A single First Under Heaven Dharma Idol Conference had netted Qingming more than five hundred Dao Foundation Patriarchs, along with some hundred-odd thousand of their disciples, pupils, and assorted relatives from their hometowns.
Upon entering Qingming, some patriarchs adhered to the philosophy that the great recluse hides in the city, choosing to reside in the twin cities of Yong'an and Ding'an. Others believed in retreating to the wild mountains, choosing to settle in border cities instead.
Whether practicing great reclusion or minor reclusion, once they arrived in Qingming, they were like droplets of water falling into an ocean—they truly vanished from notice.
Only after settling down did the patriarchs realize that their neighbors to the left and right, the front streets and back alleys, were teeming with Dao Foundations. Throw a brick down the street, and it would probably hit several of them. With so many Dao Foundations around, hearing their own disciples constantly call them "Patriarch" with every breath made the patriarchs feel embarrassed, so they quietly changed how they were addressed.
Qingming's laws were exceptionally strict and comprehensive. Many disciples of these patriarchs, newly arrived and unaccustomed to the rules, habitually threw their weight around just as they had back in their home villages. Looking to stir up trouble, they tried to bully a street vendor, only to end up thoroughly beaten by the very vendor they targeted, before being arrested and tossed into prison.
Standing by family over reason, the patriarch raised a clamor to back his disciples, only to be promptly arrested himself and locked in the cell right next to them.
Arrested in the afternoon, his verdict arrived that very evening—several dense pages, well-reasoned and thoroughly supported by fact.
Considering that the offense was minor and a first infraction, the Flourishing of the Many Realms issued a relatively lenient sentence: only one year of detention, with the option to deduct time from the sentence through merit once the victim was fully compensated.
Having already been slapped unconscious by a law-enforcement cultivator earlier, the Dao Foundation Patriarch had long lost his arrogant bluster, and humbly asked how one could earn merit.
At present, there were no active wars on Qingming's borders. The only way to quickly earn merit was through work. If the patriarch wished to work, his prison sentence could be deferred.
The law-enforcement cultivator listed out various possible jobs. While the work varied, the daily pay was roughly similar across the board. Thus, the patriarch picked what seemed like the most respectable and dignified option: working as an energy-supplying array cultivator. Half a year of full-time work here could offset a whole year of detention, and any subsequent merit earned could be exchanged for Qingyuan to improve his standard of living.
Fortunately, upon first arriving in Qingming, everyone's standard of living had already improved dramatically, so the need was not overly pressing. They discovered that in Qingming, as long as one worked diligently, one could eat meat at every meal. Before settling in Qingming, even the personal disciples of a Dao Foundation Patriarch could not eat meat every day. And without enough meat, Body Casting was naturally sluggish.
Under Qingming's current system, only certain jobs earned merit, including energy-supplying arrays, underground mining, and factory labor. Merit could be converted into Qingyuan, but Qingyuan could not be converted into merit. This was designed to prevent wealthy individuals from simply buying their way out of sentences.
For minor crimes, offsetting a sentence required actual labor; money was useless. One had to balance the ledger with contributions. This was the philosophy of Flourishing of the Many Realms, and in truth, Wei Yuan's philosophy as well.
When this Dao Foundation Patriarch entered the energy-supplying array, he saw that those around him were all template cultivators and instantly felt disdain. But after a full day's work, the patriarch discovered that because he had slacked off, he actually failed to outperform the template cultivators!
This was utterly intolerable. The patriarch still cared about saving face, so on the second day, he only spaced out a few times—yet he still failed to outperform the template cultivators.
The patriarch was infuriated and finally decided to get serious!
On the third day, the patriarch did not slack off once, yet he still could not outperform the template cultivators.
Stunned, the patriarch finally realized that the template cultivators were not just focused—every single one of them was outputting at maximum capacity! The patriarch simply could not understand: it was just a day job, was there really any need to try so hard?
Puzzled though he was, starting from the fourth day, the Dao Foundation Patriarch finally outperformed the crowd of template cultivators and took his rightful place at the top of the rankings. However, from that day on, after finishing his shift and returning home, he was too exhausted to even read storybooks.
During this period, the patriarch's disciples and pupils gradually found suitable jobs as well, throwing themselves into work with fiery enthusiasm. When they returned home, they also lacked the energy to read storybooks, and naturally, their visits to pay respects to the patriarch grew fewer and farther between.
The patriarch could only sigh helplessly. After all, it was a good thing that everyone could earn a living through their own abilities.
Before long, the patriarch's chief disciple, who was likewise in the Dao Foundation realm, found a job in a factory. Then the disciples discovered that the cultivation methods distributed by Qingming were actually vastly superior to what the patriarch had taught them—and they were handed out for free! To learn techniques from the patriarch, one had to haul water for three years, chop firewood for five, and light fires and cook for another seven, only to receive a meager, stingy fragment of a technique at the end.
Furthermore, the disciples soon realized that by earning merit, they could exchange for a multitude of powerful cultivation methods. As long as one possessed enough talent, one could even study the Palace of Grand Beginning's Six Arts of Body Casting!
And so, once they discovered there were real cultivation methods to be learned, not a single disciple or relative came to call at the patriarch's door anymore.
It took quite some time for the patriarch to accept the reality that he had become an ordinary person. Fortunately, by working diligently day after day, his energy supply output was exceptional, and he swept up a considerable amount in performance bonuses. This, in turn, dissatisfied the crowd of template Dao Foundations. Unable to increase their power output any further, they began clocking longer hours, determined to wrest the bonuses back from this country bumpkin of an outsider.
Once colossal amounts of supplies were produced, they were loaded onto flying boats and shipped to the State of Ji alongside recruited mortals.
In September of that year, as golden autumn arrived, the territory in the State of Ji welcomed its first harvest season. Wei Yuan attached great importance to this, so he brought along the cultivators from the Palace of Grand Beginning to the State of Ji to help them accumulate prestige among the people.
To advance the cultivation paths of the Palace of Grand Beginning's cultivators, Wei Yuan was now working on three fronts, having devised an entire plan. First was accumulating popular acclaim and karmic luck, keeping everyone sustained by karmic luck over extended periods. With prolonged accumulation, their aptitudes would experience marginal improvements, making cultivation bottlenecks easier to break through.
Second was tempering their bodies in the Desolate Realm. However, the Desolate Realm placed exceptionally strict demands on the quality of one's dharma idol. Thus, Wei Yuan had hauled back plenty of desolate iron and stone from the Desolate Realm to build bathhouses and hot springs, allowing cultivators of average strength to temper their bodies simply by soaking. Moreover, with proper control over the spring water, Dao Foundation cultivators could soak as well.
In no time, body-tempering hot springs sprang up across major cities, packed to bursting every single day. Anyone with a bit of spare coin wanted to take a dip.
Soon, the hot spring establishments in Ding'an City and Yong'an City were bought out for hefty sums by merchant chambers and converted on the spot into brothels. Business boomed instantly. Once the wealthy had eaten and drunk their fill, they would arrange to soak at the pleasure houses together. The most coveted skill among the courtesans shifted from singing melodies to scrubbing backs.
Even Wei Yuan had not expected mere stones from the Desolate Realm could find such an application. Upon reflection, he felt he might have managed things too strictly in the past, leaving Qingming's residents starved for entertainment.
Thus, Wei Yuan decided to see what other clever applications people might invent, holding a special auction for a batch of Desolate Realm stone and iron. It proved wildly popular; some hundred-odd cubic yards of Desolate Realm iron auctioned for millions of Qingyuan.
The final avenue was pills. After twenty years of development in Qingming, the Medicine Garden had finally reached scale, churning out massive quantities of qualified medicinal herbs, with output rivaling that of the ancestral mountain's herb garden.
With an abundant supply of herbs, Xu Henshui went all out, concocting pills cauldron after cauldron. Supported by Zhidan Sanren, he finally developed the Vast as a Misty Sea Alchemy!
This alchemical technique had a series of prerequisites: for example, all medicinal herbs had to be finely pre-processed, ground completely into fine powder, or had their essences extracted.
Once the raw ingredients were thus refined, Xu Henshui took charge personally. Relying on the boundless magic power of his dharma idol, he ultimately concocted a massive, perfectly cubic pill measuring three feet on each side.
Next came the cutting. Xu Henshui brought in sword cultivators to slash through it every centimeter. Thus, a single massive cubic pill was sliced into a million individual pills.
When Zhidan Sanren took the stage, it was an entirely grander spectacle. He could refine a massive pill measuring nine feet across, which, when sliced, yielded a staggering twenty-seven million pills!
Now, Zhidan Sanren added merely a twenty percent markup over the cost of raw materials, yet his pill valuation continually set career highs.
Xu Henshui's pill valuation surged forward by leaps and bounds as well, close on the heels of Patriarch Danming, surpassing the other Scenery Command Patriarchs, and standing second only to Zhidan Sanren.
The only flaw of the Misty Sea Alchemy was that the resulting pills were square, making them prone to scraping one's throat on the way down.
With these three avenues, the cultivation paths of the Palace of Grand Beginning's cultivators broadened significantly. Geniuses like Wei Yuan, Zhang Sheng, and Bao Yun were a rare breed after all; the vast majority of cultivators in the Palace of Grand Beginning were Dao Foundations who had no hope of reaching the Dharma Idol realm in their lifetimes. Now, Wei Yuan turned his sights toward them, preparing to pave the way forward for their journeys.
Chapter 1034