Chapter 944: A Dream of Play

“Your Majesty! Come catch me, I’m right here!”

“Your Majesty, look this way! Do my legs please you? Catch me, and they’re yours.”

……

Wei Yuan shook his head forcefully, snapping out of the momentary daze. Yet he had clearly heard those sounds—utterly real—but he could not recall where he had heard them before.

Regaining his focus, Wei Yuan reconnected his spiritual sense to the human world’s smoke and fire, continuing his search for the heart demon.

The human world’s smoke and fire was astonishingly efficient; it had already selected sixty-seven thousand village heads to oversee nearly two million commoners, all directly linked to the Immortal Plants and able to report anomalies instantly.

In just one hour, over three thousand anomalies were detected. Investigations uncovered nine types of thirty-one imperial jade seals, sixteen bronze figures, over sixty stone steles, and more than six hundred anti-imperial poems—but from over two thousand authors. Many commoners couldn’t write poetry themselves, so they copied others’ works and changed one or two characters to claim them as their own.

Wei Yuan had no time to carefully verify each case, so he sent them all to the Yellow Springs Realm for reincarnation. Yet the heart demon was not among them.

For a moment, the rebels in the human world suffered unprecedented devastation, and the realm grew suddenly clear—but the heart demon remained utterly vanished. With no other choice, Wei Yuan decided to shift focus to the battle in the heavens, minimizing damage to the human world while continuing the search for the heart demon.

At this moment, Wei Yuan sat cross-legged on the Immortal City square, surrounded by massive arrays erected to prevent the heart demon’s escape. Zhang Sheng, Ji Liuli, Bao Yun, and others took turns on guard, debating strategies day and night.

Feng Chutang returned to the Tai Chu Palace specifically to consult ancient texts, and confirmed her suspicion: there was never any record of a heart demon trial occurring during Ascension to Yu Jing.

During Ascension to Yu Jing, the heavenly tribulation is especially critical—it should be as powerful as possible without exceeding the cultivator’s capacity to survive. The stronger the tribulation, the better the body refinement.

Without a formidable physical body, the moment the heart-phase world forms, it will crush the spiritual sea and cause the cultivator to explode. This is the most common cause of death during Ascension to Yu Jing.

Yet Wei Yuan had encountered a heart demon trial—truly inconceivable.

True heart demons originate from beyond heaven, typically encountered only after Immortal Ascension, once every thousand years during a tribulation. Fortunately, though the Tai Chu Palace was young, its number of Immortals was substantial, and its collection of Ascension insights was comprehensive, with detailed records on heart demons—equal to any noble clan, firmly ranked among the top three in the realm.

Feng Chutang immediately exchanged all the materials and transmitted them via the Xun Gong Zi Palace to Qing Ming. Zhang Sheng led the cultivators in studying them, pondering strategies. Wei Yuan, meanwhile, resisted the celestial corruption while reading the materials.

Within a month, Wei Yuan had absorbed nearly all the materials and stored them within the human world’s smoke and fire; during this time, the battle in the heavens had reached a stalemate, primarily because the combination of Han Li, Jun Weizhi, Fuyao, and Lei Ling was devastatingly effective—further amplified by the Immortal Plants, they had slain over a dozen giant beasts and countless lesser foes.

Ji Liuli, Zhang Sheng, and others repeatedly entered the human world’s smoke and fire through dream-entry to observe the purple blotches in the sky, even daring to venture onto the battlefield to verify their theories.

After a month of study, the cultivators finally developed several plans, ready to test them one by one. Three mature proposals emerged: two proposed by Zhang Sheng and Ji Liuli, the third by Feng Tingyu and the Academy’s cohort of academicians.

Of the three, Feng Tingyu’s plan proved, upon evaluation, the most viable—truly unexpected by Wei Yuan.

With the situation urgent, Wei Yuan did not delay; he immediately enacted the plan within the human world’s smoke and fire.

The human world’s smoke and fire operated with extraordinary efficiency: in less than half a day, all commoners were divided into groups of one hundred thousand, isolated from one another, then summoned in rotation for examinations; upon assembly, each person faced a desk with paper and brush, questions appeared on the paper, and they were required to answer within fifteen minutes with a minimum word count.

The questions were simple—only three in total:

One: Briefly describe the method of invading the heart-phase world.

Two: Describe possible resistances during invasion and corresponding countermeasures.

Three: Argue the inevitability of the heart demon’s failure.

The commoners were long accustomed to obeying orders, and most troublemakers had already been sent to reincarnation. Thus, they answered quietly and diligently. Once completed, the scrolls were automatically retrieved by the Immortal Plants. When one group of one hundred thousand finished, the next group was summoned. Those who had answered and those who had not were strictly kept apart.

The examination proceeded rapidly; at this pace, all commoners would finish in less than a day. Those not yet examined continued fighting the celestial enemies; those who had finished were assigned specific combat zones, with no overlap.

Immediately after the fifth group finished, an immensely terrifying and blazing spiritual sense swept across the entire human world’s smoke and fire! Then came the horrifying laughter of the Creator Immortal Sovereign, echoing through heaven and earth: “Ahahaha! So you finally showed your hand!”

Dozens of terrifying auras surged simultaneously, rushing toward a single spot in the city. A seemingly ordinary middle-aged man suddenly straightened his posture, his presence rising like a towering mountain or vast river!

He sneered, speaking in a strange tone: “Using such treacherous schemes—what kind of heroes are you? I’m ashamed for you! Today, I die—so what?”

His words rang with finality. Facing the onslaught of terrifying auras, he showed no fear, leaping upward to meet the torrent of divine light—charging against the current!

Wei Yuan, combined with the Immortal Plants, unleashed a single devastating strike. The middle-aged man’s flesh and bones vaporized instantly within the divine light, leaving only a wisp of black qi that shrieked before being purified into nothingness.

In the Immortal City, Wei Yuan opened his eyes and laughed aloud three times, filled with joy.

The cultivators glanced at him. Xiang Xiaoyu asked: “Did you capture the heart demon?”