According to the records, of the original four commanderies of the Shattered Lands, Ningxi Commandery, governed by Xu Zhijie, was the largest in area but the smallest in population. The common people could barely survive, and public grievances boiled everywhere. Xu Zhijie also maintained an enormous army, ranked first among all the commanderies. Yet facing the Wuyu Clan, his forces retreated defeat after defeat, and each time it took the main Xu family stepping in, uniting forces from various sects and grotto-heavens into an allied army, to drive the Wuyu Clan back.
Yet with continuous warfare year after year, the common folk had no means of livelihood.
And so Xu Zhijie served as commandery governor for ten years. The commandery's borders shrank back by two hundred li, the population dwindled by eight hundred thousand, and countless people secretly used secret techniques of the Wuyu Clan to curse Xu Zhijie to die an early death. Afterwards, the Xu family finally intervened and arrested Xu Zhijie. They subsequently uncovered all sorts of wicked deeds—payroll padding, embezzling military supplies, and even colluding with the alien race. In the end, Xu Zhijie was sentenced to beheading, and his clan members were exiled or pressed into penal military service.
The moment Xu Zhijie died, every household in Ningxi Commandery lit firecrackers in celebration. But before even half a year had passed, the army of the Wuyu Clan swept across the four commanderies of Ningxi. After several rounds of contention, this region became the Shattered Lands.
Because Xu Zhijie had committed so many evils, he was granted a passage all to himself in the local gazetteer, spanning a full two hundred and twenty words dedicated to detailing his villainy and end for posterity to revile.
The intelligence distributed by the Palace of Grand Beginning had naturally undergone verification; it could not be falsified. According to the records, Xu Zhijie was practically a textbook example of a single official ruining an entire commandery, deserving death ten times over. Ningxi Commandery had originally held at least over two million people, yet after his ten-year tenure, only 1.5 million remained.
Yet in Xu Wan'er's mouth was a completely different story.
Though Xu Zhijie was of the Xu family's direct lineage, he had refused the marriage arranged by the family, choosing instead to marry a commoner woman. This left the young lady of the Lu clan's direct lineage, who had been arranged as his match, nursing a deep grudge. At the same time, several cousins within the clan had always envied Xu Zhijie's talent, and thus allied with Lady Lu, doing everything possible to suppress and sabotage Xu Zhijie.
Despite being suppressed, Xu Zhijie was exceptionally capable. Relying on his achievements, he rose through the ranks step by step, eventually being promoted to commandery governor of Ningxi to guard the frontier. However, the various factions in Ningxi Commandery were deeply entrenched, with traces of the Xu family's various branches everywhere. Every single vice general in the military had a backer; even the provincial commander couldn't order them around, let alone Xu Zhijie. The payroll padding and embezzlement of military supplies were all done by these people; Xu Zhijie couldn't interfere at all and wasn't even allowed to see the military logistics ledgers.
Relying on his own political savvy and years of effort and groundwork, Xu Zhijie ultimately managed to win over four of the eight vice generals. At the same time, he cracked down severely on powerful families annexing land, investigating and dealing with several major landlords, reclaiming the land for the commandery government, and then distributing it to landless peasants for cultivation. These measures offended nearly every branch of the Xu family, especially since one of the landlords had family members serving as officials in the Western Jin imperial court. They continually impeached Xu Zhijie, hurling all sorts of slander onto his head.
A few days before he was condemned, Xu Zhijie hurriedly sought out Xu Wan'er, passing down to her a profound art capable of concealing her Dao Foundation, and giving her several life-saving magical implements. Xu Zhijie then said he had inadvertently uncovered an earth-shattering secret and was looking into it; he handed Xu Wan'er a sheet of jade paper, telling her to keep it safe and flee to Lanshen Palace to seek refuge.
As it turned out, before Xu Wan'er even had time to leave, that very night a large group of unidentified attackers stormed into the governor's manor, slaughtering everyone on sight. Relying on the art that concealed her Dao Foundation, Xu Wan'er escaped amidst the chaos. Later, she encountered Yun Feifei on the road, and only then were the pursuers fought off.
Not long after, news broke that Xu Zhijie had been convicted and thrown into prison, and a litany of charges was published. The common people, already living in utter misery and ignorant of the truth, naturally hated Xu Zhijie to the extreme. Meanwhile, those who had received favors from Xu Zhijie dared not make a sound, and anyone who dared to question it was arrested and labeled as Xu Zhijie's accomplice. In this way, less than a month after his conviction, Xu Zhijie was publicly beheaded. At the execution ground, crowds were packed shoulder to shoulder; hurled eggs and rotten meat coated Xu Zhijie from head to toe.
Wei Yuan listened, half-believing and half-doubting.
There were indeed many suspicious points in this matter. For instance, the conviction and execution had happened too fast. Xu Zhijie was, after all, a prominent regional official. Under normal circumstances, just securing a conviction would take at least several months of trial; then it would require review by various imperial ministries, and a submission for the King of Jin's approval before an execution could be carried out. For Xu Zhijie to go from charges being filed to execution in less than a month, there was almost certainly something hidden beneath the surface.
However, Wei Yuan had come to escort Yun Feifei back to the palace, not to redress grievances for Xu Zhijie. To put it bluntly, the Immortal Monarch's chess move was far more important than whether some commandery governor's grievance was genuine or false.
After throwing up, Xu Wenwu had been listening at the side. As he listened, his face filled with indignant passion, itching to denounce current affairs and air his own insights. But the moment he opened his mouth, Wei Yuan bound it again with a Dao art rope.
After some thought, Wei Yuan asked, "What did your father give you that night?"
Xu Wan'er recalled carefully and said, "On the paper were very trivial records: land acreage and census data covering a dozen or so counties within the commandery and neighboring commanderies, spanning perhaps several decades. There were many records of troop and grain movements between military camps, records of merchant caravan traffic, over a dozen ledgers, records of silver flowing in and out of bank accounts—everything looked quite ordinary. I don't understand what they mean either. Father didn't tell me at the time; he only said I should find a way to bring it to Lanshen Palace."
Wei Yuan couldn't make heads or tails of it either. Just then, the duration of Xu Wenwu's Dao art gag expired, and he immediately blurted out impatiently, "These records may look chaotic and disordered, but there must be a connection! As long as we analyze them carefully and uncover the underlying patterns, we can—"
Wei Yuan raised a finger, and a rope bound Xu Wenwu's mouth once more.
Having spoken of her life story, Xu Wan'er's eyes were already brimming with tears. She suddenly bowed to Wei Yuan and said, "My three brothers and two sisters all died at the hands of those people, dying a wretched death. If Benefactor can clear my father's name, this humble woman has no other way to repay you; I can only... only..."
"Time to go." Wei Yuan stood up.
Xu Wan'er cast Wei Yuan a plaintive glance.
Wei Yuan did not mount immediately. Instead, he found a patch of level ground and first drew a formation diagram on the dirt. Then he placed spiritual items in various positions, and finally set a small formation plate in the center of the diagram. He pointed a finger at the formation plate, and a figure emerged at its center—white beard fluttering, radiating the transcendent bearing of an immortal.
This formation diagram was called the Turbid World Inquiring Immortal Method, something Wei Yuan had learned in Theory of Arts, used for divining the fortune or misfortune of a specific action. Normally, the results of divination were very vague, only able to distinguish roughly between good and bad omens. The divination's accuracy was influenced by the caster's own station, the quality of the spiritual items, and the nature of the matter being divined. The higher the station involved in what was being divined, the vaguer the result would be.
This was a very basic divination method. Its advantage lay in being simple and easy to use, with no strict environmental requirements and no need for sacrificial offerings. Consulting feng shui before major undertakings had now become a habit for Wei Yuan, especially now that he had the Immortal Monarch's formation plate in hand, making divination exceptionally favorable.
Seeing the figure of the immortal in the formation, Wei Yuan knew the formation was successful. Thus, he silently chanted in his mind: *Going to Lanshen Palace on this journey, what risks do I face?*
Wei Yuan deliberately limited the divination to himself. Xu Wan'er would have been fine, but that Xu Wenwu came from another world. Though utterly ignorant and unaccomplished, his fortune was bizarre; there was no telling what results might occur if he were included.
After his silent recitation, Wei Yuan steadily channeled Dao power. The white-bearded immortal elder had been smiling amiably, but all of a sudden, his smile twisted into a grimace of agony. The crown of his head blackened, and a bird's talon pierced right through his chest. Soaked from head to toe in pus and blood, he dissolved into a puddle of foul mud in the blink of an eye.
Chapter 108