treasury would be such an existence.

By comparison, the Western Liang kingdom treasury left by the Li ancestors was somewhat...

Li Zhong thought for a moment: if the secret treasury left by his ancestors were like the Western Wang Mu's kingdom, that would be too easy to use!

Not to mention the production of spiritual medicine without cost, even refining magic treasures and helping to cultivate spells—what treasure in the world could be more useful than slaves?

Great families treat people as slaves, isn't it because they are too useful?

Slave cultivation plus time is simply the perfect combination of wealth, law, land, and companions—all external things for cultivation!

If the Li family possessed this million years of time, they would probably no longer be a mere Longxi family; at the very least, they could restore the Western Liang kingdom, and even overthrow the Northern Wei to create their own Li family imperial dynasty, which would not be impossible.

And through the changes pushed by Qian Chen, although the Western Wang Mu's kingdom treasure had lost some convenience, its potential was even more terrifying.

Even Cao Xuanwei had not expected the harvest to be so great.

Now, the old eunuch following behind him seemed to be trying his best to contact Chang'an.

If the Cao family knew of the existence of this secret treasury, they would probably rather let Murong Chui break through the Northern Frontier than let this secret treasury be taken away.

Five hundred and forty years of time, a place a hundred *li* in circumference, plus the foundation of a kingdom, could at the very least instantly create the wealth accumulated by the Northern Wei kingdom in nearly a hundred years!

But Qian Chen only had one understated evaluation of this: "Monkey-version Kunlun Mirror!"

If the Kunlun Mirror wanted to, one jump in time could create hundreds of such bronze trees.

It was a terrifying spiritual treasure that could truly open a world by itself, and then refine all the time of a world, allowing people to manipulate, harvest, and shift it at will.

By comparison, the Dao Dust Bead selling itself for only thirty million moral points was really not an empty estimate.

"The current Western Wang Mu's treasury is the kind of treasure where the more you invest, the more terrifying the output..." Qian Chen mentioned casually: "The only limitation is that the heaven and earth of a hundred *li* in circumference is still too narrow. In less than two sixty-year cycles, I'm afraid it will limit the shamanic people's reproduction!"

Li Zhong sighed: "If a cave-heaven treasure like Longcheng were invested in it..."

Thinking of this, he couldn't help but shiver: "If those military family killers thought of this point, I'm afraid they would all risk their lives to seize Murong Chui's Longcheng!"

"The Liuzhen military leaders might not think of it, but Cao Xuanwei certainly can." Qian Chen smiled: "It's just that he can also restrain his own desires, knowing that Murong Chui is not someone who can be easily plotted against."

Li Zhong looked back at the bronze divine tree, still showing shock, leaned into Qian Chen's ear, and asked in a low voice: "Brother! Are the treasuries behind all this terrifying?"

"If they are all like this!"

"I'm afraid the Liuzhen, Chang'an, the Buddhist sect, and even the Northern Frontier Demon Department, Murong Demon Army, and Rouran Hu Department will no longer plot to break through the Central Plains, but will plot to seize these six great treasuries instead!"

Qian Chen was slightly troubled: "After all, the Western Wang Mu's kingdom once had the Kunlun Mirror. There shouldn't be any others as heaven-defying as them."

Li Zhong had just breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Qian Chen change the subject: "However... existences like the Immortal Qin and the Lord of Samsara, how are they inferior to the Western Wang Mu's kingdom?"

"Their treasuries... are not that simple either!"

Li Zhong watched his eldest brother's hand behind his back wave, and his heart sank. Like this, there were still three more times?

Not to mention whether the bumpkins of the Liuzhen could withstand such an impact.

Even if they could, he was afraid that some people would go crazy after seeing such heaven-startling wealth!

"Fortunately, the Supreme Louguan and the Fallen Demon Lord and my Li family's Western Liang treasury shouldn't be this heaven-defying."

Li Zhong patted his chest, only to see Qian Chen's footsteps pause, and a death stare look back.

He thought that his Dao Dust Bead was indeed poor compared to those spiritual treasures of the Lord of Samsara.

But it wasn't your kid's turn to look down on it!

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 1028 =====