Chapter 148: Wisdom King

At this moment, Wang Ping had no idea where he was.

He felt completely weightless, his five senses melting away. His thoughts scattered, swimming like fish through a boundless ocean, washed over by an endless torrent of information.

Below him was the Heavenly Demon Royal Court.

Yet the instant his gaze fell upon that square-shaped world, its true name surfaced naturally in his mind:

The Eight Treasure Table.

'It's just like the Eight Trigrams Furnace. But while the Eight Trigrams Furnace only forges artifacts for the Immortal Gate, this Eight Treasure Table is entirely a breeding ground for the Brahma Nation, isn't it?'

Wang Ping's consciousness continued to ascend.

This time, it wasn't a change in physical height, but more like stepping from the second dimension into the third—an elevation in state that allowed him to perceive far more.

This included the historical evolution of the Heavenly Demon Royal Court. He saw the very first creatures dropped into this world. He watched them grow step by step, breathing in the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, cultivating their bloodlines, drawing Totems, and developing their own systems. After generations of natural selection, they finally formed the Royal Court of today.

It was a long, drawn-out history of evolution.

Theoretically, this process should have taken millions of years to complete. Yet, as Wang Ping looked down upon the history of the Royal Court, he discovered a terrifying truth:

'One thousand three hundred years.'

From the moment the first strange beast was thrown into the Royal Court world, it had only taken one thousand three hundred years for the creatures inside to complete an evolution that should have taken millions!

And that was not all. Within this long stretch of history, he also saw countless possibilities. He saw a timeline where the Six-Eared Clan never declined, but instead rose to become one of the Eight Great Royal Clans. Someone from their ranks had even become the khan of the Royal Court at one point. He even caught sight of the Golden Roc Great Sage.

In reality, he was already dead.

But in the history Wang Ping witnessed, the Golden Roc Great Sage could easily have made a different choice and forged a new path to survival. All it would have taken was an external force to nudge things along.

Countless possibilities, countless variations.

Yet as he watched them, Wang Ping felt no emotion at all. Instead, an extremely bizarre thought—one that had no place at such a moment—sprouted in his mind:

Fake.

That was right. Whether it was the Golden Roc Great Sage or the millions of years of evolutionary history, everything seemed to be nothing more than a false, ephemeral illusion.

Ready to burst at the slightest poke.

So fake that as long as something sufficiently "real" intervened, it could effortlessly twist the established rules and carve out a new future.

The Golden Roc Great Sage did not have to die. The Six-Eared Clan did not have to perish. The Royal Court could have had a completely different landscape, and the masses could have even lived in peace and happiness... The more these thoughts bloomed, the more clearly Wang Ping sensed just how fragile, fake, and powerless all of this was.

'I am the same.'

Exactly. Including himself, he too was fake, capable of being easily altered... He just hadn't realized it before because his perspective hadn't changed.

Now, however, things were different. His perspective had ascended to a higher dimension. It was as if a character in a book had suddenly ascended to become the one holding the pen.

No, not the one holding the pen.

To be exact, he was the pen in the writer's hand.

He was still fake, still at the mercy of others, but in this moment he had gained a perspective indistinguishable from "reality," allowing him to glimpse his own falsehood.

In that case—

'Where is the real thing?'

At this thought, Wang Ping's already scattered consciousness exploded completely. At the same time, it continued to be pulled upward. It felt as if someone was forcibly lifting his head.

His gaze fixed straight upward.

And then, he finally saw it—right above the Royal Court world, coiled around the four edges of the Eight Treasure Table, sat four gigantic entities!

They sat cross-legged at the four corners of the world, like guests invited to a banquet. Their eyes shone brighter than stars, and their mere gazes unleashed boundless, endless power. In their presence, even the supposedly resplendent cosmos lost its luster, reduced to a worthless backdrop.

Their appearances also varied.

One of them bore a solemn and majestic visage. With an elbow resting on the table and its chin propped in its hand, the figure stared upward, ignoring the world below, completely lost in thought.

'Ugh...!'

In an instant, Wang Ping felt as if his thoughts had been set ablaze. A violent surge of cruelty and an urge to destroy welled up, plunging him instantly into madness.

If he still had a physical body right now, his eyes would surely be bloodshot.

However, this emotion came as quickly as it went. As his gaze pulled away from the figure resting its chin, his mind rapidly returned to a clear and tranquil state.

Simultaneously, the corresponding name surfaced in his mind.

Great Majestic Virtue Wisdom King.

The incarnation of wrath, the demon-subduing reverend. Battle and bloodshed were his greatest loves. Victory was the finest offering to him, while death and defeat met with his absolute scorn.

Not daring to look any longer, Wang Ping hurriedly averted his eyes.

This time, he saw a figure sitting perfectly upright. With pale golden skin and a vast face obscured by layers of auspicious light, the figure held one hand raised before its chest.

Great Tara Wisdom King.

The incarnation of wisdom, the mother of enlightenment across three lifetimes. Greed and contemplation were her greatest loves. Seeking knowledge was the finest offering to her, while surrender and ignorance met with her utter disdain.

The third figure was the only one sitting with its back to the Royal Court world. A golden wheel turned slowly behind its head, radiating an aura that seemed holy and brilliant at first glance.

But for some reason, the exact moment Wang Ping's gaze touched it, a heavy stench and a blinding sense of revulsion washed over him, as if he had just looked at something filthy. He quickly tore his eyes away, learning the title of this wisdom king in the process.

Great Golden Wheel Wisdom King.

The final figure was the one his consciousness had been approaching this whole time. Only now did Wang Ping drift down, landing softly in his palm.

This was the only figure whose face he could clearly see so far.

Before his eyes was a man with a wrathful expression, wearing a crown adorned with stars. Within his sun-like eyes, water and fire continuously clashed.

Yin and yang, water and fire, heaven and earth—layers of imagery, opposing yet unified, intertwined within those eyes, blooming and then shattering apart.

Strangely, however, draped upon this wrathful man was the figure of a woman. Her legs were wrapped tightly around his waist like a lotus throne. They sat face to face, their four arms embracing one another. Though they appeared to be separate entities, together they formed a perfectly unified image.

It was dual cultivation. It was ultimate bliss. It was the harmony of yin and yang.

This was the so-called:

Great Joy Bodhisattva.

A second later, Wang Ping watched as this universe-spanning figure lowered its head. From those eyes, pooled with billions of colors, a minuscule sliver of light suddenly split off.

"Boom!"

Just this single sliver—not even a sideways glance—slammed directly into Wang Ping's sea of consciousness, immediately beginning to read his past, his present, and even his future.

'Not good!'

Wang Ping's mind instantly went blank. He never expected that after the so-called forty-nine heavenly maidens, something like this would be waiting for him.

He had been set up!

This was Jin Hai's true trump card!

'The forty-nine heavenly maidens were just a ritual! If the flames of lust couldn't breach my sea of consciousness, he would directly summon the Great Joy Wisdom King to descend!'

Wang Ping had witnessed the mighty power of the Immortal Gate's Qi Refining practitioners with his own eyes. Yet if asked right now, he was entirely certain that even a Qi Refining practitioner could not do what the Great Joy Wisdom King was currently doing. The entity wasn't searching his soul at all; it was directly observing his past, present, and future!

And then, the entity saw it—

It saw an infant born into the Six-Eared Clan, carrying wisdom from a past life and burdened by the hatred of an exterminated clan. It saw him converse with Jin Hai, and finally, it saw him die in an earth-shattering battle.

That was the life of the "Six-Eared Orphan."

Wang Ping was left speechless.

Never before had Wang Ping felt the Taiping Sutra to be this reliable, providing such an overwhelming sense of security. It truly deserved to be called his daddy!

"...Good."

As the word echoed, the gaze from the Great Joy Wisdom King dissipated.

Wang Ping's field of vision plummeted alongside it. A deafening ring filled his ears. In the blink of an eye, he fell back from the third dimension to the second, returning to his own body.

"Phew!"

Wang Ping snapped back to reality in an instant, sucking in a sharp breath of cold air. When he opened his eyes again, the Snake Clan Great Sage he had just defeated hadn't even collapsed to the ground yet.

What had felt like an eternity was, in reality, less than a single instant.

"Congratulations, martial nephew!"

Jin Hai's laughter drifted over. This time, devoid of any lingering wariness, he walked over affectionately and caught Wang Ping's already trembling body just in time.

Even though Jin Hai didn't know exactly what the Great Joy Wisdom King had seen—and such a magnificent existence would never bother to explain it to him, nor could Jin Hai possibly communicate with the entity to warn it of what to look out for—the Wisdom King's mighty power was undeniable. Since this person had returned alive, it meant there were no issues.

"To be able to seek an audience before the Great Joy Wisdom King, and even be graced by a glance from the Wisdom King, is a monumental stroke of luck. Combined with the fact that you, martial nephew, cleared the Forty-Nine Heavenly Maidens Void and Form Array, the Wisdom King must have bestowed a profound gift upon you. You can check your sea of consciousness."

A profound gift? Bestowed by the Wisdom King?

Wang Ping narrowed his eyes. He immediately calmed his mind and looked into his sea of consciousness—and there, surprisingly, lay a strangely shaped talisman.

Its design was identical to the Great Joy Wisdom King.

It depicted a man sitting cross-legged, with a woman wrapping her legs around him like a lotus throne... As Wang Ping's gaze fell on the talisman, information instantly surfaced in his mind.

Void Joy Non-Dual Guardian Consort Talisman.

Just as Jin Hai had said, this was indeed a supreme gift. As the name suggested, it was a talisman capable of refining an outsider into his very own protector wisdom consort!

What was a protector wisdom consort?

'In short, it means I can obtain everything she has, while she can only exist in dependence on me. If she dies, I might not die. But if I die, she will definitely die.'

It was the most extreme form of slavery.

Of course, this talisman also had its limits. The target to be refined into a protector wisdom consort was strictly limited to females; it would never work on a male.

Additionally, to refine a protector wisdom consort, he had to ensure the target had entirely lost the power to resist. Otherwise, the slightest fluctuation would cause the refinement to fail.

But to Wang Ping, none of these restrictions mattered.

Because the moment he understood the effects of the Void Joy Non-Dual Guardian Consort Talisman, the absolute best candidate for his protector wisdom consort had already surfaced in his mind.

'Daoist Nun You... You Xuexin!'

Recalling all the humiliation he had patiently endured in the past, a fierce hatred boiled in Wang Ping's heart.

'As the saying goes, a gentleman takes revenge, ten years is not late. You damned venomous woman... it is finally my turn to rise. It's about time we settled our old scores!'